As one of the few actual secular-socialists in the United States, I wonder if this means I'm due to be captured, tortured, and held indefinitely without charges. You know, since I'm such a threat to America.

Gingrich is just another Luntz-inspired propagandist.

Recently, it became so clear to me, that 'Fear' was priority #1,2, & 3, for the GOP leadership...
as evidenced by their 'Obama is making us a Socialist Nation' claim.

Cleary, they loved using the 'Fear the Terrorists' theme, and the effect it had on the electorate, but they also realized it had run it's course. So now, 'Fear the Socialism' is the 'best' Fear they can 'use'.

Sad.

What we Americans should do, ideologically speaking, is to insist Newt Gingrich crawl back under the rock he has been living under for the past generation!

He has not taken into account our social development since the midnineties when he was free to lob a gernade or two at his perceived political enemies, while divorcing his first wife as she lay recovering from cancer in a hospital bed awaiting the day when she would have to beg her church for charity for herself and Newt's children when he abandoned his family commitment to help support his own offspring!

No, Newt, if we read your book, it will be for the lulz, and nothing more! -Kevo

yes we progressives/liberals are a dangerous bunch. health care reform, financial regulatory reform, energy reform ... these are incredibly dangerous ideas ...

in all seriousness, it's fine for conservatives to oppose our ideas. a healthy, honest give and take from all points of view is necessary in a democracy and can make both sides better. however, this kind of rhetoric IS truly dangerous.

To be fair, I believe that the conservatives bed-wetting reaction to terrorism (resorting to torture, presumption of guilt, stripping non-whites of rights) is more of a threat to what I perceive as the American way of life than what the terrorists themselves are doing. But that's slightly different than an "existential" threat... and more people seem to pay attention to Newt's opinions than mine.

"Such is the world through Newt Gingrich's eyes."

Actually, Steve, the world through Newt Gingrich's eyes consists entirely of Newt's colon wall.

Step 1: Establish terrorism as something everyone should mindlessly fear so they'll let you do whatever you want while you're in power.

Step 2: When out of power, use that fear as the benchmark for how much your supporters should fear everyone but you.

Geez, you could hardly expect them to let eight years of fearmongering go to waste and just stop talking about terrorism, right?

What do these secular-socialists believe in exactly? What do they look like? Do they have a secret handshake? Do the emerge from pods taking over the lives of real Americans? If you are infected ith secular-socialism is there any hope or should you be shot on sight like a zombie? Do they cheat on their wives? If they win what will the do to the rest of us? Will they drain us of our vital essentials. So many questions. I guess I will have to read his book.

These "secular-socialists" look like us? How horrible, at least the terrorists work robes and funny beards.

I particularly love how now Newt sees Fascism, Nazism and Imperialism as evils on par with Communism. Set aside the fact that America is acting as an imperialist power today. The GOP has been overtly fascist as long as I've been alive, and Newt's ideological forefathers thought Hitler was a "great man" with a lot of "good ideas" right up until he declared war on us. Initially, FDR only asked for a declaration of war against Japan because he feared that even after Pearl Harbor, the GOP wouldn't go along with war against Germany.

GOP hypocrisy? My, who would've thunk it? These clowns have no scrupples and their dishonesty knows no bounds. Knowing they'll never be called out only emboldens them. They literally take opposing sides of an argument over the course of one election cycle.

Luntz-inspired = Oxymoron

GOP is threatened by the Liberal Facism according to the fearless Goldberg which is then adopted as peerless by the human Newton whose Gingrinchy fecular humanism seems to excise goodly godly overlaps that inconvenience progress with that critter he ain't legal with where Luntzy at luncheons cracks wise about a hand in the till which thrills the leg off of tweety who sympathizes that things are too hard meet halfway but there are still five minutes till coffee break and Bill kristol will explain what oxymoron means with a cheesy grin that pulls the meaning sociopath to a cheerful center right inflation ...

Actually, this type of hyperbole is a trusty old staple of GOP rhetoric. The week of the Oklahoma City bombing, some right wing pundit, I believe it was Cal "most effeminate face-lift in the known universe" Thomas, who opined that the nation had suffered two equally destructive attacks: the bombing, and the passage of a law granting some benefits to domestic partners of state employees in one of the New England States.

Of course, that was before the GOP also realized how profitably they could combine fear of terror with racist dog-whistles. It's true that in the immediate aftermath of Oklahoma City, a lot of people suspected Arab terrorism, and Rush Limbaugh, with the statesmanlike profundity for which he's so well known, suggested we just go ahead and bomb a few Arab countries on principle, whether we knew who did it or not. But Timothy McVeigh was inconveniently white, and so it wasn't till 9/11 that it became possible to make hatred of brown people with foreign names seem truly patriotic.

Nope, the R's haven't changed. Terrorism was a screen. It's always been the poor, the non-whites, and the poor non-whites.

Which liberals/progressives are in the best position to get a coordinated message out? We have a wonderful opportunity to completely flip decades worth of perception by simply declaring that WE'RE not wetting OUR pants over terra', we're bravely going about our normal lives, if you wingnut pussies want to cower in fear, go to it! And then we live it. Cable news always puts opposites together to 'debate' on TV, when the wingnut mouthpiece delivers the 'be vewy afwaid' speech, our guy/gal needs to openly respond, 'Go hide in your closet, real Americans aren't handing our enemies a victory as easily as you are'.

So that's where Friedman's doctorate on kicking a defenseless opponent in the civilian collateral was germinated .

I understand Newt's concern. All the secular-socialists I know, and that's quite a few, think cheating on your sick wife is reprehensible, and are also opposed to impeaching a sitting President for purely partisan political reasons. Clearly, if there is one side that is out to corrode the American value system, it must be them.

But even more disturbing than the threats from foreign terrorists is a second threat that is right here at home. It is an ideology so fundamentally at odds with historic American values that it threatens to undo the cultural ethics that have made our country great. I call it "Christian conservatism."

There, fixed.

I've come to the conclusion that movement conservatism is just another way for the elite to make money. I don't think Newt really believes what he says, but there are many people who will pay hard earned cash to buy his book that do.

If the Soviet Union had collapsed in 1953, Joe McCarthy would have begun to spew the same bile.

Its taken 50 years since Eisenhower crushed that particular pissant, but within the past decade the tail gunner crowd finally accomplished its takeover of the GOP. Gingrich should not be taken lightly. He is a bona fide rooster in that party. Their cancerous screed enjoys access not only to the bully pulpit that is the FOX network, but to the all other organs of the corporate media as well. And as you can scare some of the people all of the time, and all the people some of the time, power is always ripe for the plucking.

The threat we face comes from our own arrogance and callous disregard for safety measures, like blow-out preventer devices that failed due to
conservative greed.

Gingrich in one of the prime feeders of the dangerous rhetorical zombie fever swamp that the anti-American, traitorus Republican Party has become.

The Republican Party is an infection of the body politic. Its bacillus is spreading, bite by zombie bite. It is an insurrection against the Federal government and govnermnets at all levels, no less than the Confederacy was.

They have demonized everyone who differs with them, including the moderates in their own wretched excuse for a political party in a modern free society.

They want demons -- become demons.

They want enemies -- become the enemy.

They want civil war - become violent.

They want government destroyed, then let's destroy the government.

They hate taxes. I can hate taxes unlike anything they ever seen, except in their rancid fever dreams, as in a violent tax revolt against all levels of government run by the scum in the Republican Party. Show them what true hatred of taxes entails -- you tax us and we will fucking kill you in your beds.

What kind of threat is a black, billowing slurry of petrochemicals flooding into the sea?

Probably greater than I can imagine.

Benzene.

All you need to know about organic chemistry, is the volatile hexagonal carbon ring not only is part of a nasty smelling chemical, but a deadly one as well.

We boast about our ability to kill people, we fly drones and float submarines, yet we cannot stop our own leak.

No plan in place. Nada.

Reminds me of the Iraq War. Again, after invasion (drilling), no plan. nada.

It's very simple. Newt Gingrich is in no position to do anything whatsoever about actual, real-world terrorism, so he must set that issue aside.

He can, however, wave a banner with the scary image of a menacing made-up hobgoblin with a magical made-up name, be it Rumpelstiltskin or Secularsocialism, and try frightening people into hiring him as their Man On A White Horse, or Glorious Political Savior.

Joe McCarthy was by no means the first to discover this little trick.

It is an ideology so fundamentally at odds with historic American values that it threatens to undo the cultural ethics that have made our country great.

I was thinking "Corporate feudalism," but Gaia nailed it with "Christian conservatism."

Americans he disagrees with are worse

That is an amazingly common belief. Consider how many people are afraid of the Tea Party movement, global warming deniers or capitalists.

JL: If the Soviet Union had collapsed in 1953, Joe McCarthy would have begun to spew the same bile.

As it was, McCarthyism was as much (or more) about attacking the snooty Eastern Establishment types and other "enemies within" as it was actual anti-Communism.

And because the "fundamental values" of the American republic are deliberation and compromise -- a constitutional system of divided powers and checks and balances designed to, in Madison's famous words, "break the violence of faction," how exactly does Newt Gingrich advance those "fundamental American values" by declaring war on half of America, by identifying them as enemies of the state, ideologues who hate America? America has a revolutionary tradition, but Newt Gingrich has always been at heart a bomb-throwing revolutionary at war with the fruits of that earlier revolution, namely our own democratic tradition.

Newtie is simply trying to understand why the country doesn't rally to him. After all, he's a patriot with only the best intentions for the country in his heart (did someone in the back say something?); therefore there MUST be a consipracy of some sort to explain the lack of support for his nut-jobbery.
Any other explanation is just too painful to imagine...

It's a conspiracy, I tell you!

Funny, I was @ Costco just a while ago and walked by this very book , with its smarmy title staring me in the face. Three thoughts jumped into my mind

1. My god conservative whores sure like going to the publishing well to make extra $$$$$ Seems like a never ending flow.

2. Costco never fails to dutifully display them proudly.

3. If companies like Geico deem Lance Baxter's asking conservatives a few simple questions like 'how many retards work for you' grounds for immediate termination, why do other companies think it totally appropriate to display '12 step plans for stopping our worse than a muslim terrorist President'?

America is becoming a joke.

It's a conspiracy, I tell you!

That'll teach us to accurately cite Gingrich's hypocrisy, massive corruption and lack of character.

I guess if I was a serial liar, amoral panderer of moneyed interests and intellectual fraud, I might lash out at "your lyin' eyes" too.

Pandering to the right with the usual themes of massive hysteria and paranoia. A timeless tradition really. And a great way to sell product be it radio, cable news, books, etc. You can't lose.

Conservatives failed miserably at defeating terrorism, so now they think they'll try defeating domestic liberals. Too Funny.

When that fails, next up: The Boy Scouts. Then The Brownies, when that also fails. Pretty soon, they'll settle for confiscating candy from babies.

Neo McCarthyism. What it boils down to is invention of a non-existant bogeyman because the bullies at the back of the bus got shouted down for being stupid- so they're attacking the Bus Driver.

Melaninsheviks. The real menace.