The Romney Candidacy, or Will The Saints Go Marching In? (Part 1 of 2)

For the Republican Party, particularly the Christian Right (or what I have come to call the “Ecclesio-Leninist” faction), the chief objective of modern politics is to preserve and expand executive power in order to continue the war against “Islamo-Fascism” -- and to ensure that the powers accumulated by Bush remain in Republican hands.

In the interests of achieving that objective, the Ecclesio-Leninists are willing to embrace electable candidates who may be regarded as less than ideal in terms of their positions on various social, economic, and theological issues. Their position could be summarized thus: As long as we can agree to kill 'em all, we'll let God sort out our moral and theological disagreements.

This is why Mitt Romney, who is perceived as the most conservative potential 2008 GOP standard- bearer, is gaining political traction with Christian Conservatives in the South who ordinarily wouldn't have anything to do with a Mormon politician.

As late as 2004, Romney was marketing himself as a “moderate” or “centrist” Republican. When he ran for the Senate in 1994, Romney actually tried to flank Ted Kennedy to the left on issues such as abortion and homosexual “rights.”

But in courting the Evangelical Right, Romney has made all of the appropriate noises on social issues and, more importantly, offered unqualified support to the Bush regime's seizure of dictatorial power (including the purported presidential authority to order torture of detainees). He also endeared himself to the War-obsessed Christian Right by inveighing against Mohamed Khatami during the former Iranian President's visit to Harvard. Romney, who has also been an unabashed supporter of the war in Iraq, would almost certainly support a war with Iran as well.

True, the Mormon Church teaches that all Christian denominations are apostate, and that only faithful, active Mormons will reach the highest level of “celestial glory” in the world to come. The religion teaches that God is an exalted man, and that those who dutifully follow the Mormon program will themselves be exalted to godhood as well. It diverges in many other critical matters of doctrine from Bible-based Christianity.

Romney's growing support among Evangelical conservatives demonstrates that these essential disagreements are no longer a significant political liability.

Who cares if Romney is wrong about how people can get to heaven, as long as he is willing to kill the “right” people? -- or so his Evangelical supporters appear to think.

This is a remarkable development for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that until about 116 years ago, the Republican Party targeted Mormon polygamy as one of the “twin relics of barbarism” (the other being chattel slavery) to be abolished through aggressive federal action – and Mormonism itself to be an aberrant religion akin to Mohammedanism.

Fair warning: The following portion of this blog is largely devoted to an examination of religious doctrines. Those of my readers who are of an atheist or agnostic bent will probably find it tedious and unedifying; those who are Mormons will probably find it offensive. I earnestly ask those who belong to either category to bear with me until the end, because I am driving toward a point that I think is worthy of your consideration, even if it's a little rough getting there.

When last I mused in print about the impending Romney presidential bid, I pointed out that Mormons actually have more in common with Muslims, on matters of faith and doctrine, than they have with mainstream Christians. To substantiate that claim I offered a link to an essay by the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR), a California organization of Mormon scholars whose mission is to defend their Church in the eyes of the public.

The essay(.pdf) is entitled “A Message of Friendship: Muslims and Latter-day Saints.”

I should point out that I am on record calling for a less truculent policy toward the Muslim world, since I think we have trouble enough in our dealings with Islam without borrowing any more. It is not my view that we can or should wage a “war of civilizations,” primarily because war by its nature undermines civilizations rather than preserving them, and secondarily because it's unreasonable to describe contemporary America as a civilized society in many ways.

That being said, this must be also: There are serious and insurmountable differences between the Christian and Muslim faiths; the truth claims they make are mutually exclusive. Which is why, once again, it's significant that Mormonism (as FAIR points out) shares a great deal of common ground with Islam (the following quotes are taken from FAIR's analysis):

*Mormons, unlike conservative Christians, find “truth” in the Quran:

"Latter-day Saints accept all truth, wherever it may be found, as part of our religion -- whether in the Quran or in other good books."

*Mormons believe that God as described in Islam is the same Being worshiped by Bible believers:

"Latter-day Saints recognize the terms God and Allah to refer to the same being in different languages."

As a matter of history, “Allah” was a Moon deity adored by Arab pagans (I use that term in its descriptive, rather than pejorative, sense) long before Mohammed began his career as a prophet.

*Mormons and Muslims both regard mainstream Christianity as degenerate, and the Bible as flawed and inadequate:

"Muslims and Latter-day Saints both recognize that after the coming of Jesus, divisions and apostasy arose in the Christian church.... Latter-day Saints and Muslims acknowledge that writings in the Bible, while inspired and truthful, underwent some changes as they passed through the hands of careless scribes and translators and conniving priests."

*Some Mormon leaders have actually acknowledged the prophetic calling of Mohammed as authentic:

The FAIR paper cites the opinion of LDS Apostle (and counselor to Brigham Young) George Q. Cannon: "I believe myself that Mahomed, whom the Christians deride and call a false prophet ... was a man raised up by the Almighty, and inspired to a certain extent by Him to effect the reforms which he did in his land.” Elsewhere, FAIR asserts that "revealed to Abraham and Muhammad many particulars relating to even seemingly small aspects of daily life.... Would God withhold counsel from us today in great matters when he [sic] taught Abraham and Muhammad even in small ones?"

There's a great deal to be said about trying to understand how Muslims think and what they believe, and seeking not to give offense unnecessarily. But this hardly requires that Christians concede key truth claims made by Muslims – regarding the purportedly divine origin of the Quran, the calling of Mohammed as a prophet, and the identity of Allah as the Supreme Being.

In fact, by professing two of those three tenets an individual performs shahadah -- that is, he converts to Islam. The Quranic punishment for repudiating that profession, either in word or deed, is death. Which is why countless Christian martyrs, both ancient and modern, have been willing to suffer torture and death rather than conceding even as much as FAIR did in its “Message of Friendship” to Muslims.

Mormon founder Joseph Smith was compared to Mohammed (the link is to a sectarian source, but the footnotes are reliable) in fact, during a bitter inter-communal war between Mormons and non-Mormons in Missouri, Smith actually offered the parallel himself. Referring to the Muslim refrain, “Al-Quran or the Sword,” Smith predicted that the time would come when Americans would face the ultimatum, “Joseph Smith or the Sword.”

There are other points of similarity as well between Islam and Mormonism. To name just two: Like Mohammed, Joseph Smith claimed to have been visited by an angel (Gabriel in Mohammed's case, “Moroni” in Smith's), and , through that messenger, to have received a new book of scripture; both Muslims and Mormons have practiced polygamy, and some fringe elements of both religions do so even today.

At this point, irreligious readers will ask, quite reasonably, “Yeah, and so what? Why should we care?”

It's understandable that those who are indifferent to religious matters would ignore them as criteria for evaluating presidential candidates. But how is it reasonable for professed Christians to ignore or minimize such matters when deciding whom to entrust with the immense, and ever-expanding, powers of the presidency?

Christians are taught that where our hearts are, our treasures will be also. For a large and growing segment of the conservative Christian community, the most coveted treasure is political power; so set is that cohort's collective heart on preserving the Republican Party's temporal power that it's willing to embrace a candidate whose views of eternal matters are, in some ways, probably closer to the Islamic “enemy” than their own.

"Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness"? For too many people who consider themselves Christian conservatives, power is much more important than righteousness -- power without limit, resting directly on force. Which is why, once again, I refer to such people as "Ecclesio-Leninists."


Next: Mormon theocratic politics, then and now.

Habeas Corpus Delicti

corpus de-LIC-ti (n) -- The material evidence in a homicide, such as the discovered corpse of a murder victim, showing that a crime has been committed; a corpse.

“This is not a time of rebellion,” points out John D. Hutson, dean of the Franklin Pierce Law School in New Hampshire and former judge advocate general of the Navy, referring to the Bush regime's suspension of the habeas corpus guarantee. “There has not been an invasion, and there's no evidence the `public safety' requires it. Let's not kid ourselves. This is not about an invasion. It is about the embarrassment of holding people who, if they got to court, could show they should not have been held.”


Hutson's assessment alludes to the fact that the U.S. Constitution does permit Congress to suspend habeas corpus “when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” The newly enacted Military Commissions Act (MCA) effectively destroys the habeas corpus guarantee for non-citizens within the United States accused of being “unlawful enemy combatants,” and undermines that guarantee for any US citizens thus designated by a “competent tribunal” appointed by, and accountable only to, the president.

Habeas corpus is the principle of law, innate to the Anglo-Saxon tradition of due process, protecting individuals from arbitrary imprisonment without trial or other judicial recourse. The fact that the Constitution provides for the suspension of that guarantee by Congress, under specific circumstances, is one of the three major disfiguring weaknesses of that noble text (the others being the Eminent Domain “takings” provision and the original language outlining the compromise on chattel slavery).

What happened on October 17, when Imperator Arbustius Minimus scrawled his childish signature on the MCA, could be considered an example of a “revolution within the form,” Aristotle's description of the process through which tyrants determined to acquire total power subvert the institutions of a relatively free society through deception, rather than demolition – using legal means and established institutions.

In our constitutional system, checks and balances only operate if those in whom political sovereignty resides – the public – are alert and jealous of their liberties. Most of the American public has either been anesthetized by the corporatist media, or intimidated into compliant silence.

The sound of liberty dying, pace Senator Amidala, is not necessarily “thunderous applause”; in our case, it's the amorphous babble of a terminally distracted population that has been indifferent to the fate of their freedoms.

Dean Hutson's analysis of the MCA underscores the fact that the MCA retroactively pardons Bush and his henchmen for illegally imprisoning and torturing innocent detainees rounded up and imprisoned at Gitmo and various “black sites” after 9-11. This explains why Bush was so anxious to get the measure passed before the mid-term elections. This presents us with a fascinating spectacle – the passage of a law that is itself evidence of a crime (that is, a corpus delicti).

But is it possible that immunizing Bush and the others who went to what Darth Cheney calls “the dark side” was the central purpose of the MCA?

This would certainly be in character – if we can wring from that word an applicable meaning – for Bush and his cohorts.

After all, as military affairs analyst William Lind points out, Americans and Iraqis continue to die in a war Washington knows is lost for the purpose of preserving George W. Bush's historic reputation.

“The `battle for Baghdad' is going nowhere,” Lind observed a few days ago. “A Marine friend just back from Ramadi said to me, `It didn’t get any better while I was there, and it’s not going to get better.” Virtually everyone in Washington, except the people in the White House, knows that is true for all of Iraq.”

“Actually, I think the White House knows it too,” Lind continues. “Why then does it insist on `staying the course' at a casualty rate [dead and wounded] of more than one thousand Americans per month? The answer is breathtaking in its cynicism: so the retreat from Iraq happens on the next President’s watch. That is why we still fight. Yep, it’s now all about George. Anyone who thinks that is too low, too mean, too despicable even for this bunch does not understand the meaning of the adjective `Rovian.' Would they let thousands more young Americans get killed or wounded just so George W. does not have to face the consequences of his own folly? In a heartbeat.”


From this perspective, Incurious George and his handlers just demolished seven centuries of due process protections, and are presiding over the needless slaughter of thousands, simply to protect themselves from the consequences of their own corruption.

Lind, in a phrase I devoutly wish had been birthed at my keyboard, predicts: “When history finally lifts it leg on the Bush administration, it will wash all such tricks away, leaving only the hubris and the incompetence.”

And CNBC commentator Keith Olbermann, in the most recent of the “Special Comment” segments he has devoted to chronicling our descent into a Bushevik dictatorship, chides Bush for not thinking things through as he signed the MCA.

Striking exactly the proper tone in addressing the Bushling – the weary condescension and tightly controlled anger of a disgusted adult trying to explain a rudimentary concept of logic to a spoiled, bratty child who has just burned down the family home – Olbermann inquired:

“Did it ever occur to you once, that in just 27 months and two days from now when you leave office, some irresponsible future President and a `competent tribunal' of lackeys would be entitled, by the actions of your own hand, to declare the status of `Unlawful Enemy Combatant' for… and convene a Military Commission to try… not John Walker Lindh, but George Walker Bush?”

Bush the Much Lesser is indeed a poster child for not thinking things through, and it would be delectable to see him hoist by his own petard. But it looks like someone has already established a ratline for Bush and his cohorts: According to a report in the Latin American press, the Bush Family has been looking into the possibility of purchasing land and settling down in northern Paraguay.

The corpse of our constitutional republic lies cold at our feet; her murderers have chosen an escape route, and the getaway car is idling in the driveway.

Cultists, Counterfeiters, and Cop-Outs

Bush's Conservative Critics are HELPING THE TERRORISTS!


Isn't it fun to see a mind-wiped cult adherent get caught in the coils of a cult conundrum?

Last month, the Bush White House convened an off-the-record meeting with the GOP's chief herd-poisoners: Talk radio personalities Mike Gallagher, Neil Boortz, Laura Ingraham, Michael Medved, and Sean Hannity.

According to yesterday's New York Times, the purpose of this session was to discuss such issues as the war in Iraq and immigration, and to ensure that these prominent exponents of the Party Line remain true and faithful in their assignment, which is to keep their audiences on the GOP reservation.

At the GOP's grassroots, disaffection has been growing over the administration's incontinent spending habits, the deepening morass in Mesopotamia, and the proposed amnesty for illegal aliens. These issues, as well as other conservative complaints, were brought up during the White House meeting. According to Medved's account, in seeking to parry those criticisms, Bush deployed his most reliable trope.

Reports the Times:

“Mr. Medved wrote about how Mr. Bush spoke about his commitment to his immigration plan in terms of the fight against terrorism. He said the president made a case that if he were to give in to conservative complaints, `the nation's enemies (and the rest of the world) would take away the belief that the president could be bullied, prodded, overwhelmed, and intimidated.'”

Which is to say: If Bush changes what passes for his mind about ANYTHING for ANY REASON – then the terrorists win.

This suggests to me that the Bushevik revolution has succumbed to a form of auto-immune disorder, turning its “you either stand with us or with the terrorists” illogic against those within the ranks who have yet to purge themselves of any thought or impulse not devoted to upholding and sustaining the Dear Leader.

North Korea's Counterfeiters, and Ours

Only someone whose sense of irony is long dead can contemplate the current North Korean “crisis” without indulging in a wry, bitter chuckle.

We can leave aside, for the nonce, the fact that the admittedly horrible regime in Pyongyang has been denounced as an “aggressor” for reportedly test-detonating a nuclear device – by a regime headed by another hereditary tyrant who has conspicuously refused to rule out a nuclear strike against Iran. (It's my view, by the way, that the Bush regime sees the Korean nuclear “crisis” as a back door to war with Iran.)

The irony I find indigestibly rich comes in this discussion of the various forms of organized crime pursued by Pyongyang .

North Korea's rulers “have held off political collapse in the years since the end of the cold war thanks to a web of criminal businesses backed by the power and military might of a well-armed dictatorship,” observes The Australian. Among those illicit enterprises is the production of “counterfeit $100 bills known to law enforcement agencies as [the] Superdollar. US security services have seized $US 50 million ... of the counterfeits since they began appearing in 1989, of a quality so high they are often detected only when they reach the Federal Reserve.”

Which is to say that the counterfeits generated by Pyongyang are nearly as good as those produced by our own regime's counterfeiting arm.

In fact, Irwin Seltzer of the Hudson Institute (a neo-Trotskyite-leaning think tank that generally embraces a bellicose foreign policy) points out that the explosion of Federal Reserve-enabled debt during the reign of Bush the Dimmer has actually done more to compromise our national security than North Korea ever could – and that fact has helped embolden the oligarchy fronted by Kim Jong-Il.

“It is the economic policy of the Bush administration that has hobbled its efforts to veto North Korea's application to join the nuclear club,” Seltzer opines. Washington's profligacy has resulted “in stacks of IOUs held by China,” for which North Korea is a surrogate.

Seltzer, predictably, faults Bush and the adults who script his lines and wipe the drool from his chin for their failure to “call on the American people to make some sacrifices, in the form of higher taxes,” so as to fund the ongoing and ever-expanding War Against Whatever Bad Things We're At War With This Week.

But we're already paying taxes in the form of inflation – the product of the Federal Reserve's officially sanctioned counterfeiting. At least North Korea's evil ruling junta, unlike our own, is smart enough to pay for its ambitions by counterfeiting some other country's currency.

As Bruce Bartlett points out in Impostor, his indictment of George W. Bush for sundry crimes against the Constitution, one inescapable legacy of the Bush era will be the largest tax increase in our nation's history. So deep and vast is the fiscal hole into which we've fallen, that we're likely to see both rampant inflation to monetize the debt, and extortionate tax increases as well. And let's not forget that another significant military engagement abroad will also likely result in the imposition of a “blood tax” in the form of conscription.


Conscience Makes Cowards of Us All

“The wicked flee when no man pursueth; but the righteous are as bold as a lion.” (Proverbs 28:1)

Earlier today (October 17), Pro Libertate correspondent Scott Watson reported on a congressional candidate forum held at Meridian, Idaho's Valley Shepherd Church of the Nazarene.

On hand to address the luncheon meeting were Republican congressional candidate Bill Sali and Constitution Party candidate Paul Smith; the audience included incumbent Representative Butch Otter (who is the Republican candidate for Governor of Idaho) and Senator Larry Craig, who really should retire from politics and find employment as a stand-in for noted sci-fi/horror character actor Michael Ironside.



(Senator Craig)



(Actor Michael Ironside)



During his turn at the microphone, Paul Smith “described 9-11 as an `inside job,' insisting that someone `pulled' Building 7, and that the whole incident was contrived by the government to be a pretext for war and the creation of a police state,” Scott recounted to me. “This made Senator Craig really mad; I mean, he was furious. He got up and walked out of the room. He clearly didn't want even to be in the room when such views were being expressed. He did come back later, but he was still visibly angry. This guy has been in politics for decades, and you've got to assume that he has plenty of practice when it comes to controlling his reactions – but it was plain to see that he was really angry.”

Asked about the reactions of other Republican celebrity politicians in the crowd, Scott said that Rep. Otter “didn't appear to have much of a problem” with Paul Smith's remarks, and that the reaction of candidate Sali – who was difficult to see from Scott's vantage point -- “wasn't so pronounced.” Scott videotaped the event, and as soon as the video is posted on-line I'll provide a link to it.

As I've said before, I consider myself a persuadable skeptic regarding the claims of the 9-11 Truth Movement. But whether or not the 9-11 attacks were an “inside job” -- Operation Northwoods on steroids, as it were – it's beyond serious dispute that the incidents were exploited in exactly the fashion that Paul Smith described.

Smith's audience included two collaborators in the process of turning our republic into a Reich, as well as another who is indecently eager to enlist in the effort.

Few Republican loyalists have displayed greater servility toward Imperator Bush than Senator Craig and Representative Otter, both of whom voted in favor of the Military Commissions Act (MCA) – the legal foundation for a literal presidential dictatorship. Sali's campaign ads – a slurry of regurgitated White House talking points – leave little doubt that if elected, he will gladly become the most docile, dutiful drone in the Collective.

Larry Craig is your typical high-viscosity politician, meaning he's unfit for civilized company. Craig describes himself as a conservative – whatever that etoliated expression means anymore – but it has been Otter's proud claim to be something infinitely more commendable: a constitutionalist. He is much more personable and much more knowledgeable about the Constitution than Craig – and thus much more culpable for betraying it by voting on behalf of the MCA. Otter's was a conscious crime against his oath of office, one that disqualifies him from ever holding another office of public trust.

Craig's retreat in the face of Paul Smith's political heresy was an interesting gesture for many reasons, among them the fact that the Senator's priority was to remain untainted by such blasphemies against the State, rather than trying to understand why views like Smith's have gained so much traction among sober, responsible people. That's because Craig – like practically every other elected official -- apparently views his role as that of representing the regime to the people, rather than protecting the people from the regime.

"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.