It is time to take America back for the ideals that we stand for as a nation. It is time for wealthy progressives to answer wealthy rightists and give strong support to Majority PAC, which is battling the save the Democratic Senate, and House Majority PAC, which is battling to bring back the Democratic House. We must battle ferociously against those who would turn the Supreme Court into a house of injustice for a generation.
This is an urgent call to arms: it is time to say we will not let America go, and fall under the one party state domination of a right wing extremism that uses words like "liberty" in the service dark visions that would make our Founding Fathers cringe with horror.
You can glance at the daily newspaper and consider the shape of things to come if a Republican party under the control of a far right wing takes control of the presidency and the Senate, keeps control of the House, and locks in a rightist Republican Supreme Court majority for a generation.
Wealthy progressives, if you need reasons to write million dollar checks to independent groups raising money to save the Democratic Senate and bring back a Democratic House, here are a few:
A Republican audience howls with laughter at a bigoted comic "impersonating" our first African American president.
Housing foreclosures, our modern Grapes of Wrath, are so extreme there is now a two year backlog of Americans waiting to be thrown out of their homes, after millions already have been.
A Supreme Court justice with a Republican right wing agenda, who voted to legalize the further buying of elections in the Citizens United decision, has deep and intertwining relationships with one of America's wealthy conservative benefactors.
This Supreme Court takes pride in not adhering to clear ethical standards that apply to other judges in lower courts. It is composed of two justices who gave speeches to ideological groups that should have been grounds for recusal for conflicts of interest real or apparent, instead of voting to destroy campaign finance rules that even the last Republican nominee for President did not merely support, but championed.
This Supreme Court is led by a Chief Justice who promised during his confirmation hearing to respect historical precedent, before leading the Court to overturn two centuries of precedent on the great matter of further allowing special interests to buy and own our Republic, even though our Founding Fathers directly warned against this, and two hundred years of judicial precedent prevented this.
You can read that income inequality in America has reached catastrophic levels of pain for the poor, Gilded Age luxuries for those at the top, and crushing burdens for those in the middle.
You can read that nearly a fifth of the nation is jobless while Republicans continue to filibuster jobs proposals in the Senate, in their drive to fully destroy any semblance of decency and democracy in the Senate, and destroy any hope for programs to create jobs for Americans.
For anyone who needs a reason to write a big check to save the Democratic Senate remember the words of the Republican who would be Majority Leader if Republicans win control. He said his number one priority is destroying the president, not creating jobs or saving homeowners. Is this what you want to be running the United States Senate?
To understand what would happen if partisan Republicans, under the control of a far right wing, win their dream of a one party state they control, just look at Mitt Romney disowning his own record at governor. Romney is forced to denounce himself, in a desperate effort to appease the far right that controls his party.
I make no apology for Democrats who fail to fight in Washington as hard as John and Robert Kennedy fought. But the imperfections of Democrats must not permit the one party rule of radical right Republicans.
Aren't America's wealthiest progressives, who fail to make the magnitude of large donations that America's wealthiest rightists regularly make, just as complicit as Democrats in Washington they criticize for not fighting hard enough?
I sure don't qualify as Thomas Paine, but here is my warning and my call to arms:
If Republicans win the presidency, keep control of the House, win control of the Senate, own U.S. Supreme Court majorities for a generation, and own the Senate that confirms Supreme Court nominations it will be a dark decade for the nation. It will be a dark and desperate decade for the poor. It will be a dark and deepening tragedy for the heartland of the nation.
Do you want a one-party state with all branches of government controlled by today's Republican Party using words like liberty and freedom to justify policies and practices far outside the historical tradition of any great party throughout the history of our nation?
To close where I began, if Rupert Murdoch cares enough about his vision of America to make million dollar donations to fight for it, do wealthy progressives care as much as he does, and will you fight as hard as he fights? If you don't, he wins, we lose.
If the Koch family cares enough about their rightist vision of America to write checks measured in millions and tens of millions of dollars, do wealthy progressives care as much as they care? Will they fight as hard as the Koch family fights? If they don't, the Koch vision of America wins, and the progressive vision of America is destroyed.
I am fed up with those who offer excuses to do less. I am fed up with calls to inaction. I am fed up with surrenderists and dilettantes and hobbyists and those who counsel Democrats to play the dainty politics of badminton, when faced with the rightist Republican politics of total and destructive war.
There is a war being fought by the right for the future of the nation. It is total war. It is aggressive war. It is a war that would turn American government at every level into the hourly abuses we see from the Republican governor of Wisconsin. It is a war against values that Democrats and even Republicans have accepted for two hundred years. It is a war funded by huge sums of rightist money that uses words such as liberty to denounce anyone who stands against them as an enemy of the state.
There are men and women of great means and high values who can write big checks to groups that can accept them, such as Majority PAC working to save Democratic control of the Senate, and House Majority PAC, working to regain Democratic control of the House.
My advice to progressive wealthy men and women of means is take your checkbook and your pen and listen to what Republicans say they believe, and promise they will do, in the one-party state they are spending vast sums of money to create.
Ben Franklin once described America as a Republic, if we can keep it.
Let's fight to keep it.