November 19, 2002
Voice of a 92-Year-Old Anti-Fascist
Doris "Granny D" Haddock, the 92-year-old woman who walked across the U.S. for campaign finance reform gave an amazing speech to Citizens for Participation in Political Action in Boston, on Sept. 27, 2002. It gives an invaluable perspective on where we have come in the U.S.Under Reagan, she said, corporate raiders were given the green light. Regulations to restrict their predatory behavior were removed. The effects of their greed has permeated our society.
"We are living in the harsh world invented by a handful of corporate raiders whose values were completely foreign to the fairness and moderation that had so long served as the proper foundation of American success and the American dream of plenty for all," Haddock said. "They were not a new kind of person, for there have always been among us a few reptilian hearts of uncommon greed. What was new was the political permission they received for their rape and rampage, which continues."
Haddock says that those who go by the name "conservative" in America today give the word a bad name. They are not really conservative. "True conservatives in our country don't have many political leaders to look to with respect. Among the last was Barry Goldwater. He believed that the government had no business in our bedrooms. He believed that a woman and her doctor didn't need the government's help in deciding her important issues. He would have laughed and then, I think, become very, very angry at Ashcroft's attacks on the Bill of Rights and his citizen-against-citizen snitching system. Goldwater believed that the only issue of importance regarding gays in the military was whether or not they could shoot straight.
"What we are seeing now from the far right is not conservatism at all. It is fascism: the imposition of a national and worldwide police state to enforce a narrow world view that enriches and empowers the few at the expense of the many, and that gives no respect or honor to other cultures, ways of living, or opinions. To call that conservatism is a crime against the memory of America's great and true conservatives, who might think that government ought to be less involved in life than we old liberals would concur with, but who nevertheless stood for the core American values that today's right-wing leaders undermine at every opportunity."
Granny D points out that the division today is not between conservatives and liberals, but between the hypnotized and the awake. The hypnotized believe that history is only in books, something fixed and completed and that every day they get up and start the same day over again. They don't realize that history is happening right now. The United States is in the middle of a dynamic process that is changing our society to its core. If people don't wake up, our free society will be completely obliterated and replaced by a corporate tyranny. It is happening very fast right now.
Check out the entire text at Alternet.org. This is a gem, and one very bright old lady.
