Where there's Perkins' smoke, there's fire

BUSINESS MUST be slow these days for Tony Perkins and the American Family Association.  Perkins, the Christian conservative  group's president,  has been increasing the volume  of his attacks  on President Obama, particularly now that red-baiting has become fashionable  among some of Obama's more temperamental opponents.

You wouldn't think that Perkins could be so nasty in his own venues if you saw him on TV as the sort-of grown-up kid from the Andy Griffith Show.  But now that the American Family Association was among the losers who seriously endorsed Rick Santorum, he's had to fully turn his aggrieved attention to Obama. Aside from spreading doubts about the president's birth certificate, Perskins urged  his constituents  to read a  column suggesting there is  an alarming Communist strain in  the President's behavior.   The right-wing writer, Sandy Rios, hisses  that the president has so weakened America  that it will encourage a Communist takeover.

Perkins says  he isn't exactly naming names but "We're looking at facts." To add more trash to the fire, Rios praised Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) for declaring there are 81 communists in Congress.

And Perkins' group defends its wholesome mission as defending family values, lunacy obviously not being one of them.  

And now, a message from history?

NOW THAT "SOCIALISM" has become the hottest buzzword of the masters on the political right,  it  seems we're not more than a step or two away from setting up a politburo on Pennsylvania Ave.  Granted the USSR was our post-war enemy as a tightly-controlled Communist enterprise while Nazi Germany was our enemy as the National Socialist party - powerful rivals in WWII - little distinction is mentioned today between the ideologies.  Indeed, right-wing Fox hosts like Glenn Beck are trying to engage a wider viewing audience with blurring  references to "comrade" and talk  of "revolution"- on the horizon.  He sees no difference between Democrats and Communists.  Or did he mean socialists?  Or whatever.

We are regressing to the nutty mean-spirited days of the  ,'5os,  '60s and early '7os  when Joe McCarthy, a dangerous Republican senator from Wisconsin, and the John Birch Society, among others, took wide liberties in destroying the reputations of individuals.  Fearful university professors defensively made references to Karl Marx in their philosophy classes.    Ohio State University barred suspected Communist speakers from the campus with a ridiculous Speakers Rule.   Americans were challenged on whether it would be better to be dead than red.  President Eisenhower was commonly called a "comsymp."  Books were stripped from libraries.  

A particularly glaring  example of how the Radical Right schemes worked drove  an all-American guy from his job at Miami Trace High School in Ohio.  A few details:  Dan O'Brien was an ex-Marine, Korean War veteran and football coach who sinned by defending the United Nations.  Anonymous hate-mail campaigns and various other pressures on the family prompted O'Brien to finally quit his job and spare his wife and children  of further despair. It is one of the ugliest stories in Buckeye history.

All the while, Sen. Frank Lausche was trying to salvage his primary campaign against John Gilligan in speeches to small-town audiences warning that unnamed Communists were freely  operating in the federal government.  (When I asked him to name one, he flared with nasty shouts and left the room, my question still unanswered.)  History will show that he lost the election anyway. 

That is the upside of today's Radical Right attempts to scare us with  rants about socialism and the ogre of a totalitarian Barack Obama, a mere couple of months into a four-year term.  The Rush Limbaughs and  Glenn Becks  of an earlier generation lost decisively.  Is there anything to be learned from history for the current crop of air-wave comedians?