Thursday, November 24, 2016

Why do liberals see the Koch brothers as evil?

First: liberals are still highly varied and inherently different from "leftists." The American right is tightly disciplined and kept ideologically monolithic at great expense. If Roger Ailes issues a talking point in the morning, nearly all Republican office holders have repeated it by nightfall.  In contrast, getting liberals to do anything in unison is like herding cats.

Second: our Great Experiment was essentially launched by Adam Smith and Benjamin Franklin, who wrote extensively about the value of flat-open-fair competition.  The word "competition" is hated on the left and liberals have been taught to fret over it, which is a shame, since the "flat-open-fair" part is essential to them.

Smith pointed out that competition - in democracy or politics - has for 6000 years been ruined by CHEATERS.  Guys who win a round, then use money and power to make sure they STAY the winners, by crushing any chance of new competitors rising from below.  It took 60 centuries to learn the methods of stopping feudalism and other cheats.  We've learned that very rich men will often try to restore feudalism.

Third:  CHEATING is the issue. Our grandparents set up anti trust laws (now abandoned) to break up too-big-to-fail banks and monopolies so they would have to compete. All of that has been crushed and tossed aside by today's GOP, obedient to the Kochs and Murdochs and Saudis. "Flat-open-fair" is what they intend to destroy and what every GOP effort is bent toward.

That is why "sacred property" has replaced "competition" as the main slogan of the right.  And yes, the Koch brothers are the great promoters of a new era of cheating. Gerrymandering and rigged voting machines...

The question is not "why hate them?" The question is what patriotic believers in our Great Experiment would NOT hate them?


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from Quora http://ift.tt/2glCopP

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