See Dick Read... Badly

Dick Enthusiast and Dick

Let's be clear. There are some people, let's call them stooges and manipulators because they are, who have been actively working to destabilize the respect most Americans have long held for the government. One of the manipulators is Dick Armey, a former Texas Congressman. He came to Congress around the same time as Newt Gingrich, helped devise the "Contract for America", a kind of conservative manifesto, and he fancies himself a wise intellectual and astute reader of culture and economics and history. He is more like the Wizard of Oz, but without a heart or the ability to understand and acknowledge his own limitations.

He has used his own organization, FreedomWorks, to fight healthcare reform efforts, and to thwart debate over healthcare reform.

McClatchy writes about conservative efforts to correct history books and balance against a perceived left wing bent in many books, and Dick Armey's efforts at redefining people's perceptions about the nation's historical past.

Armey has been out there giving speeches and talking history, and doing it badly. When caught in the big lie, that lie is then papered over with denial or more lies. Which is how much of the shameful and unusually destructive Republican Party has been lately functioning.

At the same event, Armey urged people to read the Federalist Papers as a guide to the sentiments of the tea party movement.

"The small-government conservative movement, which includes people who call themselves the tea party patriots and so forth, is about the principles of liberty as embodied in the Constitution, the understanding of which is fleshed out if you read things like the Federalist Papers," Armey said.

Others such as Democrats and the news media, "people here who do not cherish America the way we do," don't understand because "they did not read the Federalist Papers," he said.

A member of the audience asked Armey how the Federalist Papers could be such a tea party manifesto when they were written largely by Alexander Hamilton, who the questioner said "was widely regarded then and now as an advocate of a strong central government."

Armey ridiculed the very suggestion.

"Widely regarded by whom?" he asked. "Today's modern, ill-informed political science professors? . . . I just doubt that was the case, in fact, about Hamilton."

Hamilton, however, was an unapologetic advocate of a strong central government, one that plays an active role in the economy and is led by a president named for life and thus beyond the emotions of the people. Hamilton also pushed for excise taxes and customs duties to pay down federal debt.

In fact, Ian Finseth said in a history written for the University of Virginia, others at the constitutional convention "thought his proposals went too far in strengthening the central government."

(McClatchy, in an article on the rewriting of education texts by conservatives)

Hamilton of all people was actually responsible for the type of economic decisions (centralized banking anyone?) that would have driven modern Republicans, libertarians and state's rights activists bonkers. But Armey is not one to let truth dominate the process of making a seemingly important point. He functions almost like Sarah Palin, but smarter, and willing to manufacture intellectual arguments, or mock others when challenged on the details. Note Armey's misrepresentation of history. Examine how he suggests those that don't agree with him do not cherish America like he does.

That, dear reader, is wrong. This crowd, this cabal that would interrupt Congressional town hall meetings, that would mock the President of the United States with lies and distortions, that work against honest discussion of legislation that clearly is designed to help others, that would define American by "us" and "them" or "real" or "iunreal" or American or un-American, needs to be sat down. This group of liars and extremists and manipulators of the truth need to be challenged and forced to honest accounting. This group of situational "patriots" needs to be challenged about their selective concerns for the nation's situation (economic or otherwise), and put to the test over their inconsistencies. These "citizens" who would fill their hearts with darkness, their minds with lies, and their mouths with false witness needs to self-reflect on the real reasons for their sudden vitriol for the elected leaders of the United States. They mask their ignorance and hatred with the history of this wonderful nation.

Dick cannot read. Dick misbehaves. Dick sit down and be quiet.