Just now I logged on to Facebook and on an irritated whim I commented on a remark posted by a friend who has been somewhat estranged lately for reasons not germane to this.

Or perhaps they are. I often wonder how ideology affects one’s personal loyalty, ethics, etc. I haven’t seen a direct one-to-one relationship, it’s more complicated than that, but still…

At any rate, what this person posted was:

“Unregulated free market capitalism looks suspiciously like China…..”

I posted:

“Stephen W. Browne: Dumb on so many levels. A free market is not and cannot be “unregulated” by definition. A market systems cannot function without rules: against fraud and force, misrepresentation in advertising, enforcement of contracts,”

Then I hit the ENTER key, which I do often on Facebook. On some sites ENTER gives you a paragraph break. On Facebook it actually enters what you’ve written, and I often forget that. (And by the way, how do you get a paragraph break on Facebook?

So I continued to write:

“Stephen W. Browne: China has moved away from a totalitarian system that outright murdered tens of millions of people and caused mass starvation of similar numbers through the sheer economic idiocy that has resulted from every attempt at centrally planning the economy. And have you seen China? Nor have I, but I have taken the trouble to get to know a fair number of Chinese with first-hand experience of both countries. Some in the context of helping them defect. I have seen and lived in not one, but three countries which were in the process of moving from controlled economies to at least freer markets. In each case I saw first-hand the explosion of prosperity that followed immediately afterwards. I have visited at intervals several more, and seen reliable reports of still more. In contrast as a country, ours in this case, has fallen lower on the economic freedom index maintained by the Canadian think tank Fraser, well we see the results around us. This is so silly that, as one scientist said, “It’s not even wrong.” How China and the U.S. resemble each other is not in being “an unregulated free market” but in us moving towards the kind of crony capitalism of China. One where the government allows a minimal market, but picks the winners and losers through preferential regulation, complicated tax codes, awarding government contracts to favored supporters, and outright subsidies, bailouts etc.”

Then I hit ENTER, and this popped up:

“Sorry, you may not have permission to add this comment or the original post may have been deleted.”

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(Cross-posted on my blog at The Marshall Independent.”

For those who enjoy following celebrity public spats, there was rather a good one at the American Airlines lost luggage area at LAX on Sunday (Dec. 18.)

Cuban-born star Maria Conchita Alonso spotted Sean Penn, approached him and braced him for his support of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.

Things escalated until Penn called Alonso a “pig,” and Alonso replied, “And you are a communist a**hole! It is great to live the way you do as a communist!”

Penn would not reply to press inquiries about the incident, but a representative told the New York Post that a “hostile woman was nonsensically berating” Penn.

Alonso later made a statement, “The only thing I regret is me calling him an a** hole because I lowered myself to where he is at, and took away my class at that second, but I don’t regret calling him a communist. The other thing I regret that nothing came out of this for us to meet in private. What happened Sunday isn’t really the way I wanted things to happen, I thought, ‘This is the perfect moment for me to go and tell him lets meet and talk.’ I have facts and he doesn’t. All he sees is what Chavez has presented. I am still not having a conversation with him, which is what I wanted to achieve that day. But all this is still good because I have an opportunity now to tell people that what Sean says is not true. How can you believe someone like Chavez? You have to be stupid, which I know Sean is not.”

Alonso was raised in Venezuela after her parents escaped Castro’s Cuba. She is a former Miss Venezuela and first entered show business in Venezuela and Mexico.

Penn is Hollywood royalty, the son of actor/director Leo Penn and actress Eileen Ryan. Leo Penn was blacklisted during the 1950s, and though you have to dig a bit to confirm it, was in fact a member of the Communist Party (CPUSA.)

Sean Penn has palled around with Chavez, as well as spending some serious face time with Cuban dictator Raul Castro in 2008. Back in 2002 he toured Baghdad as celebrity guest of Saddam Hussein, and on his return erected a larger-than-life sized statue of the late unlamented dictator in his front yard.

So is Sean Penn a communist, a chip off the old block?

I seriously doubt Penn has the brains or the patience to wade through ‘Das Kapital.’ Nor does he seem the kind to give up his fortune to live in a commune, or subject his professional judgment to Party discipline as so many Hollywood writers did back then. His fairly lengthy arrest record for assault indicates “does not play well with others.”

Penn once described himself in an interview, “Let’s face it. I’m a person that feels pretty alienated from the rest of the world and never felt understood by anyone.”

Poor misunderstood fellow, with nothing to console him but his millions.

“I’ve been spreading the word around for a while that I’ve wanted to talk to him and Danny Glover and even Oliver Stone. But they haven’t wanted to talk to me. I want to believe that it is just ignorance. I want to believe that those amazing directors and writers and actors that praise communist leaders just don’t know the truth and have been brainwashed by the propaganda,” Alonso said.

With all due respect to Alonso, I think she misses the point entirely.

What Penn, Glover, Stone, and a lot of their ilk are, is dictator groupies.

Dictator groupies, to put it bluntly, like hanging around with people who kill people. Similar to gangster groupies, like the celebrities who liked to hang around with “Crazy Joey” Gallo before he got whacked in the Gallo-Profacci War in 1972. (But hey, he got immortalized in a song by Bob Dylan no less.)

Dictator groupies are not unaware of the mass murders committed by their idols, how could they not be? They admire them.

Probably everyone has had the “if I were king of the world I’d set everything to rights and kill all the no-good $#!+s” fantasy. The difference is, these people take it a lot more seriously than us grownups. And of course, who else but professional creators of fantasy would be so susceptible to taking that fantasy seriously?

But there’s another thing too I think. Academics, professional intellectuals, and people who have inherited wealth and professional advantages (and note how many prominent Hollywood people these days have inherited their intro into the entertainment industry,) tend to be a bit on the wimpy side. They admire strength, but they don’t know what real strength is.

And all too often, they think strength is brutality.

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I recommend Sarah Palin’s editorial in the Wall Street Journal, “How Congress Occupied Wall Street.”

If you want to dismiss Palin as an intellectual lightweight, go ahead. This may after all be basically a book report on something written by one of her staff – but Palin had the sense to first employ the guy, then promote his book.

The staffer is Peter Schweizer, and the book is “Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison.”

And incidentally I can’t think of anything that illustrates the corruption of our media and political culture more than the comparison between how the Tea Party demonstrations were treated, versus the Occupy Wall Street, Oakland, etc.

On the one hand you had huge crowds of largely middle-aged, working, successful, well-educated people, come together to protest the bankrupting of our country by an out-of-control government. They assembled peacefully, left property intact and no trash behind, then went back to their homes and their jobs.

On the other hand you had affluent kids supported by their parents, no jobs – or how else could they afford to camp out in public places for weeks? They vandalized the places they occupied, and the surrounding businesses, and had a significant interpersonal crime rate, disturbed the peace of the neighborhoods, and left the places filthy. Insofar as they had any coherent message at all, they were against “greed” but wanted the government to forgive the massive loans they took out to subsidize years of idleness while acquiring indoctrination miscalled “education” after realizing it left them with no employable skills or even work habits.

The first were vilified as “racists” on no evidence at all, labeled with an obscene name “teabaggers,” and dismissed when they were not simply ignored.

The second were treated with sympathy by the mainstream press, courted by leftist politicians, and taken seriously as a “movement” although there was no evidence of ideological coherence or any broad-based support at all.

Indeed, it seems more than likely any initial sympathy in the areas they occupied has vanished by now.

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Note: My personal blog is on indefinite hiatus, however I am cross-posting from my newspaper blog at The Marshall Independent and the print-only TV Guide.

Michael Moore recently tried to deny the blindingly obvious on Piers Morgan’s TV talk show.

Moore said he is not one of the “1 percent” of “fat cats” the Occupy (blank) crowd are protesting in various venues across the country.

“I’m not,” Moore denied. “I am devoting my life to those who have less and who have been (bleeped) upon by the system.”

To begin with, that wasn’t the question. A rich person can spend his or her life helping the less fortunate, and many have. But I believe the question was about whether Moore was in the top 1 percent of individual net worth, and Moore’s $2 million home on Michigan’s toney Torch Lake and estimated net worth of around $50 million put him, if not in the top percentile then certainly within spitting distance of it.

I find Moore’s attitude irritating.

Moore is coming off like the kind of people we used to call “parlor pinks” or “limousine liberals,” i.e. well-off people who wear their concern for the poor on their sleeves. Who’d do anything for the working class – except join it.

Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against wealthy philanthropists, and in fact have a great deal of admiration for many of them and their not inconsiderable contributions to society.

What irritates me is “poor mouthing.” That “I’m really one of you” posturing.

With $50 million in the bank, Moore is manifestly not one of me. Furthermore, all indications show that he came by his fortune honestly, by creating a product people were willing to pay for. Not one to my taste, but enough folks liked what he sells to make him rich, so more power to him. So obviously, “The System” has worked pretty well for him.

(OK, so he got the seed money to make “Roger and Me” by suing his former employer Mother Jones, which is not technically illegal but…)

Quite frankly, from seeing interviews with Moore, I don’t think he’s any smarter than I am. He certainly isn’t more handsome than me, and I’m obviously in lots better shape. I generally dress better for work too.

There is the question of talent of course. Whatever one thinks of the content of Moore’s documentaries, they are visually brilliant. I don’t know if that’s innate talent for camera work or something I could learn. I suspect I could, I take pretty good pictures and digital photography makes it easy and cheap.

Where the really irritating subtext of Moore’s message comes in, is the whole assumption behind his railing against The System that Poops on Us is that he could get rich through hard work and brains, but I couldn’t possibly. That calm assumption of superiority that just chaps my (bleep.)

Mr. Moore, I don’t mind that you’re rich, I’m not the least bit envious of your good fortune. Just hold the patronizing attitude if you please.

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Note: My personal blog is on indefinite hiatus, however I am cross-posting from my newspaper blog at The Marshall Independent and the print-only TV Guide.

The Occupy Oakland protests have turned a tad violent the news media reports. The country’s fifth largest port has been closed by demonstrators.

Some of the reports coming out of Oakland include:

After a rumor spread that the Whole Foods store had threatened to fire employees who participated in the protest, Regional President David Lannon announced on Facebook: “We totally support our Team Members participating in the General Strike today — rumors are false!”

It didn’t do him any good. Demonstrators wearing Guy Fawkes masks from the movie “V for Vendetta” trashed one Whole Foods store, breaking windows and spraypainting walls. Another Whole Foods that distributed water bottles to passersby was also attacked by masked demonstrators and forced to close.

(For those who haven’t seen it, “V for Vendetta” is about a lone “freedom-fighter” battling a tyrannical Christian theocracy that has somehow established itself in England. After rescuing a young woman from the secret police, the masked hero shows his moral superiority to the regime by imprisoning and brainwashing her to get her to see the awfulness of the regime, before he succeeds where the original Guy Fawkes failed and blows up the Houses of Parliament and presumably a number of bystanders.)

A Men’s Wearhouse in Oakland put up a huge poster saying, “We Stand With The 99%” and announced they’d be closed that day.

Demonstrators smashed their windows.

Demonstrators also vandalized ATMs and sprayed “F***” on Christ the Light Cathedral.

The Oakland city council responded by considering a resolution in support of “Occupy Oakland” and calling on the city administration to “collaborate with protesters”.

Full disclosure, I am no stranger to massive demonstrations. For about three months in 1997 I participated in the nightly street demonstrations in Belgrade, Yugoslavia protesting the Milosevic regime’s stealing of local government elections.

“Participate” might be a bit misleading. Since I returned to my apartment at night I had not choice other than to participate. Approximately 17 percent of the city’s population were on the streets every night, marching, singing, and making noise with pots and pans and a variety of home-made noisemakers during “pandemonium half-hour” when the official government news was broadcast.

I used to say I just took the first demonstration going home after work. Every night we’d march past an estimated 10,000 armed paramilitaries recruited mostly from Bosnian Serbs, because they had no connection with the city’s population. It was known Milosevic’s wife Mira “the Red Queen” wanted the paramilitaries to fire on the demonstrators.

Apparently they couldn’t find anyone willing to give the order. It was kicked downstairs as far as it could go, to a vice-chief of police, who flat refused even after government goons gave his son a beating. So I may owe my life to a Serbian cop.

A week or so after the regime had to capitulate to the demonstrators, that cop was machine-gunned in a pizza place near my work.

During months of nightly demonstrations I didn’t see any property vandalized, no windows broken, and I can’t recall much spraypainting of walls.

There were however some really great posters made by art students at the university. My favorite was Arnold Schwarzenegger as The Terminator on a Harley holding up a red card, and below the words, “Hasta la vista Communista!”

The more I see of these Occupy whatever demonstrations, the more I miss Belgrade.

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The Anthony Weiner story is the gift that keeps on giving.

Rep. Weiner (D-NY) tweeted/sexted a co-ed and first, pushed the wrong button so it went public, then provided a grateful public with the most delightfully idiotic verbal gyrations as he tries to get out of being caught red… handed without telling lies he could be held legally accountable for. (Such as submitting a false police report.)

I know, I know, “innocent until proven guilty,” it seems like everyone is prefacing their remarks with that these days. Oh puh-lease, he probably hasn’t done anything illegal, at least nothing seriously illegal. He’s just made an…. a fool of himself in public.

Unlike his equally idiotic but less arrogant Republican colleague Rep. Christopher Lee (D-NY) he’s not admitting anything, apologizing for anything, or indicating he’s even thinking of resigning.

Heavy sigh, what are we going to do with these big playful boys who run this country (usually into the ground.)

A while back I suggested my personal plan for term limits.

You altruistic public servants can have three consecutive terms in office.

After one, you have to spend at least an equal amount of time making an honest living before you run for any public office again.

Or, you can have two terms in office. After which you spend an equal amount of time in jail.

Or, you can have three consecutive terms in office, after which we take you out and shoot your sorry ass because you’re hopeless.

I now see I didn’t really go far enough. What we need in this country is a governing class given autocratic power for life, like the enlightened rulers of China that New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman endlessly gushes about.

So here’s my revised proposal. We announce that as of the next national election, the winning candidates will serve for life, with no constitutional limits on their powers.

THEN we take them out and shoot them the day they are sworn in – and for good measure, anybody who sought the nominations too.

Notice we’d be keeping the promise – election for life. We don’t have to mention how long that life will be…

After all, a great nation keeps its promises.

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Good news on the free speech front from Europe. Lars Hedegaard was acquited in Denmark of charges of saying true, but not nice things about Muslims resident in his country.

The hate-speech trial of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff in Austria is still ongoing though. Frau Sabaditsch-Wolff is facing similar charges stemming from… well it appears that in support of her xenophobic, racist, etc etc rants she (this is shocking but I have to say it) actually quoted the Koran

And in America a big-time Washington D.C. lawyer Paul Mirengoff, who happens to be a conservative blogger was made to grovel in public, take down a blog post, and shut up.

Mirengoff is a partner in the employment law group at the firm of Akin Gump, and one of the founders of Power Line blog.

The offending post was about the Tuscon tragedy. The specific offensive part concerned a prayer offered by a Yaqui Indian shaman. Luckily the post was preserved elsewhere – and now here. Take a half-minute and read the offending thing in its entirety..

In the post immediately below, I praised President Obama’s speech in Tucson this evening in honor of the victims of that horrific shooting spree. His speech was part of a larger ceremony which, on the whole, was rather a mixed bag.

The best thing about the evening, even better than Obama’s speech, was the news he delivered that Rep. Giffords today opened her eyes on her own for the first time since she was shot.

Other good spots: Daniel Hernandez, the intern who helped save Rep. Giffords life, gave a brief and impressive talk in which he insisted that he was not a hero. And Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano used their time at the podium not to deliever speeches but instead to simply reading from scripture. This may have been designed to keep things fresh for Obama’s speech, but it was appreciated nonetheless.

On the negative side of the ledger, I didn’t appreciate the president of the University of Arizona (and master of ceremonies) telling us how lucky we are to have Barack Obama as our president and Janet Napolitano as our homeland security chief. Nor did the frequent raucous cheering by the huge crowd seem appropriate at what was, at least in part, a memorial service.

As for the “ugly,” I’m afraid I must cite the opening “prayer” by Native American Carlos Gonzales. It was apparently was some sort of Yaqui Indian tribal thing, with lots of references to “the creator” but no mention of God. Several of the victims were, as I understand it, quite religious in that quaint Christian kind of way (none, to my knowledge, was a Yaqui). They (and their families) likely would have appreciated a prayer more closely aligned with their religious beliefs.

But it wasn’t just Gonzales’s prayer that was “ugly” under the circumstances. Before he ever got to the prayer, Gonzales provided us with a mini-auto biography and made several references to Mexico, the country from which (he informed us) his family came to Arizona in the mid 19th century. I’m not sure why Gonzales felt that Mexico needed to intrude into this service, but I have an idea.

In any event, the invocation could have used more God, less Mexico, and less Carlos Gonzales.

That’s it. The unforgivable offense was to suggest that prayers for Christian victims might appropriately be… Christian.

I myself cheerfully accept anybody’s prayers for my safety, salvation, or good luck with the lottery. The good wishes of a good person may or may not help, but they certainly can’t hurt.

Of course, that’s not the whole story as you find out when you follow the money.

But that was not good enough for one of Mirengoff’s law partners, James Meggesto, who issued a sanctimonious statement saying he was “shocked, appalled and embarrassed” by Mirengoff’s “insensitive” “web posting” (emphasis mine):

“As an enrolled member of the Onondaga Nation; as an attorney who has dedicated his life and law practice to the representation of Indian tribes, tribal organizations and tribal interests; and as a partner in the American Indian law and policy practice at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, I was shocked, appalled and embarrassed by a recent Web posting by another Akin Gump partner, Paul Mirengoff, who posted on his personal blog an insensitive and wholly inappropriate criticism of the use of a Yaqui prayer as the invocation to the recent memorial service held in Tucson, Arizona. As soon as I and the firm became aware of this posting, the firm took immediate action to deal firmly with this unfortunate situation. Accordingly, Bruce McLean, chairman of the firm, issued the following statement: “We sincerely apologize for the blog entry posted by Akin Gump partner Paul Mirengoff on his personal blog, powerlineblog.com. Akin Gump is neither affiliated with, nor a supporter of, the blog. We found his remarks to be insensitive and wholly inconsistent with Akin Gump’s values. Mr. Mirengoff regrets his poor choice of words and agreed to remove his post.” ”
Meggesto doesn’t say who dropped the dime on Mirengoff. How this even came to the firm’s attention is surprising. After all, the paragraph in question was pretty mild, part of a larger post and not really much different than a lot of others were saying. Perhaps some innocent concerned citizen just happened to read Power Line that night and call Akin Gump, but it’s equally likely the watchers were behind it, directly or indirectly.

The criticism by Meggesto and Akin Gump was disingenuous at best. There was nothing in Mirengoff’s post which was a “criticism of the use of the Yacqui prayer”; Mirengoff was making a point about the absence of a Christian prayer at a memorial service for religious Christian victims.

And just what are Akin Gump’s “values”? The primary value at stake here seems to be money to be generated from representing Indian tribes and financial interests. Nothing wrong with that, but Akin Gump should have just said what it really meant: “We are afraid that left-wing bloggers and others who hate Power Line will make a big deal about this and try to use it against the firm to disrupt our relationship with clients who pay us millions of dollars in legal fees each year.”

If Akin Gump had justified its actions based on its own financial interests, rather than hiding behind words like “insensitive,” I would have respected its decision (although still disagreed with it). A law firm has a legitimate interest in maintaining client relationships. Instead, Meggesto and Akin Gump chose to portray Mirengoff at best as insensitive and at worst as a bigot, which conclusions were not supported by the blog post in question.

Mirengoff obviously feared for his position at the firm, because he issued a confession/apology worthy of a political prisoner in (insert name of tyranny here):

OK, I have to say I support Mirengoff 100 percent – but I can’t help but think he’s kind of a wuss.

Dammit shyster, couldn’t you have taken the hit and sued the bastards? That’s what lawyers do!

Maybe I should be more charitable, and maybe I’m not in the mood because I’ve just come back from Belarus where a friend and comrade was forced to make public statements by threats on the lives of his partners.

Mr. Mirengoff I’m sure you have a family to support, but that redskin lawyer (yes I’m being deliberately offensive, sue me) isn’t going to scalp your wife and children. “Attorney” is a portable skill you can take damn near anywhere. And if you have sons, wouldn’t you rather they saw their father as a man who stands up for himself, than a provider of new BMWs for graduation?

I’m living a lot closer to the margin of poverty than you are – and I’ll say whatever I damn well please on my blog PRECISELY BECAUSE THERE ARE PEOPLE TELLING ME I CAN’T.

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Note: This originally appeared in The Dakota Beacon last year.

There really is a Ron Paul revolution.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference last year, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) won the straw poll for preferred candidate for president, with 31% of the 2,395 ballots cast. He handily beat three-time front-runner Mitt Romney (22%), and smashed conservative darling Sarah Palin (7%), up-and-comer Tim Pawlenty (6%), Mike Pence (Who? 5%), how-are-the-mighty-fallen Newt Gingrich (4%), and FOX News rock star Mike Huckabee (4%).

Ron Paul is known as the one avowed libertarian with a successful career in national politics.

And what a sensational career! He first won a seat in the House of Representatives in a special election in 1976 to fill a vacancy caused by the appointment of Robert R. Casey, who had defeated Paul for the seat in 1974, to the Federal Maritime Commission.

Paul then lost the seat to Democrat Robert Gammage by fewer than 300 votes (about the number of votes Lyndon Johnson once arranged to have “lost” in Texas) but came back to defeat Gammage in 1978. He was reelected in 1980 and 1982.

In 1984 Paul tried to move up to the Senate, but lost the Republican primary to Phil Gramm. He won a seat in the House again in 1997 and has been there ever since.

Paul ran for president as a candidate of the Libertarian Party in 1988, and as a candidate for the Republican nomination in 2008.

I saw Ron Paul in Oklahoma when he was campaigning for the Libertarian Party nomination. Although American Indian Movement activist Russell Means could give a more impassioned speech three sheets to the wind, Paul took the nomination on the strength of his convictions.

Paul actually gets away with speaking his mind. Conservatives love him for taking solid free-market positions most Republicans don’t dare. Libertarians love him for fearlessly advocating recreational drug legalization. (A position William F. Buckley held, but didn’t promote.)

And honest men of all stripes love Paul because walks the talk. He has consistently advocated term limits, and is one of two congressmen (with Howard Coble, R-NC) who have pledged not to receive a congressional pension.

Perhaps it’s because of his, “The heck with you, I’ve got a life outside of politics” attitude. Paul doesn’t need Washington, and that’s why people who love liberty trust him, in spite of a lot of alleged nutty stuff about his past associations.
But then there’s that foreign policy thing.

“If Ron Paul is behind it and has nothing to do with foreign policy, I agree,” acerbic conservative columnist Ann Coulter said in response to a question at CPAC.

Paul is firmly on the isolationist Right. Unfortunately, not the Paul Harvey isolationist Right. Harvey believed alliances of convenience with foreign tyrannies were corrupting America.

Paul finds common ground with the Left, and I mean the Ward Churchill America-hating Left, holding that if we didn’t meddle so much in other countries business, they wouldn’t do things like flying hijacked airliners into our skyscrapers.

This is an attractive belief to many. In a world inhabited by a lot of really scary people, it’s comforting to think we can influence over their attitudes and actions by what we do, or don’t do.

The idea that some people hate for what we are is really scary.

Isolationism has a long history on the Right. Conservative/libertarians during the Woodrow Wilson administration (then called “liberals”) saw America’s entry into World War I as part of Wilson’s drive to expand government way beyond what the constitution allowed, and his megalomaniac desire to play on the world stage.

Nineteenth-century freedom-lovers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau condemned the Mexican War as an imperialist land grab. Many who opposed slavery, nonetheless opposed going to war with the South to end it. Some contemporary isolationists still condemn Lincoln for waging the Civil War.

Patriotic isolationists hold the U.S. should maintain forces adequate to defend our borders, and cease sending and stationing troops abroad entirely, with the possible exception of retaliatory strikes against foreign enemies who attack us first.

I once held this position.

How and why I changed, lies in my experiences living for 13 years in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and the revelations by the intelligence agencies of the U.S. and former Warsaw Pact countries after the fall of communism.

And full disclosure, for personal reasons. My wife is Polish, my children have dual citizenship. Some of my closest friends are Polish, Lithuanian, Belarusian, Romanian, Hungarian. What happens to them and their countries, matters to me.
What my position is now is hard for me to label. I still think an awful lot of American intervention abroad has been ham-handedly stupid and counterproductive.

In the 60s for example, I opposed the Vietnam War, not least because of the prospect of being sent to fight it personally at a time the campaign appeared to be circling the drain.

I still think it was an ill-thought out venture, and though fought by men as brave as America has ever sent to war, strategically inept. A position shared by the military academies these days, which have whole courses devoted to the mistakes of Vietnam. In terms of grand strategy, the Soviets kept American forces occupied in a theater remote from their real interests in Europe by supplying North Vietnam with materiel that was cheap compared with the cost of keeping our forces in the field at the end of a long supply line.

Nonetheless, I am not the isolationist I once was. What I am now, I’m not sure. When I was young, I had all the answers. Now all I seem to have is a lot of disturbing observations and questions.

I miss those answers.

So what I’d like to do is present some of those observations and questions. Please understand I am not trying to score rhetorical points on anyone. I don’t think I know the answers beyond doubt.

But, I don’t think you do either. I think this issue is an unsolved problem. I think it’s important we start defining those problems before we can approach a solution.

As an old Yellow Dog Republican once said to me, “If you make a mistake in domestic policy, you could wind up hurting a lot of people. If you make a mistake in foreign policy – you could lose your country.”

Charge: we meddle.

Yes we do. Iran is still pissed off about the CIA-supported coup against their Prime Minister Mossadegh in the 1950s. No Mexican ever forgets what few Americans ever remember, that the southwest quarter of the U.S. was once the northern half of Mexico. Many Latin Americans resent the presence of U.S. forces in their countries, “assisting” in a war fuelled by the drug habits of rich gringos.

But something overlooked here is, everybody meddles.

The USSR had a cabinet-level department, the Comintern, devoted to spreading world revolution, with the U.S. as a primary target.

The Mexican government actively and openly promotes illegal immigration to the U.S., with comic books and DVDs explaining how to sneak in and blend in. Mexican politicians and intellectuals boast about the ongoing reconquista of the Southwest.

During the Bush-Gore election the Chinese secret police got caught trying to funnel money into the Gore campaign. Public outrage was underwhelming.

Saudi Arabian bought-and-paid-for influence in Washington is a scandal waiting to break – that never does, because it’s bipartisan, equal opportunity corruption. Saudi princes boast how they’ve bought this country.

Could a decision not to meddle anymore be akin to unilaterally deciding to disarm?

Question: What constitutes “meddling”?

Sending troops abroad, for sure.

How about supporting dissidents in foreign tyrannies with covert aid? Economic sanctions against countries with appalling human rights abuses? Was establishing Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America meddling?

Ron Paul might think so.

Paul was the one “nay” vote on a bipartisan House of Representatives resolution asking the government of Bangladesh to drop capital charges against Bangladeshi journalist Saleh Uddin Shoaib Choudhury.

Choudhury it seems, was arrested for treason, sedition and whatever else they could throw at him, for the crime of attempting to board a plane to Israel to talk peace.

It was a resolution for God’s sake! Not a threat or a declaration of war. It wasn’t even a hint that we’d reconsider the $60 million gift the US bestows on them every year. Resolutions don’t mean anything but a gesture of moral disapproval, everybody knows that. Except that sometimes they mean a lot to the people in those appalling countries.

Charge: The U.S. keeps troops garrisoned in more than a hundred other countries.

Yes we do. And the question of whether we’ll continue to do so may be moot. Troops and gear are expensive, and if our economy declines below a certain level the argument may be settled for us. We’ll draw down our forces because we can’t afford not to.

And more than sixty years of garrisoning Europe have taught us a bitter lesson. The NATO alliance, minus the U.S., is a military pygmy. The Western Europeans accepted the protection of the U.S. nuclear umbrella and conventional forces. Then instead of building up their own forces, they used the savings to build the comfortable social-welfare states they sneer at us for not having.

Now it is questionable if Old Europe could build up their militaries if they had to. Would their citizens accept diversion of resources that subsidize four-week vacations, 30-hour work weeks, and retirement at 50? Can a continent of one-child families even contemplate sending their sons to war?

As allies, they leave something to be desired.

But to the east of them, in many small countries recently free of Soviet domination, are peoples who look to us for the preservation of their new independence. Peoples who are willing to be allies, not dependents, and carry their share of the load.

They, like the West Europeans, are part of Western Civilization, our kin. Are we ready to say we don’t need friends? That they aren’t worth the trouble of saving if it comes to that?

But is Lithuania, a little bigger than West Virginia, worth going to war for? How about Poland, the size of New Mexico? World War II started in Poland.

Some suggest we might take in refugees from humanitarian crises such as another holocaust, rather than send troops abroad to try and stop it. This could someday include European refugees from a resurgent Russian Empire, indigenous Europeans fleeing the Islamization of the continent, white South Africans and Zimbabweans fleeing genocide.

What if Israel is overrun? Does anyone doubt the first war Israel loses will be the last war it ever fights? We could wind up taking a lot of these peoples in, or stand by watching as they’re slaughtered. We could get a lot of fine new Americans, but how long could we keep that up? How many could we take in?

Observation: every country capable of projecting power beyond its borders, on occasion does so.

But, the argument goes, we needn’t do so. With two wide oceans on either side, and countries to the north and south who are friendly, or at least no military threat, we can stand in proud isolation, espousing “friendly relations with all, entangling alliances with none,” in George Washington’s words.

The example often given is Switzerland’s armed-to-the-teeth neutrality.

The Swiss actually made the Nazis back off of their plans for invading their country, convincing them it wasn’t worth the cost. Quite a trick to pull on the mighty Wehrmacht without firing a shot.

It is worth noting an integral part of Switzerland’s defense policy is to destroy the country rather than let it fall into foreign hands. Bridges, tunnels, roads, etc throughout Switzerland are deliberately designed and built to be mined and destroyed in the event of an invasion.

More to the point, Switzerland can do nothing to protect its citizens beyond its own borders. Two Swiss were recently arrested in Libya, apparently in retaliation for a Swiss ban on constructing new minarets.

Do we want to adopt a policy of: beyond our borders you’re on your own? Can we? How long would it last after foreign governments and non-state actors went into the thriving growth industry of “kidnapping citizens of rich and compassionate countries”?

We’ve been there before. Thomas Jefferson launched America’s first foreign war after the U.S. government found itself paying as much as a tenth of its annual budget to ransom our citizens captured on the high seas by the Barbara Pirates based, come to think of it – in Libya.

Question: Much international trade depends on keeping the sea lanes open, particularly in places such as the Panama and Suez Canals, and the Straits of Hormuz, Malacca and Gibraltar. Is this a justifiable projection of American power?

I’ll never forget what a Dutch woman told me during the Iran-Iraq War, when U.S. Navy ships were escorting oil tankers through the Straits of Hormuz.

“YOU’VE got to escort those ships,” she said, “that’s OUR oil!”

Perhaps the rest of the world doesn’t want us to “mind our own business” as much as they want us to use our power in ways they approve.

What I call naïve isolationism makes two claims about the U.S. and its place in the world.

1) Other people hate us because of what we do, not who we are.

We could argue this one back and forth all day. Instead I’ll pose another question.

Our current enemies come from a particularly fanatic sect of Islam. Their soldiers are technically non-state actors, supported covertly by factions within rich states who are ostensibly our friends and allies.

The Islamic jihadists are fighting for values that include: 1) Honor killings; the notion that if your wife, mother, sister, or daughter is raped, or just gets uppity, it is your duty to murder her. 2) Speaking critically of the Prophet or questioning the divine origin of the Koran is a capital offense. 3) Apostasy, converting to another religion, is a capital offense. 4) Killing someone who insults your family and clan is praiseworthy. 5) Slavery is acceptable to God.

In an increasingly interconnected world, do you think we can share that world in peace with them?

Objection: not all Muslims are Islamic jihadists!

Probably not. So can we tell those Muslms who aren’t jidahists, that the jihadists are their problem – until they win and become our problem whether we like it or not?

2) If you don’t aggress against others, they will not aggress against you.

This flies in the face of history. All experience, over many weary centuries, shows that what most provokes an aggressor is weakness.

During the Cold War, libertarian isolationists argued the Soviet Union, though tyrannical and paranoid in the extreme, had no intention of waging aggressive war against the U.S. or Western Europe, and was largely reacting, perhaps overreacting, to American truculence.

We now know this was false. According to documents released by the Polish government over the past few years, the Soviet Union always intended to invade and conquer Western Europe. The invasion was originally scheduled for the early 1980s. (This is confirmed by in-laws of mine in the Polish military at the time.)

From the testimony of a high-ranking defector, Col. Ryszard Kuklinski of the Polish Army General Staff, the Russians counted on driving the Polish, Czech, Hungarian and Romanian forces ahead of them to take the first bullet, and to remind them which side they were supposed to be on.

What caused Kuklinski to contact the CIA and start feeding information to them, was discovering the Soviets had made the horrific decision that Poland and much of Eastern Europe was expendable if the war went nuclear.

I repeat the question: can you share a world in peace with people who think like this?

Question: It seems sooner or later “no-name nukes” are going to be loose in the world. What if the only thing which can prevent, or at least delay that day, is pre-emptive attacks on rogue states attempting to acquire nuclear weapons?

Question: What happens if a nuke explodes on our territory and we cannot tell for certain who is responsible? What if we have to face the choice of retaliating on mere suspicion of responsibility? On that day might we not look back and decide pre-emptive war was the more moral choice?

In conclusion, American foreign policy sometimes appears to both our enemies and allies, to have an alarming inconsistency. President Barack Obama has given signals to our friends in Eastern Europe, Israel, and Latin American states trying to create stable democracies, that he is either indifferent or actively hostile towards their interests and simpatico to their enemies.

On the other hand, Obama has completely adopted the Bush policy on the War on Terror he ran against. He has continued renditions, put off closing Guantanamo, and actually increased Predator drone attacks targeting Taliban leaders. (Not to mention family and bystanders – Bush would have been crucified.)

Obama, like Right isolationists, found it easier to criticize from the outside looking in. Now he’s in the position of having to go with the flow, or make it up as he goes along.

If we want to insure the survival of the United States for a while longer, and of liberty for the future, we’re going to have to address some hard questions. We’re going to have to do some hard thinking that is both idealistic and tough-minded. It’s not going to be easy, or comfortable.

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Mona Charen has an editorial explaining why Sarah Palin should not run for President in 2010.

I have to say there’s a lot reasons in this article I don’t much care for. Among other things it reeks of that snotty elitist disdain for popular culture.

Nonetheless I agree Palin shouldn’t run in 2012.

Numero uno – John Bolton is talking about running. It would be insane not to run Bolton if he wants to.

Claire Berlinski noted in an ‘Uncommon Knowledge’ interview in a world where North Korea is nuclear and Iran is about to go nuclear, it makes little sense to elect someone who may be ready to lead the country in 2012.

It is of course true that Palin is better prepared than Barack Obama is every likely to be. But this is, shall we say, damning with faint praise.

Palin is nonetheless showing a genius for connecting with people in flyover country, at a time when Washingtonians can’t seem to keep from showing their aristocratic disdain for us common folks. This by the way, shows in Charen’s obvious distaste for Palin’s travel show about Alaska, and her disgust with Palin’s daughter Bristol’s appearance on Dancing with the Stars.

Tell me Mona, if you don’t like the example of a single mother bumping and grinding to the tune of “Mamma Told Me Not To Come,” can you suggest another way that single mom can make $50 grand per show to support herself and her kid? It’s better than public assistance, more praiseworthy than living off your parents, and it ain’t The Pole honey.

In my humble opinion what this amounts to is – Sarah should run for Republican National Committee chairman.

There is a great deal of discontent with current chairman Michael Steele – which probably wouldn’t translate into support for Palin though. Whether Steele will go for another term is still unknown.

Acording to WaPo:

On Friday, Steele issued his own memo, trumpeting the historic Republican victories this month and claiming the RNC’s share of credit. He argued that it was the RNC that helped achieve “what was, by far, the greatest turnout by any party in any midterm election in U.S. history.”

Bullshit. It was the Tea Party and Sarah Palin fighting the ossified Good Ole Boy Republican oligarchy.

Remember Palin made her bones in Alaska doing the same – to the extent that some of the native Corrupt Ole Boy Republicans are now wearing orange jump suits?

As I’ve said, there’s something about the U.S. system that limits us to two major parties. To take this country back we have to take over a major party. I’ve reluctantly come to the conclusion that a third-party strategy isn’t going to work. We need to take the GOP and Sarah might just be the girl to do it.

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I experienced an interesting piece of synchronicity this morning as I was mulling over the news of the Peace Flotilla to Gaza.

I came across this hilarious parody produced in Israel, “We Con the World.”

It was evidently put together, released by PM Netanyahu’s office, then retracted with an apology. I found it on a hostile comment to a column by Caroline Glick. The commenter thought it was outrageous. I thought it was a hoot!

It also underscores what a lot of us are wondering these days. Why should Israel give a damn about “international public opinion” (which means in effect, Arab and European opinion) since it’s never going to change no matter what they do or don’t do?

At about the same time I received a comment on a years-old post, “Observations on Arabs.”

Of course, the poster called me a racist. Then followed with a racist insult.

One Earl J said, “I don’t know how I reached this site (curse you, google!), but this racist hatchet job made me throw up a bit in my mouth. The most sinister kind of racist is the one who coats his hatred with a fake gloss of objectivity. I checked some of your other posts and I see you’re either a Zionist or Jewish. No surprise there.”

I replied, “Actually I’m mostly Scottish and Irish, with some exotic touches on my mother’s side.

“Have you tried Gaviscon? Best non-prescription thing for acid reflux I’ve found.

“My good friend Ali Alyami, founder of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, hasn’t noticed I’m a racist yet. Please don’t tell him.”

I forgot to add a quote from J.R.R. Tolkien. When a German publisher interested in a translation of ‘The Hobbit’ asked if Tolkien was an Aryan name, he replied that none of his family were speakers of Sanskrit, Hindi, or Romani. But, he said, if they were asking if it was Jewish, “I regret that I have none of the blood of that talented people in my veins.”

Then I came across an article about how senior White House correspondent Helen Thomas has been dropped by her agency over her remarks that the Israelis should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go back to Germany and Poland.

She evidently got caught on record and immediately apologized.

First impression, it’s interesting to see that remarks perceived as anti-Semitic are still un-PC. It kind of puts a crimp in conservative claims that anti-Israel sentiments have been mainstreamed.

Secondly, what’s ironic is I kind of agree with Thomas – except I’d like to bring them here.

In a nuclear age, Israel is just too vulnerable. Ahmedinajad is a moral monster, but he’s also right. A country that small equals a “one-bomb state.”

And as I’ve said before, I think we should consider taking in White and Colored South Africans and Zimbabweans. Eventually we may be taking in indigenous Europeans fleeing the Islamicization of the continent as well.

And by the way, does anybody in the Middle East realize that when Israel is incinerated in nuclear fire a whole bunch of Palestinian Arabs become radioactive ash as well? Are Hamas’ Palestinian buddies even concerned about this?

Oops, gotta go now. I have to pick up my white sheets at the cleaners for the cross-burning tonight.

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