The impeachment debate is stirring deep fears among many on the left about the possibility of a right wing takeover. PNS commentator Larry Everest is a Marxist journalist whose work has appeared in the LA Times, Newsday, The Nation and other publications.

Hillary Clinton was right. There is a "vast right-wing conspiracy," and it may be on the verge of a major coup. Many Americans are now shocked at the impeachment juggernaut precisely because they're not aware of the right-wing's full agenda or its strength.

This impeachment effort has never just been about Bill Clinton. It is a campaign to reshape U.S. society that goes far beyond outlawing abortion or allowing prayer in schools. The right aims at nothing less than enshrining fundamentalist religious standards in all civic life.

It's no accident that independent counsel Kenneth Starr chose to attack Clinton on sexual issues. The right has used this to put consensual sex outside marriage on trial.

They support intrusion into people's lives. Their agenda is based on "America right or wrong" and white supremacy. According to the Washington Post, Representative Bob Barr of Georgia, who helped spearhead the impeachment drive, has been a keynote speaker at a meeting of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group that opposes mixed marriages on the grounds that they will lead to white "race death."

These forces see Clinton as a symbol of multi-culturalism and the 1960s. The Wall Street Journal acknowledges that Starr "was not just prosecuting Bill Clinton; he was prosecuting the entire culture that gave birth to what Bill Clinton represents." And Maureen Dowd writes in the New York Times, that "the Republicans are attempting to repeal the 1960's."

Since the 1960s, the right has viewed America as a society in cultural and moral decline, and in danger of fragmentation. These concerns have been amplified and gained broader support with the fall of the Soviet Union. For one, the U.S. no longer has an enemy to bind it together. Second, surviving today in the capitalist global market demands more ruthless cost-cutting with fewer restrictions on big business. Instead of a peace dividend, we've gotten downsizing, NAFTA, and the gutting of New Deal social programs.

All these changes have undermined the New Deal consensus that helped hold American society together for over 50 years, and many in the political establishment are concerned. There are sharp debates around just how to forge a new social compact, but the far right's position -- that traditional religious morality must be the new basis for maintaining America's cohesion and world dominance -- now has the initiative.

In California, we've gotten a glimpse of the ugly right-wing future in Propositions 187, 209 and 227. The recent assassination of Dr. Barnett Slepian in Buffalo, the murder of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming, and the auto-lynching of James Byrd, Jr. in Jasper, Texas are also products of the climate of hatred and intolerance fostered by the right.

Poll after poll has made clear that the majority doesn't share these views. But focusing our energy on supporting Clinton and the Democratic Party is no strategy for preventing a right-wing takeover.

In many ways the Democrats have facilitated the right's growing strength. Clinton's specialty has been to combine the right's politics of cruelty with Democratic rhetoric of inclusion. He's been able to end welfare and gut many civil liberties -- a Republican President who tried that might have triggered Los Angeles-style urban uprisings. The Democrats have continually given ground to the Right and increasingly accepted its terms as the "common ground." When Clinton confessed that he had sinned, he was publicly legitimizing fundamentalist morality.

All who find the right's vision abhorrent must vigorously oppose its authoritarian crusade in all its manifestations. That's a difficult task, but far more realistic than expecting Clinton and the Democrats to save us from the hell-fires of the Republican right.