"The Only Reason to Vote Republican" (revisited)

The following essay is a re-run, but a very timely one.

It was originally published on July 9 in the "Birch Blog" on The New American's website. Within hours of posting this essay, I received stern, disapproving messages from my superiors at JBS, complaining that the essay undermined what had been described to me as the "corporate consensus" that the Birch Society would have to make nice with the GOP in order to grow and prosper.

What is remarkable about that complaint is this: The essay below cites the "Conservative Index" published by The New American to document and illustrate the points I was making. So I was, in effect, being criticized for making appropriate, if inconvenient, use of materials published by the JBS.

"Why do you insist that the Democrats would be better?" demanded my editor, Gary Benoit, in an e-mail. I replied that what I wrote was not anti-Republican or pro-Democrat, but rather anti-incumbent -- and besides, I asked, how could the Democrats be worse?

At least one other commentator, Laurence Vance, made similar use of that Conservative Index in writing an indictment of the incumbent Republican Congress.

Significantly, even though the JBS officials who fired me protested that blog posts like "The Only Reason to Vote Republican" were terminally off-putting to GOP-leaning Republicans, this specific post prompted a very favorable discussion thread at -- of all places! -- Sean Hannity's website.

And in recent weeks, several high-profile Republican-aligned conservative commentators and activists have openly called for the GOP's defeat in this year's mid-term elections.

I have reason to believe that "The Only Reason to Vote Republican" led directly to the decision to fire me from the JBS. I published it about three weeks after receiving a phone call from Alan Scholl in which my job was threatened for writing an earlier blog explaining how the GOP was cynically exploiting the immigration issue as a way of mobilizing the political support it needed to consummate the creation of a police state, which effectively happened on September 28, with the passage of the Military Commissions Act. On the same date, the Mark Foley scandal broke.

Interestingly, the final essays I published in this space before being fired all dealt with various ways in which the Republican leadership supports torture and perversion -- traits now widely understood by an increasingly disgusted electorate.

My offense, apparently, was to take the JBS's principles (and published works, like the Conservative Index) too seriously, and being ahead of the curve. That's a self-serving view, I admit, but it makes a certain sense -- unlike the explanations currently being handed out by Appleton to justify my termination.





The Only Reason to Vote Republican

Sunday, July 9, 2006, 11:28 PM

Unless your Congressman is named Ron Paul, he doesn't deserve to be re-elected.

On at least one occasion during the last congressional term, every member of the House of Representatives – Dr. Paul being the sole exception – violated his oath of office by voting in favor of unconstitutional legislation; this is documented by the most recent installment of The New American's Conservative Index (CI).

The CI is not a comprehensive survey of congressional votes; it does, however, provide a useful core sample of the convictions – such as they are – of Congressmen and Senators by examining their votes on clear-cut constitutional issues.

For the House, the average CI score in this installment was 36 percent. Vermont Representative Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist, actually out-performed the average, and several supposedly conservative Republicans, by running up a cumulative score of 37 percent. The New American has described as “Sanderistas” those Republicans (such as former House Majority Leader Tom Delay – 37 percent) whose CI rating is identical to that of Vermont's lefty Independent, or those (like DeLay's replacement John Boehner – 34 percent) whose performance was even worse.

Newt Gingrich, who successfully co-opted the 1994 Republican “revolution” that led to the seizure of the House from the Democrats, consistently voted to the left of Sanders.

The chief difference between Sanders and the Republican “conservatives” who flank him to the left is found in the preferred beneficiaries of wealth redistribution. Republicans generally favor corporate welfare, while lefties of the Sanders type are wedded to Big Labor and Welfare State constituencies. Both parties – or, better stated, both appendages of the ruling Establishment Party – have become nothing more than elaborate political support systems for deeply entrenched constituencies.

Which is one of many reasons why Rep. Paul is so valuable.

In a profile of Rep. Paul that suppurates befuddled condescension, the Washington Post describes him as a “rare breed” in this era of lock-step (or goose-step, in the case of a GOP increasingly defined by fuhrerprinzip) party discipline: “Democrats and Republicans have been quite disciplined in recent years – when party leaders say `jump,' the savvy congressman had better inquire how high.”

Dr. Paul, however, insists on treating his oath to uphold the Constitution as, well, a solemn promise before God to his constituents. Which is why he is a living rebuke to the hypocritical collectivists who infest the Republican Party, and utterly mystifying to the retread socialists who publish the Post.

“Republican Ron Paul missed out on the 19th century, but he admires it from afar,” writes the Post in a witticism that's as limp as an un-medicated Rush Limbaugh. “He speaks lovingly of the good old days before things like Social Security and Medicaid existed, before the federal government outlawed drugs like heroin. In his legislative fantasies, the amiable Texas congressman would do away with the CIA and the Federal Reserve. He'd reinstate the gold standard. He'd get rid of the Department of Education and leave the business of schooling to local governments, because he believes that's what the Constitution intended.”

Note how the Post treats those prescriptions (particularly those dealing with education ) as whimsical personal opinions, rather than -- as Paul demonstrated to the reporter – strict application of the actual text of the Constitution. (In what was almost certainly a long overdue primer on the charter of our republic, Paul introduced the Post report to Article I, Section 8, which specifies every purpose for which Congress can appropriate money.)

Rep. Paul has a well-earned and altogether commendable reputation for voting against nearly every proposed law -- perhaps acting on the unassailable insight that in a society suffocating, as is ours, beneath countless positivist laws, the only defensible legislative course is to begin repealing them.

After all, the only Being in the universe who has a right to impose laws originally gave us ten, and He eventually condensed them into two.

Dr. Paul also understands that everything government does is backed by the threat of lethal violence – often implicitly, but to an increasing extent, overtly. Once the Constitution, which is intended to restrain and control government, is cast aside, that power is emancipated and deployed on behalf of whatever individual or faction can seize control of it, and will be used to the extent the victors can get away with it.

In principle, the only alternative to the Constitution is kto kogo? -- Lenin's “who does what to whom” dichotomy, which – when coupled with his ideology of rule (“power without limit, resting directly on force”) -- provides the formula for the Total State.

Over at the More Liberty Blog, Richard Wilkins observes:

“Last Friday, the House Republicans passed a resolution attacking the media for daring to inform the public about the government's efforts to spy on them. Early this year, the GOP House leadership pushed a bill through the House outlawing "price gouging.” Now they are attacking the press. First economic crimes, now attacks on the media for displeasing the State. Maybe GOP really stands for Grand Old Politburo.”

If you're content to settle for this -- if you believe that unchecked profligacy, open-ended foreign war, and canine subservience to a lawless executive should be rewarded -- then by all means, vote Republican this November.

What Do We Do? Fight Them, Until We Can't

“... the liberty of my country is gone, and I go after it!”

Patriot-martyr James Otis, reacting to a speech offered by Tory Timothy Ruggles during a meeting of the Massachusetts Assembly in 1769; Otis then dashed from the House as if in physical pursuit of the freedom that had fled from America's shores.





“What do we do now?”
“Same thing we always do – fight them until we can't.”

Kara “Starbuck” Thrace, answering a question from her compatriot Tyrol as they contemplate life under the tyrannical Cylon occupation, on “Battlestar Galactica.”


Freedom has fled our country. Tyranny has descended, albeit in tiny but perceptible increments -- much like the first modest droplets that prefigure a deluge of Noachian proportions.

Before September 28, we were still, in principle, a relatively free country. Today we are, in principle, a nation of slaves – or at least we will be as soon as the demented little pseudo-male in the White House puts crayon to parchment and signs the Military Commissions Act into “law.”

As late as a month ago, it was possible to prevent this outcome. Now it's all over but the sound of one Sharpie marker scratching out the Bushling's appropriately childish signature.

Many people – including some I once thought cared about freedom – will contend that this assessment is both alarmist and defeatist, since for the most part we'll be able to go about our business.

But this misses the point. In principle, our freedom of movement and the other liberties that were given to us by our Creator are now conditional and revocable at the whim of the insensate clod who defiles the White House. Once again, this means that although in practice we may behave as free people, in principle we're slaves.

John Locke taught this principle to the anti-government extremists and miscellaneous reprobates who won our independence from Great Britain. Slavery, Locke pointed out, consists of being "subject to the incessant, uncertain, arbitrary will of another man" and that "absolute arbitrary power" is the practice of "governing without settled standing laws."

The Bushling, under the Military Commission Act, can imprison and torture anyone he chooses to designate as an “unlawful enemy combatant.” And through the use of “signing statements,” he can set aside the substance of any duly enacted law by invoking his supposed authority as a “war president” (this is most commonly known as the doctrine of the “unitary executive”).

True, these powers have already been exercised, but only (for the most part) against foreigners and a few disreputable US citizens, such as Jose Padilla. This, like the illegal surveillance of domestic phone calls and other impositions, was done without express legislative consent – until September 28, 2006, The Day Liberty Died.

“But we're still freer than people in Cuba, Iran, China, or Russia, or Syria, or Saudi Arabia,” many will contend. No, we're not – in principle. As is the case with Cubans, Iranians, Chinese, Russians, Syrians, and subjects of the House of Saud, our freedoms are contingent on the continued grace of our master and his duly appointed agents. They may leave us alone entirely; they may impose upon us slightly; they may suddenly descend on us in fury to deprive us of our homes, our families, and our lives. According to what our rulers are pleased to call the “law,” the choice is entirely theirs.

“A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master, who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the last extremes of injustice and oppression,” wrote Edward Gibbon , getting the principle right even if he applies it somewhat dubiously to the fate of pagans under Emperor Theodosius. We should remember that proverb whenever some lickspittle like Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh advises us that George the Bold – slayer of Zarqawi and “liberator” of Iraq and Afghanistan – is both good and wise, and will only take but a few of our rights away for the greater good.

Of either Limbaugh or Hannity it can be said: He has the soul of a kapo – assuming, of course, that he has a soul of any kind.

The case of the above-mentioned Jose Padilla illustrates perfectly what the regime has planned for us.

Padilla, a US citizen, is an ex-con, a former gang-banger. By most accounts, he's a pretty loathsome fellow – perhaps half as loathsome as the typical tax-fattened parasite working for the world's most murderous gang, the Federal Government. He was arrested in Chicago by the Feds, designated an “enemy combatant” by Emperor George Witless Bush, and detained without appeal in a Naval brig in Charleston, South Carolina.

Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft made a dramatic announcement (appropriately enough, in Moscow) that Padilla was part of an al-Qaeda plot to smuggle and detonate a “dirty” bomb in the United States. Bush and his handlers insisted that the president has the authority to detain an enemy combatant indefinitely, simply on the chief executive's say-so.

When it appeared that this claim was headed for a Supreme Court challenge that the administration would lose, Padilla was released from military detention and indicted on various charges that had nothing to do with a “dirty” bomb plot. This way Bush and his cohorts could protect the purported presidential authority to lock up a U.S. Citizen at whim – until that claim was ratified by Congress, as it was on September 28.

The prosecution of Padilla has shaken loose revelations – almost entirely ignored by what we're told is the “liberal” media – about the real reason he was arrested and detained for more than three years without trial or legal recourse: The Feds wanted to recruit him as an informant and operative, and he refused to play along.

In addition to being illegally arrested and imprisoned for three years, Padilla was tortured, according to a very plausible brief filed by his attorney.(.pdf)

“In an effort to gain Mr. Padilla's `dependency and trust,' he was tortured for nearly the entire three years and eight months of his unlawful detention,” reports the brief. “The torture took myriad forms, each designed to cause pain, anguish, depression and, ultimately, the loss of will to live.”

The chief torture method employed by the regime was isolation and sensory deprivation, coupled with efforts to deprive him of sleep. He was also “put in stress positions for hours at a time. He would be shackled and manacled, with a belly chain, for hours in his cell. Noxious fumes would be introduced to his room causing his eyes and nose to run.”

He was threatened with deportation to Gitmo – a place that this loser insists is a paradise on earth – as well as “being cut with a knife and having alcohol poured on the wounds. He was also threatened with imminent execution.”

Padilla also claims to have been drugged with LSD (which was developed by the CIA, let's not forget, for just such uses).

Why was this done to Padilla? The Regime's answer, in the form of a brief it filed opposing Padilla's right to legal counsel, is quite telling:

“Only after such time as Padilla has perceived that help is not on the way can the United States reasonably expect to obtain all possible intelligence information from Padilla.... Providing him access to counsel now .. would break – possibly irreparably – the sense of dependency and trust that the interrogators are attempting to create.”

Roll that statement around on your mental palate for a while. Then rinse, and spit.

Padilla, remember, had nothing to do with a terrorist plot. The Regime was simply trying to break his will – through torture – in order to turn him into an informant and, quite likely, an agent provocateur. The case for denying him legal counsel boils down to this: If he knows he has rights, we can't break his will; ergo – no lawyers for him!

Here's something else to contemplate:

Under the Military Commissions Act, “evidence” obtained through torture can be used against those designated “unlawful enemy combatants” by presidential decree. The methods used in the attempt to break Jose Padilla's will could therefore be used to extort accusations for use in “court.”

How would Americans – at least those of us who pay attention to the news – react if what we're discussing now were being said about Cuba, China, Iran, Russia, Syria, or Saudi Arabia? Bear in mind that most people who live in those countries never experience such things, yet we have no difficulty referring to the governments ruling those unfortunate nations as despotisms.

Yet for some reason most Americans cannot or will not face this unpleasant but insurmountable fact: As of September 28, the government that rules us has officially claimed the power to behave exactly like the regimes ruling all of those long-suffering nations.

Our freedom has fled. How many Americans are willing to pursue it, before the regime that chased it away catches up to them?

Jihadi, or "Jackass"? Either Way, the Joke's On Us

What if Adam Gadahn, rather than engaging in treason or sedition, is simply involved in an elaborate “Jackass” stunt?

Some people inclined to recreational self-destruction put leeches in their eyes, or commit self-lacerating acts of mayhem with heavy machinery. Perhaps Gadahn's conversion to radical Islam, and his emergence as an al-Qaeda spokesman, was prompted by the same masochistic desire for novelty. It's entirely likely that the greatest damage Gadahn will do to our country will result from the precedent likely to emerge from his indictment for treason.

Gadahn was indicted yesterday (October 11) by a federal court in California for providing “material support” to terrorists and enlisting in al-Qaeda. Prior to his conversion to Islam, Gadahn was a very nice Jewish kid named Adam Pearlman who lived on a goat farm in southern California.

In pursuit of madder music and stronger wine – well, not really, since Jihadis generally disapprove of music, and alcohol isn't halal – Pearlman converted to Islam and at some point reportedly traveled to Pakistan. From that distant clime Gadahn/Pearlman, under the stage name “Azzam the American,” has dispatched several propaganda videos praising the 9/11 attacks, issuing threats against the U.S., and admonishing infidels to join al-Qaeda.

“We have a US citizen who betrayed his country,” insists Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, oblivious to the fact that the same can be said of practically everyone in the federal government who takes a taxpayer-funded salary to carry out activities not sanctioned by the Constitution. McNulty insisted that Gadahn's broadcasts served al-Qaeda's cause by helping to “demoralize” and “intimidate” Americans.

Remember that description of Gadahn's offense well, since it will serve as a standard for future sedition trials, whether or not the FBI ever manages to lay its hands on the wretch.

"The war on terror is a fight for hearts and minds, and Gadahn gave himself to our enemies in Al Qaeda for the purpose of being a central part of their propaganda machine,” insisted McNulty. “By making this choice, we believe Gadahn committed treason - perhaps the most serious offense for which any person can be tried under our Constitution." (In fact, it is practically the only crime for which the federal government can prosecute citizens under the Constitution.)

While the description of Gadahn's alleged crimes may be extravagant, McNulty's description of the young man's behavior is plausible: He does seem to have “adhered” to a group identified as an enemy of our nation, an accusation that certainly should be tested in court.

However, Executive Assistant FBI Director Willie Hulon of the agency's National Security Branch was quick to extract from this specific case a general principle that is pregnant with lethal mischief. Gadahn, insisted Hulon, "represents a new breed of homegrown extremist, who has chosen to betray the country of his birth, and align with the Al Qaeda terrorist network."

So far, rather than being a representative of a “new breed,” Gadahn appears to be sui generis. Yes, it's possible that al-Qaeda sleeper cells have been sown in our home soil. But how many of those cells are composed of “homegrown” jihadis, rather than the imported variety? How can they be identified? And – the key question – what measures do the Feds intend to use in identifying them?

U.S. Atty. Debra Wong Yang, whose Los Angeles office prosecuted the case, accuses Gadahn of “advocating al Qaeda's terrorist agenda, an agenda that includes the overthrow of the United States government and the murder of American citizens.... The charges returned today by a federal grand jury demonstrate that the criminal justice system will not sit passively by while a United States citizen engages in such activities."

So far, Gadahn's “activities” consist not of planting bombs, but rather uttering abominable things. True, making propaganda broadcasts for an enemy in time of war is a criminal offense by any reckoning, but here's the rub: We're not at war. Congress has declined to issue a declaration.

And besides, al-Qaeda is a criminal syndicate, not a sovereign power. This means it should be dealt with primarily as an issue for law enforcement, rather than the military. Yes, that's John Kerry's position, but it's correct anyway – and by being right about this one issue, Kerry has used up his quota.

If the Feebs manage to find Gadahn, he would likely be the first U.S. Citizen to be tried before one of the special tribunals authorized under the Military Commissions Act of 2006. If convicted he could face the death penalty.

Should Gadahn be caught, prosecuted, and convicted, I think a better sentence would be to strip him of his citizenship and banish him from our shores forever, forcing him to live among the Mohammedans, which in my view would be punishment enough.

Yes, this apparently suits him just fine, at least right now, but chances are someone who was raised as a Jewish kid from California, and developed a taste for thrash metal, will eventually grow tired of the ascetic lifestyle imposed on followers of the Prophet. At some point he will ache to see women attired in something other than ambulatory tents, and to hear Biohazard rather than the ululations of the local muezzin – and when this happens, he will suffer.

Yes, I'm being facetious – about a number of things, including the possibility that Gadahn will be caught, since he's probably an intelligence asset, albeit a highly deniable one.

The Los Angeles Times points out that “FBI counterterrorism officials were aware of Gadahn for years.” While in California, “Gadahn had become close to two radical Muslims who were followers of the radical cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called blind sheik who is serving a life sentence in federal prison for his role in the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center.”

Remember the terror cells that were strewn about our country, and have taken root in some unlikely places? Sheik Omar was the Johnny Appleseed of the American Jihad, and he was deliberately allowed into the country by the CIA. In 1990, Omar was issued a visa by the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum, despite being on a State Department terrorism “watch list.” The embassy official who approved that visa was a CIA officer.

It's also worth pointing out that Sheik Omar was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, an international terrorist fraternity whose chief organizer in recent decades was Said Ramadan. According to Robert Dreyfuss's book Devil's Game, Ramadan became a CIA asset in 1953, and afterwards was involved in every significant phase of building the modern Islamic terrorist network.

After arriving in the US, Sheik Omar was brought into the bosom of a group of radical Muslims who had received training and support from the federal government; they became the cell that staged the first World Trade Center attack. Within that group was a former Egyptian army officer named Emad Salem, who was working as an informant for the FBI – and who was able to demonstrate, after the bombing, that the FBI had prior knowledge of the attack.

The Feds likewise had several informants in the Elohim City white supremacist redoubt that served as a key staging base for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. In fact, it's likely that there's not been a significant incident of this kind since COINTELPRO went into business decades ago that has not been run by people connected to the feds in some way.

Whatever becomes of Gadahn, and however he became the bizarre and repellent spectacle he's become, the real story here is that our rulers have now established a precedent for indicting and prosecuting those whose utterances are said to “demoralize” the public in the never-ending “war on terror.”

So if this is Gadahn's idea of an elaborate prank, the joke's on us.

Fencing Us In, Not Keeping "Them" Out

To say that Congress's vote to erect 700 miles of “secure” fencing along the southern U.S. border is an “empty” gesture is a felonious act of understatement. It is barren of any meaning save cynical political opportunism: The fence offers politicians on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border (which is slated for abolition in 2010 anyway) to strike faux-populist poses while screwing down the police state lid on their respective helot populations -- who are soon to be co-mingled in one polity, anyway (about which more anon).

Mexico is threatening to protest the border fence at the UN. Please forgive me for not being terrified by the news. Outside of the guild of professional wrestling referees, it is impossible to find a body with less credibility or power to enforce its decisions than the United “Nations" (nor should it have that power, of course).

The Bush regime's media auxiliaries have touted the “border fence” as testimony of the comparative seriousness of the Republicans in matters of border control. This is just one of several themes that the shills and spokesthings for the Grand Old Pederast Party have been throwing at the wall in the hopes that something will stick. This is done in the desperate (and probably forlorn) hope that the Republicans can change the subject from the perverted Page-Turners on the Hill – the scandal serving as the proverbial elephant in the living room as mid-term elections approach.

Illegal immigration, like terrorism and narcotics trafficking (all three of these subjects are related, naturally), is probably impossible to prevent, but can be mitigated through intelligent policies, such as ending “birthright citizenship.” Milton Friedman's insight that it is impossible to have a welfare state and open borders remains valid.

Were the US serious about dealing with illegal immigration, we would abolish birthright citizenship, scale back (preferably eradicate) the federal welfare state, end subsidies and other material support for Mexico's kleptocracy, and stop undermining the status of English as our common tongue. But this problem – once again, like drug trafficking and terrorism – is simply too profitable, both to the regime in Washington and its corporatist consorts, to solve.

The Cold War begat the behemoth called the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC), a self-sustaining, incestuous cluster of corporate interests and government bureaucracies that thrive on perpetual war. The Homeland Security State (HSS), which incorporates many elements of the MIC, similarly subsists on the persistent peril of terrorism.

The obvious selling point of the HSS is its supposed mission of protecting us from savagely bearded Mohammedans bent on swaddling our women in burqas, beheading infidels at random, and reducing the rest of us to Dhimmitude – a scenario as grim as it is implausible. But in order to “strengthen itself in exercise, and entangle [itself] in precedents” (to borrow James Madison's useful expression yet again), the HSS is working to exploit public concerns over illegal immigration.

A few weeks ago we learned that several major military contractors, both nominally American (Raytheon, Northrup) and foreign (Sweden's Ericsson), were in competition for a $2.1 contract to provide electronic sensors and other hi-tech hardware for the Border Patrol. The prize was ultimately awarded to a consortium led by Boeing (also known as the lead agency in Beijing's corporate lobby).

Query: With so much money to be made – both by corporate contractors and the politicians whom they ply with campaign contributions and other emoluments – from illegal immigration, why would any serious effort be made to end that “crisis”?

Query the second: With the United States and Mexico scheduled for consolidation in 2010 via the Security and Prosperity Partnership (commonly called the North American Union), why are huge sums going to be spent on hi-tech surveillance and monitoring devices along a soon-to-be-abolished border?

Apart from the corrupt enrichment of the political class, the obvious answer is that the border “crisis” is being used as a convenient way to build the sinews of our domestic surveillance state.

A good example of how this works in practice was offered by a series of raids conducted by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an appendage of the Heimatsicherheitsdienst ("Department of Homeland Security" in the original German) in the Northeastern U.S.

Noted one press account (and pay careful attention to the highlighted portions):

"Homeland Security agents took to Ohio streets the past week, arresting 154 undocumented immigrants. The agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices in Boston, Philadelphia, Buffalo and Detroit came heavily armed and loaded with files and warrants for deportation. They took in immigrants from 30 countries and every continent save Antarctica.... The men and women had been caught entering the country illegally and were ordered to court but never showed or had been ordered deported but never left, authorities said.... No recent event spurred the sweep, government officials said.

`Sept. 11 showed us that, to have security, we have to have an immigration system with integrity,' said Marc A. Raimondi, national spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Most of the Sept. 11 terrorists had taken advantage of lax enforcement, he said. `You can't have integrity if there is no consequence for abusing the laws or ignoring a court order.'

Among those taken were immigrants who had been in the U.S. for a decade or more. They must leave homes, jobs and maybe children born here who are U.S. citizens.

`If they had complied and left 10 or 15 years ago, that wouldn't be the case,' said Rob Baker, field office director in charge of detention and removal for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Ohio and Michigan.

He noted that, by the end of September, seven agents will be based permanently in Cleveland to cover such operations throughout Ohio."

In addition to serving as a pretext for the quartering of Homeland Security goons in local communities, the issue has inspired at least some local officials to petition the Feds to intervene in that fashion.

Here's one example:


"A state Superior Court judge based in Hazleton has written to Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff seeking more manpower in the fight against illegal immigration. Judge Correale F. Stevens, elected in 1997, has been hearing from county judges and local elected officials about the growing problem of illegal immigrants settling in Northeastern Pennsylvania."

Another example is provided by a Hazleton, Pennsylvania ordinance punishing people who transact business, hire, or, rent housing to illegal immigrants. That example illustrates how the immigration “crisis” can be used to compel common citizens to act as informants and enforcers.

After signing the measure, Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta said his office would “train city workers in how to check people's immigration or citizenship status....” He also asked the City Council to approve a measure “requiring all tenants to register with the city and prove their legal residency.”

Here's where the issue gets really interesting. Once again, pay careful attention to the highlighted portions:

"`We're also going to be talking with Immigration and Customs (Enforcement) to see if possibly we could receive some assistance,' said Barletta, who said he wore a bulletproof vest to the vote as a precaution because the issue was emotionally charged.... Other municipalities across the country also have considered acting to address illegal immigration. Ordinances similar to the Hazleton measure have been proposed in the Florida communities of Palm Bay and Avon Park and the California towns of Escondido and San Bernardino."

The bulletproof vest was most likely a gratuitous piece of political stagecraft. The intended message, most likely, was that radical elements among the illegal immigrant population (and their advocates) would take a pot-shot at the stalwart mayor.

While not minimizing the dangers posed by some elements on that side of the conflict – such as the toilet bowl crust in human form called coyotes who exploit, abuse, and sometimes kill illegal immigrants – it's possible that Mayor Barletta had more cause for concern about falling prey to an angry landlord or business owner: The Hazleton ordinance suspends the operating licenses of businesses caught hiring illegals, and authorizes fines of $1,000 a day on landlords who have illegals as tenants.

One need not be an advocate of open borders (I certainly am not) to experience a momentary twinge of misgiving over the idea of forcibly deputizing businessmen and landlords to inspect citizenship papers.



The most unsettling aspects of this ordinance (which was, predictably, immediately challenged in court by the ACLU), are first of all the fact that Hazleton is clearly a pilot project, and secondly, that this draconian experiment – creation of a “Your Papers, Please” Regime In One City – is being quietly supported and keenly observed by the DHS.

It is true, of course, that some communities along the U.S.-Mexican border have literally come under siege by illegal immigrants, as well as paramilitaries (from both the Mexican military and militias in the pay of that country's narcotics cartels – or do I repeat myself). But in keeping with Grigg's First Law of Federal Action (“Those problems Washington does not create, it exacerbates by intervening to impose a `solution'”), some people in those besieged communities have discovered that they may have more to worry about from the federal agents supposedly there to “protect” their communities from the invaders.

The Tucson Citizen recently reported that the Border Partol – which, remember, is going to benefit from the billions of dollars' worth of surveillance gear – has been seizing automobiles “based simply on the presence of a passenger who is an illegal immigrant.... The vehicle's owners then face steep impound fees and long waits to retrieve their cars....”

This practice was successfully challenged in court in the 1999 case Gete vs. Immigration and Naturalization Service – yet it persists to this day.
“It doesn't make any difference whether you're taking [illegal immigrants] to the grocery store or taking them from the desert to the hospital,” insisted Border Patrol spokesman Jesus Rodriguez. “There is no free pass.”

The same applies, of course, to people who car-pool with fellow workers who are here illegally.

“Are they saying we're supposed to check somebody's immigration status?” asks real estate agent Cecilia Gutierrez-Arce, a legal permanent resident of the US whose family includes “US citizens, illegal immigrants and a Border Patrol Agent.” “Are we supposed to be spying on our neighbors? Our relatives?”

Chris Simcox of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps answers that question in the affirmative: All Americans have the civic duty to issue the demand “Your Papers, Please,” and report illegal immigrants to the Feds.

“It would certainly have a chilling effect on employers,” Simcox points out.
It certainly would. And it would also certainly habituate Americans in the practice of acting as spitzel, chivatos, stukachi – each of those terms is the epithet “informants” rendered in German, Spanish, and Russian.

Obviously, the federal government has the constitutional responsibility to secure our borders and normalizing our immigration situation . And just as obviously the political class has abetted the problem, thereby cultivating a politically useful crisis. Now we're told that our choices are between open borders and bloody chaos, or the creation of a garrison state (the latter being the regime's preferred solution to every conceivable problem).

Many conservatives are convinced that a surveillance state within secure borders would be an acceptable arrangement. Apparently I'm not a genuine conservative, because that's not a description of any America I would want to live in.

North Korea has exceptionally secure borders. So did Soviet Russia under Josef Stalin. I'd like to think we could do just a bit better than that.

Tonight's Episode: The Tory Perspective, or There Goes my Severance (THIRD UPDATE; see comments section)

A brief preface:

This one is long and unfortunately heavy on history, but PLEASE stick it out. Toward the end of this entry I will share some very significant personal news that is directly related to the substance of this essay. Forgive me for “burying the lead,” but in this case it's necessary to do so.

In the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, those now honored as the fathers of American Independence were often disparaged as extremists – uncouth radicals given to hyperbole, ad hominem attacks on on King George and his agents, alarmist assessments of seemingly innocuous policies, and other off-putting rhetorical excesses.




Heading up the Department of Rhetorical Excess for the Freedom Faction was Samuel Adams, who was also its canniest and most effective organizer.

As Mark Puls points out in his splendid new biography Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution, Adams – although eclipsed by Washington, Jefferson, and his own second cousin John – was the chief instigator of the independence movement. To paraphrase James Madison, Samuel Adams took alarm at the first experiment on the liberties of the American colonists, and resisted abuses of power before they became institutionalized as policies.

During a 1761 conversation with John, who at the time didn't see the British government as a potential threat, Samuel “said he was suspicious of British power in the colonies and believed that leaders in London had `hostile designs' to rule over them,” notes Puls. “For more than a century, Britain had a `hands-off' policy concerning the colonies, but that attitude seemed to be changing.... Samuel told [John] to be on guard for signs of growing power by royal officials.”

The wealth and productivity of the Colonies had indeed provoked more than a few concupiscent glances from London. Once France was effectively chased from the Americas at the end of the Seven Years' War, England emerged as the most powerful Empire since Honorius woke up one morning in 410 AD to find himself hip-deep in Visigoths.

But debt is always empire's greedy and implacable consort, and London was looking to the Americas to pick up the tab. This meant, among other things, keeping Redcoats garrisoned along the western frontier – allegedly to provide security against terrorism from the Indians, but in fact to exact what London considered due obedience to its dictates.

As taxes were ramped up, efforts to avoid them escalated as well. This prompted London to begin a “war on smuggling,” employing “writs of assistance” operating in a fashion somewhat like roving wiretaps, national security letters, and other “homeland security” measures operate now.

And King George's administration created its own special tribunals – admiralty courts in Nova Scotia (from which the British had expelled the Acadians in the New World's first instance of “ethnic cleansing”) to prosecute those who ran afoul of the new impositions.

None of this was lost on Samuel Adams, even though most of the public was utterly oblivious to what was going on. He himself had been an elected tax collector, albeit one who displayed a pronounced indisposition to force people to pay up. The one good thing to come out of that disreputable job, notes Puls, is that Adams “developed a feel for the pulse of public opinion that no other local leader could match.”

But Adams, unlike the trend-sucking invertebrates that typify the contemporary PR industry and the cringing, timid sycophants who pay for their advice, wasn't content to “ride the wave” of public opinion. Leaders don't ride waves; they make them. This is why Adams made an issue out the 1764 Sugar Act when practically nobody else paid attention to it.

“In his view,” writes Puls of Adams, the Sugar Act “would lead to more taxes, more royal officials, and dependence on Britain, and eventually would render the self-governing legislatures powerless.... If an outside body such as Great Britain was allowed to tax [the Americans], then their liberty was gone.”

But Adams stood practically alone; nobody else in the political clubs or merchants' associations seemed to understand or care about the issue. He needed “to rouse the indignation over the taxes” -- which were imposed not just on sugar but on various other raw materials and finished products -- “and turn theoretical arguments about government and liberty into battle cries.”

This meant haranguing as many audiences as he could reach, using suitably alarmist and intemperate language, and then organizing a boycott of British goods that was calculated to provoke heavy-handed reprisals from London. This was intended to make clear and tangible the latent tyranny of London's policies.

Adams on one occasion defined his political strategy as: Put them in the wrong, and keep them in the wrong. He was, in a word, a provocateur. He was also an unabashed demagogue, both in the original sense of being a teacher of the public and in the less elevated sense of being prone to what some might now characterize as “violent” and “extremist” rhetoric.

And Adams was not at all afraid to tear into those he deemed collaborators with tyranny, including those who were passive out of a desire for respectability.

“If ye love wealth more than liberty,” wrote Adams in addressing that cowardly and sanctimonious lot as the War for Independence began, “and the tranquility of servitude more than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May you chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were ever our countrymen.”

Now, that's extremism. Would to God that our nation today were to come down with an epidemic of it.

Thomas Paine was a similarly gifted practitioner of patriotic invective, even though he didn't possess Samuel Adams' genius for organization (and was less commendable in many other important ways). Paine's most memorable – and important – use of his God-given gift of patriotic vituperation came in his treatment of King George in Common Sense.

The chief task before Paine in composing that Pamphlet was to provoke a sufficient portion of the torpid American public – not a majority, but rather an active, informed minority, who would influence a plurality – into reclaiming their sovereign rights from a government bent on centralizing power and reducing the colonists to peonage.

To that end, Paine directed his fire at the person of King George III, describing him as the “Royal Brute of Great Britain,” a “crowned ruffian” who was “nothing better than the principal ruffian of some restless gang; whose savage manner of preeminence in subtlety obtained him the title of chief among plunderers.”

This isn't to say that Paine believed America would be better off with a different king. Rome had some experience with this kind of thing, as Montesquieu observed in The Spirit of Laws. "Instead of being roused from her lethargy by Caesar, Tiberius, Gaius Claudius, Nero, and Domitian, she riveted every day her chains,” he observed. This was because, "If she struck some blows, her aim was at the tyrant, not at the tyranny."

What Adams, Paine, and other intemperate, insult-spewing “George haters” of the Founding Era understood, however, was that it is impossible to take aim at tyranny without targeting the tyrant as well. It wasn't enough to speak in diaphanous generalities about abuses of power; the abuser had to be named and shamed, along with his collaborators, both active and passive. When a political system had become corrupted into a tyranny built on loyalty to a man, those who agitate for freedom will have to deploy arguments against that man – that is to say, ad hominem attacks.

As the late Murray Rothbard pointed out, Paine “delegitimized and desanctified the king in American eyes.”

I'm not that familiar with the reaction of Tory pamphleteers to the attacks on King George and his agents. I would be willing to bet, however, that some of them -- while professing to sympathize with the grievances of their over-taxed fellow Americans, and acknowledging the troubling trend toward despotism – saw King George, the most powerful ruler of his time, as a persecuted “victim” of those rhetorical assaults.

As the British noose tightened on Boston in reaction to the agitation of the Freedom Faction, Tory publicists no doubt strove to find some way to focus blame on Samuel Adams and his kindred “extremists,” whose radicalism had supposedly precipitated the crisis, and whose unproductive personal attacks on the King supposedly alienated moderate and respectable people.

The Tory position, in a phrase, would be this: Samuel Adams and his fellow radicals are to blame for our troubles, because they pissed off the King and those who support him.

What would the Tory Perspective sound like today -- an era when America is living under another hereditary Emperor named George, who is also the most powerful ruler on the planet?

Transposing the basic sentiment into contemporary terms, it might take the form of a warning against “Feeding the Police State Through Hate” -- the “hate” in this instance consisting of rhetorical attacks, done in the style of Samuel Adams and Thomas Paine, against the beady-eyed, in-bred, bloody-handed little simian who presently defiles the presidency.

“The major problem in attacking the wrong-doer rather than the action is the natural human tendency to allow room for the wrong in sympathy with the victim of ad-hominem style attacks,” lectures this voice of what could be called Tory “respectability.” “ As critics of the Bush administration level personal insults at President Bush, his apologists defend every presidential usurpation of power and assault on the Constitution -- in the name of fighting the war on terror, of course.”

“Apologists for the Imperial Presidency play upon the natural revulsion of the uninformed for this type of personal name-calling and ranting,” continues this tutor in moderation, who insists that “principled Constitutionalists ... can agree that giving power to the offender by attacking the person rather than the action plays right into the hands of those who seek to exploit it.” The Bush administration “has almost perfected the art of exploiting this flawed approach, and are masterfully using it to excuse their abuse of the Constitution -- along with the alarming accumulation of power in the Executive Branch.”

The man who performed that feat of verbal contortionism appears to have been auditioning for the rhetorical equivalent of the Cirque du Soleil: He places the blame for our descent into presidential dictatorship on those who have been warning about it, even as he has studiously avoided engaging in the struggle against the all-but-consummated transformation of our republic into a Reich.

Indeed, had our Founding Fathers acted on counsel of that sort, the United States would never have come into existence. And following that advice today will certainly result in the extinction of what remains of our liberty.

The author of those words is Alan Scholl, a man for whom I have great affection and no little respect. My feet have been under his table on more than one occasion, and my family has worshiped alongside his. We have been the beneficiaries of his kindness and generosity, and until last Tuesday (October 3), I was a professional colleague of Alan's on the staff of The John Birch Society, for which he serves as Director of Mission and Campaigns.

On Tuesday I was fired because I refused to shut down this blog, which I created and maintained on my own time.

According to Alan and the others who made the decision to fire me, I have used this private, after-hours web diary to express opinions and espouse positions contrary to the purposes and principles of the JBS. They insist that I have given scandal to those who have erroneously been identified as the Society's “core audience” -- Bush-enraptured Republicans, the very people working most energetically to build a presidential dictatorship.

Alan, who is in charge of shaping the Society's campaigns, has said, in so many words, that the JBS cannot undertake a campaign to oppose the emerging Fuhrer-Reich because by doing so it would become a “pariah.”

Given that the Society is already routinely – and dishonestly – compared to the KKK and groups of that ilk, what does it have to lose in terms of its public image by taking a principled stand in favor of civil liberties? And what does it have to gain by passively “riding the wave” on immigration and related issues, rather than (forgive the mixed metaphor) distinguishing itself from the conservative herd by standing up for the Constitution, individual liberties, and the rule of law?

With the legal foundation laid for an American gulag, I have to ask: Is freedom worth risking one's reputation, and livelihood? We know the answer of those who pledged their “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.”

There are many, many good and capable people working in and for the JBS. Its principles are still sound, as is the concept behind its creation, which was to be the modern equivalent of Samuel Adams' Commitees of Correspondence. Those principles, and that concept, remain laudable and worthy of the attention of sober and serious patriots.

What the JBS needs, at the leadership level, is modest amount of Samuel Adams' intrepidity.

The New American, for which I was a contributor since 1990 and a Senior Editor since 1994, remains the finest journal of its sort in circulation. It still draws on the talents of many capable and principled writers, the best among them – now as it has been for some time – being William F. Jasper, the surviving Senior Editor and a very close friend.

Bill tells me that the Society is recovering very well from a tumultuous (and badly overdue) change in administration a year ago. Many key people, both volunteer leaders and former staffers, have returned to the crusade. The organization boasts a terrific media department as well as an impressive – and expanding – web presence.

It is my sincere hope and prayer that the organization grows and prospers – but more importantly, that its leadership quickly rediscovers the advertised purpose of the JBS, which is to lead an organized, principled struggle to restore our freedoms.

And by the way --



It looks like I'm not the only commentator recently pink-slipped for committing unabashed acts of "Bush Hatred":

"Comic Paul Mooney (most recently of Chappelle's Show) was midway through a taping of the famed Harlem theater's weekly variety show when the plug was abruptly pulled. Mooney claims the show's producer, Suzanne de Passe, told him material in his monologue had offended unnamed officials from Time Warner, whose chairman, Richard Parsons, heads the Apollo Theater Foundation's board of directors and is among the country's most prominent black Republicans."

"They wanted me out of there, the Republicans, the Time Warner people," Mooney insists. "They said I was Bush bashing, and it was hatred. I felt like I was in Iran or Cuba or somewhere." (Emphasis added.)

The routine, as Mooney describes it, was fairly vulgar, but not the sort of thing that used to get Lenny Bruce locked up. Were I in his place, I would have dropped the remarks about presidential daughters Jenna and Barbara, who are non-combatants, and focused entirely on the Wee Decider himself. Indeed, the bit that "killed" did exactly that: "Mooney also did a bit on how the letters in Bush's name can be manipulated to produce the number 666, proving Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez's recent claim that Bush is the devil. `The audience went crazy for that,' he says."

"My point is ever since 9/11, we lost all our rights," Mooney contends. "They're practicing on the minorities, but when they get good at it they're going to do it to the white folks."

As a fellow "Bush-Basher of Color" who just lost a job for giving offense to the Dear Leader and his followers, I'm not entirely in accord with Mooney's analysis: It seems to me that the regime is "practicing" on all of us without regard to color. I do agree with Chris Floyd's take on this incident: "[T]he ethos of the Leader-state officially ratified by Congress last week is spreading fast...."

GOP: Grand Old Pederast Party

"Were I to discover that my only possibility of happiness lay in excessive perpetration of the most atrocious crimes, without a qualm I'd enact every last one of them this very instant, certain -- that the foremost of the laws Nature decrees to me is to enjoy myself, no matter at whose expense."

Marquis de Sade, Juliette

Here are three salient facts about the Republican Party's ever-deepening pederasty scandal.

The first is that Rep. Mark Foley (who, had he not been elected to Congress, would be living in a van down by the river, like his more reputable brother Matt, the noted motivational speaker) conducted a cyber-sex chat with a teenage boy while Congress was voting on a war appropriation measure.

The second is that the highest echelons of the Republican Party knew that Foley was an active, predatory pederast – and encouraged him to run for re-election anyway.

The third is that the most notable – perhaps the only -- legislative achievement of the Republicans in the run-up to the mid-term election was to enact a measure legalizing torture by executive decree.

For all of the GOP's pretense of morality, for all of its flatulent rhetorical effusions in praise of virtue, the truth is this:

The organizing principle of the GOP is Sadism.

The Marquis de Sade was not merely a pioneer of modern perversion. He was also a philosopher (if that word can be tortured – forgive me, “coercively interrogated”) into applying here – of the Total State. For Sade, personal corruption and concentrated political power were co-efficients in the revolution to bring about the total state. In order to build such a state, its agents would have to free themselves from the restraints of God's law and conventional morality.

"If from immolating three million human victims you stand to gain no livelier pleasure than that to be had from eating a good dinner," Sade instructed his contemporary disciples, "you ought to treat yourself to it without an instant's hesitation."

His only criticism of the French Revolutionary reign of terror, comments historian Geoffrey Ashe in his book The Hell-Fire Clubs: A History of Anti-Morality, was that “the killing was being done from a bad motive, politics instead of pleasure."

Sadism is largely about gratifying illicit appetites, but it's primarily about eradicating moral restraints on individual behavior. Its chief objective is the liberation of the libido – not only sexual lust, but the lust for power. Where no restraints inhibit the latter, the former can easily be serviced as well.

Bill Clinton was singing from Sade's hymnal when, in an interview two years ago, he said that he exploited Monica Lewinsky for the “worst possible reason – just because I could.”

The same could be said by, and about, Mark Foley, as well.

When Clinton came under siege for his debased conduct in the Oval Office, and the corrupt means he used in trying to preserve his position, his supporters treated impeachment as a “coup” and rallied to his defense. Whatever depraved things Clinton did, his supporters maintained, the important thing was to keep him, and his party, in power.

The same refrain is now being sung by the GOP's leaders and defenders, led by the thrice- and currently-divorced "epitome of morality and virtue" (notorious for, inter alia, taking Viagra along during a weekend junket to the Dominican Republic, a notorious hot spot for sex tourism). The Foley scandal is a strategically timed dirty trick intended to depress the Republican vote, and give power back to the Democrats – which would be a disastrous setback in the “war on terror.”

This follows a conspiracy by the House GOP leadership to protect the pederast out of simple political expediency. And now the Republican leadership is defending the House Speaker who conspired to suppress the truth about Foley's alleged crimes.

The GOP's perspective on Foley could be tidily summarized thus:

Protecting a pederast is the price we must pay in order to continue slaughtering foreigners, torturing innocent detainees, and consolidating power in an all-powerful Executive.

Somewhere in hell, Sade is taking a brief break from his assigned duties – today, he was emptying Stalin's bedpans – to enjoy a furtive smile of satisfaction over the hypocritical depravity displayed by his Republican disciples.

I Can't Stand Bullies

Caveat lector:

The following entry contains no discernible traces of actual journalism, even by the admittedly unexacting standards that generally prevail in this space. It shouldn't be necessary to say so specifically, but the opinions expressed herein are mine alone, and I alone bear liability for them. And the most incendiary things said herein are not to be taken literally, any more than are most of the insults exchanged on the playground or in internet chatrooms. This entry is equal parts self-dramatizing memoir, self-aggrandizing puffery, pointless but hopefully diverting bloviation, and – quite frankly – an act of calling out the people who provoked what follows, if they're interested. And, in what I intend to be a unique departure from my rules of decorum, this essay will include a few examples of mild vulgarity.

Once again, reader discretion is advised.

Roughly a decade and a half ago, when my abortive career as a professional musician was winding down and my prospects as a journalist were firming up, I was briefly the lead guitarist for a band called “Antithesis,” based in Provo, Utah. (Yeah, the choice of name was my idea, and I fully take the blame for it.)

Our debut occurred at an international festival of some sort held on the campus of Brigham Young University.

We attracted a large and very receptive crowd, and with the consent of the people responsible for the room we'd converted into a concert hall (part of the main cafeteria), we played just a little longer than was customary. The audience was appreciative, and the faculty on hand seemed to approve, as well.

Then campus security showed up, led by a guy in his late 40s who was about 6'5” of petty authoritarianism. This guy seemed to think that playing past the established curfew was our idea, and that we had engaged in a minor act of defiance.

After we had shut off the power and started to strike the stage, this guy got in the face of the bass player, who as our frontman was somehow responsible for our supposed offense.

I busied myself with the task of wrapping mike cords and putting away my own gear, while listening to the unfolding verbal smack-down of our bass player. My friend was a mild-mannered, inoffensive sort, and he kept trying to explain that he had nothing to do with the decision to run a little long.

But Mr. Alpha Male Security Man wouldn't let my friend get a word in edgewise, cutting him off, shouting him down, and using his size advantage (more than half a foot in height) to intimidate a young kid who hadn't been looking for a confrontation.

Try as I did to stay aloof, I felt my mercury rising, which – in someone of Mexican-Irish ancestry – can be a dangerous development. “I'll just keep out of it,” I told myself. “Well, I'll stay out until and unless I hear the right word.”

Just then, I heard the “right word”:

“... you little smart-ass,” snarled the Security Chief.

That's the word, I thought, rising from my crouch and thrusting myself between my friend and his tormentor.

“Hey, Curly, why don't you just back the hell off?” I hissed, poking him in the chest. “We did what we were told, and you've got no right to treat my friend like this, you foul-mouthed, swaggering martinet!”

Or words to that effect. I specifically remember calling the guy a “swaggering martinet.”

The Security Chief (to whom I later apologized, and who wasn't really a bad guy ) snapped his head back and treated me to a look that was equal parts astonishment and evaluation, the former over the fact that he had been called out by a guy who called him a “martinet” (which isn't usually part of the ritual insults that are a necessary prelude to a fist-fight), the latter a natural male instinct when assessing whether you can take the other guy.

After the slightest moment's hesitation, the Chief shook his head and backed down, largely because he was in the wrong and he knew it – but also because he was pretty sure pushing the matter further would have immediate and disagreeable consequences. My bandmates had stopped what they were doing, gaping at me in amazement: I was the easy-going guy who spent our breaks with his nose in a book (at the time, I recall, I was reading George W. F. Hallgarten's Why Dictators?, an interesting if tendentious look at tyrants from Dionysius II of Syracuse through Mussolini).

Even though my right hand is permanently mangled from a street fight I had as a freshman with a guy two years older and twenty pounds heavier than myself (I put him down, but broke my hand in the effort), I've not been in many scrapes. Part of that is because I really hate fist-fights, as does any other rational man. Part of it is because as a believer I'm commanded: “If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men” (Romans 12:18).

When possible I'll simply walk away, and for decades that option has been readily available to me. Frank Shamrock, who knows from fighting, likes to point out that true self-defense often involves nothing more than the wisdom to avoid bad situations, and the conditioning to run away if necessary.

But I can't stand bullies.

Which brings us to the point of all of this.



Last night (September 27), while running errands, I made the mistake of listening to Mark Levin's syndicated radio show. For the mercifully uninitiated, Mark Levin is a squalid little fleck of snot who pollutes print, cyber-space, and the airwaves with his bilious brand of neo-Trotskyite bloodlust. He has a face for radio, but a voice that sounds like Joe Pesci on helium.

Had he not attached himself to Sean Hannity, Levin – who I gather is an attorney of sorts – would be panting after ambulances, handing out business cards at funerals, selling his brackish blood for a few bucks, and otherwise doing what he had to in order to scrape together enough money to pay his monthly NAMBLA membership dues. (I'm kidding, of course. Levin isn't a member of NAMBLA, never has been, and never will be. Even despicable pederasts have standards, of course.)




Levin makes a point of maintaining a discrete phone line for self-identified “liberal” callers, whom he invites on the air and immediately begins to insult in a way that calls to mind the proverbial nasty little kid who hides behind the playground bully. Almost without exception, the “liberal” callers are well-mannered, like the fellow from New York who called last night to offer a polite rebuke to Levin for calling people names.

“How big are you?” bellowed Levin to the caller, apropos of nothing. When the puzzled caller said he was about 5'11”, Levin – an audible smirk in his voice (yes, there is such a thing) replied, “Well, I'm six foot one! How much do you weigh? It doesn't matter – I could kick your ass all over the state.”

That's the word, I thought, wishing devoutly that I had about five minutes to administer a much-needed attitude correction to little Marky Levin.

Hey, Marky, you shiny-pated dweeb, you witless suck-up and Quisling, here's an official invitation:

I'm about 5'11”, too. I weigh about 275, and none of it jiggles. I can tear off 100 pushups in pretty strict form in roughly the amount of time it takes Sean Hannity to compose an intelligible sentence.

In a moderated debate forum in which you don't have your grubby little finger on the kill button, I would tear you apart like warm bread. If you wanted to take it to the ring or the mat, I'd beat your arrogant ass so hard it would make your queer lover die from a broken heart. (I'm kidding about the "queer lover" bit, of course, since no self-respecting queer would have Levin.)

You want to make this happen? Drop me an e-mail, bee-yatch.

The same offer is open for Sean Hannity, who's obviously too busy pruning his unibrow to crack the cover on a book, including the two he supposedly wrote.




Anybody who's seen the documentary “This Divided State” probably remembers the nauseating spectacle of Sean waddling across the stage at a speech in Orem, Utah, playing to a crowd of thousands of Republican partisans (the type of people who would have done “the wave” at a Nuremberg Rally), mockingly taunting the few liberals who had dared to attend the rally: “Here, little liberal; here, little liberal,” sneered Hannity as if calling a dog.

Such courage.

C'mon Sean – come out from behind the mike and throw down with a Bush administration critic in a forum neither you nor your buddies control. Or just come and throw down. I'd snap you like a dry twig.

The same deal is extended to self-designated “Culture Warrior” and supposed tough guy Bill O'Reilly, although I think Al Franken's got dibs. I don't respect Franken's political views, and his humor is hardly to my taste, but he's a former collegiate wrestler -- and that I respect. If O'Reilly were foolish enough to get in Al's face, Franken would ground and pound the splotchy-faced Prima Donna faster that you could say “loofah.”

I've had more than a belly-full of the preening, smirking, self-enraptured bullies who represent Bush-era, Fox-centered “conservatism,” and I'm sure that millions of others would say the same thing. They suppurate unearned, insufferable self-regard. And they've infected most of the Right with their arrogance. All of these guys are about two dozen stout ass-whippings shy of being civilized people, and I would gladly volunteer to help each of them catch up.

Abu Ghraib, U.S.A.

Senator Joe Lieberman, who lost the Connecticut Democratic primary to Ned Lamont but is running for re-election as an Independent, was the beneficiary of a September 20 fund raising dinner in Florida organized by shopping mall magnate Mel Sembler, the former chief fund raiser for the Republican National Committee.

Sembler is also the head of the Lewis “Scooter” Libby Legal Defense Trust, organized to raise money to pay the legal bills on behalf of Dick Cheney's former chief of staff. Libby is accused of playing a pivotal role in the Bush regime's outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame as a retaliatory strike against Plame's husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson. More significantly, Libby is believed to have played a similarly critical role in helping to devise the regime's policies regarding the detention and torture of terrorist suspects.

Lieberman has earned the gratitude and support of the regime and its mouthpieces (Sean Hannity being both the stupidest and most repulsive example) for the unqualified support he has offered Bush regarding the Iraq war and efforts to transform the presidency into a fully realized dictatorship.

Some doctrinaire neo-Trots, such as Bill Kristol's gang at the Weekly Standard, have suggested that Lieberman would make a suitable replacement for Donald Rumsfeld, should the incumbent Secretary of Aggression and Occupation be persuaded to step down. Others have gone so far as to suggest that Al Gore's 2000 running mate would make a good addition to the Republican Party's 2008 presidential ticket.

Lieberman may be among the most liberal members of the Senate regarding social and economic matters, but he is rock-solid on the two issues that dominate Bush-era Republican conservatism: Foreign war and domestic tyranny; he's unabashedly in favor of both.

Those eager to know who really runs the Republican Party could do a lot worse than study the career of Mel Sembler. He donated $100,000 to the 1988 Bush campaign, and his diligent and effective work as a GOP money-man was rewarded by an ambassadorship to Australia under King George the Elder, and one to Italy under King George the Dumber. He was given a presidential citation honoring him as a “Point of Light” by Bush I, and publicly described as “my buddy” by the inbred, mentally handicapped Bushling who currently infests the White House.



Prior to becoming one of the key players in the GOP fundraising apparat, Sembler operated a chain of drug “rehabilitation” centers called Straight, Inc., which was an outgrowth of an earlier federally funded program called The Seed. A 1974 investigation by the Senate Judiciary Committee found that The Seed employed methods similar to the “highly refined `brainwashing' techniques employed by the North Koreans” against US prisoners of war.

“`Treatment' at The Seed involved 12-hour days of brutal, confrontational group therapy, supplemented with beatings, and isolation if the teens did not comply,” observes investigative journalist Maia Szalavitz, author of Help At Any Cost, a terrifying expose of the contemporary Behavior Modification (BM) industry. “Food and sleep were also limited, kids were completely deprived of privacy, even in the bathroom and they were permitted no reading, music, TV or contact with the outside world. The Congressional investigation gave The Seed a bad name – but Sembler ... and a number of other participants in it believed it saved kids from the evils of drugs.”

At its peak, Sembler's Straight program ran nine “treatment” facilities in seven states. The program received funding from the same government agency that had underwritten The Seed. Straight built upon the Chinese/North Korean methods The Seed had employed by adding its own festive touches; for example, veterans of the program recall “kids being gagged with Kotex pads” and being fed a diet consisting entirely of peanut butter sandwiches.

Many – perhaps most – of the youngsters fed into the Straight program had no documentable problems with drugs or alcohol. Some of them were victims of sexual abuse who, once enrolled in Straight, were brow-beaten , or just beaten, into “admitting” a drug problem. The BM methods used in the program dictated that confessions had to be made in order for a detainee to receive certain privileges – including the power to inflict misery on newer inmates. In addition to being a mind-control cult and concentration camp, Straight was an academy designed to create sadists.

Straight closed down in 1993, but “its tactics live on in hundreds of similar programs holding thousands of teens, some even run by former Straight employees in former Straight buildings,” observes Szalavitz.

Private BM programs, some of which receive government funds, operate offshore in Mexico, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Samoa, and elsewhere. A popular variation on the same approach can be found in wilderness programs like the one featured in the short-lived ABC “reality” series “Brat Camp.” Tens of thousands of American teenagers are consigned to such programs, many of them literally kidnapped from their beds early in the morning by rented thugs who – with parental authorization – seized the teens, restraining them with handcuffs if necessary, and delivered them into the custody of the BM programs.

Many of those BM programs, observes Szalavitz , “utilize punishments banned for use on criminals and by the Geneva Conventions.” At facility examined in Szalavitz's book, “teens were found bound and gagged with nooses around their necks.” In 2001, Mexican authorities discovered a facility run by the Utah-based World-Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP) in which teens had been locked in dog cages. At a WWASP camp in Samoa, teens were sentenced to lengthy confinement a three foot by three foot box similar to North Vietnamese “tiger cages.”

Amberly Knight, a WWASP whistleblower who administered a camp in Costa Rica, testifies that “children were imprisoned in deplorable conditions that we would not tolerate for adult death row inmates in America.” When the atrocities at Abu Ghraib were made public, Knight was “horrified,” because “that's what they do [at some WWASP facilities] every single day....”

These BM programs are an outgrowth of the murderous fraud called the War on Drugs, and they developed and employed many of the methods of physical and psychological abuse now being used in the even more murderous fraud called the War on Terror. Sembler – a perverted little lump of arrogant corruption – is a human bridge connecting those two enterprises. And he's one of the most powerful figures at the highest echelon of the Grand Old (Torture) Party.

This is what those people do. It is who those people are. It is why they are Just Plain Evil.

The Grand Old (Torture) Party

Politically conservative Mormons and Evangelical Christians are divided by serious disputes over doctrine, but presidential aspirant Mitt Romney has found a way to bridge that chasm: He stands “foursquare behind the president” regarding his supposed authority to order summary imprisonment and torture of anybody upon whom he chooses to visit such treatment.

“The people we are facing are individuals who have no interest in the Geneva Convention,” insisted Romney during a swing through South Carolina to court the Evangelical vote. “They slit the throats of our servicemen. They target civilian populations for terror and destruction.”

The crimes committed by Jihadists are manifold and mortifying, of course, but given that tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in various ways – including decapitation – as a result of the illegal war waged by Washington, there's a moats-vs.--beams issue here that true Christians should recognize.

But “Theo-Cons” of the sort Romney is seeking to seduce would regard such sayings of Jesus as seditious talk – “moral equivalence” that would lead to “appeasement” of our “Islamo-Fascist” enemy.

Come to think of it, wasn't it the Theo-Con faction of Jesus' era who connived in his illegal arrest, detention, torture, trial before a Kangaroo Court, and execution? As I recall, their rallying cry was essentially identical to chief tenet of Bush-era American conservatism: “We have no king but Caesar.”

Jesus was neither a terrorist nor an insurgent, of course, unlike many others who had been imprisoned, tortured, and crucified by Rome. He was just One among many innocent people who got fed into the brutal but necessary machinery of imperial “justice.” The Empire had enemies, of course, and as Pilate understood, sometimes it's tragically necessary for innocent people to suffer in order for civilization to endure.

But I digress ... sort of.

During his most recent visit to South Carolina, Romney's embrace of the totalitarian concept of President-as-torturer-in-chief won the admiring support of the Theo-Cons.
“From his outspoken defense of President Bush on interrogating terrorism suspects to an appeal to Christian conservatives here Friday, Gov. Mitt Romney is increasingly trying to position himself as the leading conservative alternative to Sen. John S. McCain, R-Ariz., in the 2008 presidential race,” reported the Boston Globe.

“He's maximized his window of opportunity very well in South Carolina," observed Scott Malyerck, executive director of South Carolina's state Republican Party. ``He's hitting those conservative buttons that folks are concerned about."

Granted, Romney's positions on abortion and homosexuality have, as they say, evolved since his senate candidacy in 1994, during which he attempted to flank Ted Kennedy to the left. He was elected Governor of Massachusetts as one of those dreaded “moderate” Republicans, and more than a few local critics believe that his enlistment as a conservative footsoldier in the kulturkampf was inspired by simple opportunism.

But Romney put such concerns to rest, as far as South Carolina's Republican leadership is concerned, by publicly pledging his support for the Imperial Executive (a gesture serious Christians also refer to as “bending the kneel to Baal”).

John McCain has made similar efforts to court the Theo-Cons, and he probably would have earned their unqualified support were it not for the fact that he seemed to cavil over the question of torture. This would be understandable, since, as an “illegal combatant” in the war against Vietnam (the causus belli was fraudulent, and war was not declared by Congress – two reasons invoked by the bestial Vietnamese Communists to justify their horrific treatment of our POWs), McCain was subject to many of the same forms of “coercive interrogation” the Theo-Cons consider just and proper.

McCain's opposition as part of a dialectical charade, of course, but even pantomimed opposition to the Divine Leader is considered a severe heresy by the Theo-Cons. It is possible that McCain will find forgiveness before the primaries begin, and if he gets the nomination I could see Romney ending up at the bottom of the ticket.

In any event, Romney's presidential aspirations will inevitably provoke detailed media scrutiny of his religious background, including some elements of Mormon history, doctrine, and practice that will make for lurid copy.

For this reason, while in South Carolina Romney was confronted by Cindy Mosteller, a supporter of John McCain, who has concerns about how the historic Mormon practice of polygamy and the church's teachings about people of African and American ancestry would play with the voting public.

Another brief digression is necessary here.



The practice of polygamy was officially disavowed in 1890, although it continued sub rosa until the early decades of the 20th Century, and remains enshrined in Mormon scriptures as a godly ideal (and, in a theoretical sense, it is still practiced by Mormon men who are “sealed” to both a living wife and a deceased spouse; Mormon Apostle Russell M. Nelson, the LDS Church's point man of the defense of traditional marriage, meets that description).

For nearly 150 years, Mormon doctrine prohibited the ordination of black men to the church's lay priesthood and depicted black skin as the mark of a divine curse.
That policy was changed when LDS President Spencer W. Kimball announced a revelation in June 1978 lifting the ban on ordination. However, that announcement was coupled with a statement from the Mormon hierarchy reiterating its opposition to intermarriage between white and black people.

Exogamy had previously been treated as a problem because it would transmit the “curse” supposedly inherited by black people. Yet once the “curse” was lifted, the official opposition to “race-mixing” remained.

(Furthermore, according to Mormon teachings, dark-skinned people of American Indian ancestry, Latinos, and Polynesians also display in their complexion the mark of divine disfavor; God, as defined in Mormonism, is oddly preoccupied with melanin content as a form of color-coding for righteousness.)

Also likely to be of some concern to the voting public would be the largely ignored, but still authoritative, Mormon teaching that the Constitutional Republic created by America's Founders was merely a precursor to the advent of a Mormon theocracy. Shortly before being murdered in June 1844, Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith organized a secretive group called the Council of Fifty that was intended to be the foundation for a Mormon theocracy.

At the time, Smith was campaigning for the U.S. Presidency , an office to which he considered himself entitled by divine appointment. After the Council of Fifty was created, Smith was anointed “Prophet, Priest and King over Israel on Earth,” which meant (in the words of his loyal disciple Heber C. Kimball) that Smith was “the president pro tem of the world.”

This is a very interesting topic I will have to explore at greater length on another occasion. But back to Mitt Romney and the GOP Theo-Cons....

Cindy Mosteller, a devout Evangelical Christian aware of at least some of these issues, says that she's concerned about their political impact on the Republican Party should Romney become the front-runner.

According to an account in The State, Mosteller “had planned to ask the questions in an open committee session, but Romney nixed that idea by ending his short address with a final `thank you.' The governor then proceeded to meet with the media for about 15 minutes.

Enter Mosteller.

Sensing trouble, Romney aides hurriedly ushered reporters out the door.
Afterward, Mosteller said the governor did not answer any of her questions. She described the meeting as `very tense.'”

“This makes me sick,” complained Republican activist Cindi Costa, who had “pleaded with Mosteller not to confront Romney.” “Your personal faith is not game in politics. It’s a private matter.... [confronting Romney] besmirches her character. It makes her look hateful. This is not what we’re about. The party does not give religious tests.”
Mosteller's action was “awful,” complained said Spartanburg GOP chairman Rick Beltram. “She acted in bad taste,” insisted Katon Dawson, the state GOP chairman.

So here's where we stand: “Coercive interrogation” of prisoners, employing methods similar to those employed by the KGB, is a moral and proper policy with which no patriotic Christian can take issue, and asking polite – albeit – forceful questions about the religious convictions of a man auditioning for the most powerful office in human history is “in bad taste.”

If Mitt Romney were exactly the same candidate – the same vaguely Ted Dansoneque looks, the same privileged upbringing, spewing the same Osterized rhetoric – but was a Muslim rather than a Mormon, the Theo-Cons would hardly be as eager to denounce the use of “religious tests.”

The doctrinal differences that separate Mormon beliefs from mainline Christianity are as numerous and as significant as those dividing Dar al-Islam from the Christian world. In some ways Mormonism is closer kindred to Islam than it is to conventional Christianity.(.pdf)

Indeed, during the 19th century – particularly in the aftermath of the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre, the original September 11 terrorist attack – the desert-dwelling, polygamist Mormon theocracy under Brigham Young was often described in terms quite similar to those used in excoriating “Islamo-Fascists” today.

It's also worth pointing out that Mormons were on the receiving end of some of the most abominable abuses of government power in our nation's history, including an “extermination order” issued by Governor Lilburn Boggs of Missouri in 1838. A lot of this follows the familiar and tragic script of innocent people getting the worst of fights their leaders had picked on their behalf, but be that as it may, one would expect that Mormons, of all people, would be reflexively suspicious of unaccountable government power.

Just as we would expect that Christians, who worship as God Incarnate an innocent Man who was treated to every form of torment the perverse ingenuity of professional torturers could devise before giving His Life on our behalf, would have moral compunctions against authorizing any government to engage in torture.

Tomorrow: How a key fundraiser for the Grand Old (Torture) Party profited from illegally imprisoning and brainwashing American youth.