Taki's Magazine

Casualties of Diversity

2009-11-16T02:05:05Z

When alleged killer Nidal Malik Hasan went on a murderous rampage at Fort Hood Texas last week, the Muslim Army psychiatrist reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar,” which means “god is great” as he shot his victims. Speaking about the shootings on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday, Gen. George Casey said “What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even-greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here.” Casey is not only wrong, but the Fort Hood tragedy was a direct result of our egregious commitment to the concept of diversity.

The United States has many bizarre policies, but perhaps the two worst are what some have dubbed “invade the world, invite the world.” We invade and occupy countries to impose American values on people who do not want them and then we invite these people into our country via mass immigration. We bomb people and expect them to love us, and when they arrive on our shores we are often shocked to learn they don’t.

The Washington Post reports that “The Hasan family was large and had deep roots in Roanoke Valley.” Hasan might be a religious military man born and bred in Virginia, but Robert E. Lee he is not. Writes Chronicles Magazine editor Thomas Fleming, “So in the world of The Washington Post, immigrants to the US have ‘deep roots’ wherever they choose to settle. Hassan’s family had deep roots in Palestine…” Fleming is right, and not surprisingly it has been reported that Hasan often told others that his first allegiance was to his Islamic faith, not his American identity.

Mainstream conservatives who believe there exists a religious dimension to Islamic terrorism are correct, but are fools when they ignore the glaringly obvious motivating factor of US foreign interventionism. Does anyone really believe that if the US was not in Iraq and Afghanistan-something Nadal complained about constantly-he would have gone on his rampage? Like Osama Bin Laden, Al-Quada and the 9/11 hijackers, without massive US presence in Muslim nations, Nadal the Islamist would have had much less inspiration to commit murder.

Liberals who believe Islamic terrorism is mostly due to US occupation of Muslim nations are correct, but foolish to believe there does not exist a religious dimension. As Great Britain, France, the Netherlands and other European nations are now learning the hard way; Islam en masse is simply incompatible with the West in so many uniquely frustrating ways that is not true of other cultures and religions.

All cultures or religions are not equal, and while it should be none of America’s business how the rest of the world conducts its business, we should be the sole arbiters of how we conduct our own. That the US did not drastically cut back on immigration from Muslim nations in the weeks and months after 9/11 was indicative of just how deeply multicultural philosophy has corrupted our better senses. Even worse, that a follower of Islam could remain in the US Army while telling anyone who would listen that he had effectively joined the other side, shows that political correctness has pretty much erased our common sense altogether.

When Gen. Casey says, with a straight face, that “it would be an even-greater tragedy” than Fort Hood “if our diversity becomes a casualty” his stubborn multicultural outlook reflects a prevailing, establishment PC orthodoxy that virtually insures future tragedies. Rightly notes Taki’s Magazine editor Richard Spencer: “That Hasan acted according to his faith… must be obvious to everyone whose brains haven’t yet been rotted out by PC.”

Saying Islamic terrorists just “hate our freedom,” is a childish and dangerous fantasy that has already led to thousands of deaths, both American and foreign. Saying Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam is a fantasy that is just as childish and just as dangerous, which led to the deaths of 13 innocent victims in Fort Hood last week. Nidal Malik Hasan may have been a soldier for the US, but in a sane world, his outspoken, admitted preference to be a soldier for Allah would have gotten him immediately thrown out of the Army. Unfortunately, “diversity” prevailed, and according to Gen. Casey, will continue to prevail, as the “war on terror” continues to create more terrorists, and multicultural ideology promises to harbor them—both domestic and abroad.

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George W. Obama

2009-11-06T19:27:15Z

During last year’s Republican National Convention, South Carolina GOP leaders were regularly calling in to WTMA talk radio in Charleston to provide event coverage. On the day they were supposed to talk to me, I was informed that Republican Party officials did not wish to speak to Jack Hunter. In denouncing big government and all its works, I never saw any reason to make special exceptions for Republicans and for my anti-GOP sins I had become persona non grata.

Today, everyone is denouncing big government. Since Obama’s election, tea party protests have sprung up across the country and conservatives are now rallying loud and clear against Washington spending. But liberal politicians and pundits who are calling conservative activists “crazy,” or to borrow MSNBC host Chris Matthew’s phrase “wingnuts,” have it exactly backwards. It was crazy that anyone who might claim the label “conservative” would also claim the Republican Party of George W. Bush. Conservatives haven’t lost their sanity—they’ve regained it.

In the meantime, the Left has gone completely nuts. Worshipping a president who promised “change,” liberals continue to ignore that little has. On foreign policy - the Left’s primary gripe against Bush—Obama’s war mentality is remarkably similar to his predecessor. In drawing down in Iraq, Obama has simply transferred massive US presence to Afghanistan. Controversial war on terror-era measures like the PATRIOT Act, extraordinary rendition and warrantless wiretapping remain intact. Notes observant liberal Noam Chomsky “As Obama came into office, (former Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice predicted he would follow the policies of Bush’s second term, and that is pretty much what happened, apart from a different rhetorical style.”

During the Bush years, conservatives loved to portray outspoken war protesters “Code Pink” as a perfect example of liberal wackiness. It turns out conservatives were right, but for reasons even they couldn’t have imagined, as the same Code Pink that so vehemently denounced Bush’s war in Iraq now supports Obama’s war in Afghanistan. Writes Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo:

Right on time for the somber eighth anniversary of the Afghanistan war and occupation, Code Pink founder and primary spokeswoman Medea Benjamin has announced that her organization—which made so many headlines and newscasts protesting “Bush’s war”—is now ‘rethinking’ their position on Afghanistan. A piece in the Christian Science Monitor, which Code Pink is now strenuously trying to spin, reports that the famous antiwar group is seriously amending their position after listening to the views of Afghan women.

Bush administration officials and conservative talk radio made the case time and again that the US was simply “liberating” Iraqis from the oppressive hand of Saddam Hussein. At the time, I can’t recall antiwar groups ever considering this argument, yet in supporting Obama’s war in Afghanistan, Code Pink is now using the logic of Dick Cheney and Sean Hannity to justify American military intervention in the name of human rights.

But one need not look to the far Left to find liberal lunacy. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham has quickly become the Left’s favorite Republican for both his willingness to compromise with the Democrats and his attacks on conservatives. Liberals constantly praise Graham as a “reasonable” Republican, in contrast to the rest of his party.

But if Dubya was enemy number for one for the Left, Bush Republicanism had no better proponent than Graham. Under Bush, Graham was a big government Republican in all the ways liberals admire—expanding Medicare, No Child Left Behind, TARP—but also in the one way they allegedly despise, with his unqualified support for an explicitly neoconservative foreign policy. When possible Bush successor John McCain was saying that the US might remain in Iraq for “100 years,” or after the brief skirmish between Russia and Georgia, immediately injecting the US into the situation by proclaiming that Americans “were all Georgians now,” there was Graham, always nodding his head approvingly and enthusiastically. The Left loved to portray Bush as a “warmonger.” If someone can tell me how Graham’s politics differ in the slightest from Bush and Cheney, I’d love to hear it.

Liberals who note the hypocrisy of tea partiers who now protest Obama, yet remained silent when Bush was expanding government, have a valid point. But on the one year anniversary of the last election, Obama Democrats have proven themselves no less hypocritical than Bush Republicans, particularly on the issue that most defined the Left during the last administration-foreign policy. Though few will admit it, liberals who voted for a “change” from Bush have not got it. And like the Republicans before them, Democrats’ faith in their president will likely continue to blind them to the fact that they may never get it.

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Whither the Alternative Right?

2009-11-03T14:14:25Z

Long before I supported Ron Paul for president and in general, I was a staunch Pat Buchanan conservative. I still am. Giving my opinion on the radio and in print, at least twice a week for over a decade, I’ve been called a libertarian or a conservative depending on the issue being discussed, but more importantly, the political figures associated with those discussions. If arguing my opposition to NAFTA, illegal immigration and American empire in 2000, I was derided as a Buchananite-nationalist-isolationist. If arguing against NAFTA, illegal immigration and American empire in 2008, I was derided as a Paulite-libertarian-isolationist. I plead guilty on all counts.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending the 2nd annual HL Mencken Club conference where a host of conservative and libertarian thinkers came together for a rousing exchange of ideas on what might—and what should—animate the American Right. One, surely ongoing, debate seemed to be whether right-wingers could make more progress by focusing on cultural issues like illegal immigration, multiculturalism and affirmative action or libertarian issues like government size, spending and perhaps, civil liberties. Would a more culture-minded Buchananite approach work best? Or perhaps a more libertarian-minded Paulite approach?

What many are now calling, appropriately and accurately enough, the “Alternative Right” encompasses both the Buchanan and Paul camps, and whatever differences each have are miniscule compared to their shared, stark differences with the liberal Left and mainstream neoconservative Right. Before discussing what should be done to advance Alternative Right causes—why not look at what has already been done?

The two most successful, right-wing grassroots uprisings in recent years have been the backlash to amnesty for illegal aliens in 2007 and the ongoing “tea party” protests against government spending. Buchanan’s position on illegal immigration in 1996—something only he talked about back then and the GOP viciously attacked him for—is now conventional conservative consensus.

Whether born of partisanship or principle, the thousands of Americans protesting government spending at tea party rallies has radicalized the Republican Party’s natural base. When criticizing talk radio, liberals tend to believe the small, “angry” percentage who actually call-in, unquestionably represent the millions who listen—yet contradictorily assure respectable folks that these crazy “teabaggers” are but a small, vocal few. Sensing their influence and power, the GOP establishment pays anti-government protesters lip service, but to their credit, the tea partiers are not necessarily paying anything back. Notes the Wall Street Journal “the tea-party movement appears aggressively nonpartisan, much like Ross Perot’s supporters in 1992.”

So what happened to all those crazy Ron Paul kids during the election, waving protest signs and screaming about big government? Many of their parents have joined them.

If Paul had been elected president and carried through on campaign promises to secure the border, end “anchor baby” citizenship,” dismantle government programs like affirmative action, welfare, race-based housing loans and the like, the Texas Congressman would be portrayed by the Left as one of the most racist presidents in modern history. Just for following the Constitution.

But while the Left—including most of the GOP leadership—would shriek, the real Right, the Alternative Right, would applaud. While the GOP keeps scratching its head wondering how to attract more minorities and young people, ironically the only Republican who has attracted both is Paul, and his anti-statist message is feasibly more acceptable to the wider, mostly white, tea partying GOP base, primarily because it is anti-state, not anti-minority. Simply put, the libertarian approach—per Paul’s example—is the model that could build the broadest coalitions and bear the most fruit in advancing Alt Right policies.

In 1996, I thought libertarians who abandoned Buchanan—the only presidential candidate serious about rolling back American empire—were damned fools. A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll published this week shows that Americans’ trust in government is at a 12-year-low and over half the country supports the formation of a third party. Fed up with George W. Bush-style “compassionate conservatism” and already souring on Obama’s “change,” what organized, anti-government, anti-establishment philosophy exists that might attract disenchanted voters who could challenge the status quo of both parties? In 1996, it was unquestionably the Buchanan Brigades.

In 2009, it is Ron Paul libertarianism. The reason I talk about Paul so much is because Paul has accomplished so much, creating an intellectually serious grassroots fervor that I hadn’t seen since Buchanan in 96, only younger, more enduring and with broader appeal. And today, and in any era, the cultural and constitutional wings of the Alternative Right would gain far more by hunting where the ducks are than trying to invent a brand new bird.

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Capitol Hill Hos

2009-10-30T03:12:41Z

I don’t know much about economics. What I do know is that so many so-called “experts,” including politicians and economists, are wrong far more often than they are right. They’re wrong about virtually everything, and yet shamelessly keep selling the same old fairy tales. They are liars. They are cheats. They are whores.

As Congress plots government healthcare, Americans should remember how incredibly wrong Washington leaders were about the cost of programs like Medicare. Bush and Obama have already been proven irrevocably wrong about TARP and stimulus, and yet both claim it’s working. Months ago in South Carolina, Gov. Mark Sanford stood firm in refusing to sign off on extending unemployment benefits, demanding that that department be overhauled so that any future crisis might be averted. This week, a less aggressive, post-scandal Sanford signed off on allowing federal stimulus dollars to keep SC’s unemployed propped up for a few more weeks. Problem not solved, just prolonged. Sanford was right the first time.

And despite his apology, so was Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson when he called Federal Reserve adviser Linda Robertson a “K Street Whore.” During an appearance on the Alex Jones radio show, Grayson said “this lobbyist, this K street whore, is trying to teach me about economics.” Robertson had attacked Grayson for his efforts, along with Republicans like Congressman Ron Paul, Sen. Jim DeMint and others, to audit the Federal Reserve.

Probably most famous for saying Republicans who opposed Obama’s healthcare plan simply want Americans to “die quickly,” Grayson has quickly established himself as an outspoken congressman who pulls no punches.

When I heard conservative critics attacking Grayson this week for daring to call Robertson a “K Street Whore,” I had to laugh. Was the Right simply going after Grayson for his earlier attack on anti-government healthcare Republicans, or were they really upset that he would refer to a representative of the Federal Reserve as a whore? Is it not a primary function of conservatives, especially rightwing talk radio, to lambaste and lampoon the whoring politicians who run Capitol Hill? Hell, conservative humorist PJ O’Rourke’s 1991 take on the entire US government was a book entitled “Parliament of Whores.” If Robertson were a man, would there have been any controversy?

If anyone deserves to be called whores or worse it’s the criminals who run the Federal Reserve, a secretive institution that continues to steal from the American people by printing as much money as it sees fit. Before becoming a top lobbyist for the Fed, Robertson was, appropriately enough, a top lobbyist for Enron. Notes Grayson spokesman Todd Jurkowski, Robertson “attacked the Congressman and his efforts to promote a Republican bill to audit the Federal Reserve… She’s a career lobbyist who used to work for Enron and advocates for whatever she gets paid to promote.” What Robertson has been paid to promote during her lobbying career are institutions primarily in the business of theft, and the Fed adviser has long worked the K Street strip like no other.

Obama’s massive healthcare agenda, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, our vast domestic welfare state, “stimulus” packages - every bit of big government imaginable - could not be afforded if the Federal Reserve did not allow the United States to live far beyond its means. The US borrows from China and prints more money. That’s how we get by. That’s how we get debt. Our leaders on Capitol Hill, from men like Tim Geithner and Bernanke to women like Robertson and Nancy Pelosi are liars, cheats, and yes, whores - and then some.

And more people should say so. One need not agree with Grayson’s opinions on everything to admire his blunt language about one of the US’s most destructive institutions and those who run it. If Republican Congressman Joe Wilson shouting “you lie!” at President Obama was arguably this year’s best summation of our Washington rulers, Democrat Congressman Alan Grayson calling the Federal Reserve’s head lobbyist a “K Street Whore” was a close second. But like Wilson, Grayson’s greatest mistake was in limiting his criticism to just one bureaucrat.

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Hate Is Not a Crime

2009-10-27T13:53:04Z

When openly gay college student Matthew Shepard was targeted, tortured and murdered in 1998 the story made national headlines. Soon after, MTV sent a camera crew down to Charleston, South Carolina searching for a redneck or two who might offer some insensitive remarks about homosexuals for their “True Life” series. They found one. Me.

I was a student at the College of Charleston and as the lone conservative writer at the school paper, was asked to participate in the television tapings. I remember telling MTV I believed Shepard’s murderers should receive the death penalty. I also told them, when prodded, that I believed homosexuality was “against God.”

It’s a comment I’ve regretted ever since.

My first regret stems from the blasphemous assumption that I could know the mind of God and secondly, that I had portrayed gay men and women as somehow lesser children of that God. Despite my youthful ignorance, there is nothing more obvious to me today than the fact that the overwhelming majority of homosexuals are born gay. It is nature, not nurture and certainly no choice.

But in a free society what people choose to think about homosexuality should be their choice. The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act currently being pushed through Congress, which seeks to expand the definition of federal hate crime laws to cover homosexuals, is the criminalization of thought, pure and simple. It’s bad enough that we already have federal laws that cover crimes motivated by racial, ethnic or religious prejudice, which are an affront to free speech that should be abolished. Battery, assault and murder are horrible enough crimes on their own without attaching some special significance to what the perpetrator might think about his victim. Rightly notes South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, there are “fundamental problems with any federal hate crimes legislation. The Rule of Law requires opposition to this idea that we treat crimes differently.”

Not that I don’t understand the rage of homosexuals or racial and religious minorities who sometimes feel like targets of violence. In 2002, my best friend was assaulted for verbally defending the honor of a woman. For his chivalrous deed, my friend, who was far too drunk to defend himself (everyone was intoxicated) had his head mercilessly pounded into the sharp corner of a steel toolbox, coming dangerously close to severely and permanently damaging his eye. The perpetrator was a perennial loser, mad at women, himself and god-knows-what-else, filled with enough “hate” to take on the whole world. At the time, if someone had put a bullet in his head I wouldn’t have lost much sleep over it.

One can only imagine the rage of Mathew Shepard’s family, his friends and particularly those in the gay community who knew him. A loved one was taken by two emotionally-dysfunctional men whose insecurities and personal shortcomings drove them to murder. No doubt, many would like to see Shepard’s killers put to death and it’s an injustice this never happened.

But not because Shepard was gay - because he was an innocent human being who had done nothing to deserve his fate. While murder is certainly worse than assault, is beating up a homosexual a worse crime than beating up my friend? If my friend were homosexual, should his assault take on an entirely new dimension? When violent crimes occur, each born of evil-intentions and producing gruesome results, are some crimes less equal than others? For hate crime law advocates, their answer is an unqualified “yes!” Their logic is repulsive.

Advocates of hate crime laws argue that homosexual and minority members’ particular identities make them especially vulnerable, requiring special legal protection. One could just as easily argue that the colossal disparity between black-on-white violent crime versus white-on-black violent crime makes white Americans especially vulnerable, and yet no one advocates for special legal protection for whites. Some might argue that existing hate crime laws allow for this, but the instances of anti-white hate crimes being prosecuted compared to anti-minority hate crimes, is beyond laughable and no one seems to be clamoring for it.

Most violent crime is born of some sort of hatred and examining motive is certainly crucial in any criminal investigation. But “hate” - for gays, minorities, women, chivalrous men - is still just a thought, and should not be itself, a criminal action. Criminalizing the thought behind a violent act sets dangerous precedent and gives special justice to special groups and lesser justice to victims of similar crimes who do not belong to those groups.

Stupid as it was, what I thought about homosexuality in 1998 should not have been a crime. A few weeks after the MTV special aired, I was standing in a King Street bar when a rather tough lesbian woman violently pushed me from behind, angry over my comments. Looking back, I’m surprised she didn’t punch my lights out. That would have unquestionably been a crime. But not her opinion of me.

“I Hate Liberals” tote bag available Zazzle.com

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FOX Hunt

2009-10-23T13:59:53Z

The Obama administration’s decision to treat FOX News as a political opponent rather than a viable news outlet has angered many conservatives. Not me. FOX News is not and never has been “objective journalism.” But neither is MSNBC, CNN and every other corporate outlet that disseminates politically-biased disinformation. It’s no secret that Obama and FOX have long been “ready to rumble,” so why not finally remove the blinders and the gloves so that FOX can get to their business, unfettered, of beating this administration into a bloody pulp?

Which is exactly what MSNBC, CNN and every other liberal news outlet should have done to the last president. For all the bad press conservatives complained about Bush getting from the liberal media, where in the hell was any hard-nosed journalism leading up to the invasion of Iraq, where more thorough investigation into the administration’s allegations about WMDs and Saddam Hussein’s alleged ties to Osama Bin Laden could have swayed public opinion, maybe preventing a costly and unnecessary war?

When former Bush White House press secretary Scott McClellan expressed regret in his recent book that the media had been too easy on the administration in the lead up to the Iraq war, CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin explained her colleagues failure, saying that the “press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the President’s high approval ratings.”

Favoring ratings over objective journalism? Who would do such a monstrous thing? Obama senior adviser David Axelrod now says with a straight face, FOX News is “not a news organization” but simply “geared toward making money.” Fellow rocket scientist and White House communications director Anita Dunn says that FOX is just “opinion journalism masquerading as news.” Axelrod and Dunn’s supposed reasons for not allowing FOX News equal White House access also easily applies to every other news outlet Obama gladly indulges.

Our compromised media is nothing new precisely because there is no such thing as objective journalism. Before the 20th century, people got their information from newspapers that were explicitly “Whig” or “Tory” or later, “Republican” or “Democrat” that would engage in nakedly partisan public battles, leaving objectivity to the mind of the reader. Newspapers served the political and corporate interests of those who owned them and everyone knew it.

News outlets still operate this way, the only difference is that Republican news services like FOX and Democrat shills like MSNBC pretend they aren’t biased. FOX News isn’t always “fair” in attacking Obama, nor were they “balanced” with their Bush propaganda. MSNBC laughably continues their charade of objectivity while practically worshipping Obama, even adopting the slogan, “Experience the power of change,” which I do on a regular basis by changing the channel. A year ago I could barely stomach FOX and their Bush worship, finding myself watching MSNBC because they were more inclined to attack the president. Today, MSNBC’s Obama propaganda makes me gag and FOX News is better than ever in its role as one of the new president’s most vicious critics.

There can be no true objective journalism because there are no truly objective human beings, journalists and editors included. Publications take political stances not only in their opinion pages, but in what stories they include or omit, not to mention the slant and tone of those stories. Charleston’s own Post & Courier reflects a moderate, Republican establishment mindset and my conservative readers often wonder why I write for that “liberal rag” the Charleston City Paper, a rather obvious political bias my editor Chris Haire, to his credit, readily admits.

And Americans would be much better informed if all news outlets would openly admit their bias. Liberal Noam Chomsky has argued that the illusion of media objectivity has led to major news outlets becoming the instruments of government and corporate interests rather than society’s watchdog, investigative journalism’s alleged purpose. World-renowned reporter Robert Fisk, who the New York Times once described as “probably the most famous foreign correspondent in Britain” shares Chomsky’s sentiments: “There is a misconception that journalists can be objective ... What journalism is really about is to monitor power and the centres of power.”

As the Democrats proceed with arguably the most ambitious big government agenda in history, conservatives should hope for a more explicitly partisan FOX News - completely on the outs with the president - that might monitor that “centre of power” that is Obama’s Washington, DC. MSNBC and CNN certainly aren’t going to do it. FOX should do to Obama what MSNBC and CNN should have done to Bush - attempt to cripple the president’s agenda by actually reporting on it. Forget objectivity, how about some actual productivity, in which partisan media outlets might finally do a competent job of keeping an eye on the other party? And far from being offended by the recent White House snub, FOX News should do America a favor by embracing its explicitly partisan role as an enemy of Obama’s state.

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Balloon Boy

2009-10-20T14:08:48Z

When a runaway hot-air balloon reported to be carrying a six-year-old boy made headlines last week, many were surprised to find out it had all been a hoax. Admitted the six-year-old boy on live television, “We did this for a show.”

Another hot-air balloon by the name of Lindsey Graham also made headlines last week by putting on a show of his own, as the South Carolina Senator held court at a town hall meeting, touting his conservative credentials before an angry crowd that wasn’t buying it. “They’re a political fringe group” Graham said of his critics, “I’m the conservative in the room.”

Is Graham a “conservative?” Are his detractors merely a political fringe? In a headline reading “Graham aims to tackle ‘radical’ views,” the Greenville News reports:

Political experts say a burgeoning group of right-wing activists long seen as the fringe of the party is growing in influence, fueled by economic fears and populist ire over Washington spending and magnified by the power of the Internet… Whether they represent a vocal minority or the seeds of a serious election challenge for Graham remains to be seen, though at least one Republican consultant believes the state’s senior senator has ‘real problems’ outside of just a raucous town hall meeting… ‘If he were running right now, he’d be in serious trouble,’ said Dave Woodard, a Clemson University political science professor and former campaign manager for Graham who said he has Upstate polling to support his view.

Woodard’s findings coincide with another story published in the Wall Street Journal the same day entitled “Tea-Party Activists Complicate Republican Comeback Strategy” in which the author Naftali Bendavid notes:

The rise of conservative ‘tea party’ activists around the country has created a dilemma for Republicans. They are breathing life into the party’s quest to regain power. But they’re also waging war on some candidates hand-picked by GOP leaders as the most likely to win… the tea-party movement appears aggressively nonpartisan, much like Ross Perot’s supporters in 1992. ‘The tea-party movement, in my judgment, has proven to be very real, but it’s precisely the fact that it’s real that makes it difficult to take advantage of,’ says Vin Weber, a former Minnesota congressman and now a top Republican strategist. ‘They don’t want to be co-opted by the Republican Party.

For his entire career, Graham’s strategy for victory has been the same as his party’s—dangle conservative-sounding rhetoric before easily duped constituents during an election year so that Republicans can be returned to Washington to do as much damage as the Democrats. It’s refreshing to learn that according to some experts, a growing number of grassroots conservatives are tired of being duped.

Not that establishment Republicans won’t stop trying. Graham is a master of this long-standing Republican hoax, in which politicians will float their own hot-button, hot-air balloons, especially concerning social issues like gay marriage, abortion, and the 2nd amendment, but are actually far more concerned with the much more important business of spending trillions of dollars on needless “bailouts” and stimulus packages, even more needless trillions on unnecessary wars, collaborating with the Democrats to expand the domestic welfare state and appointing liberal justices to the Supreme Court. Said Graham in Greenville last week, “I’ll put my record as a pro-life politician against anybody in this country… I’m a lifelong NRA member.” It should be noted that alleged, staunch pro-lifer and gun rights advocate Graham has done very little to actually overturn Roe vs. Wade or federal gun laws, but has worked overtime to promote TARP, cap and trade, and amnesty for illegal aliens.

Perhaps an even better example of Graham’s posturing was his bi-polar treatment of liberal Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Said Graham at first “When I look at her record, her ideology, I’m deeply troubled.” The Daily Beast even ran the headline “Lindsey Graham Attacks Sotomayor.” A few short weeks later, Graham became the sole Republican on the senate judiciary committee to confirm Sotomayor.

The biggest difference between the so-called “balloon boy” and Graham, is that the six-year-old finally admitted his disingenuousness. Sheriff Jim Alderden, who worked on the runaway balloon case, rightly noted that the boy’s family had “put on a very good show for us, and we bought it.” Graham and his Republican Party have put on a show for years—millions of conservative voters have bought it—and yet the GOP still refuses to fess up. Said Graham of his critics without the slightest hint of irony, “The reason I can stand up there and smile confidently and tell them I disagree is I know that most people are with me.”

Whether conservatives continue to buy Graham’s hot-air is something only time will tell. But rest assured that in the meantime, Lindsey Graham and similar self-described “conservatives” will never admit to their hoax—and worse—will insist that the same old Republican show must go on.

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lindsey’s Party

2009-10-16T15:05:29Z

It’s hard to imagine a Republican more useless than South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. Whether spearheading legislation that would grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, stumping for the $787 billion taxpayer theft known as “TARP,” being the lone GOP committee vote to confirm liberal Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor, or his recent joining with John Kerry to promote cap-and-trade—without shame and without fail—conservatives have never had a friend in Graham.

And yet in 2008, Graham was reelected in the deep Red State of South Carolina over a Democratic candidate, Bob Conley, who staunchly opposed amnesty, TARP and was well to the right of Lindsey in almost every respect. Many dubbed Conley a “Ron Paul Democrat,” given his support for the Texas Congressman during the Republican presidential primary and in that senatorial election the conservative “D” lost to the liberal “R” thanks purely to party affiliation. Rest assured, Lindsey Graham would like to keep things this way.

And Ron Paul would not. Comparing the 2008 Paul campaign with every other Republican who ran for president that year is a study in contrasts. Paul remained a Republican out of political necessity, sometimes seemingly regrettably, despite his continuing disappointment with his party’s lack of serious commitment to limited government principles. Every other GOP candidate, from talk radio favorite Mitt Romney to eventual nominee John McCain, would mouth occasional limited government rhetoric despite their lack of a voting record to match, seeming most interested in their ascendancy in the Republican Party and the power it affords.

When confronted by a crowd of tea partiers, town hall protesters and other angry grassroots conservatives at a meeting in Greenville this week, Graham reacted to criticism leveled against him by attacking one man: “We’re not going to be the Ron Paul party ... I love this party ... I’m not going to let it be hijacked by Ron Paul ... Ron Paul’s run for president like 39 times. He keeps losing.”

Graham is right. The limited government philosophy that Paul believes once was, and could be again, the guiding principle of the Republican Party, keeps losing. Despite the Founding Fathers best intentions, the Constitution that has remained the only guideline for every vote Paul has cast during his decades-long career in Congress, has been badly damaged by politicians from both parties. To “hijack” the Republican Party, Paul would have to inspire a genuine revolution, not only in the way our government conducts its business but in what Americans think about how much business their government should be conducting. For Paul, the battle has never been about “Republican” vs. “Democrat” but limited government vs. unlimited government and there’s never been any question about which side Paul stands on.

On the other side, you’ll find Graham. As the quintessential GOP establishment man, the big government Republicanism that defined the Bush era had no greater champion than Graham. Conservatives who now trash Lindsey for siding with the Democrats have short memories, as it was Bush who first promoted amnesty, who “abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system” with TARP, and grew our government and debt to record heights. At every turn, Graham was Bush’s boy. Now says Graham, “I’m going to grow this party,” which is comical considering his last attempt at Republican resurrection resulted in the sound defeat of his political life-partner, John McCain, who voters rightly saw as a continuation of the unpopular Bush. Today, Graham’s GOP remains wedded to recycling Bush-era, big government policy, always stamped with an elephant insignia and always designed to fool rank-and-file conservatives into voting against their better interests.

But now, too many are tired of being played for fools. The angry crowd that confronted Graham at a town hall meeting in Greenville this week were but the most vocal representatives of an ever-growing group of Americans who are fed up with both the excesses of Bush and the even worse excesses of Obama. For the first time in a long time, many Americans are looking back to the Founding Fathers, holding up their Constitution and seriously reexamining the role of government in their lives. This is fertile ground for an admitted “revolutionary” like Ron Paul. This is dangerous ground for protectors of the status quo like Lindsey Graham. “We’re not going to be the Ron Paul party” Graham will continue to say defiantly, but can no longer say definitely.

And neither can Paul. While any future Republican Party worth having must indeed, finally be “hijacked” by the principles of limited, constitutional government, big government Republicans like Graham would like nothing more than a safe return to the good old Bush days when constituents would just keep their mouths shut, wallets open and their votes-a-comin.’

If this happens—and there’s a good chance it might—conservatives, constitutionalists and patriots of all stripes interested in genuine political revolution must finally to go to whichever party, old or new, that best suits their interests. And Lindsey Graham and his retread Republican Party—can go to hell.

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The Nobel Police Prize

2009-10-13T10:53:46Z

Gauging politicians and pundits’ various reactions to President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize last week was amusing. Even more amusing was the reaction from American conservatives.

Wrote Rush Limbaugh in an e-mail to the Politico:

This fully exposes the illusion that is Barack Obama ... And with this ‘award’ the elites of the world are urging Obama, THE MAN OF PEACE, to not do the surge in Afghanistan, not take action against Iran and its nuclear program and to basically continue his intentions to emasculate the United States… They love a weakened, neutered U.S and this is their way of promoting that concept.

Said Texas Congressman Ron Paul:

His policy is not exactly pro-peace. Right now it looks like the war will continue over there, Obama wants more troops into Afghanistan and more bombing in Pakistan, it looks like Pakistan is going to be the front of the war, there’s been no significant troop reduction in Iraq.

Limbaugh and Paul’s reactions represent two, polar-opposite views on the same subject, and yet both men are generally perceived as right-wing conservatives, completely opposed to President Obama’s agenda. But on foreign policy, only Paul truly opposes this president. Limbaugh might rail against Obama all day, every day, but once you get past the rhetoric, both Rush and Barack essentially agree that it is the United States’ mission to be the world’s policeman. As officer Obama continues to patrol Bush’s old beat, even expanding into new neighborhoods, it is Paul who’s demanding the U.S. fully and finally turn in its world’s police badge—while Rush would simply prefer a different sheriff.

If perception is indeed reality, the reality that Obama’s foreign policy is closer to Bush’s than not, is something not only lost on conservatives like Limbaugh, but the Nobel Committee. It is true this president has more international admirers than his predecessor, and Obama’s award seems to be more for his different, more diplomatic style than any substantive policy breaks from the old guard.

Psychologist and Huffington Post columnist Robert Epstein has called Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize the “Thank-God-You’re-Not-Bush” prize, and he makes a sound point—it is hard to imagine such an award being bestowed on Obama, who has basically done nothing, if he had instead followed Bill Clinton or George H.W. Bush rather than the disastrous Dubya. Epstein explains:

The basic idea is simple: a prolonged experience with a stimulus that has strong negative or strong positive value distorts the way we view new stimuli of the same sort. If we’ve had prolonged experience with a strong positive stimulus, we’ll tend to view new related stimuli negatively. And if we’ve had prolonged experience with a strong negative stimulus, we’ll tend to view related new stimuli positively… The contrast effect works in many domains, including the political. And yes, it can even cause intelligent, well meaning people to confuse bringing peace to people with giving inspirational speeches about bringing peace to people.

In Epstein’s view, the prejudice abroad or “negative stimuli” of George W. Bush is what primarily led the Nobel committee to award Obama its prestigious Peace Prize, though the president continues with policies similar to Bush. It also follows that staunch supporters of Bush’s foreign policy in the U.S., like Limbaugh, had a more positive impression of the last president and therefore react negatively to Obama for the same reason the Nobel committee reacted positively. This emotional, illogical phenomenon could be seen even more clearly recently in the gleeful response of Limbaugh, the Weekly Standard office and others on the Right, to the news that despite Obama’s efforts overseas, Chicago had been denied the 2016 Summer Olympics.

But one need not be a shrink to see that despite their more serious differences on domestic policy, Obama and Limbaugh essentially agree on foreign policy. They differ only in degree; not their basic philosophies. Paul notes the confusion:

There should be debate on ‘should we be there?’ And ‘why are we there?‘And ‘should we win the war?’ vs. ‘we shouldn’t be there.’ No, the debate is ‘how many troops should we send,’ ‘should the front lines be in Afghanistan or should the front lines be in Pakistan,’ ‘and how many contractors should replace the soldiers that we’re removing from Iraq,’ it’s the wrong, wrong debate.

Paul is right. That Limbaugh believes Obama winning the Nobel Prize “fully exposes the illusion that is Barack Obama,” more accurately exposes the illusion of Rush and the mainstream conservative movement, who would have had far more disagreements on foreign policy with a strict constitutionalist president like Paul than a big spending liberal like Obama. And though neither Limbaugh nor Obama would ever say forthright, they believe America should police the world - in fact both would insist they reject the very notion - it never seems to stop mainstream conservatives and liberals from always defending the most ambitious military overstretch in history, in the name of “national security,” “world stability” and any other excuse to promote permanent American global hegemony.

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Cosmetic Conservative

2009-10-09T15:50:57Z

Describing what he sees as the relative powerlessness of talk radio, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote last week: “Let us take a trip back into history… It is the winter of 2007. The presidential primaries are approaching. The talk jocks like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and the rest are over the moon about Fred Thompson. They’re weak at the knees at the thought of Mitt Romney. Meanwhile, they are hurling torrents of abuse at the unreliable deviationists: John McCain and Mike Huckabee. Yet somehow, despite the fervor of the great microphone giants, the Thompson campaign flops like a fish. Despite the schoolgirl delight from the radio studios, the Romney campaign underperforms. Meanwhile, Huckabee surges. Limbaugh attacks him, but social conservatives flock. Along comes New Hampshire and McCain wins! McCain wins the South Carolina primary and goes on to win the nomination. The talk jocks can’t even deliver the conservative voters who show up at Republican primaries. They can’t even deliver South Carolina!”

David Brooks is a man who does not, and probably cannot, understand a state like South Carolina. Nor does he understand talk radio, the conservative movement, or even himself.

Talk radio hosts gravitated toward Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney because both candidates best fit their ideal: non-threatening, marquee value GOP establishment types who project a “conservative” image, despite not having much of a record to match. The reason Mike Huckabee “surged” is because “values voters” cared more about electing one of their own than his lack of limited government credentials. John McCain won in South Carolina because the most military-heavy state in the union wanted to support a soldier, and the senator’s military record was valued more than his politics. Indeed, virtually every Republican who ran for president in 2008 represented a different form of identity politics on the Right.

And so does Brooks. Brooks advocates the same neoconservative Republican politics that animated Thompson, Romney, Huckabee and McCain, and his differences with the current conservative movement are more style than substance. The New York Times columnist would like to see a conservatism that stays faithful to the policies of the Bush administration, yet with the temperament and air-of- respectability of a New York Times columnist. His criticism is almost entirely cosmetic.

Calling himself a “reformist” Brooks seeks a conservative movement less abrasive than talk radio, less Christian than Mike Huckabee and pretty much exactly like John McCain, sans Sarah Palin. This kindler, gentler, or dare I say “compassionate” conservatism, differs little from the Republican brand that got its butt kicked in 2008, or as The American Conservative’s Jim Antle writes: “Much of reformist conservatism is really an aesthetic judgment about the Republican Party and conservative movement… the reformists tended to support the very Bush-era policies that ushered in the Obama administration and Democratic congressional majorities. Virtually all of them favored invading Iraq. Although many of them now concede that the war did not go as well, pre-surge, as they had hoped, most of them continue to believe the decision to attack Iraq was justified. The Iraq War and the foreign-policy ideas that gave rise to it are conspicuous by their absence from reformists’ list of areas where Republicans or conservatives need to change.”

Indeed. And now Brooks and his ilk still argue over the righteousness of the war in Iraq, the need to stay in Afghanistan and are keeping a hawk’s eye on Iran. In the mind of Brooks, the Republicans didn’t lose the White House in 2008 because of George W. Bush, his policies or his wars - Americans were simply turned off by Sarah Palin. Brooks’ conservatism is anything but, and despite his rationalizations, the man is basically just a snob.

But if Brook’s snob conservatism, Thompson and Romney’s wannabe-Reagan-imitations, Huckabee’s holy-rolling and McCain’s mad-bomber mentality are all just stylistic variations of the same Republican policies, it is worth noting the one candidate in 2008 who attracted widespread, bipartisan support, based not only almost purely on his ideas - but ideas that stood in stark contrast to the rest of his party. Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign reflected the antiwar sentiment that helped elect Obama and the anti-government outrage that now defines the grassroots Right. Paul, unlike his fellow 2008 presidential contenders, not only rejected the failed policies of the Bush administration, but despite his lack of charisma, possessed the only political platform that might have had a chance of winning - while remaining conservative to the core.

But strict, limited government conservatism is of little concern to establishment men like Brooks, which makes him completely useless. Writes Antle: “the reformists, whose new ideas are not conservative and whose old ideas are the ones that destroyed the Bush GOP, are the very last pundits Republicans should heed.”

Indeed. And if the American Right needs a new, better identity - as many rightly believe it does - a good start might be to move as far away as possible from the politics and person of David Brooks.

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Iran, Iran So Far Away

2009-10-06T05:48:48Z

Whenever I discuss the colossal mistake that was (is) the Iraq war and the embarrassing lack of WMDs, some defender of that war always insists that “everyone” thought Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Well no, everyone didn’t, including the weapons inspectors. But the “everyone” who count most are those who wield the most power, and thus said Vice President Dick Cheney in 2002: “Stated simply, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us.”

Cheney was wrong. “Everyone” was wrong.

And “everyone” is wrong today about Iran and their supposed WMDs. You might be asking, “how does some minor league columnist from Charleston, South Carolina possess the proper intel to refute what Washington leaders and our national media are all saying about Iran’s nuclear capabilities?”

That’s easy. They’re all full of crap.

Virtually everything our leaders told us about the supposed “threat” posed by Iraq was either a lie or a drastic exaggeration to garner public support for a war that was unnecessary, in hindsight. These are the same leaders who lied about or exaggerated the immediate need for the $787 billion Wall Street bailout or “TARP” to fix our economy, as that criminal piece of legislation passes its one year mark having accomplished nothing.

I opposed the war in Iraq and TARP for the same reason—I am accustomed to politicians telling any lie necessary to get what they want, and find more truth in first examining their wants than getting caught up in the lies they find necessary to achieve them. In Iraq, I knew the neoconservatives who ran the Bush administration had been aching to invade that country long before 9/11, something they made clear on numerous occasions. I watched them manipulate facts, twist logic and shamelessly use the terrorist attacks as their public excuse for their war, knowing full well it was never their private inspiration. Since Iraq, this same crowd has had their heart set on invading Iran, something they have also made clear on numerous occasions. When last week Iran admitted the existence of a second uranium enrichment facility, it quickly - and predictably - became 2002 and “WMDs” all over again.

And our leaders’ duplicity is staggering. Just this summer, dissidents in Iran took to the streets posing a serious challenge to the ruling regime and American neoconservatives chastised Obama for not coming out strongly in their support. Why should our government have supported the dissidents? Because if things worsened, the US would have assumed a degree of moral responsibility for the deteriorating conditions, which could have resulted in American boots on the ground in Iran. Now the same leaders who pretended to support the opposition to Iran’s ruling regime are the staunchest endorsers of sanctions, which would punish the very same dissidents. Or as opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi told the Washington Post: “Sanctions would not affect the government but would impose many hardships upon the people, who suffer enough as a result of the calamity of their insane rulers.”

Again, our politicians’ wants dictate their arguments and their current rhetoric on Iran intentionally is leading to war, occupation and permanent US entrenchment. We’ve heard this all before. WMDs? Iraq behind 9/11? Saddam, the “next Hitler?” It was all bogus. Iran has nuclear weapons? Tehran poses a threat to the US? Ahmadinejad is the “next Hitler?” Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…

Ex-CIA officer Philip Giraldi puts it best: “The real question for the United States and its citizens should be whether or not Iran constitutes a serious danger and whether the threat level mandates Washington’s launching of another war on the heels of two unsuccessful forays into the Muslim world. Many Americans might also observe that the cost of such a journey into darkness would have catastrophic effect on a crumbling US economy. One could reasonably ask why Congress and the media seem intent on setting the US on a path that can only lead to war, a conflict that could easily have consequences that would gravely damage the United States and its people.

Remember the WMD, pilotless drones, chemical weapon labs, and mushroom clouds? The same song is being sung again, but this time everyone should recognize a con job when they see it coming.”

But my greatest fear is that too few Americans see the same con job coming. Conservatives who see a socialist conspiracy behind every move Obama makes are still incapable of believing government could ever conspire to take us to war, and liberals who were once antiwar will give their hero Obama the benefit of the doubt, as both parties dish out the same crap that got us into Iraq. And I hate to say it, but Americans have far more to fear from government leaders who get excited over the idea of Iran having WMDs than Iran actually having WMDs.

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Everybody’s Racist

2009-10-02T13:09:30Z

Having the moniker “Southern Avenger” is like being named “Malcolm X.” Both have racial connotations and people assume the best or worst depending on their perspective. That advocates of Southern heritage might try to emphasize positive aspects of their philosophy—regional pride, states’ rights—is unacceptable to critics who see nothing but a front for anti-black racism. That advocates of Black Nationalism might try to emphasize positive aspects of their philosophy—ethnic pride, community control—is unacceptable to critics who see nothing but a front for anti-white racism. Indeed, sometimes Southern heritage has just been about hating blacks and sometimes Black Nationalism has just been about hating whites. And sometimes they haven’t.

Those on either side of the typical argument over “racism” have a knack for cherry-picking their own “facts” to manufacture their own conclusions. President Barack Obama automatically becomes racist for defending a black college professor who got into a tussle with a white police officer. Congressman Joe Wilson automatically becomes racist for misbehaving during a speech by a black president. Is there a racial dynamic or component to both situations? Perhaps, but it’s ridiculously simplistic to whittle down either man’s behavior to pure racism, as many have. The same goes for those who champion Southern or black pride.

And the same goes for anyone, period. We have reached a point in our public discourse where the word “racist” has little definition. When I’m accused of racism these days, my reaction is usually an ambivalent “so?” It’s not that I’m necessarily comfortable with the term; I’m just not sure what it means anymore. Writes Jesse Washington of the Associated Press:

f everybody’s racist, is anyone? The word is being sprayed in all directions, creating a hall of mirrors that is draining the scarlet R of its meaning and its power, turning it into more of a spitball than a stigma. ‘It gets to the point where we don’t have a word that we use to call people racist who actually are,’ said John McWhorter, who studies race and language at the conservative Manhattan Institute. ‘The more abstract and the more abusive we get in the way we use the words, then the harder it is to talk about what we originally meant by those terms,’ said McWhorter.

In a recent column, my friend and colleague, Charleston City Paper columnist Will Moredock argued that it is necessary to keep talking about racism so that it might eventually go away. But if we discuss racism more because the term is being stretched to mean more, what, exactly, are we talking about to begin with? By injecting race into controversies where its existence is questionable at best, do we not simply create racial animosity where little to none had existed prior? My definition of racism is very simple: malicious intent motivated by race. I do not believe Obama or Wilson even remotely fit this category. Moredock disagrees, writing the day after Wilson’s outburst “What we saw last night was racism, pure and simple.” Pure and simple? I have no problem talking about racism, but see no point in constantly discussing a concept that’s become so abstract there’s no longer any semblance of a definition.

The few hardcore, actual racists I’ve met are every bit as silly as hardcore anti-racists. What do you say, when discussing politics, to someone who is most obsessed with the fact that Obama’s black? There’s not much you can say to such inanity. What do you say, when discussing politics, to someone who is most obsessed with the fact that Obama’s critics are white? Once again, not much.

It does little good to argue with such people and in fact, their obsession over the constant specter of racism is the best way to kill a debate. If Obama is a racist, as some on the Right claim, then anything else he might stand for can be completely dismissed. If Wilson is a racist, as some on the Left claim, then his disagreement with the president is entirely discredited. In such an environment, Americans might get as much out of a national conversation with David Duke and Louis Farrakhan, men who admittedly allow race to color every issue, as they would hardcore anti-racists, who in seeing “racism” in everything can no longer see any other issue.

Some will accuse me of pretending racism doesn’t exist. This is not true. Race is a significant part of our identity and our differences often fall along those lines, sometimes nastily. But this doesn’t mean racial lines are the sum of our differences. To assume they are is a mistake, leading one to ascribe the act of “racism” to every instance of criticism or disagreement. Unfortunately, this is where we stand today.

Though only a fool would claim racism doesn’t exist; only a fool sees racism in all that exists. And if everybody’s racist; no one is.

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The Need to Secede

2009-09-29T04:36:07Z

In a recent column for the Charleston City Paper, I explained how my moniker, the “Southern Avenger,” came from my advocating for states’ rights and even secession in my early 20s, a brand of politics I still subscribe to today. Long comfortable with such concepts, it’s easy to forget that plenty of folks are not, and was reminded promptly by a number of readers that very notion of Americans no longer living under the same government is still considered “crazy” by many. Here are a few of those comments:

“Just great! What we need is to divide our country into a Balkanized mish-mash of impotent little ‘countries.’ This is crazy talk, meant only to incite as far as I can see.” Another wrote: “So, are we asking for the idea of 50 individual countries? Talk about a screwed up idea.” A kind critic wrote: “Jack—I’m a big fan … but the secession idea these days is on par with colonizing the moon. It just doesn’t make sense.” And a less kind critic wrote: “You need to broaden your exposure to world ideas. This column shows how narrow your focus is. You haven’t grown much from your early years. You thought you knew it all then and still do.”

While I’m always more fascinated by the amount of stuff I don’t know, than I am the narrow worldview that exists between my two ears, I am quite certain of two things: big government doesn’t work–and yet it is always considered sound, sane and respectable to advocate for it. And the opposite is also true—to advocate for smaller government is acceptable so long as you’re talking about voting Republican or lowering taxes, but the moment you try to actually seek limiting Washington, DC’s jurisdiction; it’s time for a straightjacket.

Upon his death in 2005, George Kennan was remembered for lots of things, but being crazy wasn’t among them. As a U.S. ambassador, adviser, political scientist and historian, Kennan was known as the “father of containment” and was one of the most influential architects of U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union. Kennan’s New York Times obituary described him as “the American diplomat who did more than any other envoy of his generation to shape United States policy during the cold war,” Gen. Colin Powell described him as “our best tutor” and Foreign Policy magazine declared Kennan “the most influential diplomat of the 20th century.”

But in his later years, Kennan had also become a full-blown secessionist, advocating independence for the state of Vermont and imagining a United States that would break up into “a dozen constituent republics.”

In February, 2010, a group of activists, academics and intellectuals will meet in Charleston, South Carolina, to pick up where Kennan left off. Known as the Abbeville Institute the theme of the conference is “State Nullification, Secession and the Human Scale of Political Order.” Say conference organizers:

George Kennan, author of the Cold War policy to contain the Soviet Union and described by some as the ‘conscience of America,’ taught that a regime can become dysfunctional by simply becoming too large. Near the end of his long career in service to his country, where he stood for moderation and realism in international politics, he judged that the American regime had grown too large for the purposes of self government and that we should begin a public debate on how to divide it in the direction of a more human scale.

The Abbeville Institute’s mission is to kick start Kennan’s desired public debate:

For the first time in 144 years the topics of State nullification and secession have again entered public discourse. Nullification and secession were understood by the Founders as remedies to unconstitutional acts of the central government. Yet over a century of nationalist indoctrination and policy has largely hidden this inheritance from public scrutiny. The aim of the conference is to recover an understanding of that part of the American tradition and to explore its intimations for today.

America’s Founding Fathers were indeed revolutionary, but by no means “crazy.” The same was true of George Kennan and those who will attend the Abbeville Institute this winter in Charleston, who continue to explore his vision of devolving, limiting or breaking-up the modern state.

There is a big distinction to be made between radicalism and insanity. And the admittedly radical idea of states’ rights or secession is far more logical than the conventional, popular habit of pretending we still possess the wealth, will or cultural consensus to maintain and expand the American empire forever.

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An Unpatriotic Conservative

2009-09-25T04:38:13Z

When FOX News host Glenn Beck said during an interview with Katie Couric this week, “John McCain would have been worse for the country than Barack Obama,” his comments made headlines. Beck explained that “McCain is this weird progressive like Theodore Roosevelt was.” Beck laid out this view in better detail on his television program earlier this month:

I am becoming more and more libertarian every day, I guess the scales are falling off of my eyes, as I’m doing more and more research into history and learning real history. Back at the turn of the century in 1900, with Teddy Roosevelt—a Republican—we started this, “we’re going to tell the rest of the world,” “we’re going to spread democracy,” and we really became, down in Latin America, we really became thuggish and brutish. It only got worse with the next progressive that came into office—Teddy Roosevelt, Republican progressive—the next one was a Democratic progressive, Woodrow Wilson, and we did … we empire built. The Democrats felt we needed to empire build with one giant global government ... The Republicans took it as, we’re going to lead the world and we’ll be the leader of it … I don’t think we should be either of those. I think we need to mind our own business and protect our own people. When somebody hits us, hit back hard, then come home.

Beck is trying to explain how Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican precursor to what historians call “liberal internationalism,” a foreign policy view that contends the role of the U.S. is to intervene around the globe to advance liberal objectives. This progressive doctrine, later called “Wilsonian” after Woodrow Wilson, was intended to “make the world safe for democracy,” to quote our 28th president. Wilsonian globalism was embraced fully by George W. Bush, and as Beck notes, was also a guiding philosophy for his could-have-been successor, John McCain. In their application, there is very little difference between “neoconservative” foreign policy and “liberal internationalism,” and both views are progressive in origin.

Preferring to keep his audience in the dark on such distinctions, neoconservative talk host Mark Levin was angry that Beck would dare shine a light on them. Said Levin this week:

McCain is no conservative… but to say that he would be worse than a president who’s a Marxist, who’s running around the world apologizing for our nation, who’s slashing our defense budget… to say he would be worse is mindless… incoherent, as a matter of fact. There’s our 5 PMer on FOX.

It should be noted that Beck’s FOX News program airs at 5 PM EST.

Who else does Levin consider mindless? He continues:

I don’t know who people are playing to; I don’t know why they’re playing to certain people. Ron Paul’s another one ... this fascination with Ron Paul. Ron Paul, who blames America! American “imperialism,” quote, unquote, for the attacks on 9/11. How can any conservative embrace that? And yet the 5 PMer does.

For eight years, hosts like Levin and even Glenn Beck promoted full-blown neoconservatism without ever calling it by that name. For these mainstream pundits, conservatism simply equaled neoconservatism, and during the Bush years there was no talk of limited government, no concern about “socialism” and no real worries about anything else, other than the War on Terror. The Republican Party was a single issue party; Ron Paul was considered crazy, Joe Lieberman was considered cool—and government exploded.

But much to Levin’s chagrin, that impenetrable neoconservative unity no longer exists. Unlike Levin, Beck now claims “the scales are falling off of my eyes,” and he now questions old assumptions about foreign policy, the value of the GOP, the worth of the two-party system, or even if McCain would have been any better than Obama. Conservative columnist George Will once cheered Bush’s foreign policy, but now thinks it’s time to bring the troops home from both Iraq and Afghanistan. When Sarah Palin spoke in Hong Kong this week, a Wall Street Journal headline read, “Palin, Sounding Like Ron Paul, Takes on the Fed.” Few conservatives get excited by Joe Lieberman anymore. But many are starting to talk like Ron Paul.

The attacks on Beck by Levin are a reflection of what’s happening on the American Right as a whole, where the old fools’ game of merely corralling grassroots conservatives into the Republican Party is suffering from a severe shortage of fools. I’m not saying that Beck is an all-around, reliable conservative figure, nor do I believe the Republican Party is going to start seriously listening to Paul in the future, but there are at least now, finally, tiny slivers of truth making their way into the mainstream, thanks in no small part to a handful of celebrity truth-seekers, no matter how eccentric or inconsistent they may be.

And if there’s one thing we can be sure of—there would be no tea parties, no town hall protests, no marches on Washington, no questioning foreign policy, no attacking the Federal Reserve, no new-and-improved Glenn Beck and no new respect for Ron Paul—if John McCain had won the election. The neoconservative agenda would have continued, undisturbed, and according to plan. And something tells me Mark Levin would have preferred to keep it that way.

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“9/12” Delusions

2009-09-22T18:30:43Z

South Carolina’s Jim DeMint is one of my favorite Republicans. The senator’s unwavering opposition to government spending—from “stimulus” and national healthcare to auditing the Federal Reserve—just warms my conservative heart. That is until he breaks it again, as he always does, by going back to supporting the biggest government program of them all.

On the day before DeMint appeared on FOX News in support of the tens of thousands of anti-government protesters who gathered on 9/12 in Washington, DC, he gave the following comments on the senate floor:

Today marks the eighth anniversary of America’s war on terror… It’s crucial to remember now, as the terror and tragedy of that day recedes into the past, this war did not begin with the 9/11 attacks or when we sent troops to Afghanistan and it will not end when we defeat terrorists on any battlefield. Our goal cannot be merely to end one war but to win the war on terror. We will not win trying to appease the grievances of our enemies. They do not hate our policies; they hate us, our freedoms and our way of life.

DeMint could not be more wrong—wrong about the nature of Islamic terrorism, their motive for murder, and how to prevent further attacks.

Do Islamic terrorists find American democracy weak, our culture too libertine and our comparative materialism repugnant? They sure do, and their Koran even says all sorts of nasty stuff about Christians, Jews, and other infidels. I have about as much tolerance for intolerant Islam as they do for Western liberalism, and we allow too many followers of Allah on American soil at our own peril. Right now, Europe is learning this lesson the hard way.

But blaming 9/11 or the current terrorist threat exclusively on Islamists’ anti-Western prejudice is like blaming alcoholism on an addictive personality while completely ignoring the substance of the problem; the alcohol. The overwhelming, primary motivator for Islamic terrorism is our interventionist foreign policy. A would-be Islamic terrorist might cringe over Playboy or gay marriage in a far-away land, but the substance of his hatred is the presence and activity of the U.S. in his homeland.

In the 1990’s, the U.N. estimated that over a half Iraqi million children had died due to US sanctions, the Iraq War alone has resulted in over 100,000 civilian casualties to over a million depending on the source, and the number of American “infidels” on Muslim holy land -a primary complaint of Osama Bin Laden in 2001 - has now increased ten-fold. Plenty of Americans believe the US is justified in invading any nation it sees fit to avenge deaths of the 2,998 civilians killed on 9/11. Yet, that Islamic terrorists only hate our “freedom” and are not retaliating to avenge the hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of their own civilian deaths, is dangerously naïve. The terrorists attack us here because we are over there. Period. And in 2009, more of us are over there than ever.

DeMint strikes me as a patriotic guy who bought into the same false war narrative many Americans did in the days and months that followed 9/11. Today, DeMint finds himself as a primary spokesman for many of these same Americans - only this time they want to go to war against the Democrats big government agenda. So do I.

But it makes no sense to protest the big government on the Democrats’ horizon while still promoting the big government of the recent Republican past. DeMint’s clarion call on the eight anniversary of 9/11to “defeat” a vaguely defined enemy by achieving some undefined victory is a recipe for eternal war, a foreign policy approach that not only almost guarantees another terrorist attack, but the astronomical cost of which completely negates the senator’s otherwise limited government message.

DeMint seems like a genuine man who truly believes in limited government, but has yet to confront the glaring contradiction between his domestic and foreign policies. DeMint is representative of many conservatives who continue to harbor the same contradiction. Pro-war conservatives remind me much of welfare-loving liberals—no matter how much it costs and no matter how much government makes the problem worse, both groups insist their respective wars on “terror” and “poverty” are battles America must fight forever. DeMint’s attachment to the failed “war on terror” narrative might indeed be heartfelt, but remains just as destructive to America’s financial health and national security as the “socialist” Democrats he opposes so stridently.

Perhaps the two greatest threats to the U.S. today are terrorism and big government. The Democrats have long been champions of more government and Obama now seems intent on continuing with a Bush-style, interventionist foreign policy. The Republicans have decided to fight this president on much of his domestic agenda, but essentially agree that Obama should mimic Bush by turning Afghanistan into his own $3 trillion war. It seems the Democrats are completely wrong and the Republicans are half wrong and neither truly stands for limited government. And I’m sorry, but having to choose between the jackass party and the half-assed party, is no choice for me.

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