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Writing in Town Hall today, David Limbaugh made an error. He said, “People will produce more when they are allowed to retain more of the fruits of their labor.”

This is obviously wrong. Under capitalism, 9/10s of labor has been denied substantial control over productive property by state and laws permitting minority monopolization of material and intellectual means of production. If it is true that people will produce more when they are allowed to keep more of the fruits of their labor, and, conversely, people will produce less if they are allowed to keep less of the fruits of their labor, then one would expect productivity to have declined sharply with the expansion of capitalism.

This did not happen. It did not happen with slavery either. Slaves were not less productive because they weren’t allowed to keep the fruits of their labor. Nor was it true that serfs were less productive because they weren’t allowed to keep the fruits of the labor. This is because any system that permits a minority to monopolize the means of production and thus compels the majority to either be owned by the minority or by necessity rent themselves to the minority makes productivity a requirement of the relationship.

If it were true that keeping the fruits of one’s labor maximizes productivity, then communism, wherein everybody owns and controls the means of production, and distributes goods and services based on need and self-actualization, would be the most productive system possible.

The problem is that communism distributes the fruits of labor equitably and eliminates all but necessary work and thus people work less because their needs are met more easily and more completely. In others words, all people work less and enjoy life more.

That’s the capitalist’s worst nightmare.

At the forefront of apologetics for Israel is the US-based group StandWithUs, a thoroughly obnoxious lobby that harasses students and professors critical of Israeli policy and US participation in it. StandWithUs is deeply involved in the persecution of William I. Robinson at University of California-Santa Barbara, and, I understand, one of the students who instigated the affair is an operative for StandWithUs.

Those who support the persecution of Robinson have made arguments to which I want to respond. Exploding these exposes the real agenda here. The international president of StandWithUs, Esther Renzer, says, “This case is a litmus test of whether professors can exploit their positions of authority to impose their political prejudices on students or whether the university truly will remain a place where all points of view can be comfortably and responsibly discussed.”

First, all students imposed views on students in the sense that failure to answer a question declared true in relation to a point of view results in negative outcome. These are often political charged truths. Suppose a students decides to skip all questions pertaining to natural selection on a biology test because she is a creationist. Should she be allowed to pass on those questions without consequence because of here theological beliefs? Is she being punished because of her point of view? Or do we say that she suspends her belief in the supernatural in order to answer questions the premise of which she rejects just so she can have a positive outcome? Is this not imposing views on students? Damn straight it is. It’s called education. She agrees to this by remaining enrolled in the class.

In social science class, which is no less scientific than the natural and physical sciences, professors nonetheless take great care not to impose their political prejudices on students because they recognize that they are held to a different standard. In any case, Robinson did not connect his email to any possible negative consequences in terms of evaluating the students. When a student asked the question, Robinson reassured her that the e-mail carried on consequences. This has been twisted into a claim that Robinson admitted that the email was irrelevant to class. No, he said the e-mail was for her interests, therefore she did not have to do anything with it, and therefore there was no consequences for dismissing the claims in the e-mail.

Here’s the real world: Professors present political and other positions in class, germane to the subject at hand, that students can either agree or disagree with, or dismiss altogether. Part of a university education, specially learning how to become an informed and engaged citizen, is learning that one routinely confronts political opinions with which one either agrees or disagrees or is indifferent and that one is free to openly disagree with opinions with which they do not agree or ignore them altogether. It’s called life in an open society.

The e-mail over which Robinson’s opinion was sent was open to all participants in the class to use how they saw fit. It was for their interests in the context of a sociology class on global issues. All students had an equal opportunity to debate the merits of the email. Two students chose not to debate the merits, but instead to participate in a campaign to suppress academic freedom, thus harming the interests of the professor and the other students who enrolled in the course. They did not sign up for a class the content of which was constrained by outside forces. They signed up for a sociology class on global issues.

Israel’s invasion of Gaza is a global issue or great interest to the American college student. The comparison of any current state policy to the policies of past oppressive regimes is the bread and butter of historical social science, which rests on a comparative methodology. Second, it is not possible in a sociology class on global matters to comfortably discuss all points of view on account of the obvious fact that certain points of view will inevitably make some persons uncomfortable. There has never been a requirement that only those points of view with which every participant is comfortable may be discussed. If this were a requirement then the university classroom would have no purpose.

Christians who believe in creationism who attend biology classes have to participate in judgments premised on the truth of natural selection, a point of view diametrically at odds with the biblical account of life on our planet. Those who believe a supernatural being compels objects to fall confront in physics class judgments which operate on the theory of gravitation. The demand that we only discuss things with which we are all comfortable forces off the table any discussion the origins and development life or the reasons why objects fall. Yet, even in times where such matters were taken off the table, those who wanted to know but couldn’t were made to feel uncomfortable. Those who knew from other sources but were not allowed to speak up were made to feel uncomfortable. The curious were silenced, misdirected, punished.

Not discussing the killing of Palestinian civilians by Israeli military forces makes a lot of students who know what’s going on feel uncomfortable. Why is their discomfort any less important than those who defend such oppressive policies? Life is not about always feeling comfortable, especially in intellectual and political endeavors. Pursuing knowledge and justice often requires afflicting the comfortable. Life is about disagreement over things. If disagreements can’t happen in the context of a college classroom, then can we realistically expect them to happen elsewhere.

Roberta P. Seid, StandWithUs education and research director says that Robinson’s e-mail was anti-Semitic because it “demonized Israel, its founding, and its history. The university should be concerned about the degradation of academic standards when professors present such polemics as reasonable analyses.” Demonizing Israel is not anti-Semitic (and the State Department asserting that it does has no bearing on the truth of the matter).

Anti-Semitism is prejudice or especially discrimination against Jews based on their real or perceived Jewishness. Demonizing a nation-state, whatever its alleged ethnic character, does not inherently involve prejudice or discrimination against one ore more ethnic groups living within those borders. Was opposition to apartheid in South Africa demonstration of prejudice against the white ruling class? No, it was opposition to its oppressive public policies that caused the horrible treatment and conditions of the blacks who suffered under its control. Did people demonize the state of South Africa? Yes, for good reason. Seid said, “But that is not the case against him. [So why bring it up?] The case is that he inappropriately used university resources to impose and promote his personal political prejudices, stifling students’ ability to critically examine controversial issues. I’m sure he would be glad that the Code of Conduct safeguards are in place if a homophobic or racist professor took the liberties he took to influence students.” Note how the language is almost identical to that used by Renzer, so the same points I made above apply.

But let us examine the analogy Seid tries to draw about the homophobic or racist professor. Suppose that a biology professor states that she does not believe that homosexuality is genetic, that after a careful review of the evidence, she concludes that homosexuality is a learned behavior. Some students might find this uncomfortable for political reasons, namely, the desire to construct homosexuality as biological in order to legitimate identity. Some would suggest that even saying this is itself homophobic. But why should any of these statements be homophobic? A person can be strongly pro-gay and lesbian, believe that human beings should be free to be homosexual, even believe that the claim of genetic origin stigmatizes homosexuals as having defective genes from the point of view of heteronormativity, but that nonetheless the question it open to exploration—a person can be and believe all this and still argue the position that homosexuality like heterosexuality is learned behavior. If I were a biology professor making this argument should I be persecuted? If I am a professor who exposes the racist policies of any country, including my own, am I to be persecuted for being a racist? I say a lot of uncomfortable things about whiteness. Am I a racist? Should I be persecuted for discussing the history and consequences of whiteness in the United States?

Roz Rothstein, StandWithUs’ international director, said that StandWithUs launched the petition to provoke UCSB to persecute Robinson “to protect the right of students to register grievances against faculty without fear of hostile faculty reactions.” Speaking about those who are defending Robinson, Rothstein said that “’Robinson’s supporters’ assault on the students’ complaints could disempower other students with grievances and intimidate them into silence.” Talk about twisting oneself into knots. Rothstein said, “The politicization of academia is a serious problem today. We applaud the UCSB administration for trying to uphold standards of academic freedom and responsibility. They are under a lot of pressure, and our petition lets them know that tens of thousand of people support them and their commitment to ensure that the university remains what it should be—a place for the critical examination of ideas, facts, and values.”

What Rothstein wants is the depoliticization of science, a form of political correctness that will stifle critical examination of ideas, facts, and values. Life is political. The classroom, a place where life happens, is political. The academy is political. This is a welcome fact of social reality. The attempt to remove politics from academia is guided by a desire to render the university classroom a sterile environment where “truths” learned outside the classroom cannot be challenged in the classroom. The attempt to remove politics from academia is guided by a desire to reinforce indoctrination via a conspiracy of silence in the one place where critical examination fo ideas, facts, and values can take place.

Is it not ironic in some way that Americans who participate in StandWithUs’ witch hunt trample upon their own Bill of Rights to silence their fellow citizens who would criticize Israel? Why would any American tell another American to shut up about Israel? I have found that those who object most strongly to criticisms of Israel have no problem with criticism of US foreign policy, except where it pertains to US’s participation in Palestine. 

This is the United States of America. Here we allow free and open discussion and debate about ideas, facts, and values. At least we’re supposed to. We could do a lot better job if those who represent StandWithUs engaged the discussion and debated Robinson on the substance rather than organize campaigns to suppress his academic freedom. If ever the defenders of Israel are silenced in the classroom, what will they be able to say about this? If they are consistent, they will have to take their medicine. But, for them, free speech is not the principle in operation here. For them, I am free to say whatever I want, just so long as StandWithUs agrees with me.

Andrei Chikatilo was one of Russia’s more prolific serial killers. Chikatilo confessed to murdering more than fifty children. He tortured his victims first. Then he stabbed out their eyes and removed their genitals to deposit his semen in them.

In his confession, police learned that his first murder had occurred not when the police first started tracking his crimes (the murder of the 13-year-old girl Lyubov Biryuk), but before that, in 1978, with the murder of a 9-year-old girl named Yelena Zakotnova. This discovery alarmed police because a man had already been arrested, tried and executed for the murder of Zakotnova. Chikatilo had moved to Shakhty, the town where Zakotnova lived, to teach.

Before his family arrived to join him there, he purchased a hut. He discovered Zakotnova near it, took her into his hut, and killed her there after failing to achieve an erection. He substituted a knife for his penis. Chikatilo was a suspect in the case. He had been seen by a witness. Blood was found on his doorstep. But because the other man confessed to the crime under torture, Chikatilo was cleared of the crime.

Because the police extracted a false confession through torture, they did not catch Chikatilo on his first murder and Chikatilo went on to murder more than fifty other children. Because of torture, several dozen children are dead.

This post is one of a series of posts publicly defending William I. Robinson, a sociology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) from charges of anti-Semitism. I studied under Robinson when he taught at the flagship campus of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. I took his courses on political economy and globalization.

The controversy centered around an email that Robinson sent to his students. In the email, he included photographs and a side-by-side comparison of images from the Holocaust and the Israeli military action in Gaza. The email was sent during the winter 2008 semester as part of a course on global studies. In it, Robinson expressed his criticism of Israeli policies and accused Israel of committing “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza. The email sparked intense controversy, with some students and outside groups accusing Robinson of anti-Semitism and promoting a hostile learning environment.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Simon Wiesenthal Center were among the organizations that criticized Robinson’s email, alleging that it crossed the line into anti-Semitism. They argued that the comparison between Israeli actions and the Holocaust was inappropriate and offensive. Supporters of Robinson, including faculty members and students, defended his right to free speech and academic freedom, contending that the email was intended to stimulate critical thinking and discussion.

The controversy gained significant media attention, both nationally and internationally. The university administration initiated an investigation into the matter, led by the Office of Judicial Affairs. They examined whether Robinson’s email violated university policies on academic freedom, free speech, and creating a hostile environment. In April 2010, after a review process, the UCSB administration concluded that Robinson’s email did not violate university policies. The administration acknowledged the concerns raised by some students but emphasized the importance of free speech and academic freedom within the academic community.

The controversy surrounding William Robinson’s email at UCSB sparked broader discussions about the boundaries of academic freedom, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the line between criticism of Israeli policies and anti-Semitism.

Here is a good summary of the matter from Not My Tribe. You can read a comment from me towards the bottom.

“You can criticize Israel; you can criticize the war in Gaza,” Abraham Foxman is arguing. “But to compare what the Israelis are doing in defense of their citizens to what the Nazis did to the Jews is clearly anti-Semitism.” It may be a bad comparison, but it’s not anti-Semitic. The adequacy of comparing what Israeli is doing to Palestinians in Gaza to any historical event is an intellectual matter not something that one is forbidden to make at the risk of being branded something akin to racism. It is also a moral matter.

Intellectually, which historical events most closely approximate the invasion of Gaza? If one finds William Robinson’s analogy rationally inadequate, then one can certainly criticize the comparison for that. But it’s alleged inadequacy is not to be found in accusations of racism. Such accusations are an attempt to silence the analogy. Morally, if the analogy is adequate, the question revolves around why groups that have experienced historic oppression would use similar forms of oppression on others, especially when justifying their actions based on slogans such as “never again,” a slogan which one assumes has universal application.

Suppose that blacks forced whites in South Africa into a white ethnic enclave, built walls around it, and routinely launched cross border attacks on the enclave, killing ethnic whites and destroying their property. Would it be racist to accuse the black majority of using apartheid-like tactics against whites? Here’s an even stronger case, since the white ethnics were the ones who practiced apartheid against the black majority. Would it not seem relevant to ask the black majority why they are doing this to the white minority given the experience of blacks with apartheid?

* * *

The course in question concerns global issues. Robinson is an historical sociologist whose forte is researching and teaching global issues. Comparative analysis is the method of historical sociology. Cultivating critical comparative thinking in students is its striving. This is why Robinson was hired and tenured and promoted: he’s a brilliant comparative historical sociologist. Robinson would have been failing his students and acting ideologically had he avoided this topic. After all, it was the major global story of the day. It is a common teaching method to illustrate classroom concepts with contemporary public issues.

The email, whether you agree with the content or not, is appropriate in the context of a sociology class covering global issues. In his comment, Roland Radosh misses the point of a public education, which is troubling given that he has attempted to provide one for so many years. The purpose of a liberal arts education is to promote, along with critical, comparative, and historical thinking, the work of citizenship, an endeavor that demands attention to moral concerns. This isn’t technical or vocational training we’re talking about here, but a liberal arts education. This is the place where these types of discussions are supposed to take place. Why else would the school have a sociology class on global issues if not to enlighten students and encourage them to actively engage the world around them?

For Radosh, it’s as simple as this: he doesn’t like what’s in Robinson’s email. He’s gotten himself all twisted in knots trying to argue for the suppression of speech in a way that allows him to preserve his self-identity as somebody who believes in academic freedom. The effort is an obvious failure. More broadly, this affair is a transparent attempt to intimidate the critics of Israel into silence and discredit them in the eyes of the public. They are making Robinson an example. I don’t think it’s going to work. For liberty’s sake, I hope it doesn’t.

* * *

Note (7/3/2023): Radosh’s comment, as did many others, disappeared from the Internet after Robinson was vindicated.

Maine voters have repealed a law permitting gay marriage. But why does there need to be a law permitting gay marriage in the first place? How can there be a law forbidding gay marriage in a free society? Civil and human rights are not subject to popular vote. They exist as unalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Supposing these rights are inalienable, two (or more) individuals may only be denied the status of marriage—if the state recognizes any marriage—only if there is a compelling secular reason for denying them marriage. I have been asking people for years now to give me a compelling secular reason for denying marriage for gays and lesbians. I have to put the word “secular” in there because, if I don’t, people give me religious reasons which they should already know carry no weight in a society based on the separation of church and state.

For most of our history, in states throughout our nation, the white majority denied the right of black and white men and women to marry. Those laws were overturned by the Supreme Court in 1967 because they represented a fundamental violation of civil and human rights. If the state sanctions marriage, then it is not treating individuals equally when it denies marriage to some consenting adults while permitting it for other consenting adults.

The same principle applies to gay marriage. This is not an argument by analogy. It is an argument of principle. By denying gays and lesbians their right to marry—and they have that right whether it is recognized or not—the majority of voters in Maine demonstrate that they do not cherish the fundamental tenets of a free society. What Maine voters have done, in fact, is impose a tyranny of the majority in Maine.

“I was shocked,” Joseph, 22, said. “He overstepped his boundaries as a professor. He has his own freedom of speech but he doesn’t have the freedom to send his students his own opinion that is so strong.”

It’s Bill Robinson’s class. Ths course is a sociology course on global issues. He couldn’t have overstepped his boundaries with this case. The Israeli attack on Gaza is a global issue. Robinson would have been acting ideologically to avoid it.

Not only does Robinson have the freedom to send information and opinion concerning this matter, he has an obligation to do so. As for not sending out strong opinion, if the student can’t stomach strong opinion, then maybe the university classroom is not the place for this student.

“I just want to bring awareness,” said junior Tova Hausman, who has joined Joseph in accusing Robinson of violating the school’s faculty code of conduct. “I want people to know that educators shouldn’t be sending out something that is so disturbing.”

What’s disturbing is Israel’s attack on Gaza. Why aren’t those who support Israel’s action prepared to be confronted with the grim reality of it? The role of a university professor is to disturb students, to shake them out of their happy complacent lives, to make them see things they don’t want to see.

I have a lecture on lynching. The images are very disturbing. Of course they are. If you sign up for my course, Freedom and Social Control, you will have to confront disturbing issues.

In anatomy class, people cut into cadavers. That’s disturbing. You have to do it if you want the credit.

It should be known that one of the students who dropped the class and filed the complain is Lia Yaiger. Yaiger is a graduate of Stand With Us. This group trains students in campuses in what they call “response techniques” to alleged “anti-Israel” efforts on campus. Right wing groups used similar tactics to go after Marxist professors in the 1960s and 1970s. It’s an orchestated campaign to stifle academic freedom on college campuses.

In 1976, pharmaceutical corporations and governments around the world, including the US government, manufactured a swine flu epidemic.  Despite the fact that there were no confirmed cases of swine flu anywhere on the planet outside of thirteen soldiers at Fort Dix, a US military facility in New Jersey, the government rolled out a massive vaccination program accompanied by an extensive propaganda campaign involving print and television media.  Millions of Americans were injected with the experimental swine flu vaccine.   

The consequence of the program was scores of people suffering vaccine injury, several hundred of them developing a sometimes lethal and always devastating paralytic condition called Guillain–Barré syndrome, or GBS.  The government, shamefaced, had to cancel the program.  

To this day, mainstream news organizations continue to run interference for vaccine manufacturers by denying the link between the vaccines and GBS.  However, as Dr. Meryl Nass, an expert on vaccines and bioterrorism, points out, at least ten separate studies of the 1976 swine flu vaccine have confirmed the link.

One of the more frustrating false claims constantly being promulgated by bourgeoise propagandists and, unfortunately, widely believed to be true by the public, is that a high rate of taxation on the wealthy is bad for the health of the economy. The fact of the matter is that the opposite is true. The higher the taxes on the wealthy, the healthier is the economy. Put another way, an aggressive progressive income tax is good economics.

There are two obvious reasons why an aggressive progressive income tax is good for economic health: First, the capitalist dynamic naturally expands wealth for those who own and control the means of production, which includes the capitalist and their functionaries. This is because capitalism is a social system in which the wealth generated by the direct producers – the worker, slave, so forth – is appropriated by social classes that do not generate that wealth – the capitalist, landowner, etc. This means that when taxes are low on the ownership classes and their functionaries, inequality increases and wealth becomes bottled up in a small network of families whose spending on goods and services cannot effectively complete the circuit of capital. The exploiting classes are too small in number to affect the levels of demand necessary to keep the economy growing. The majority has insufficient income to spend on goods and services. The fall in demand reduces the rate of profit. This contradiction leads to what economists call a realization crisis, and it is one of the main forces in defining the character of business recessions. The deeper the business recession, the worse off just about everybody is, including those social classes who believe they benefit from lower taxes. 

Second, lower taxes on the wealthy means less revenues for the government. Because the government must borrow to continue its operations, most of which serve the interests of the exploiting classes, budget shortfalls drive up budget deficits, which in turn drives up real interest rates. Why do budget deficits drive up real interest rates? This is a basic matter of supply and demand: money has a price (interest on borrowed funds), and the more the government competes with the private sector for investment resources the higher is the price of money. Higher tax rates on the wealthy provide for the government resources with which to drive down inequality, thus allowing the majority to enjoy higher incomes, which they can spend on goods and services. This method effectively completes the circuit of capital and leads to stable economic expansion. Labor union density, as well as a minimum wage, plays an important role in this by raising incomes. At the level of consciousness, and at the level of the firm, capitalists want lower taxes because they perceive they will keep more of their profits. But at the system level, the desire for lower taxes, if met, leads to a drop in the rate of profit. This paradox is very real.

It is, therefore, for the good of the wealthy that high top marginal rates are imposed upon them and the revenues generated redistributed through public projects that secure the long-term health of the society. Higher taxes (along with higher union density) are better for everybody. 

You will note in the chart above that, while income taxes have remained basically flat for most Americans over several decades, they have been systematically reduced for the wealthy during this period. The actual picture is even more dramatic, as the majority pays higher taxes now in the form of payroll taxes and sales taxes. Anybody remotely familiar with the economic history during the period knows that the greatest period of wealth creation and the highest standard of living for most Americans was during the period 1950 through the early 1970s. The period between 1970 through the early 1990s were periods of instability and declining standard of living. Now, if, as the anti-tax advocates claim, high taxes were bad for the economy, the opposite would have been true. The economy would have performed poorly in the period between 1950 and the early 1970s, and would have improved with each reduction in taxes. Given the low level of taxation in the 1980s, the economy should have been better than it ever was. But this is not what happened.

When did our economic troubles begin? They began in the early 1970s following the first major reduction in the top marginal tax rates in the 1960s. The 1970s were a period of economic instability and rising inequality. At the start of the decade of the 1980s, taxes were again slashed. The effects were extremely high interest rates and a dramatic rise in unemployment. Later in the 1980s, taxes were cut again and the economy tumbled into a deep recession. Only when taxes were raised in the early 1990s did the economy tack off. Look at this chart: 

Why did the tax increases in the 1990s kick off one of the longest periods of business expansions in US history? In part because lower budget deficits drove down interest rates, which allowed for more investment, growth in jobs, growth in consumer spending. The expansion would have been more successful if the budget surplus, which reached record levels under Clinton, had been invested in public projects to improve the long-term health of the economy. Raising top marginal rates even more would have made the expansion even more successful still. This should have been a period of economic contraction, according to the theory of the anti-tax propagandists. But it wasn’t. What happened when taxes were slashed under Bush Junior? Did, as the anti-tax propagandists claim, the economy take off? The economy tumbled. We are now in the middle of the worst economic catastrophe since the great depression. The massive budget deficits and accumulation of wealth among capitalists and their functionaries has crippled our economy. 

Facts and logic show us the way out of the crisis: dramatically raise taxes on the wealthy, redistribute that money to the masses through public projects that will improve the long-term health of our society. What do the anti-tax ideologues say? They say raising taxes in a recession is the worst possible thing to do. But, as you can see, this claim is based on the false claim that tax cuts grow the economy. The question for policymakers now is whether they act based on the facts, or act on the basis of the propaganda of the capitalist class.

After a presentation in Speech 101, in which Los Angelese City College student Jonathan Lopez read the dictionary definition of marriage and then two verses from the Bible, Lopez found an evaluation form left in his backpack by Professor John Matteson that said, “Ask God what your grade is.” This pulled a hardy laugh out of me. 

Lopez’s feelings were hurt. But why not ask God? If Lopez believes Yahweh is the final authority on gay marriage, then why not believe Yahweh is the final authority on his grade? After all, the rest of Lopez’s speech was all about the miracles Yahweh performed in his life (apparently one of which was not allowing him to escape Speech 101 without criticism for his bigotry).

Conservatives are claiming that Matteson violated Lopez’s free speech rights. But it’s more like conservatives, believing Lopez has a right to use a classroom assignment to spread hatred, and that rules of logic and evidence aren’t relevant in a college classroom, are the problem. Sure, you can cite the Bible if you wish. But you must also be aware that there may be a reasonable person in the audience. 

One student in the class said, “I do not believe that our classroom is the proper platform for him to spout his hateful propaganda.” Another student said, “I don’t know what kind of actions can be taken in this situation, but I expect that this student should have to pay some price for preaching hate in the classroom.”

These complaints are worth entertaining. Suppose Lopez had stood before the class and read the dictionary definition of race and then verses from the Bible to advocate for racial segregation or genocide. It’s easy to find scriptural support for such hateful beliefs and actions. Is it not the same thing as denying homosexuals equal protection before the law? Or is it because hating homosexuals is not perceived as quite as terrible as racism and genocide?

Matteson also has free speech rights. He used them to criticize Lopez’s presentation. 

Obama asserted in his inaugural speech that our “badly weakened” economy is the result of “our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.”

What was the hard choice working people should have made to prepare the nation for a new age? Are workers really to blame for this mess? Or are persons in positions of power? You can only hold people accountable for the things under their control.

The President of the United States has not always blamed the public for the crimes and failings of elites. In his 1933 inaugural speech, Franklin Delano Roosevelt opened with a promise to “speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly” and then proceeded to blame “the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods.” He said that they “have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence,” to properly lead the nation.

“Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men,” the thirty-second president said, attacking the rulers of exchange as only knowing “the rules of a generation of self-seekers.” (Polls regularly show that more than 80 percent of Americans today believe corporations have too much power.)

“They have no vision,” FDR said of the corporate leaders; “and when there is no vision the people perish.”

FDR preached about “the moral stimulation of work,” contrasting it with “the mad chase of evanescent profits,” and asserted that the restoration of our ideals “lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.”

(Read the speech here: First Inaugural Address, 4.3.1933. This is the speech Americans deserved this week, not this: Obama’s Inaugural Address.)

In the speech on Tuesday, Obama talked about “greed” and “irresponsibility” without identifying the culprits. When he identified the party at fault, he implicated everybody.

In contrast to Roosevelt, who argued that the problem was not the spirit of America but the material failure of the economic system, Obama said (after talking about “the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics”):

Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land — a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

He blamed the people’s spirit.

Recall Carter’s words from the notorious “malaise speech” of 1979:

The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our Nation.

Roosevelt charged that the money lenders were “pleading tearfully for restored confidence” after losing “the lure of profit to induce our people to follow their false leadership.” Obama, like Carter, like the false leaders Roosevelt assaults, accuses the public of losing confidence in their country.

Obama turns not to Roosevelt in this time of crisis, but to Carter, who failed to show the courage necessary to challenge corporate power on behalf of the nation that elected him.

Workers are not to blame. Workers woke up every morning over the last several decades and did the right thing all day long (in the context of the prevailing economic system, a system they were told was just and fair). It’s not their fault they’re being thrown out of work and home. The “rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods” are to blame.

Roosevelt spoke the truth without advocating the overthrow of capitalism. Why can’t Obama? Why couldn’t Carter? Why must the victims of economic calamity bear the brunt of austerity? Where is the critical analysis from the media watchdogs who are supposed to keep the politicians honest?

Roosevelt said in the spring of 1938:

Unhappy events abroad [the rise of fascism in Italy and nazism in Germany) have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any other controlling private power.

The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living. Both lessons hit home. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing.

Roosevelt didn’t just assert these facts but provided a detailed statistical analysis of the situation: One-tenth of one percent US corporations owned 52 percent of all corporate assets and received 50 percent of all corporate income in the 1930s. Less than 5 percent of US corporations owned 87 percent of the assets and less than 4 percent of manufacturing corporations received 84 percent of their net profits. In 1929, three-tenths of the population received 78 percent of dividends. In 1933, 33 percent of all inheritances went to 4 percent of heirs.

Roosevelt’s New Deal pushed back corporate power and redistributed income. He opened the way for the normalization of organized labor and the creation of a broad middle class. Educational opportunities were expanded. Poverty plummeted from 33 percent in 1950 to less than 12 percent by the end of the 1960s. Home ownership grew.

But big capital fought back, gaining strength over the decade, buying off our leaders, crushing labor, shrinking the middle class, taking control of both political parties. Corporations are now more powerful that before – capitalism has colonized virtually every aspect of our lives and its reach is global. Roosevelt’s statistical profile reads like that of the present day. And his warning sounds like prophecy.

More than ever the supporters of capitalism – for the capitalists themselves are driving the system into the ground – need Roosevelt’s words and deeds. But they get instead Carter’s rhetoric, Clinton’s cabinet, and operatives from the Federal Reserve, World Bank, and IMF.

Was this the change those who voted for Obama were expecting?