Three months after their Election Day drubbing, Republican leaders see glimmers of rebirth in the party’s liberation from an unpopular president, its selection of its first African American chairman and, most of all, its stand against a stimulus package that they are increasingly confident will provide little economic jolt but will pay off politically for those who oppose it.

After giving the package zero votes in the House, and with their counterparts in the Senate likely to provide in a crucial procedural vote today only the handful of votes needed to avoid a filibuster, Republicans are relishing the opportunity to make a big statement. Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Tex., suggested last week that the party is learning from the disruptive tactics of the Taliban, and the GOP these days does have the bravado of an insurgent band that has pulled together after a big defeat to carry off a quick, if not particularly damaging, raid on the powers that be. (more…)

Published on Sunday, February 8, 2009 by the New York Times

What the Centrists Have Wrought

Are they listening?
by Susanne King, MD
Thursday, Jan 15, 2009

As Tom Daschle, President-elect Obama’s choice for secretary of health and human services, flies across the country to attend community meetings on health care reform, and the Obama Web site solicits opinions and health care stories from citizens, those of us who support a single-payer national health insurance program hold our collective breath. Will the incoming government really listen to the citizens who, in poll after poll, by a clear majority, support single-payer health care? Or will the vested interests of the private, for-profit health insurance lobby win again? (more…)

Laurence W. Britt

Earlier I had published 10 characteristics.  This is a more comprehensive definition. Originally published in Free Inquiry Magazine Volume 23, Number 2, and republished here from Council of Secular Humanism.  Restrictions apply.

Free Inquiry readers may pause to read the “Affirmations of Humanism: A Statement of Principles” on the inside cover of the magazine. To a secular humanist, these principles seem so logical, so right, so crucial. Yet, there is one archetypal political philosophy that is anathema to almost all of these principles. It is fascism. And fascism’s principles are wafting in the air today, surreptitiously masquerading as something else, challenging everything we stand for. The cliché that people and nations learn from history is not only overused, but also overestimated; often we fail to learn from history, or draw the wrong conclusions. Sadly, historical amnesia is the norm. (more…)