“…The middle class and the working class in America without government protection, support and investment will be controlled by radical right wingers, religious fanatics, old John Birchers and people like Paul Ryan.”

Previously:

National Federation of Democratic Women in Kansas City – June 12, 2014 (June 13, 2014)

NFDW in Kansas City – Claire Connor – “Wrapped in the Flag” – part 1 (June 13, 2014)

Claire Conner: ….Now, we stand back now as liberals and we say, the press, yeah, the press stinks. It does. Even Chris Matthews is terrible. I mean, let’s face it, hardly anybody has the nerve to say to someone, hey, those facts are wrong or they aren’t facts at all. Yet, our leaders don’t do it either. we let [Representative] Paul Ryan stand on the American stage as if he were some kind of a bright economist who actually could add and subtract and that he had really valid ideas. Really? Here’s a guy who doesn’t have, cannot find a government program he doesn’t want to end and he’s never worked for anyone but the government. [laughter]  He never has.  Oh, I think, wait, I take that back. I think one summer he drove that, uh, hot dog machine, one summer. [laughter] This is a kid who went to college on his father’s Social Security.

Now, they want to tell you that poor people, poor people keep sucking at the government and draining all of our money. Really? If there’s someone sucking up our money it’s people like Paul Ryan.  And yet every single two years the people of Wisconsin reelect him. Why? Why? Because the people who don’t agree with him forget to vote.

I live in Florida. Now Florida, I want to remind all of my friends who do not live in Florida, if you would like to know what’s coming down the road for you, you take a look at Florida. Nineteen years the GOP has run Florida and it is a mess. It’s sad, it’s pathetic and it’s not getting any better. We have teachers paid forty-seventh in the nation, we have kids crammed into schools because they closed all these schools and jammed all of our children into these big conglomerate messes We test kids and test kids and test kids and have nothing. We have drained out of our children any love of learning. We have a legislature that gives themselves this thing called a leadership days which means basically you sit in your office in Tallahassee and collect checks from anybody who wants your vote. Florida is probably as corrupt as any place in, on the planet. It’s unbelievable. And everyone knows it. Nineteen years they’ve been in charge. We have no clean water, we have wrecked the Everglades, it’s pathetic.

Now, here’s the really pathetic thing, there are more registered Democrats than Republicans in the state of Florida. That’s right. I wish it weren’t right. It makes me crazy. Do you, I, I lived in Florida about four months and people who I’d met, Democrats, would call me and ask me to to vote for. I said, are you crazy? You’re calling me?  I just got here, but let me tell you who to vote for. In the case of Florida if you have a breathing human being with a D after their name, that’s who you vote for. [laughter, applause] That’s it and it’s easy. You don’t even have to know anything because in Florida, until you get rid of some of the Republicans, we’re not going to discuss government at all. So, this is what’s happened to the great State of Florida. It’s awful.

And if you look at the South today you’ll see the old Confederacy is exactly like Florida. We literally have a bright red Confederacy. And they are armed to the teeth and itching, itching to take out the feds along with all the minorities and most of the women. Yeah, yeah.

I have friends, African American friends, women in particular, who say that they are suffering the most awful indignities again coming out of the mouths of these brats. Men and women who’s hatred has been unleashed in the last six years in ways that I find to be utterly horrifying – and I am a white woman. I’m angry that we’ve unleashed and allowed to happen this hatred in this country. This rage and this anger. And why? Because we never believe these people. We always think, oh, you know what, that’s as bad as it’ll get. That’s as bad as it’ll get.

When Benghazi happened we thought, oh, they’ll never impeach him, they can’t. They can and they will. Look at what happened to [Sgt. Bowe] Bergdahl. Look at what happened to the President of the United States. And to that young man, who knows what happened to him? But worse than that, where were the people who stood up and said to [Senator] John McCain, listen mister, we traded for you. [applause]  We traded for you with North Viet Nam. And in your own book, John, you said you gave up everything you knew to the Vietnamese. We should have let you rot. [laughter] But seriously, who has the nerve to say that to John McCain? It’s terrible. We tried this guy on Fox News last Sunday or the Sunday before. They were saying that the death penalty should be on the table. For what? We haven’t tried him, we haven’t charged him, we haven’t investigated anything. And in the next breath they say, and the President should be impeached.

The problem is they’re not crazy. They’re working their plan. I wish they were crazy. Crazy people are one thing. Crazy people, honestly, you  can defeat crazy people fairly easily. These people aren’t crazy, they have a plan. I think their plan is really evident right now. They’re going to impeach President Obama. They won’t remove him from office. They don’t have the votes in the Senate and they won’t have them. But they don’t need that. They will have two more years of a government that does nothing. And what happens in America when the government doesn’t do anything? Americans know one thing. They know what party controls the White House, and that’s all they know. And that is our fault. That is our fault.

I talk to Democrats who still don’t understand that the President can’t pass a bill. They don’t know. We haven’t taught anybody. We haven’t taught anybody how the government works. So when the government doesn’t work who do we blame? The President. Democrats forgot the most important thing in American politics, the guy in the White House doesn’t matter. The guy in the White House doesn’t matter. What matters?  The state legislatures, the school boards, um hmm, the county board, your congressman, and your senator. You take care of that and the White House will take care of itself. [applause] Yes indeed.

So, I’m gonna get pulled off this stage because I really do want to talk to you and let you talk to me. I want to tell you this, I know about the radical right because I lived with them. I know what their goal is. They don’t believe in any safety net programs. We’re gonna talk a lot more about this tomorrow. They believe in no safety net programs. They believe, the pure right wingers, and there are lots of them, including this guy who just beat [Representative] Eric Cantor, by the way, David Brat, they believe that the Federal Government has four jobs. Now, you need to memorize this. The radical right and most of the GOP believes that there are four things that the government does. One, coin money. Two, run the Post Office. And you’ll notice they don’t really believe in that much anymore. Three, run foreign policy. And four, run the War Department. Now that is it. Those are the four specifically enumerated powers reserved the Federal Government in the Constitution according to these people. they do not believe in the common welfare, general good concept at all. Not a bit. They believe in those four things and they’re not too sure about the Post Office, so they believe in three.

Now you have to start thinking how that translates into real policy. That’s why food stamps are a no. That’s why the farm bill was a mess. That’s why they will not fund the highway department. My father and the right wing don’t believe in it. And nor do most of them up there. That’s why they absolutely oppose all civil rights legislation and did from the get go. Because in their minds the Federal Government has no jurisdiction, no authority, and no right. Now, if you get your arms around that you’ll begin to understand that libertarians and radical right people are essentially anarchists. They are. They’re essentially anarchists.

Now Kansas, your neighbor here, is getting a good dose of this right now. It is. And tomorrow we’re going to talk a little bit about the Kochs, so I hope you all come to breakfast at seven thirty. And you’ll miss a great opportunity to listen to me talk about the Kochs, you know, who are Birch kids, they’re Birch kids.

So, the, anarchy is simple when you’re worth a hundred billion dollars, isn’t it? Yeah. rich folks always think they don’t need the government because essentially they don’t. Essentially they don’t. Unfortunately not only do they not need it, but they want to wreck it and that’s a problem.

But I think we need to start as Democrats talking to ourselves, talking to our friends, talking to our voters about this reality. The middle class and the working class in America without government protection, support and investment will be controlled by radical right wingers, religious fanatics, old John Birchers and people like Paul Ryan.

Previously:

National Federation of Democratic Women in Kansas City – June 12, 2014 (June 13, 2014)

Claire Conner: ….I have a unique story. One that you haven’t heard before, probably. I was raised in the heart of the radical right. It took me twenty-five years to figure out that virtually everything I had learned from my father and my mother I didn’t agree with. But living that long with a true, pure radical taught me a lot of things.

And he taught me the thing I most want to share with you tonight. There’s a reason why they win. The reason is so hard to grasp. It’s a simple reason, but we can’t grasp it. My father, thirty-two years, never changed his position on anything. Not once. He was driven by rage, anger, hatred and a supposed devotion to the flag and the Constitution.

I called my book “Wrapped in the Flag” because that is one of the biggest problems we face. We face a movement that wraps itself in such patriotic bull, bull it is astounding.        

But here’s what we don’t get, on the left. We get all that, but here’s what we don’t get. These people aren’t kidding. what they say is what they mean. When they talk about their plans and they talk about their philosophy they’re not kidding. And you can’t wrap your arms around it and I can’t either. Why? Because it’s stunningly impossible to think that you are dealing with a whole group of people, currently running, by the way, the House of Representatives, who do not believe in government. That was the biggest shock to me with my father. It took me years to grasp that. He loved the Constitution, but hated the government. Now that’s nuts, but it’s true. If you listen, you listen to the gang running the House that’s what you hear. They love the Constitution, but they hate the government. They have done such a wonderful job selling the American people on this problem, they started, by the way, with Reagan, Reagan took the idea that the biggest problem you have is the Federal Government and turned it into an eight year administration.

They have done such an excellent job selling us on the idea that our most serious problem is that the Federal Government is out to get you and you and me that right now sixty-three percent of Americans think the biggest problem they have is the Federal Government. Let me say this, not everybody appreciates it when I say this, but the liberals have failed to stand up and defend the idea that the United States has a Federal Government and that Federal Government has legitimate and essential functions. [applause]

Now let me be clear, I don’t love the NSA. I don’t love everything President Obama did or didn’t do. I don’t agree with everything the Federal Government has done. But, I do not believe that turning the United States back to something precolonial times is in any way an answer to our problems. To make America back into the image that the right has is to change us to something not one person in this country ever lived in or ever thought they wanted.

I figured this out in nineteen seventy-six. I was a slow learner. But in nineteen seventy-six I got it. I was born in nineteen forty-five, so, yes, I was a slow learner. Here’s what happened. I went up to see my mom and dad. We lived in the same town in Wisconsin and I had been pulling back from doing any Birch stuff for years. I kept saying. I’m not doing this, I am not participating, don’t call me. But it’s very hard to say no to your mom and dad, they were very persuasive. anyway, I was, at that time, involved in the pro-life movement, which is another interesting and important learning experience for me. I was on the national, on the state board, spoke all over the state. I believed, in nineteen seventy-six, that every person of good will would understand that the only way you stop abortion is by caring for mothers and children in need. That was evident to me. It was evident to me. It was absolutely crystal clear to me, not only as a christian woman, but as a human being that you cannot say anything if you’re not willing to help those people in need.

Okay. So, at the time in Wisconsin we had this governor and this re, Republican group in the legislature who were in the business of cutting all the funding for what we called WIC, women, infants and children. Now, I was on the board of Wisconsin Right to Life. I was speaking all over the state. I couldn’t get Wisconsin Right to Life to stand up and say no to the WIC cuts. And I couldn’t understand it. I simply couldn’t grasp that. I couldn’t understand that you would say, you cannot abort your child and we won’t do anything to help you feed that baby. It was, it gave me a headache. It gives me a headache talking about it now.

So, anyway, I was up at my mom and dad’s house and I was talking to them because I thought even though we didn’t agree on politics we certainly agreed on abortion, ‘kay. So I’m saying to them, you need to stand up with me and help this legislature stop these WIC cuts. My mother goes into her, her office comes back with the most recent John Birch Society bulletin. Every month the John Birch Society read a book, practically, to their members saying, this is what you’re gonna do, this is what you do, this is what we believe in, this is why. This particular bulletin was longer than usual because it was sort of an analysis of American history in time for the bicentennial, okay. So this is July nineteen seventy-six. And she starts reading from this bulletin written by Robert Welch, the founder of the Birch Society. He goes through American history and he says, in nineteen hundred, this was like the apex of American history, in nineteen hundred we had this wonderful economy, people were discovering all kinds of possibilities, uh, the free enterprise system was in full bloom. Nineteen hundred, folks, ‘kay. And then he went on and said, and this is a quote, there were pockets of poverty, however [laughter], but, even the poverty was offset by the blessings of liberty, thus it was a healthy kind of poverty, healthy poverty, because every man understood that relief from dire want was entirely his own  responsibility. I said, what the hell are you talking about? what are you talking about? Healthy poverty? I said, so you’re answer to the pro-life movement is healthy poverty? Now we laugh about this, but let me tell you something, did you hear [Representative] Paul Ryan and the House of representatives when they cut food stamps last year?

I actually, my parents did a lot of things for me, and one of the things they did is turn me into a policy wonk. Because you couldn’t have a conversation with them if you didn’t know more than they knew [laughter], okay. But that was a good thing. So I’m kind of a brainiac about that kind of stuff. So, I actually turn on C-SPAN, I know I’m one of the only weirdos who does, but I do. So, when they’re debating on the food stamps I turned it on. And I said, I was so sad and so angry, but I also realized every last one of those people sounded just like the people who came to dinner at my house who were the leadership in the emerging radical right.

Paul Ryan, Paul Ryan sounds like every John Birch yapper who I ever met. Paul Ryan, John Boehner, the whole gang of these people, Eric Cantor, defending. And in Kansas you guys have Chris Kolbach. Poverty’s good for you. I love that. Don’t you love that? People who are millionaires who stand up with their absolutely hideous arrogance and say, poverty’s good for you people. Now we have to give every rich corporation a tax break, we have to cut taxes in Kansas for everybody who is wealthy, but, oh my god, those poor people, they’re gonna do better if we keep ’em poor. They’re gonna work hard, ’cause you know they’re lazy, you know they’re lazy. That’s why they’re poor. Now this is a crock on every level. But, it works. It works, it works, it works for a couple reasons.

Number one, they appeal to people who think, gee, you know, if the government stops giving my, my lazy neighbor help, in the morning I’m gonna be rich. So, there is that. I used to say to my dad, you know, the reason you’re a conservative is because inside of you you think you’re going to win the Irish lottery as long as the poor people don’t get any help. And there is that.

But there’s another thing. We don’t call them out for this. We let them get away with it….

The National Federation of Democratic Women are meeting in Kansas City from June 11th through the 15th. Yesterday evening there was a reception and then, at 7:00 p.m., a PAC event where Claire Conner, author of “Wrapped in the Flag” – her memoir of growing up in a home steeped in the John Birch Society and the radical right, was the featured speaker.

The Kansas City skyline from the fortieth floor of the Sheraton.

New Mexico Democrats – working for you!

Claire Conner, author of “Wrapped in the Flag” – the evening’s speaker.

Claire Conner.

We’ll have more on Claire Conner’s remarks in subsequent posts.