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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Last week I received a RightOn newsletter from an e-friend. It was a guest rant from one J.B. Williams on “Liberal-tarians.”

The rant does not appear to be archived, so I am reproducing it below. Further down is my reply. And do follow the link to Mr. Williams site.

First, let me be clear I do not find libertarians beyond reproach. Chuck, the owner of the RightOn site has forwarded proof to me of counterproductive, dishonest, and unethical conduct by local libertarians. For another example, the late R.W. Bradford researched and published in his magazine Liberty an expose of the conduct of the Harry Browne organization, which took over the Libertarian Party and left it with a crippling debt load and lower-than-ever vote totals.

And to be fair I’d have to mention that Bradford himself on more than one occasion edited article submissions he evidently disagreed with to make a totally different point than the author intended.

In short, there are valid criticisms of libertarians and libertarianism. This is not one of them, and below I go into some detail why.

Welcome to the RiteOn Newsletter
Sunday, May 23, 2010

T.E.A. Parties, Liberal-tarians and What Kind of Change?

RiteOn apologizes for the length of this article but, in our judgment, it contains important information and a point of view that is all-important to the success of the Tea Party movement. If you are an independent conservative and a supporter of one or more Tea Party
organizations, PLEASE READ THIS ARTICLE…. Ed
—————-
Constitutional conservatives and liberal-tarians have almost nothing in common

Do Liberal-tarians threaten the Conservative Resurgence?
By JB Williams Friday, May 21, 2010

The T.E.A. Party began as a simple but firm message from millions of average American citizens, “TaxedEnough Already…”-which is to say, the runaway federal government must rein itself in or the people will begin to send spend-n-tax politicians out to pasture.But over the last year, the movement has been morphed into several very different agendas, most of them operating at odds with each
other. Although the different factions can work together to dismantle the existing political power structure, working together towards building a new viable power structure is something which remains somewhat illusive. (Sic)

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. So even I can find statements by liberal-tarians which I agree with, such as this statement from Ron Paul-”There is nothing wrong with describing Conservatism as protecting the Constitution, protecting all things that limit government. Government is the enemy of liberty. Government should be very restrained.”

That might be the most valid statement Ron Paul has ever made, and he has regularly identified the conservative movement as the true defender of freedom and liberty throughout American history, as in this statement- “To me, to be a conservative means to conserve the good parts of America and to conserve our Constitution.”

I agree wholeheartedly with these statements by Paul. But then there has been another Ron Paul from time to time, a liberal-tarian Ron Paul which I disagree with and find someone dangerous. “Another term for preventive war is aggressive war”
“Have you noticed the debt is exploding? And it’s not all because of Medicare.”
“I am just absolutely convinced that the best formula for giving us peace and preserving the American way of life is freedom, limited government, and minding our own business overseas.”
“I have never met anyone who did not support our troops.”

As any national security expert will tell you, the best way to avoid war on U.S. soil is to address threats towards the U.S. before they reach U.S. soil. The best defense is very often a good offense, which means, the leftist notion of waiting to be attacked before defending our nation is a suicide mission.

While Medicare alone is not the only reason for an exploding national debt, social spending overall, which now accounts for more than 60% of the federal budget, certainly is the primary problem. The quest for “social justice” is the primary reason for our current financial calamity. To ignore that is to cover up reality. Minding our own business abroad is akin to watching a lady being viciously attacked in the supermarket parking lot, and deciding it is none of our business. Defending our own personal freedom and liberty has always required defending the freedom and liberty of others.

And yes, Ron Paul has met people who don’t support our troops. Much of his 2008 presidential campaign was funded by Code Pink and MoveOn.org anti-war protesters who like nothing about our troops.

The fact is – constitutional conservatives and liberal-tarians have almost nothing in common. Yet both are wrestling for control of America’s conservative party, the GOP, via the Tea Party.

Many of the Tea Party organizations are supporting liberal-tarian candidates in the GOP primaries, like Rand Paul in Kentucky. If the vast majority of Tea Party members are indeed “constitutional conservatives,” why are they supporting liberal-tarian candidates who are largely aligned with leftist progressive’s, issue-by-issue?

Leftist Democrats are strategically using the most extreme elements within the Tea Party movement to define the entire conservative patriot resurgence as a bunch of “fringe nuts.”

Only hours after winning the GOP primary in Kentucky, Rand Paul finds himself under attack for some of the more extreme sounding statements in his closet.

The DNC has gone so far as to write and distribute a strategy paper on how to neutralize the conservative resurgence by promoting liberal-tarian extremists in the GOP primaries, giving “mainstream” Democrats so-called “extremists” to run against in the general election come fall.

Still, many average patriots remain unaware of the official policy positions behind the effort to build a liberal-tarian powerbase within the GOP.

Official Liberal-tarian Issue Positions
Pro Abortion Rights
Pro Gay Rights
Pro Illicit Drug and Prostitution
Pro Illegal Immigration and Amnesty
Anti Strong National Defense
Isolationist Security and Economic policies
Pro Freedom from Religion
Pro Civil Rights for known Terrorists
Pro Criminalizing Acts of War

For those who doubt my assertions, the full official liberal-tarian platform and issue statement is available at the Libertarian Party web site. If constitutional conservatives take time to fully inform themselves of the real liberal-tarian agenda, they will not support liberal-tarian candidates.

Everyone from Ron Paul to Nancy Pelosi claims the title of “constitutional patriot” today. If nothing else, the Tea Party has taught every politician the proper campaign talking points for the upcoming election cycles. True constitutional conservatives are going to have to separate real constitutional conservatives from the
pretenders in order to advance the conservative resurgence needed to save this nation from certain ruin.

Not all who claim the name patriot are true patriots.

Liberal-tarians have perfected the art of nuanced policy positions in an almost John Kerryesque way.
They are both pro life and pro abortion rights
They are pro-national defense and anti-security
They are pro-national sovereignty and pro open borders
They are anti-social spending but pro-social depravity
And just like all other progressives, they pander for illegal alien
votes and Puerto Rico statehood

Again, I can go on and on with this list, but at the end of the day, the liberal-tarian gray area of nuanced nonsense is actually ideologically aligned with the leftist progressive movement, not the constitutional conservative resurgence. There are exceptions to every rule, but even in the case of liberal-tarians, the rule remains the standard.

The only place where liberal-tarians share common ground with conservatives is the area of taxation. Both want lower taxes and less intrusive government. But only conservatives seem to understand that liberal social policies always result in liberal social spending. So even here, the two are not really on the same team.

Who is the T.E.A. Party?

According to an in-depth CBS/New York Times poll taken mid-April 2010, the following information rings true about T.E.A. Party folks… 94% are dissatisfied and even “angry” at the current federal government’s direction with 92% saying the country is headed in the wrong direction 88% disapprove of the Obama Administration-96% disapprove of the Democrat controlled congress
91% disagree with current economic policies
93% disagree with current Health Care policies
91% oppose the increasing deficit spending
84% dislike and distrust Barack Obama specifically-73% say Obama doesn’t understand the problems-75% say he does not share their American principles and values
92% say Obama is forcing the country deeper into socialism
94% say that congress does not deserve re-election
66% say Sarah Palin is the leader of the movement-59% say Glenn Beck is the leader
But Palin supports John McCain who earns only 35% – and Beck likes Ron Paul who earns only 28% TP support

Clearly, T.E.A. Party folks plan to force a change of direction in this country. However, what kinds of change remain unclear…

What Change?

In 2006 and 2008, American voters were foolish enough to vote for “change” without stopping to ask what kinds of “change” leftists around the globe had in mind for Americans. If we are foolish enough to do it again in 2010, we will likely never recognize this country again for generations.

Progressives had socialism in mind and it only took a few weeks or months after the election to figure that out. Too bad we didn’t take a few minutes to figure it out before the election.

Before T.E.A. Party folks get too excited about forcing “change” in 2010, they had better step back for a moment and very carefully define what kinds of change they have in mind.

We have no “broken immigration system.” We have a good immigration system backed by good immigration laws, but a very bad record of enforcement. If patriots want that to “change,” they cannot support leftists or liberal-tarian progressives, both of whom support “immigration reform” that essentially does away with legal immigration and rewards illegal migration.

Unless patriots want Puerto Ricans helping vote on the policies of the continental USA, they had better not support leftists or liberal-tarian progressives, both of whom are pandering for the Puerto Rican vote via statehood for Puerto Rico.

Neither leftist nor liberal-tarian progressives think we are in the middle of a global war with Islamic terrorism and neither wants to treat terrorism like an act of war, preferring US civil rights and criminal courts for known terrorists, while questioning the honor and tactics of real US heroes serving in the US Military.

Both leftists and liberal-tarians want to do away with a free-market economic system that both feel is unfair to many citizens and replace it with their version of a new economic system, complete with new currency and more government intrusions.

To cut taxes, you must first cut spending and in a nation with more than 60% of its federal budget tied up in social spending, you had better curb the social habits that cause social ills and result in
social spending, or you can’t do any of it. Leftists and liberal-tarians overlook this little gem of reality.

My point is this…
Change, YES! But just any kind of change, NO!

Constitutional conservatism is the foundation that made the USA the greatest nation on earth. No nuanced or pretender platform can compare and only true constitutional conservatives will put constitutionally conservative principles and values back at the helm of this nation.

This time, before you jump at the blind offer of “change,” stop for a moment and ask what kind of change. I have come to the conclusion that the most significant difference between true constitutional
conservatives and liberal-tarians is the conservative agenda of saving a nation and a liberal-tarian agenda of exploiting current conditions for benefit of building a liberal-tarian movement, no matter the cost for our nation.

In the end, it’s one thing to remove a RINO from office. It’s a whole different thing to put the right person in their place. It requires more than unity…it requires clarity of purpose.
—————————-
JB Williams is a business man, a husband, a father, and a writer. A
no nonsense commentator on American politics, American history, and
American philosophy. He is published nationwide and in many countries
around the world. JB Williams’ website is jb-williams.com/

Chuck’s disclaimer.

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My reply:

Stephen Browne is a professional writer and journalist, who is currently between jobs as he struggles to become more computer literate. Between 1991 and 2004 he lived and worked in Eastern Europe and the Middle East after the collapse of the Soviet Empire. In 1997 he was elected an Honorary Member of the Yugoslav Movement for the Protection of Human Rights for his work with Serbian dissidents and is the founder of the Liberty English Camps, which teach the principles of political liberty and free markets through Englishlanguage instruction in several post-communist countries and Africa. While sojourning he has been kicked with honest-to-God jackboots and beaten with real rubber truncheons. (They’re not just rubber they have a steel rod inside, just in case you’re curious.)

Reply to J.B. Williams

by Stephen Browne

In a recent article Mr. J.B. Williams asks the question “Do Liberal-tarians threaten the Conservative Resurgence?” – and answers in the affirmative.

In his tone he comes off, dare I say? a tad leftist. Williams apparently thinks the way to forge a coalition to beat back the current tsunami of statism, is to conduct Stalinesque purges of those who hew not to his party line. His article is a mixture of valid criticism, invalid generalizations, and outright falsehoods.

He begins by coining a childish neologism “Liberal-tarians,” a tactic the Institute for Propaganda Analysis gave the highly technical term, “name-calling.” Perhaps he learned this lesson from leftist idiot-ologs who coined the term “conservo-tards” to achieve the same effect. He then consistently refers to libertarians as “they” throughout. As if one could characterize an extremely broad and diverse intellectual trend with a few short brush strokes – a problem all conservatives should be familiar with from being on the receiving end of this kind of stereotyping.

To elaborate all of the misconceptions and outright falsehoods would take far more space than my host, or your patience, is likely to grant. But shall we fisk this monstrosity a bit?

“But then there has been another Ron Paul from time to time, a liberal-tarian Ron Paul which I disagree with and find someone dangerous.
“Another term for preventive war is aggressive war”
“Have you noticed the debt is exploding? And it’s not all because of
Medicare.”
“I am just absolutely convinced that the best formula for giving us
peace and preserving the American way of life is freedom, limited
government, and minding our own business overseas.” “

I also disagree with Paul, and elaborated at length in an article published in last month’s Dakota Beacon, ‘Isolationism, the Problem that Divides Conservatives,’ archived below.

I will also point out that this wrong-headed (in my opinion) approach to foreign policy is not shared by all libertarians but is gospel among the so-called paleo-conservatives, and pretty well describes the opinion of the late conservative icon Paul Harvey. See the Yahoo discussion site ‘Fight for Liberty’ for the opinions of libertarian “hawks.” And note surveys conducted by libertarian publications consistently show the publicly -visible libertarian leadership is not representative of the rank-and-file on this issue.

“The quest for “social justice” is the primary reason for our current financial calamity. To ignore that is to cover up reality. Minding our own business abroad is akin to watching a lady being viciously attacked in the supermarket parking lot, and deciding it is none of our business. Defending our own personal freedom and liberty has always required defending the freedom and liberty of others.”

Agree.

“Only hours after winning the GOP primary in Kentucky, Rand Paul finds himself under attack for some of the more extreme sounding statements in his closet.”

Williams cleverly fails to mention the “extreme sounding statement” Paul was under attack for: the issue of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which “outlaws discrimination” by taking away the right of property owners to discriminate against customers based on race.

This impacts the issue of victimless crimes, which sends Williams up the wall and makes almost everybody uncomfortable. At issue is the right of people to make foolish or immoral choices provided they
directly affect only the individual. (The problem of who they affect is a matter of much argument. Suffice it to say, the libertarian position is if you indulge in intoxicants you are affecting yourself. If you get behind the wheel of a car – that’s a different story. We don’t buy that hurting the feelings of those who care about you is the legitimate concern of the law – that’s a leftist notion.)

In any case, in today’s climate it takes a great deal of personal courage to defend a bigot’s right to dispose of his own property as he wishes. Whatever else I think of Rand Paul, my hat’s off to him on this one.

Your belief in freedom is tested by how far you are willing to extend it to people you despise.

On Williams web site, right at the top, is this:

“

I have come to believe that the one flaw in our framers design is our freedom to destroy ourselves.

It may have been a mistake to ask average people (who don’t have the time, the energy, the inclination, the selflessness, the moral foundation or the good sense to run their own lives), to run the greatest nation on earth.” (Emphasis his.)

In other words, the average person can’t be trusted to make the “right” choices and must be led by a wise and moral elite – which evidently includes himself. (Who’d have guessed?) How is this different from Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama’s philosophy of government paternalism, save for the specific behaviors they think
are destructive?

G.K. Chesterton defined the libertarian position best, “The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.”

Williams describes the following “Official Liberal-tarian Issue Positions,” and cites the Libertarian Party website. To being with, the LP is one of a number of libertarian organizations, one which has been declining in membership and vote totals for some years, largely for hewing to the foreign policy positions criticized herein. Most self-identified libertarians don’t belong to any organization.

One-by-one William’s charges are:

Pro Abortion Rights: not shared by all libertarians. Ron Paul is a conspicuous example of an anti-abortion libertarian for example. And those who think it’s an immoral choice may not want it made a matter of law in all circumstances.

Pro Gay Rights: A misstatement. The libertarian position is, there are no fill-in-the-blank “rights.” There are only human rights. If you want to cite gays in the military as a specific, I’d refer you to the late Barry Goldwater’s op-ed, “You don’t have to be straight to die for your country – you just have to shoot straight.”

I will add this: I personally find aggressive, public, in-your-face, gays highly offensive. I feel the same way about loudmouth heterosexuals who like to boast about their conquests. But I do not think my offended sensibilities should be the law of the land. In either case they may merit a punch in the nose, not an act of congress.

Pro Illicit Drug and Prostitution: A deliberate mischaracterization. “Pro” has nothing to do with the issue, see the above Chesterton quote. And decriminalization of drugs is also a position supported by a great many conservatives such as the late William F. Buckley, and organizations such as LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.) The practical argument is not that drugs or alcohol are good for you, but that the process costs of prohibition are higher than any possible social benefit. Among other things, enforcement of prohibition necessarily creates those massive bureaucracies and egregious violations of civil liberties conservatives and libertarians hate.

Pro Illegal Immigration and Amnesty: Nope, libertarians are divided on the issue of open borders. A quote from one libertarian author (moi) in a published op-ed, “Does anyone else see how seriously weird it is that we’re even having this discussion? Every nation on earth takes their right to control their borders as a given. It’s pretty much what defines a nation.”

Anti Strong National Defense: This charge is loaded. There is a lot of argument in conservative/libertarian circles about what constitutes “strong” national defense. Though critics of foreign interventions like to point out that spreading limited military resources too thin weakens a country, and no country can maintain a strong military without a strong (i.e. free-market) economy.

Isolationist Security and Economic policies: Isolationist: ditto. See above. Economic: a falsehood. Libertarians are mostly free-traders who like to cite the 19th century French free-market economists, “If goods don’t cross borders – armies will.” (I myself have reservations about that one, since Tom Clancy pointed out that in 1939 Germany’s biggest trading parter – was France.)

Pro Freedom from Religion: Almost meaningless. Do you mean freedom to be an atheist or agnostic? Or perhaps not to have an established state church? Heavens to Betsy surely not! Me, I’m just dying to be hauled up before the Inquisition, or the Board of Presbyters, to have my (considerable) sins denounced before the congregation.

If you mean joining idiot lawsuits against religious symbols on public property, I don’t know any libertarians who get worked up about that. There may be some, I’ve just never run into them. And to be fair, it’s hard to get worked up over, say, the bronze doors on the Library of Congress, with their images of all the gods of writing from classical and non-Western mythology.

Pro Civil Rights for known Terrorists and Pro Criminalizing Acts of War: Not except for a delusional minority. You can find them hanging out with the paleo-conservatives over at antiwar.com.

Williams repeats many of the charges in a shorter list below this, accusing libertarians of being “John Kerryesque.” A straw man argument. He takes areas where libertarians – like self-described conservatives, disagree, ascribes all of the positions to a non-existent “they,” and triumphantly cries “they” are self-contradictory.

They are both pro life and pro abortion rights: Again, “they” disagree. Many, such as myself, are mired in the mushy middle. (Not much of a problem with the first trimester, beginning to worry in the second, and seriously wondering about the difference between a late-term abortion and a preemie saved by heroic medical efforts. And if some propagandist hadn’t invented the lying term “partial-birth abortion” we wouldn’t be having an argument about it. A “partial-birth abortion” is murdering a baby – the difference is literally a few minutes.)

They are anti-social spending but pro-social depravity: The first is correct, the second is a slander. To say that something is not properly a matter for law is NOT the same thing as saying it is good or desirable. And note one thing, only a totalitarian who believes “everything not forbidden should be compulsory” would say it is.

And just like all other progressives, they pander for illegal alien votes and Puerto Rico statehood: A falsehood. Where libertarians get nutty about statehood, they favor devolution and secession, not addition.

Neither leftist nor liberal-tarian progressives think we are in the middle of a global war with Islamic terrorism… Nope, this libertarian has written extensively on Islamic jihadism – and has lived in the Middle East. There is disagreement among libertarians, but look at Objectivists websites and the aforementioned Fight for Liberty discussion group and you’ll find strong support for the war against global jihad.

Both leftists and liberal-tarians want to do away with a free-market economic system that both feel is unfair to many citizens and replace it with their version of a new economic system, complete with new currency and more government intrusions: This cannot be a misunderstanding. It is a complete and utter falsehood. Libertarians are the strongest defenders of free-market capitalism there are, far beyond what any conservatives are comfortable with.

“To cut taxes, you must first cut spending and in a nation with more than 60% of its federal budget tied up in social spending, you had better curb the social habits that cause social ills and result in
social spending, or you can’t do any of it. Leftists and liberal-tarians overlook this little gem of reality.”

Really? And exactly how are you going to do this “curbing” without erecting massive bureaucracies staffed by legions of “experts”? And, isn’t this the same kind of social engineering so beloved of leftists? The only difference I can see is what he considers the invidious “social habits.”

How’s this for an alternative? Cease protecting people from the consequences of their own actions. Doesn’t cost a dime of taxpayer money.

“The only result of protecting men from their own folly, is to fill the world with fools.” – Herbert Spencer.

There is much to criticize about libertarians and libertarianism, as there is about any philosophy or movement, nobody has a monopoly on wisdom. I have done a fair amount of that criticism myself.

Libertarianism favors continuing, rather than halting the American Experiment of pushing the envelope of liberty to the maximum extent consistent with a reasonable degree of civil order. Since the Constitution was ratified we’ve been on unknown territory, boldly going “where no one has gone before” with few historical examples to guide us.

But this is not criticism, this is an argument for abandoning the whole enterprise of republican liberty.

In sum, it is obvious Mr. Williams has no use for libertarians. What he betrays in almost every line is, he is no conservative either. He is a totalitarian elitist, different from leftists only in the specific areas of your life he wishes to be in charge of. And not much of a difference at that. Williams has a lot in common with Hillary Clinton, who like many leftists is in many ways a notorious prude in spite of being married to a notorious libertine.

Confronted with a common enemy who is now on the ascendant, libertarians and conservatives of all stripes need each other to rally around the basic issue of combating the runaway growth of government, because we are too weak without each other. That is the grim reality.

What we don’t need are totalitarians who’d be more comfortable in a Red-Brown alliance than among those of us determined to live and die free men.

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Note: This appeared as an article in the March, 2010 print version of The Dakota Beacon.

There really is a Ron Paul revolution.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference this 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 means 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 Europe 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 Wehrmact 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 Straights 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:
- 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.
- Speaking critically of the Prophet or questioning the divine origin of the Koran is a capital offense.
- Apostasy, converting to another religion, is a capital offense.
- Killing someone who insults your family and clan is praiseworthy.
- 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. Ryszrad 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 of 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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Note: my weekend op-ed.

“¡Pobre México! ¡Tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos!”
(Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!)
-Porfirio Diaz, President of Mexico 1876-1911

The issue of what to do about America’s huge population of illegal residents is again a hot-button issue.

Arizona has just passed a law requiring local authorities enforce existing federal law concerning illegal aliens.

Enforce the law, what a concept!

As a consequence, the people of Arizona are being called Nazis, Nativists, and worse.

The first thing I’d like to ask is, does anybody else see how seriously weird it is we’re even having this conversation?

Every country in the world, except ours evidently, regards their right to control their own borders as a given. It’s pretty much what “country” means, an area defined by a border. Our law on our side, your law on yours.

That said, I have to confess to some ambiguous feelings about the issue. We have friends who though legal, have an illegal granny who takes care of their kids. (Requests for details will be politely ignored.)

What’s the harm in that?

And in my long-term residence abroad… I wasn’t entirely scrupulous about work permits myself.

But we’re talking about an estimated 9 to 12 million people here illegally, with an estimated inflow of a half-million a year. That’s not immigration, that’s an invasion!

Yet several dozen communities have declared themselves “sanctuary cities,” forbidding their own police to enforce federal laws, or even inquire of people they arrest whether they are in violation of them.

The federal government then discovered a new-found respect for federalism. Rather than declare them in a state of rebellion and sending federal marshals to arrest the mayors and councilmen, it preferred to ignore the issue in hopes it’ll go away.

Again, in what other country would that happen?

I am married to a legal permanent resident, who by law must carry her residence permit with her at all times. We were separated for four months after I came back to the U.S., while our embassy in Warsaw made up their minds to let my wife and son in. And they weren’t always polite to her either. (You’d think a three-year-old child would have clued them the Fraudulent Marriages Act wasn’t an issue here.)

So what does that say about how you’re treated when you follow the rules?

But of course we’re mostly talking about Mexicans, so you must be a racist if you suggest we shouldn’t welcome the ongoing reconquista of the southwest quarter of the U.S. – formerly known as the northern half of Mexico.

I love Mexico and it’s people. The time I spent there was delightful, as most everybody who goes there without a gringo attitude finds.

But is it a favor to allow its corrupt (and by the way, overwhelmingly white) oligarchy to export its potential troublemakers so they can remain in power?

That Right-wing think tank Freedom House, founded by that Right-wing ideologue Eleanor Roosevelt (sarcasm alert,) noticed that of the countries they categorize as “free” or “partly free,” almost all have one ethnic group that constitutes at least a two-thirds majority.

We might be the exception. We’ve already assimilated lots of people from all over the world – though never that many from a single origin. And never from next door.

But if we want to try that experiment we’d might want to consider that once done, it probably can’t be undone.

So what do I think?

I think we’re going to be neighbors with Mexico for a long time. And since I began with an apropos quote, another occurs to me.

“Good fences make good neighbors.”

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“May Allah kill Matt Stone and Trey Parker and burn them in Hell for all eternity. They insult our prophets Mohammed, Jesus, and Moses.” - Zachary “Abu Talhah al-Amrike” on Revolution Muslim website, now taken down.

Well as I said before, whenever jihadists start threatening cartoonists for images that offend them, and craven media types cave in, we bloggers should make it a point to post the images.

That’s the image. In case you’ve been on vacation in Antarctica, it’s supposed to be Mohammed in a bear suit. The bear suit is South Park’s clever way of satirizing Comedy Central which previously censored images of the Prophet on the show.

Now to be fair, preliminary reports indicate Revolution Muslim is a fringoid group of perhaps a dozen members. Our boy Zachary was evidently born Zachary Adam Chesser and appears to be a convert.

He insists he didn’t threaten them when he posted on the site that Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, “will probably end up” like Theo van Gogh.

And to make his point clear, he reportedly posted pictures of van Gogh’s butchered body.

Chesser/Abu Talhah al-Amrike told FoxNews.com, “It’s not a threat, but it really is a likely outcome. They’re going to be basically on a list in the back of the minds of a large number of Muslims. It’s just the reality.”

Oh that’s all right then. He wasn’t threatening, he was predicting. And from what has been found out about him by FOX, he doesn’t seem like the kind with the huevos to carry out a threat.

FOX news reported:

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, characterized Revolution Muslim as a loosely-organized group with such outrageous beliefs he believes it may be a “setup” to smear Islam.

“They say wild and irresponsible things periodically,” Hooper told FoxNews.com. “There’s a strong suspicion that they’re merely a setup to make Muslims and Islam look bad. They say such wild and crazy things that you have to wonder.”

Me, I think that’s BS. CAIR appears to be the aboveground legal face of jihadist terrorism in the U.S. A common strategy for terrorists operating in more-or-less democratic countries is to have such an aboveground arm as their spokesman, vis-a-vis the IRA and Sinn Fein in Ulster.

But I concede they might think of the Revolution Muslim group as a loose cannon bad for their image. The group reportedly published a poem about killing Jews on their website in October, for example. That’s not good for the we-aren’t-anti-Semites-just-anti-Zionists line.

However, they have now moved their online operation to the Revolution Muslim blog.
I urge you to have a look. The article on the South Park controversy is articulate, well-written, and not at all raving. I’d say it’s the work of a native English speaker, or someone who speaks English with near-native fluency.

It discusses with calm rationality, citing precedent as an academic writer would cite his/her sources, the scholarly justification for murder

“Many are proclaiming that the South Park episode’s insult was minimal and some might inquire about a situation where the insult is not that great. The renowned scholar Imam Malik said, “If someone says that the button of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) is dirty, then he should be executed!”…

“In the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) two key events stand out that provide evidence for the permissibility and indeed preference for retaliation against those that insult him. In the first, a blind Muslim man who had a Jewish wife (and some say servant) assassinated his wife when she continuously cursed and mocked Muhammad (peace be upon him). In the other, a Jewish poet by the name of Ka’b bin al-Ashraf was killed for his poetry insulting the Prophet even though he was living under peaceful covenant with the Muslims and was within his own territory. If anyone is in need of details and sources for these occurrences feel free to contact us and we will forward them to serious inquirers. At this point, it must be known that this is the position in Islam, that there is consensus in it and that for those that argue the harm coming as a consequence exceeds the benefit, then they should know that this is at best an argument that entails a difference of opinion although the evidence suggests that adopting the platform that we ourselves have taken is best.

“The law, known as shariah, in Islam is sacred and it is for no man to change, alter, or disregard when reacting to events like the recent degrading of the Prophet Muhammad (saws) on South Park. Indeed there is an Islamic ruling on nearly every affair and Muslims must seek their response in the religion and not in the personal desire and false manipulation of subjective introspection via philosophy or, as in most cases, emotional attachment to socialized norms.”

And note this:

“Thus the postings that have caused so much controversy on revolutionmuslim.com with regard to this matter were actually not the publication of the opinion of some Muslims but a referral and deferment to Islamic Law, thus fulfilling our divine obligation to command the good and forbid the evil by teaching and preaching the religion of Islam no matter how strange that way of life may seem to some. This is a divine order, obligatory for at least some Muslims in any community to fulfill. Allah says,

وَلْتَكُن مِّنكُمْ أُمَّةٌ يَدْعُونَ إِلَى الْخَيْرِ وَيَأْمُرُونَ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ وَيَنْهَوْنَ عَنِ الْمُنكَرِ وَأُوْلَـئِكَ هُمُ الْمُفْلِحُونَ

Let there arise out of you a band of people inviting to all that is good, enjoining what is right, and forbidding what is wrong: They are the ones to attain felicity. (3:104)”

But do read the entire piece. Among other reasons, I’d like to know if anybody else sees something familiar in this. This reads like a lot of post-60s Marxist rhetoric to me. They were good at scholarly suport for murder too.

And while I suppose I could spend time debating a lot of specific points in the post, I’m not going to.

My reply: We are enemies. I concede you have legitimate grievances mixed with the sophistry, but I’m not interested. In the long-but-growing-shorter run, I’m only interested in the judgment of battle.

Gentle readers, read the post. Know what you’re up against.

I will address one point. Early in the post, the author said, “Free speech is a vital tool in the staving of oppression, but this function has its limits.”

Nope.

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They’re he-e-e-e-ere!

Here’s what we know as of now: On Friday, April 16, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s fundraising staffer Allee Bautsch and her boyfriend Joe Brown were coming out of a Republican fundraising dinner in New Orleans organized by the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. They were set upon by a group of demonstrators. He reportedly got a broken nose and fractured jaw, she got her leg broken in several places – the kind of breaks you get from a stomping, not a fall. She’s got surgical scars and pins in her legs to show for it.

The New Orleans police first said “insults of a political nature” were shouted as the demonstrators did their thing, then backed off, then reconfirmed.

In dispute was whether the victims were wearing Palin buttons or not.

The demonstrators in the area were reportedly from a left-anarchist group called the Iron Rail Collective.

One thing worthy of note, Walter Abbot in Lincoln Parrish News Online blog reported that earlier in the evening:

“In an interview this afternoon, Louisiana GOP Chair Roger Villere, Jr. told Lincoln Parish News Online he and several others were pursued by protesters last Friday night after a political fundraiser, but managed to get into a cab and avoid the mob. “We started to leave out the front door after the event, but the protesters had us blocked – there were six of us in our group – so we went out through the kitchen,” Villere said. Once they got outside, the protesters spotted them and began to pursue them, but they managed to get into a cab and avoid confrontation.”

So who are the Iron Rail Collective? Their website (and Wikipedia page) describes them as mostly a lending library.

“Our lending library is one of the largest collectively-run radical libraries in the country. The Iron Rail was the first library in metro New Orleans to re-open after the disastrous failure of the government levees in 2005, and for several months were the only functioning library in the city. In 2009, we were invited to be the official bookseller for the Family Violence Prevention Fund’s 5th annual National Conference on Health and Domestic Violence. We were super-duper stoked about this opportunity and we did a great job, because we’re awesome.”

What the Louisiana Hayride has to say about them is:

“So, what’s the Family Violence Prevention Fund? Well, it’s one of your standard-issue leftist non-governmental organizations. We say that because they say they advance a cause – the prevention of domestic violence – that nobody could possibly disagree with, and yet on their website one will find a grab-bag of hard-left advocacy.

Like what?

How about banning of guns, chatting up unions about making employers put domestic abuse prevention programs in collective bargaining contracts and granting asylum to women on the basis of domestic abuse in the home country.

FVPF is also covered in George Soros’ fingerprints. The organization’s President is Esta Soler, whose bio says:

She has been a consultant and advisor to numerous public and private agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Soros Justice Fellowship Program, the Ford Foundation/Harvard University Innovations in American Government initiative, and the Aspen Institute. She was a member of the Violence Against Women National Advisory Council when it was co-chaired by Health & Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala and Attorney General Janet Reno.

And on the FVPF’s Board of Directors is Ellen Friedman, who is a vice president at the Tides Foundation, an outfit partially funded by Soros and whose board chairman is Wade Rathke of SEIU and ACORN fame.

So that’s who the Family Violence Prevention Fund is. Their 5th annual National Conference on Health and Domestic Violence was held in New Orleans. It says on the Conference’s web site that:

The Conference is primarily funded by the Administration for Children and Families, Department of Health and Human Services.

ACF’s staff bio page is a mixed bag with some people who actually look like professionals in the field of social work and others whose backgrounds are not so appetizing. Its Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy, Mark Greenberg, is a veteran of the Soros-funded/John Podesta-led Center For American Progress.

The fact that the Iron Rail Book Collective was the “official bookseller” for that FVPF conference in New Orleans probably bears further research. The obvious question one would imagine is whether that title afforded to the Iron Rail Gang came with a grant or fees from the conference – because if in fact that did happen it would signify taxpayer funds indirectly making their way to an anarchist commune which brags about vandalizing banks in the French Quarter, holding book-study groups to teach The Coming Insurrection and organizing demonstrations which turn violent against people they don’t agree with politically.

And that would be worse than the idea that an outfit tied into George Soros would be directly providing funds to just such an anarchist commune.”

OK, now go do your own research, I just want to make a couple of points.

One, I just hate it that these folks call themselves “anarchists.” In my younger days when I was enchanted with revolutionary romanticism, I wore the term myself sometimes. But I called myself an “Individualist Anarchist” or “Anarcho-capitalist.”

I don’t anymore, for a number of reasons, mostly having to do with other anarchists, but I retain a certain fondness for the tradition and still recommend reading Lysander Spooner’s critique of representative government. Agree or not, Spooner raises points that have to be addressed.

I’ll even concede that I’m very glad I read anarcho-communist Prince Peter Kropotkin’s ‘Mutual Aid.’ Although he disturbingly uses the term ‘communism’ favorably too damned often, he’s worth reading for his critique of the metaphor of evolution as a “war” among other things.

But Individualist Anarchists Spooner, Benjamin Tucker, and even that hopeless nerd Murray Rothbard intelectually have nothing in common with these thugs. (Though admittedly Rothbard was at times in his life also attracted to Left adventurism and had a brief flirtation with the Black Panthers before getting mugged by reality – and the Panthers.)

Two, the Left has shown their ability, like sociopaths and alcoholics, to stay always a step ahead of you in their thinking. For a while they’ve charged that Right-wing speech, on venues like talk radio, is creating a “climate of violence” that is in some way responsible for everything from the Oklahoma City bombing to the Holocaust Museum shooting, and tarred Tea Party demonstrators as dangerous extremists.

No matter that Timothy McVeigh’s politics are largely unknown but appear to have been a mishmash of anti-war/anti-government views not terribly different in tone from Michael Moore or Ward Churchill. Never mind that the Holocaust Museum shooter was a neo-Nazi, that is to say a National Socialist. And never mind that the FBI considers the most dangerous domestic terrorist groups to be the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front.

They’ve pre-emptively tarred the Right as violent extremists. So who is it that’s getting a free pass?

Yahoo news reporter reporter Bret Michael Dykes ends his story, “Victims of brutal New Orleans attack relay their story and contradict police report, but uncertainty about attackers remains” on this note:

“Of course, even if Bautsch and Brown’s recollection is correct and the attackers did come from the group protesting the event, they can’t know for sure what their motives were. Their account of the non-political nature of the verbal assault matches the one Brown gave police and the homophobic, misogynistic nature of the insults would be unusual coming the kind of person one might expect to protest a Republican fundraiser.”

Three, I’ve said it before, a controlled economy, i.e. fascism, needs a thug corps. Told you.

The beating of that black conservative guy by the Purple Shirts from SEIU was just a shot across the bow. Wait for the escalation.

I do not mean the president is part of a conspiracy to recruit a Brownshirt army. I mean it happens spontaneously, of necessity, whenever a dirigiste comes to power.

I don’t think Woodrow Wilson the professor, or Franklin D. Roosevelt the genteel patrician had the stomach for the kind of street violence Mussolini reveled in. And admittedly, the mob violence during WWI and thugish behavior of supporters of the National Recovery Administration* during the Great Depression, was restrained compared to the Fascisti or Brown Shirts.

Nonetheless, a leader who aims at the use of unrestrained power to shape society and the economy, all to the good of course, will always be followed by enthusiasts who don’t share his distaste for the cruder methods of social change.

He in fact creates a “climate of violence.”

Look for more of this. And if you’re free with your conservative or libertarian opinions in public, you might give a thought to what extent your personal ass is on the line.

*As chronicled in Jonah Goldberg’s, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change.

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Note: My weekend op-ed.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

The Gods of the Copybook Headings – Rudyard Kipling

Just to remind everybody, when President Obama was running for office the Surge wasn’t working, the troops were going to be out of Iraq in 18 months, the USA Patriot Act was an affront to civil liberties, the prison at Guantanamo Bay was the ruination of our international reputation, and terrorists were criminals who came under the same constitutional protections as American citizens.

Now in case you hadn’t noticed, the troops in Iraq aren’t packing their bags, the administration has quietly renewed the Patriot Act with minor modifications, Guantanamo is not closing any time soon, and plans to try terrorists in civilian courts on the mainland are being scrapped.

The current administration seems to have adopted the Bush anti-terror policy whole, with two exceptions. The use of silly euphemisms begun in the Bush administration (like “War on Terror”) has extended to the point of banning terms like “Islamic extremism” from official documents. And Predator drone attacks to kill terrorist leaders in the remote borderlands of Afghanistan have almost quadrupled, without being too finicky about family and bystanders.

One American citizen has just been added to the bomb-on-sight list too.

We’ve reverted to the ancient, reliable policy of, “It’s dangerous to be our enemy. It’s dangerous to be related to our enemy. It’s dangerous to stand next to our enemy.”

Both American and European media are remarkably silent about all this. Except for the occasional kvetch from the Right that George Bush would have been crucified for this, and from the pacifist Left that Obama has sold them out.

Well, yes. So what happened and what does it mean?

Could it be that foreign policy is largely event driven, and less a matter of choice than we proud citizens of the mightiest nation on earth would like to believe it is?

In an interconnected world with a lot of really scary, heavily-armed people who don’t like us much, maybe we don’t really have a wide range of available options that might produce anything good.

If you’ll give a moments thought to your own life, you’ll realize there are always more ways to screw up than to do something right. It’s just the way things work.

When you’re running for high office, you can be holy all you like. But once you get there, you start getting those intelligence briefings the rest of us don’t get to see, unless someone carefully leaks them to journalists like Yours Truly.

That’s when you learn the scary stuff about the world. Worse, that’s when you learn what we don’t know – and that’s really, really scary.

And if you’re paying attention, that’s when you realize the value of consistency of policy. Having a policy that’s consistent over time may be more important than having one that actually makes perfect sense. Because both our friends and our enemies need to know what to expect from us, lest the former get nervous and the latter get bold.

And secondly, a lot of political preference is far more personality-driven than issue-driven. We like or loathe our presidents depending on how sympatico we find them personally. If we like them, we’ll excuse almost anything they do. If we loathe them, nothing they do will get any more than a grudging acknowledgment, if that.

Notice nobody on the Right side of the aisle is saying, “Mr. President, we’ll fight you tooth and nail on the domestic agenda, but we’re behind you 100 percent on fighting the war on terrorism now that you’ve seen the light.”

Nobody on the Left side ever said to Bush, “Hey you’re a warmonger but that was a bold move on that first stimulus, thanks for the idea.”

The world is still an arena of warring tribes, and our loyalties are still more tribal than we like to admit.

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Note: My weekend op-ed. Spiked.

The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah*, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.
-Sahih al-Bukhari Hadith 846 A.D. (Sayings of the Prophet collected by Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari, 810-870) incorporated in the charter of Hamas.

President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met twice on Tuesday in an atmosphere somewhat strained.

Contrary to customary protocol, reporters were not invited to see them shake hands and begin talks, and the White House did not issue a formal statement afterwards.

What’s going on?

Two weeks ago, during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel, a low-level bureaucracy announced the building of 1,600 new apartments in east Jerusalem. Though it doesn’t appear to be a deliberate provocation, Biden, a strong supporter of Israel, was miffed enough to show up late to a formal dinner. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton later called Netanyahu to cuss him out for 45 minutes – and Madam Secretary is said to be a formidable cusser.

Netanyahu isn’t budging on the apartments.

Angry Palestinians have delayed new U.S.-sponsored peace talks over the issue. So what else is new? President Obama was described as “furious.”

So why aren’t the Israelis cooperating with us? Aren’t we their biggest supporters?

Short blunt answer, the Israelis aren’t cooperating because they get nothing from it – and they don’t trust us.

That Israel gets nothing from concessions is easy to show, if anyone has eyes to see. Harvard law professor Alan defender-of-the-rich-and-guilty Dershowitz, wrote a book, ‘Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge.’ You can dismiss it as special pleading if you like, but what you can’t ignore is the heart of it. It’s a table he created by listing all concessions made over 30 years to the Palestinians in one column, and in the other a list of terrorist acts and attempts.

In every single case, concessions have been followed by escalating terrorist acts. Simple, obvious, ignored. Like it says, terrorism works.

Why don’t the Israelis trust us?

Because they shouldn’t.

Biden is known as a strong supporter of Israel, which won’t matter unless and until the “vice” is removed from his title.

Secretary of State Clinton has been known to drop the “fucking Jew bastard!” bomb when angry and was a strong supporter of Palestinian statehood, until she publicly embraced and kissed Yassir Arafat’s wife Suha. After the subsequent backlash she discovered her “unrelenting support of Israel.”

There is no direct evidence President Obama is an anti-Semite, but he is undeniably comfortable with anti-Semitism. (Hint: 20 years in the front row of Rev. Wright’s church. Somebody forgot to tell him you’re supposed to stand up and walk out when a preacher starts racist rants from the pulpit.) And his reaction to Iran’s nuclear program has been tepid at best.

You may have missed all this but I assure you the Israelis haven’t.

But isn’t White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel a Modern Orthodox Jew who spends a lot of time in Israel?

I don’t know where Emanuel fits in all this, but he may share the same illusion most Americans cling to, that Israel’s enemies want peace.

Every American president for decades has known bringing permanent peace to the Middle East would assure his place in history. So far only Jimmy Carter has had any success, and only because Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat came to want peace more than he wanted his own life. Carter is now openly, bitterly anti-Semitic.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for another Sadat. More likely, there will be no peace until something indescribably horrible happens in the Middle East.

* “O Abdullah” probably doesn’t refer to someone named Abdullah, but to the meaning of the name, “slave of God.”

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Note: my weekend op-ed.

I’ve just read an interesting study about how buying green makes people mean.

Two PhDs at the University of Toronto; Chen-Bo Zhong, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, and Nina Mazar, Assistant Professor of Marketing, asked the question, ‘Do Green Products Make Us Better People?’ now in press at the journal Psychological Science.

The answer, according to the article’s abstract is, probably not.

“In line with the halo associated with green consumerism, people act more altruistically after mere exposure to green than conventional products. However, people act less altruistically and are more likely to cheat and steal after purchasing green products as opposed to conventional products.”

In layperson language, good examples encourage good behavior, but good behavior can justify bad behavior later.

The researchers set up three experiments with a total of 305 students at the University of Toronto. Subjects were tested to see if buying green products creates enough “moral credentials” to encourage them to lie and steal for their own advantage.

The results were clear, and depressing. It does.

The study attributes this to what the authors call, “the licensing effect,” whereby “virtuous acts can license subsequent asocial and unethical behaviors.”

In other words, I’ve been really good so now I get to be bad.

This is interesting because it offers insight into a lot of behavior way outside the scope of the experiment.

Did you ever wonder how pedophile priests justify their betrayal of their oaths, their parishioners, and their duty to God? “Climate change activists” who travel about in chartered jets and chauffeured limos, leaving carbon footprints the size of a small town? Idealistic politicians who get on the gravy train to enrich themselves after just a short time in office? Animal rights activists who treat mere people like dirt?

Explanations offered for this include: they’re hypocrites, they’re phonies enlisting in a cause they don’t really believe in but find more profitable than working for a living, or they’re degenerates infiltrating a respected institution to gain access to innocent victims.

It could be all of these, but maybe it’s also something else. Maybe it’s the licensing effect.

As I read the study, I started to get the feeling I’ve seen this movie before. Literally.

Silver Bullet is a 1985 movie based on Stephen King’s novella, ‘Cycle of the Werewolf,’ starring the late Corey Haim, Gary Busey, and Everett McGill.

The story is, a crippled boy Marty Coslaw (Heim) believes a werewolf is behind a series of grisly murders in a small New England town. The boy sets out to discover which of the townspeople is the werewolf.

It turns out, it’s the town’s pastor Reverend Lowe (McGill.)

Before Marty and his Uncle Red (Busey) manage to kill the werewolf with a silver bullet, the boy confronts Reverend Lowe.

The Reverend is aware he’s a werewolf. But, he tells Marty, surely all the good I do when I’m not a werewolf justifies ripping a few people to bloody shreds once a month?

I mean hey, nobody’s perfect.

The medieval church used to have a practice called “selling indulgences,” offering absolution for certain sins for money. The revulsion caused by this practice eventually became one of the causes of the Protestant Reformation.

So now that feel-good causes have largely replaced religion in people’s hearts, is this what we’re doing? Buying indulgences?

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