ALEC Not a Secret Society--Maybe Worse!

Haven't seen your posts in awhile, Choco.  Haven't been posting much myself, maybe that's why.

Good infomation.  Don't know what exactly to do with it.  Seems to me if there wasn't an ALEC at this point, something like it would be invented, as we goose step our way into the future....

Not that there's any direct connection but

while Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, then a corporate attorney, wrote his infamous Powell Manifesto directed to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce just before being nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by Nixon in 1971.

Sorry Choco, but you misuse the word "Fascist." Most corporate leaders are conservatives not fascists. Fascist are way over on the far left nearly indistinguishable from communists. With fascism, government has ultimate control over business. It sounds like these guys would much rather have control over government then let government control them.

You made an honest mistake. 

From Webster.

1often capitalized: a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition 2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control <early instances of army fascism and brutality — J. W. Aldridge>     
  Any evidience what so ever that  these ALEC people are interested in being controlled by a dictator? Do you think they want to be subject to " severe economic and social regimentation?"  
    I know that a lot of liberals depend on name calling, insults and character assasination to make a point. But wanting something to be so, does not make it so.  Hell why your at it, you might as well call them racists. Make them prove they are not. There is zero evidence that these guys have ANY fascist leanings.     

Fair enough. But with fascism government is in control of business. Remember Schindlers list? Oskar Schindler operated at the pleasure of government goons. Maybe ALEC is evil, maybe not. But they are definitely not fascists.

Fine

A Unitary Executive designed by the conservative based legal group called the Federallist Society.  That's some evidence if anyone is capable of understanding it. It came together during the Reagan Administration and is now one of the leading pro-conservative-oriented legal societies.  They are making their case and its a legal, Constitutionally based case.  It just has a certain form and pattern to it that reflects a formalist and fundamentalist interpretation.  The Federalist Society, started about 1983, now has a huge membership and is based in all the top law schools in the nation.  The current Supreme Court is made up of a majority who subscribe to its legal principles, which are essentially a group of legal theories called legal formalism.

An inverted totalitarian society acts much the same as an autocratically run one.  A conservative lack of imagination will not change that. The ALEC people are the control mechanism in an inverted totalitarian society running under the illusion of individual rights, they don't need to worry about an anti business Hitler type arising.  They work to keep a Unitary Executive running the Federal Government.  And they keep the plebes fighting over which one they will elect this time.

And then this wonderful revelation near the end of a recent movie about International Banksters:

"Well, this is the difference between truth and fiction.  Fiction has to make sense."  Wilhelm Wexler "The International"

Fascism has evolved in its nature and form for those of us who can think in metaphorical and allegorical terms, which is basically structuralism, where we use our abstract abilities to see that form of things we imagine can change but it's results are what matters in coming to understand something.  The term "fascism" has evolved to cover all sorts of authoritarian and mafioso type governance.  Nit pickers will be left in the dust in terms of actually being able to converse about these problems in our current, complex societies. 

Corporations are, in structural and legal form, commonly accepted forms of authoritarian-run collectives. The legal definitions of property and property rights make them almost unassailable as means for groups of people to over ride our humanity and to take charge of the vast area of activity that ralls under the rubric "economics".  "It's the economy, stupid" -- I believe one of the Bushes said that. Unfortunately logical positivists, fundamentalists, and all sorts of people who rely on an authority of something to make their sense for them, like the authority of a definition, will have difficulty figuring this out because they lack the intellectual tools along with the courage to take personal responsibility for their minds and an imagination.  And we do have a world with many of those types in it, and they of course have their rights too.  And as those who have studied them have discovered, those types are more than happy to take orders and act out their roles in an authoritarian system, the most obvious of which are the military and police who have always acted to protect the property of the authoritarian-run collectives like corporations.  It's all nice and legal and well defined.

 Just to add Paul Weyrich who Thom often plays the audio from regarding the rights desire to limit the vote, was a co-founder of ALEC

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Weyrich

Ren probably makes this point, but iI will give it a try in my more plebian dialect. A word describing corporate takeover of the governemnt is a logical impossibility given the idea that corporation and government must be seperate and oppositional. For example once corporations take over the government there can be no claim regarding the origin of such development as long as governemnt and private enterprise are seen in terms of a binary opposition

Interesting figure to bring into this discussion, SP. Along with his association with ALEC, he was active in founding the American Heritage Foundation, one of a spate of corporate funded conservative think tanks that sprung up after soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell's 1971 Memo that blue-printed creating just such things as part of a concerted effort to defend the "American Way of LIfe" from the forces of liberalism that he, and many conservatives reacted against towards the end of the tumultuous liberal rebelious movements of Sixties.

If you look at all the fear that has been rampant in this country, especially for most of the last century, I think it's hard to overlook that most of it comes from a conservative way of thinking, and I think that ought to make sense.  After all, to conserve by its nature is to attempt to preserve, to maintain something. Something that's perceived to exist and to have been established.  And if that's a goal, then intuitively one might see that anything that threatens that has a potential to create fear.

Weyrich as a kind of narrative figure in his own right was a kind of epi-tome, or as we use the word now, epitome, of that period all on his own.  If you look at what he championed, it covers a wide range of traditional American values, at least at a superficial level.  What I find interesting is how those values conflict and eventually contradict themselves.  That's interesting to me because it seems that the result of value contradiction is the eventual supercession of more anonymous forces of power. Now, whether intentional or not, that supercession turns out to be the rise of corporate power once again, a rise that harkens back to the 19th Century and the rise of those economic forces with the industrial revolution.  In very broad and general terms, that force is anti democratic.  That is, it is a force that elevates the elite over the common people, especially where those are the people who are needed as a commodified labor force so that the elite can maintain their capital based techno-industrial organizations, that is, corporations. 

This gets into some fairly technical and complicated discussions about the rise of technology and it's imperatives that become organizing principles for modern societies, but without going off at length on that, let me just try add to my comments here that the force for organization that involves this principle can also be seen as the force that the humanizing and populist left has been identifying and struggling against since the industrial revolution began, and among those who can be identified as spokespeople for this revolutionary force are the various Marxist groups, since it was Marx and Engels who first began to do an in depth structural analysis of what was taking place.

What might be interesting to wonder about is how all these epitomic (I may have just invented that word) features in Weyrich fit together to create a conservative pattern.  Here's a kind of overview list from Wiki:

That's quite a list.  If you look at that list and the inherent values it entails, and what people on the left consider the meaning of being American, you can get quite a sense of rift in world views... or at least I think you can if you are deeply and intimately familiar with the sense of inclusionary, open and humane attitudes that are those I'm familiar with on the left.  Values I took for granted as basic American values growing up, but which I have found since are not held by all.  Thus when people use terms like "live and let live" and "individual rights" I find those need to be put in an appropriate context.

I bring this up because these are the types of strains of thought I find helpful in my own efforts to make sense of what keeps coming across as a very real battle for the philosophical heart of what people would like to consider to be "American" in nature.

Now an important point I see in looking at this Council choco brings to our attention is the one about understanding our history.  For me, the conservative revival that many see as beginning with the Reagan Presidency began in the early seventies.  ALEC is part of that awakening, just as Lewis Powell's memo is.  From my perspective, they've won.  I agree with Chris Hedges who coined the notion that there has been a corporate coup d'etat, they won, we lost.  But I don't think they will ever see that they won.  I think they will continue to see themselves as underdogs trying to save their ever disappearing values.  Despite pretty much destroying the Clinton Presidency, Weyrich responded as follows in 1999:

Also, a good point, SP, about the binary opposition created on the Right, especially, between so called "public" government and private corporations, and how that rationally-created distinction can disguise the true collusion now taking place between the economic powers (and its brokers, like Larry Summers and so forth) that corporations wield and the technicalities of government.

I've never been interested in the esoteric definitions of fascism, marxism, socialism, communism, etc.  Liberty is either increasing or decreasing.

I think for some liberty means the probability of one's becoming king.  For others liberty means the probability of becoming a slave.

Ren, I like your new word epitomic.

One of the institutions the corporatist sector has succeeded in making their own is the prison system. I was going to start a thread about death in America as covered in Frontline episode on Feb 1. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/post-mortem/ The unregulated, uncredentialed autopsy business that creates customers for the prison enterprise is convenient. Florida just punished one state senator that opposed privatizing the rest of the state's prisons.

Yes, privatization is a good example of this trend merging these private totalitarian collectives with our public, commonly owned government institutions.

With prisons, they've been at it for awhile.  John Keeble is a NW regionally based writer I enjoy, read this one back in the late eighties:

Broken Ground by John Keeble.

I think it remains contemporary and deeply significant.  Surely a prophetic novel in its day.

No question, there is a certain amount of sloppiness in nomenclature where politics is concerned. The right-wing had a hernia over whether America is a democracy or a republic. Turned out that what most of the world identifies as a democracy actually is a (constitutional) republic. Plus, I guess I don't get to call myself left-wing anymore. Now, I guess I got a good ass-whipping about whether we're seeing fascism develop or not. Not sure what functional distinctions are at stake.  My world is shaken. "Liberal" seems to be the last designation I can cling to, at least until the righties can show how Joseph Stalin was actually a Liberal.

Art, fascism is anti-democracy, alec is anti-democracy, alec is fascist prone, or fascististic, or neo-fascist.  /alec-education-academy- is  similar to the kkk camps, which were christian. Democracy is dead in America, individual states can hang on to what they have, for awhile, and a very short while.

My oldest daughter has expressed a desire to go to a US university, and I am vehemently opposed. I have said she can go to Gothenburg, Stockholm, Lund, or UK, or anywhere in Europe, but not US [unless she gets a scholarship]. She's young, so she can't see how fuc**d up it is.

Ren, thanks for that link. University presses are some of the least appreciated or recognized. I have Oxford University Press works, and have read Notre Dame U.P., Cambridge U.P., and others, but never a Univ. of Washington  Press.

/review-of-better-angels-of-our-nature/ ties in with the prison industrial complex. Alec wants the privatisation, profit from the client who happens to be the taxpayer. Any way to steal from the people is good, if it's private theft. 

Crime is down, how to increase profit becomes the legislative assist through three strikes, make the judicial impotent. Alec if not fascist is similar to Mafia.

 I think the rights logic could go like this.- If indeed there had been a malicious and perhaps even criminal takeover of the government by the corporate elitesrepresenting something similat to what most of see as facism, then, according to the right, that would have demonstrate the failure of the entire concept of governemnt rather than an ethical mistep of the beloved profit motive factor itself. It was the left's fault for insisting on having too much government in the first place, and somebody was likely to rob these feckless freeloaders. Now Grover Nordquist has to drowned his baby after he has puffed it up for the robbing first.

Clash of moral codes, indeed.

There may be some deeper issues worth a thought or two in this "Cowboy Code", doug.  And those issues may parallel "the Right's logic" that SP expresses.

For an interesting overview of this ongoing clash, this Bill Moyer discussion with moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt offers some thought provoking insights.  I especially had a chuckle over the part where Haidt demonstrates, with an amusing video backup of a John Boehner interview, how the Right takes commonly used words and turns them into dirty words, kind of like they did with the word "liberal" (with a nod here to Art's dilemma above).

"...the psychological underpinnings of our contentious culture..." hmm.

That was a good interview, ren. Did you read the comments afterword?I think a lot of the comments were more in line with my own thoughts, though Haidt is persuasive.

Boehner won't compromise, but if a legislation was introduced with an agreed upon goal, the common ground as he called it, and it conflicted with his vision solely due to method, could he agree as long as there was a time specific measure of achievement of the goal both sides want?

If xxx is not lower in 3 years by xyx% we revisit this legislation. If xxx is not greater by xyx% by 2 years we revisit this bill. I don't think that is compromise, it is agreement. Compromise with conditions, or conditional compromise. Clinton's tax increase was against republican mantra, but after gaining control they never rescinded it, because it worked.

jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind. TED  [good comments following, some idiots, some not]

I think the interview and Haidt's theory are well worth some examination and discussion.  I think it would be well worth recognizing that he too creates a language for his research, and that language has its own repercussions in how he goes about interpreting his data.  I think his analysis tends to be too generalized about these groupings, and he makes a kind of binary argument to support his conclusions.  That, however, is maybe unavoidable for those in his field because they rely on statistics as their own pseudo form of science, and it may be also something that comes about if one is selling a book and hoping to find a way to spread ideas about how to absolve this situation. 

I think he finds an interesting dichotomy with his research method, the one where he shows that liberals have a tendency to put caring ahead of some of the more rational aspects of judging that he found with conservatives, which, by the way, he also express he respected and valued.  That's an issue that I find very provocative.  The conservative side of that equation also correlates with research done on the authoritarian mind set, which Haidt might try to argue that we all share down deep, but we are hypocritcal to that by rebelling against it.  Yes, certainly that's provocative if he were to argue that.

  The comments made are not unfamiliar on the Common Dreams site.  Haven't looked at the TED presentation yet.  Some he sort of predicts with his theory, but that doesn't necessarily mean he theorizes the correct reasons behind them.  I think he's a fairly rational liberal, follows the long lineage of liberal, rational thought.  And that itself has some irreconcilable contradictions within it when applied to masses of people and analyzing their behaviors in the process.

I found another article on the_privatization_trap  that.is one of Alec's goals. Crony capitalism or republican welfare whatever you want to call it. Rick Scott of FL initiated drug testing requirement to be fulfilled by his wife's clinic is fairly blatant, to me. He has a 30% approval rating.

btw, drug testing, illegal in Europe [unless suspicion or accident post accident investigation] is a multi- billion dollar republican make work program. TVA, Hoover Dam, Interstate Highway , or Jails and drug testing clinics, and a few wars.. We can see their priorities.

One other thing, the party that hates regulations, doesn't mind regulations that harass the poor, and minorities. Those drug tests, and mandatory obgyn screening and indoctrination for family planning clinics.Regulations that prevent theft and fraud are bad, regulations that prevent fun are good.

Might make a nice poster but I think it detracts from a more serious discussion about how they want the law to work in a "just" society, as described by the moral psychologist above.  Because what they'll do is focus on that catchy line, like they focus on the meaning of the word "fascist", instead of the deeper hypocrisy that involves their real and actual strong interest in keeping society orderly as they see it, which of course does involve government and some form of organizing and policing authority, just one that appeals to their sense of morality and fairness, not anyone elses.

As Haidt points out, we can all be found to be hypocrites, so that's a kind of meaningless charge that just goes around in a finger pointing circle.  So what's a way to get out of the circle and find common ground, if there is any?  And there may not be.

Chris Hedges writes a weekly opinion piece which is featured on Truthdig.org.  This morning's (The Cancer in Occupy) I think illustrates the problem the left is up against in trying to attract the more conservative and civil minded people, who Haidt identifies as the Republican/conservative-types in his studies that make the basis of his book,  to what ought to be a common cause against the larger forces that have taken over this society and its governing principles.  These are the forces we have been discussing as typified by ALEC on this thread. The "cancer" Hedges identifies this morning he calls Black Bloc Anarchists.

As noted in your catchy phrase, Black Bloc Anarchists go after the very form of order that theft and damage to private property disrupts.  While the Anarchists might see these as symbolic acts, the private property owners do not, they see them quite differently, so the message doesn't come across, and worse, it alienates a whole huge sector of the "99 percent".

The Occupy movement, being a form of grass roots democracy, is obviously vulnerable to all sorts of idealists who could undermine its form and message of rebellion against such powerful forces as ALEC. What these so-called anarchists do (the term 'anarchist' is being misapplied here if anyone understands the larger and more honorable history of anarchism) is they bring out the urge in many people in society to keep things orderly, and many of those are suffering under the heel of these mulinational corporate forces. So we get this irony.  The original tea party was actually rebelling against forces like ALEC, which were aligned with the Crown of England, yet because many people, quite a few probably in the contemporary Tea Party Movement, also have a strong urge for orderliness, they find themselves aligned with those forces which the Left sees as against their common interests, because both forces want to keep a society orderly, especially for one group in such a way as it allows the ALEC-type bloc to continue to profit at society's expense. 

That's a take on a kind of hypocrisy of focusing on conserving order while calling anyone who sees a need for big government fascist, thus the hypocrisy of calling people fascists who want a more even-handed society, one that has a more democratic flavor to its order keeping but still orderly.  But calling someone a hypocrite is probably not going to encourage them to see it.

The reason I have been challenging our "anarchist" anti-statists and libertarians to come up with a democratic theory out of the 'anarchist' tradition is that it was not just "no government" individualism.  The stupid idea that government is the problem would make any idea of democracy impossible or immoral.  I think democracy is the issue, and those on the Left who embrace democratic governance are not in any way related to fascism no matter what these Righties want to put forth.

Privatization is the enclosure of the Commons and another attack on democracy.  The government which governs least is not just the smallest.  When it delivers public services democratically, its governance is very mild and not at all intrusive into personal liberty.  The "private sector" is Commerce, and when commerce governs we do not participate in power as citizens.

Surprise, our civic language is under attack from these authoritarian cynics and elitists.  Rigel needs to take a look at how power works and what participation means.

Occupy Movement Targets Corporate Interest Group with Ties to Legislators

"You can search for and review ALEC-influenced bills in your state by using the ALEC Exposed wiki here."