{"id":1101,"date":"2014-06-13T21:58:27","date_gmt":"2014-06-14T01:58:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1101"},"modified":"2014-06-13T21:58:27","modified_gmt":"2014-06-14T01:58:27","slug":"the-neocon-left-the-deputized-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2014\/06\/the-neocon-left-the-deputized-right.html","title":{"rendered":"The Neocon Left: The “Deputized” Right"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong>What is commonly referred to as \u201cthe right\u201d by the so-called \u201cmainstream media\u201d is actually what I prefer to call \u201cthe Deputized Right\u201d\u2014a faux right-wing that takes its marching orders from the left.<\/p>\n

More specifically, the Deputized Right is actually nothing other than the neoconservative <\/em>left that the recognizable left permits to exist.<\/p>\n

Anyone with any doubts on this score should consider that neither domestically nor internationally do the recognizable left and the Deputized Right fundamentally <\/em>disagree on a single issue. Rhetorical nods to \u201climited government\u201d and the like aside, its positions on immigration, the NSA\u2019s massive surveillance apparatus, military adventurism, \u201cgay rights,\u201d \u201canti-discrimination\u201d laws, government-run health care, government-run education, and every other conceivable topic differ\u2014when <\/em>they differ\u2014from those of the recognizable left only in degree<\/em>, never in kind<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Deputized Right is every bit as invested in preserving and expanding <\/em>the power and reach of the federal government as is the recognizable left.\u00a0 The self-appointed neocon guardians of the counterfeit right are permitted to complain of government \u201coverreach\u201d when it comes to such government-run healthcare programs as the woefully unpopular \u201cObamacare,\u201d but they wouldn\u2019t think to even remotely suggest rolling back Medicare and Medicaid\u2014government-run healthcare programs whose hold over the medical industry in America they\u2019ve actually helped to strengthen. <\/em><\/p>\n

Those on the Deputized Right can blast government-run schools when talking of \u201cpublic education\u201d\u2014as long as they never come even close to recommending anything like a complete \u201cseparation of state and education.\u201d\u00a0 And, of course, they never do. \u00a0Instead, Deputized Rightists rattle on about \u201cschool choice\u201d\u2014a set of arrangements according to which government still pulls the strings.<\/p>\n

Deputized right-wingers are as much in favor of \u201ccomprehensive immigration reform\u201d\u2014i.e. amnesty\u2014as are recognizable leftists.<\/p>\n

Deputized rightists burst apart with pride in reminding Americans that their party, the Republican Party, was instrumental in helping Lyndon Banes Johnson enact such historically unprecedented \u201ccivil rights\u201d legislation as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.\u00a0 Such legislation\u2014agitated for, mind you, by the author of the Great Society, an American president who the Deputized Right routinely decries as among the worst of \u201cliberal\u201d politicians to ever occupy the White House\u2014expanded exponentially the federal government\u2019s stranglehold over the states and its citizens.\u00a0 And yet the Deputized Right not only relishes in its (alleged) role in making it all happen, but spares no occasion to remind Americans of this.<\/p>\n

The Deputized Right excoriates President Obama for being a socialist, a hard leftist, etc., while lavishing praise upon Martin Luther King, Jr.\u2014a man who was at least as far to the left as Obama.\u00a0 At the same time, it demonizes as \u201canti-American\u201d and even \u201ctreasonous\u201d a young American soldier who enlisted in the military to fight in Afghanistan, a prisoner of war who eventually expressed disgust with America for its involvement in the Islamic, Middle Eastern world, while adoring King\u2014even though the latter referred to America as the planet\u2019s greatest \u201cpurveyor\u201d of violence during the height of the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

The Deputized Right talks of \u201climited government\u201d while simultaneously calling for an ever larger, ever more intrusive, military.\u00a0 But Big Military is <\/em>Big Government.<\/p>\n

The Deputized Right insists that we are in a \u201cWar on Terror\u201d\u2014a war against either an abstraction or a bottomless supply of Islamic terrorists. Either way, it is a \u201cwar\u201d without end, a war that can never be won.<\/p>\n

The \u201cright\u201d is the Deputized Right, which is to say a counterfeit right, a neoconservative left that differs, if at all, only negligibly from the recognizable left.\u00a0 If only those with eyes would dare to see past the rhetoric of talk radio and the cable news networks, they would realize that the conflicts on display in these media boil down to internecine conflicts between leftists of not so different stripes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is commonly referred to as \u201cthe right\u201d by the so-called \u201cmainstream media\u201d is actually what I prefer to call \u201cthe Deputized Right\u201d\u2014a faux right-wing that takes its marching orders from the left. More specifically, the Deputized Right is actually nothing other than the neoconservative left that the recognizable left permits to exist. Anyone with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Neocon Left: The "Deputized" Right<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2014\/06\/the-neocon-left-the-deputized-right.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Neocon Left: The "Deputized" Right\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What is commonly referred to as \u201cthe right\u201d by the so-called \u201cmainstream media\u201d is actually what I prefer to call \u201cthe Deputized Right\u201d\u2014a faux right-wing that takes its marching orders from the left. More specifically, the Deputized Right is actually nothing other than the neoconservative left that the recognizable left permits to exist. Anyone with…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2014\/06\/the-neocon-left-the-deputized-right.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-06-14T01:58:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jack Kerwick\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Neocon Left: The \"Deputized\" Right","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2014\/06\/the-neocon-left-the-deputized-right.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Neocon Left: The \"Deputized\" Right","og_description":"What is commonly referred to as \u201cthe right\u201d by the so-called \u201cmainstream media\u201d is actually what I prefer to call \u201cthe Deputized Right\u201d\u2014a faux right-wing that takes its marching orders from the left. More specifically, the Deputized Right is actually nothing other than the neoconservative left that the recognizable left permits to exist. 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I teach philosophy at several colleges in the New Jersey and Pennsylvania areas.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jackkerwick.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/author\/jkerwick"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/399"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1102,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1101\/revisions\/1102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}