Evidence Of Things Unseen: The Rise of a New Movement

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All this international expansion is seamlessly tied to the homefront. It not only justifies the curtailment of civil liberties and the revival of arrogant patriotism among the corporate media, but also unprecedented increases in military spending, tax cuts and deficits. These are not overreactions to September 11, or isolated policy excesses, but part of a pattern of diminishing democratic rights and defunding democratic government. They are a backdoor assault on the achievements of the Great Society, the New Deal and before that the Progressive movement that regulated capitalism at the turn of the last century. The Republican agenda is to return to a society in which market values eclipse and replace the role of the public sector in the economy.

Take for example Grover Norquist, who fancies himself a generalissimo in the conservative revolution. Under the innocuous banner of "tax reform," Norquist hopes that enough tax breaks and budget cuts will "drown the baby in the bathtub."

He's talking about defunding child care, health care, public schools, public investment in the inner city, public investment in a restored environment. He sees government, the public sector, as a failure to be eradicated, not instead of an institution to protect us from the failures of the market.

Or take Niall Ferguson, a major advocate of empire and contributor of many influential articles in the New York Times, who has extolled the Protestant Ethic as the major difference between America and Europe. Let me take you through his clever argument on behalf of a WASP America. First, he notes that Americans attend church services in far greater numbers than Europeans, evidence that Max Weber's "protestant ethic" is alive and well here. As a result, Americans are inspired to work harder and longer than the Germans, the French, the Dutch and Norwegians who are "astonishingly idle," "work-shy" and, of course, "Godless." He says the Protestant Ethic is being replaced in Europe by "the spirit of secularized sloth."

Ferguson is complaining that German workers are on the job just 1,535 hours a year in comparison with virtuous Americans grinding away at 1,976 hours. That difference of over 400 hours worked is the equivalent of 62 days a year. Ferguson -- and corporate globalization defenders in general -- want to stop Europeans from taking long vacations with their families and retiring earlier to enjoy the quality of life. They want to roll back -- they call it reform -- labor gains of the whole past century.

Well, I tell you, if Americans learn to read between the lines and understand what the conflict with the Europeans is about, they will reject the scapegoating and bashing that comes out of this Administration.

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