Jon Taplin, in his recent article "Don't Know Much About History," argues that right-wing critics such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and their ilk are ignorant of the meaning and history of socialism, and are "passing on ignorance to their audience." If only ignorance really were the problem with those guys, indeed with the entire right wing noise factory, because if it were just ignorance, then maybe a history lesson would bring them back to the table talking sense.

Not only do they not care one whit about history, they could care less about making sense, they could care less about reason and logic, they have no intention of meeting on the battlefield of ideas and working something out. They are actually proud of their ignorance, they see ignorance as a touch of commonality, it's how they communicate with the base, and how the base identifies its constituents. Ignorance is a badge of honor. Outlandish, patently false, alarmist in the extreme and utterly resistant to counter-argument, ignorance is the lingua franca of the right.

In ignorance, no one need be responsible for his arguments, anyone can say anything. As we can see in the statements of right wingers from the lowest to the highest stations of power, making sense, referring to fact and sticking to the truth is actively eschewed. Rather, the further a statement is divorced from reality, the more irresponsible the claim, say for example Sarah Palin's "death panels" comment last weekend, the more loudly it is trumpeted in the media and then taken up by partisans, bounced back to the media, on and on in a spiraling inferno of hot gases. Republicans have made a sport of making outlandish claims and seeing how far they can get them to play across the land.

The danger here, however, is not ignorance per se. The danger, and it's ten times more deadly than ignorance, is the utter abandonment by the right of their responsibility to participate in the dialogue of politics in good faith, examining the facts to the best of their ability and coming to consensus to make laws that serve the best interests of the country and their constituents. They seem to care little about the plight of their constituents and the could care less about the welfare of the country as a whole. 

Democracy was built on the idea that reasonable educated people could make good policy and laws by arguing their views in good faith. Hiding behind ignorance, the right - beginning with Limbaugh and Beck, through Palin and Gingrich and Boener and McConnell, and all the way down to the gun-totin' ignoramuses who threaten death to socialists and their freedom-stifling government - shows bad faith at every ridiculous inflammatory claim. 

The right hides behind a veil of willful ignorance, but their true objective is to scuttle the entire democratic process. In doing so they make government look bad and by keeping the process in chaos they confuse and obscure the will of the people. In the vacuum of a popular consensus big money interests are given opportunities to entice lawmakers to do their bidding. If the health care reform debate is any measure, the right's campaign to disrupt our democracy and confuse the will of the people is succeeding in grand fashion.