"Diplomacy" As The Art Of Cultivating Conflict

The purpose of diplomacy is to protect our independence and security through means other than war.

Those occupying the upper echelons of the Bush Regime define diplomacy as the practice of removing impediments to war. Indeed, for Dick Cheney and his cohorts, manufacturing pretexts for war is the highest form of diplomacy.

But then again, as Stephen Kinzer documents extensively in his fascinating (and infuriating) book Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, that type of perverse “diplomacy” has long been the Power Elite's stock-in-trade.

Of John Foster Dulles, scion of a family deeply rooted in the Anglo-American Elite, one biographer noted that “it was not too difficult ... for threats and interests to merge in [his] mind,” leading him to the conclusion “that the United States might actually have an interest in being threatened, if through that process Americans could be goaded into doing what was necessary to preserve their way of life.” Thus Dulles and his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles, arranged the 1953 Iranian coup that deposed Mohammad Mossadegh, thereby creating the conditions for several decades of stimulating conflict in the Persian Gulf that may well culminate in an apocalyptic war.

I hasten to clarify that the “way of life” referred to above is one in which the bulk of the American population dutifully submits to the benevolent supervision of the likes of Dulles – the anointed Guardians of the Bipartisan Consensus. Keeping the population perpetually alarmed over some foreign threat is a vital part of maintaining that sinister stability; absent such a perpetual crisis, at least some of the people would start agitating for a smaller, less expensive, and less invasive government.

So threat cultivation is necessary in order to ensure a rich harvest of government power. This is hardly a secret; it's been the common practice of rulers for as long as they have afflicted humanity. But the Bush Regime has distinguished itself somewhat by its vulgar, transparent lust for war, and its dogmatic refusal to explore alternatives. It's not their wealth that's being wasted, or their own flesh and blood being rent, by the needless wars they pursue.

To get some sense of just how alienated the Regime is from reality as the rest of us experience it, consider this: The administration's eagerness to go to war with Iran has alarmed Fareed Zakaria.

A little more than a decade ago, Mr. Zakaria – at the time managing editor of the Council on Foreign Relations journal Foreign Affairs – kicked off his career as foreign affairs columnist for Newsweek with an essay entitled “Thank Goodness for a Villain.” The piece contained this breathtaking specimen of Establishment “wisdom”:

“If Saddam Hussein did not exist, we would have to invent him. He is the linchpin of American policy in the Mideast…. If not for Saddam, would the Saudi royal family, terrified of being seen as an American protectorate (which in a sense it s), allow American troops on their soil? Would Kuwait house more than 30,000 pieces of American combat hardware, kept in readiness should the need arise? Would the king of Jordan, the political weather vane of the region, allow the Marines to conduct exercises within his borders?… The end of Saddam Hussein would be the end of the anti-Saddam coalition. Nothing destroys an alliance like the disappearance of the enemy.”

Of course, the Power Elite Zakaria spoke for did indeed create Saddam, for precisely the purposes Zakaria describes. As I've said before, rational people understand that sometimes it is necessary to create alliances to confront enemies; the depraved, power-intoxicated people Zakaria communes with prefer to create enemies in order to justify entangling alliances.

However, at some point Zakaria seems to have retrieved his conscience, or at least recovered his sense of the absurd. With the administration and its supposed Democratic antagonists lusting for war with Iran, and the Regime's media minions depicting Iran as a world-historic menace, Zakaria has taken up the unfamiliar role of dissident.

“Iran has an economy the size of Finland and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion,” he wrote in a recent Newsweek contribution. “It has not invaded a country since the late 18^th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?”

“We're on a path to irreversible confrontation with a country we know almost nothing about. The United States government has had no diplomats in Iran for almost 30 years. American officials have barely met with any senior Iranian politicians or officials. We have no contact with the country's vibrant civil society. Iran is a black hole to us – just as Iraq had become in 2003.”

Zakaria cites the account of James Dobbins, who served as Bush's representative to the international donor's conference in Bonn following the eviction of the Taliban. Dobbins recalls that the Iranians “were very professional, straightforward, reliable and helpful.” After dipping their toes in the mysterious waters of Washington-centered diplomacy, the Iranians wanted to take the full plunge, offering additional cooperation in Afghanistan and wide-ranging talks with the US on a variety of issues.

“Dobbins took the proposal to a principals meeting in Washington only to have it met with dead silence,” recounts Zakaria. “The then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he says, `looked down and rustled his papers.' No reply was every sent back to the Iranians. Why bother? They're mad.”

The current issue of Esquire offers a similar account of Bu'ushist "diplomacy" toward Iran.

In April 2003, State Department official Hillary Mann received a detailed four-page fax from the Iranian government. The document, which was sent through the Swiss embassy in Tehran (through which Iran and the US have maintained back-channel contacts) contained “a detailed proposal for peace in the Middle East, approved at the highest levels in Tehran.”

The Iranians offered to recognize Israel, cut off all support for the terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, banish or imprison all international terrorists residing in Iran, and to end its nuclear program. The message urged Washington to re-open formal diplomatic channels that have been closed for decades.

The Bush administration refused even to acknowledge the overture from Tehran. Former National Security Council official Flint Leverett (who resigned in digust following the needless invasion of Iraq) protested that the rejection would mean “an Iran that has nuclear weapons and no dialogue with the United States.”

Odd as this result might seem to those familiar with conventional diplomacy, it makes perfect sense once it's understood, once again, that the purpose of Bush/Cheney-style diplomacy is to facilitate, rather than mitigate, conflict.

As the estimable Charley Reese observes with characteristic concision, “The reason our so-called diplomacy hasn't worked [as most people would understand the term `worked'] is because the Bush administration position is this: Iran, unless you stop what you are legally entitled to do (enrich uranium for nuclear fuel), we won't talk to you about not doing what you are legally entitled to do. You can't have talks if your position is that the other side must give in to your demands as a precondition.”

But once again, talking with the Iranians is exactly what the Bush Regime wants to avoid. Direct talks with the Iranians, after all, might lead to a solution other than the war Washington craves -- and what responsible leader would run such a risk?

To The Gulag, But For The Grace Of The State, Go I

A "Crime" is invented: New Hampshire anti-tax activist Russell Kanning is "arrested" -- the common euphemism for an officially sanctioned assault -- for the supposed crime of handing literature to employees of the criminal syndicate called the Internal Revenue Service. It's not necessary to commit an actual crime in order to be treated this way.

To Brooklyn resident Matthew Jones goes the distinction of proving something long suspected by students of the institutionalized affliction called government: If they want to, the State's armed enforcers can find a “legal” excuse for taking away one's freedom even if the individual is doing absolutely nothing.

At around 2:00 am the morning of June 12, 2004, Mr. Jones was standing and chatting amicably with a few other people on the corner of Manhattan's 42^nd Street and Seventh Avenue. None of them was doing anything to injure or even annoy another living soul – or, for that matter, to disturb public order. Reasonable people that they were, Jones and his friends would yield to the occasional pedestrian who needed to get by, but owing to the hour the sidewalks weren't as congested as they would be during business hours.

Into this unremarkable scene wandered a badge-wearing pest who decided to arrest the inoffensive Mr. Jones on a “disorderly conduct” charge.

One might reasonably ask: “What manner of `disorderly conduct' can someone engage in standing still?”

According to the arresting police officer, Jones was “impeding other pedestrians,” reports the New York Times.

So a gun was brandished (every contact with a police officer involves the threat, however subliminal, of lethal violence) and handcuffs were applied to the wrists of the astonished and disgusted Mr. Jones. In familiar fashion, Jones was slapped with the additional charge of “resisting arrest” for “flailing his arms” as he understandably tried to wrench himself from the grasp of the dishonest, demented tax-feeder.

According to the account from Officer Momen Attia, Jones “refused to move when asked,” and then “tried to run away” when threatened with arrest.

Think for just a second: If the problem was that Jones wasn't moving, why did Officer Attia insist on taking him into custody once Jones tried to “run away”? And why was it supposedly necessary to place handcuffs on Jones and haul him to jail, rather than writing a citation – assuming (as reasonable people would not) that merely standing still on a sidewalk constitutes some kind of infraction?

The answer, of course, is that Mr. Attia, like many – perhaps most – of the criminal class we refer to as “public servants” is prepared to act on the totalitarian assumption, “That which is not expressly permitted is forbidden.” From that perspective, all of us who don't belong to the governing caste are lawbreakers subject to State-authorized violence at the whim of Leviathan's armed enforcers. And let it not be forgotten that each and all of us can be arrested at any time, because it is literally impossible not to violate some enactment – however pointless, arbitrary, or obscure – referred to as a “law.”

Christians understand that our hope for salvation resides in God's grace, not in obedience to the Law. As Paul wrote in his epistle to the Romans, “... no one will be declared righteous in His sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.” (Romans 3:20)

Statism rests on a diabolical mimickry of that principle: The purpose of what Statists refer to as the “law” is not to protect persons and property, but rather to leave the governed in a state of perpetual insecurity regarding their behavior, and to render them perpetually at the mercy of the State's enforcers.

It can happen to anyone, for no defensible reason: Denver Real Estate agent Alberto Romero (left, with his family) died after a Taser attack; Romero attracted police attention by acting strangely following what appeared to be some kind of seizure.

The subject's relationship to the State could be summarized in a transposition of a familiar idiom: “To the gulag, but for the grace of the State, go I.”

Don't think for a picosecond that those who operate the instrumentality of coercion aren't aware of this reality, and eager to exploit it when there is power or profit to be gained from doing so.

In a series of articles for Slate, Professor Tim Wu of Columbia University Law School examined the ways in which “American law is under-enforced” -- meaning that a tacit agreement exists between the government and the people not to prosecute every conceivable offense. This applies to “morality” laws dealing with such things as gambling, obscenity, and polygamy, some elements of narcotics prohibition and – most famously – illegal immigration. But the principle applies to myriad other “laws,” ordinances, enactments, codes, and regulations that we are supposedly obliged to obey.

“At the federal prosecutor's office in the Southern District of New York, the staff, over beer and pretzels, used to play a darkly humorous game,” writes the professor, who (I'm required to note as a fan of 1970s album-oriented rock) could be addressed as Dr. Wu. “Junior and senior prosecutors would sit around, and someone would name a random celebrity – say, Mother Theresa [sic] or John Lennon. It would then be up to the junior prosecutors to figure out a plausible crime for which to indict him or her. Those crimes were not usually rape, murder, or other crimes you'd see on Law & Order, but rather the incredibly broad yet obscure crimes that populate the U.S. Code like a kind of jurisprudential minefield: Crimes like `false statements' (a felony, up to five years), `obstructing the mails' (five years), or `false pretenses on the high seas' (also five years). The trick and the skill lay in finding the more obscure offenses that fit the character of the celebrity and carried the toughest sentences. The result, however, was inevitable: `prison time.'”

The point of this supposedly whimsical little drinking game, notes Wu, is that “Full enforcement of every law on the books would put all of us in prison for crimes such as `injuring a mail bag.'”

Portland resident Frank Waterhouse, the victim of the police attack captured in this video, was Tasered and shot with a beanbag round while videotaping this illegal warrantless search. The police justified this assault by protested that Waterhouse refused an order to drop the camera, "which could be used as a weapon."

It has to be understood that this is not merely a perverse little prosecutorial past-time, nor is it just a useful little object lesson. The “game” described by Wu is nothing less than a form of casual apprenticeship: Remember, it's designed to teach junior prosecutors to rummage around in the most arcane recesses of the criminal code to find some way to put innocent people in prison.

One might ask: Are there similar “games” and practices followed by prosecutors elsewhere in the United States? Well, where do pestilential specimens like Michael Nifong and Andy Thomas come from, if not from a culture in which “games” and other training methods of this sort are common?

We can see the success of such indoctrination in the fact that the United States of America now has the largest prison population of any society in history, with seven million of our fellow Americans either behind bars or on probation or parole.

In a larger sense, however, given the depraved appetite of prosecutors and police to assert their supposed authority, and the perverse ingenuity they have for transmuting peaceful, inoffensive behavior (such as standing still on a public sidewalk) into “crimes,” all of us could be considered part of the parolee population, subject to officially sanctioned violence and imprisonment at the whim of our supposed protectors.

A Personal Note

Please forgive me if my posts become shorter, and my schedule becomes a bit erratic. Korrin is once again in the hospital (as soon as I'm finished, I'm going to visit her). I deeply appreciate the kindness you have shown toward her and to my family.

The Dividing Line: HR 3835, The "American Freedom Agenda Act"

Reporter: Mr. President, following up on Vladimir Putin for a moment, he said recently that next year, when he has to step down according to the [Russian] constitution, as the president, he may become prime minister, in effect keeping power and dashing any hopes for a genuine democratic transition....

Bush: I've been planning on that myself.




Mr. Bush's latest thigh-slapper about formally assuming dictatorial powers, from an October 17 White House press conference.*

It really is this simple: Members of Congress either support the Constitution -- including all of that troublesome stuff dealing with checks and balances and non-negotiable guarantees of individual rights -- or they support some form of executive dictatorship.

How do we find out which Tribunes of the public weal (OK, I'll wait for derisive laughter to subside) take their constitutional oaths seriously and support the rule of law? And how do we ferret out those who support fuhrerprinzip, either actively or by default?

Dr. Ron Paul has assessed this problem with the trained eye of an accomplished surgeon, and he has cut to the essential question with the incisiveness of an artfully wielded scalpel: On October 15 he introduced H.R. 3835, the "American Freedom Agenda Act of 2007" (.pdf) which -- if passed by Congress and signed into law -- would demolish several key pillars of the executive dictatorship created by Bush before that edifice is completed.

Yes, I know: The chances of the measure passing are either "Slim" or "None," and "Slim" is saddled up and digging spurs into his mount.

Even if the craven and dishonest collectivists in the Democratic congressional leadership -- people just as disfigured by power-lust as the Republicans, but nowhere near as efficient in accumulating and exercising it -- were to permit that measure to reach the floor, they would never permit it to be passed. And if it somehow won congressional approval, the chances of it winning Bush's signature reside somewhere south of the possibility that the tangle-tongued little tyrant will repudiate his reign and start expatiating on the doctrines of liberty with the eloquence of Cicero.

But the point served by Rep. Paul in submitting that bill, and by liberty-supporting Americans in demanding that their representatives co-sponsor it, is not necessarily to see it enacted. We'd take that result gratefully, of course.

But something very useful can be accomplished merely by making it the focus of a nation-wide citizen campaign. The text of the bill describes its intention as that of restoring "the Constitution's checks and balances and protections against government abuses as envisioned by the Founding Fathers."

Point by point, the measure describes how the Bush Regime has made war on the Constitution -- through the creation of extra-constitutional military commissions; the presidential designation of U.S. citizens as "unlawful enemy combatants" devoid of due process rights; the effective abolition of the fundamental due process guarantee, the writ of habeas corpus; the institutionalization of the demonic practice of torture; the use of "extraordinary rendition" to outsource torture of detainees to terror states abroad; the employment of presidential "signing statements" to nullify laws; the practice of warrantless wiretapping....


The Bill of Particulars presented in the act is detailed, but not exhaustive. However, by addressing those specific abuses, and reversing the policy perversions that created them, the measure would bring our nation several important steps away from the abyss. Just as importantly, by putting congressmen on record about these matters, the bill will provide the public with a priceless tutorial regarding the true nature of our national representative body. A large-scale activist campaign based on this one piece of legislation could transform the Ron Paul presidential campaign -- whatever its outcome -- into a peaceful trans-partisan rebellion against Leviathan.

Consider this endorsement of the "American Freedom Agenda Act"(AFA) from Naomi Wolf, a former campaign adviser to Al Gore:

"Ron Paul was the first of all the presidential candidates, red or blue, to step up in this way -- and all credit is due to him for getting there first. May the others of both parties race to follow his lead.... A groundswell of millions of Americans of all parties rising up to insist on passage of the AFA legislation means that we are awake -- we get it -- and that we assert that an alert citizenry, not a whipped-dog Congress or a violently abusive executive, decides what happens in this nation still.

I am not a voter on his side of the ballot -- but I will move heaven and earth to support the passage of this lifesaving agenda.... There is no way to overstate how crucial this piece of legislation is. We are at a turning point, and without the restoration of the rule of law the `blueprint' for what I have called a `fascist shift' -- the closing down of democracy -- calls for scarier recriminations against citizens, greater tightening of social controls.... Without the rule of law we will be powerless as each of these assaults on liberty continue to escalate. With it we can fight back.

This is the answer both to those who say `What we can do?' and to those who claim (actually, sometimes whine) `there is nothing we can do.' And if we don't act on this now we will get the democracy we deserve -- which is no democracy at all.

Put aside your partisan ideal world -- sometimes issues simply transcend partisanship -- and if ever there is an issue that is above and separate from party politics, it is the restoration of the democratic system we inherited. There are good people and passionate patriots across the political spectrum."

There is nothing on the congressional agenda more important than the AFA, because if the "fascist shift" correctly discerned by Wolf is completed, our ability to change government policy, or mitigate its abuses, will be gone.

With the possible exception of the closely related struggle to end the abhorrent war in Iraq, there is no political issue more important than arresting and reversing our nation's descent into unalloyed executive dictatorship.

Get in touch with your Representative by e-mail, fax, phone, letter, semaphore, carrier pigeon, or telepathy -- or, preferably, all of the foregoing.

Hound him or her incessantly about HR 3835; hector, pester, harangue, persecute, brow-beat, upbraid and remonstrate with that public servant until he or she either co-sponsors the AFA or provides a formal statement explaining why it is supposedly unworthy of support. Make it clear that this is a strictly binary, either/or proposition: Either one supports the Constitution or an extra-constitutional executive dictatorship -- there is no via media, no "third way," no other choice on the menu.

Nothing cuts sharper than a clearly and cleanly articulated set of principles. It's high time that Congress felt the keen edge of the people's blade -- and Dr. Paul has put just the right implement in our hands for the job. Let's get to work.

Be sure to visit The Right Source and the Liberty Minute archive.
Dum spiro, pugno!

*Thanks to StrikeTheRoot.com.

S-CHIP Of Fools

"You know, I was amazed how easily people fell for the idea that we actually disagree! Um, Bill -- could you spot me an intern until next Tuesday?" Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, co-architects of the much-discussed S-CHIP program.

Nothing of substance stands to be accomplished as a result of the “debate” over the proposed expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) and Bush's veto of the same. The program, after all, is the purebred offspring of an incestuous union cloaked in the euphemism "bipartisanship."

A federal “block grant” program jointly created by Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, S-CHIP was passed by a Republican-dominated Congress and signed into law in August 1997 by a Democratic president whose fiscal performance placed him comfortably to the right of the incumbent Republican. As with any other welfare state measure, S-CHIP was designed to expand, and in recent weeks this objective has been stated clearly by both George W. Bush and by Mike Leavitt, the Bush Regime's minister for welfare.

In his veto message – a rarity, given that the Grand and Glorious Decider claims the power to nullify legislation through “signing statements” -- Bush pointed out that he sought to expand funding for S-CHIP “twenty percent ... over the next five years.”

After conceding his agreement with the Democratic congressional leadership that S-CHIP should grow, Bush claimed that his real intention was to see the program shrink: “[T]his legislation would move health care in this country in the wrong direction.... Our goal should be to move children who have no health insurance to private coverage, not to move children who already have private health insurance to government coverage.”

The disagreement here was based on an expansion of S-CHIP coverage to include “some families of four earning almost $83,000 a year,” which would mean turning the program into a middle-class entitlement.

And let it not be forgotten, insisted Bush, that the S-CHIP expansion bill “does not fully fund all its new spending, obscuring [its] true cost... [and] raising taxes on working Americans.”

So Bush took out his veto crayon and went to work, spelling that challenging four-letter word with relatively little difficulty (although, to be fair, Dick Cheney helped guide the Bushling's hand).

This veto was cast by the same apostle of small government and fiscal austerity whose congressional minions employed blackmail, threats, bribes, and unethical parliamentary stalling tactics to pass an immeasurably larger enhancement of the socialized health care system on November 22, 2003.

This was done for reasons of vulgar political opportunism: Current and soon-to-be Medicare beneficiaries vote, and so the Bushite Republicans decided to bribe that chunk of the electorate with hundreds of billions of dollars to be stolen from the young and yet-to-be-born.

As the incomparable James Bovard recalls, the Medicare expansion bill – which was a pure product of Republican partisanship – actually lost when the Roll Call was taken at 2 a.m. However, the White House-allied Republican leadership kept the vote open for four hours while various arm-twisters bribed, browbeat, and bullied enough Republicans to create a “victory” margin. Even then, only two congressmen succumbed to White House pressure.

In the case of Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) -- who, to his everlasting credit, voted against the bill – the tactics included the offer of a $100,000 campaign donation to his son, a Republican congressional candidate. That bribe was coupled with a threat: Vote against the bill, Smith was told, and your son is (in the words of now-convicted Republican former congressman Randy Cunningham) “dead meat.”

Behind the gangland tactics and Banana Republic parliamentary procedures employed on the House floor, the White House was committing several varieties of perjury and and accounting fraud in calculating the costs of the Medicare enhancement. The White House's proud boast was that the expanded program would cost no more than $400 billion over the next decade (such a trifling sum to those in the business of official plunder).

Apparently that arbitrary figure was produced when some tertiary administration official pulled it from his emunctory aperture. And the White House was careful to cover up more rational cost estimates. As Bovard recounts:

“Richard S. Foster, the top actuary at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, privately estimated in June 2003 – five months before the final vote – that the bill would actually cost $550 billion. He was contacted by Democratic staffers seeking estimates on the cost of the Bush proposal. By law, he was obligated to provide them the information. Thomas Scully, the chief Medicare administrator, is reported to have threatened to fire Foster if he provided the information. Foster later commented that `there was a pattern of withholding information for what I perceived to be political purposes.' The much higher estimate of the cost of the Medicare bill was apparently known by top officials at the White House.”

Eventually the Bu'ushists admitted – long the bill was enacted – that the new Medicare benefit would cost at least $1.2 trillion over the next decade.

In a nice bit of hypocritical parallelism with the S-CHIP, Bush and his cronies deliberately shot down a proposal offered by 30 House Republicans to extend Medicare drug benefits only to seniors without private insurance coverage. And a study of the measure by the Congressional Budget Office concluded that because of the expanded Medicare program, “at least one-third of all private companies will dump their retirees into the Medicare system” -- which is an entirely predictable outcome.

So Bush's Medicare expansion was guilty of all the offenses that made the S-CHIP expansion so eminently worthy of a Bush veto. The chief difference, once again, is that Bush's enrichment of socialized health care is monumentally more destructive, since it constitutes one of the demographic cluster-bombs set to detonate as the Baby Boomers retire.

So when the economy collapses and intergenerational warfare erupts over Social Security, Medicare, and other old age entitlements, we should remember to express proper thanks to George W. Bush and his adherents.

"When we say `Don't trust anybody over 30,' we mean it!" The dystopian State depicted in Logan's Run imposed mandatory euthanasia at age 30; a fraudulent ritual called "Carousel" extended the bogus promise of "renewal" to those who qualified, but nobody ever did. That system represented one way to control old age entitlement costs -- not that I intend to give the supervisors of our quasi-socialized health care system any ideas....

The air was not rent with outraged cries from Republican-aligned media personalities when Bush got his Medicare expansion. Yet that same claque of concubines can be heard execrating the Democrats for their S-CHIP proposal – which, while bad enough, is nowhere near as disastrous as Bush's entitlement.

And efforts to defend the Chimpster's veto have broken new ground in partisan viciousness, including an unprecedented campaign to traduce young children whose catastrophic medical expenses were subsidized through S-CHIP.

That the benefits received by those families have no constitutional sanction is clear and important, but not immediately germane to this discussion – since we're examining the actions of a party apparatus that is utterly disdainful of the Constitution and incapable of fiscal restraint.

The only reason why Republican media whores -- from the Hogarthian caricature of egotistical gluttony called Rush Limbaugh, to the caustic little callat named Michelle Malkin – targeted 12-year-old Graeme Frost and his family was because his rebuttal to a presidential radio address was seen as an attack on the Dear Leader and the One True Party.

The same is true of the utterly vile suggestion, made by National Review's Mark Hemmingway, that the parents of Bethany Wilkerson, a toddler who received S-CHIP subsidies (and who stars in a Democrat-created political ad) made a “bad decision” by having children:

“Dara [Bethany's mother] admitted to me that she and Brian had been talking about having children since before they were married. She further admitted that after they were married she voluntarily left a job at a country club that had good health insurance, because the situation was `unmanageable.' From there she took a job at a restaurant with no health insurance, and the couple went on to have a baby anyway, presuming that others would pay for it and certainly long before they knew their daughter would have a heart defect that probably cost the gross national product of Burkina Faso to fix. But not knowing about future health problems is the reason we have insurance in the first place.”(Emphasis added.)

“I hope Bethany grows up strong — I’m worried about her,” wrote Hemmingway in the tone of sneering, condescending mock-sympathy that comes easily to comfortable people devoid of principles. “Not because I’m worried that the state won’t take care of her, but I’m afraid that her parents will continue to set a bad example.”

How dare Bethany's mother decide to quit her job before having children! How inept of the parents not to exercise oracular insight regarding the hidden medical problems that would eventually afflict their yet-to-be-conceived child! More to the point – how dare that family defy the wisdom of the Dear Leader, and publicly oppose the designs of his One True Party!

Such people really shouldn't be allowed to breed.

Having sloughed off the ideological pretense of being a conservative Party, the Bushified element of the GOP stands before us in the full majesty of its reptilian evil. It really is a totalitarian cult held together only by the worship of power.

"A sprawling apparatus of coercion, surveillance, and social regimentation? Oh, George and Dick, you shouldn't have!" --

Hillary the Red's delighted reaction as she unwraps her house-warming gift on the morning of January 20, 2009.


And the unfiltered nastiness of that cult's media allies will probably guarantee that in January 2009 our country will be blessed with a government headed by an unabashed socialist who will eagerly build on the legacy of her predecessor.






A Personal Note

Thanks, so much, for the prayers and very generous expressions of support for Korrin and for myself. I promise to keep you apprised of how she's doing. Your friendship, and concern for my family, are among my biggest blessings.

Please be sure to visit The Right Source and the Liberty Minute archive.

Dum spiro, pugno!

Briefly Considered: A Prediction Partially Fulfilled

"Dr. Bob Jones III, chancellor of the fundamentalist Christian university in Greenville that bears his name, is looking past his religious differences with Gov. Mitt Romney and endorsing the Mormon for the Republican nomination for president, he told The Greenville News this afternoon.

`This is all about beating Hillary,'Jones said. `And I just believe that this man has the credentials both personally and ideologically in terms of his view about what American government should be to best represent the rank and file of conservative Americans.'....

Asked whether Romney’s religion was a stumbling block for him, Jones replied, `What is the alternative, Hillary’s lack of religion or an erroneous religion?... `As a Christian I am completely opposed to the doctrines of Mormonism,' he said. `But I’m not voting for a preacher. I’m voting for a president. It boils down to who can best represent conservative American beliefs, not religious beliefs.'"

Greenville (North Carolina) News, October 16, 2007


"I venture this prediction: If the Republicans lose control of the House on November 7, Romney will be the 2008 Republican nominee. Christian Right leaders accustomed to a `seat at the table' of political power will wrestle with their collective conscience, and win."

Pro Libertate, October 22, 2006

"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."

Pro Libertate, September 26, 2006


If "beating Hillary" were the real objective, Rev. Jones would be supporting the only authentic constitutional conservative in the presidential field, the stalwart and principled Rep. Ron Paul.


But the grim, unyielding reality is that Dr. Paul -- a man who is Christian to his chromosomes, and loves freedom with every molecule of his being -- is disqualified in the eyes of Jones and his ilk for theological reasons: The God Ron Paul serves is Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace and Sovereign Lord of all creation, not the supposedly almighty State.




Mitt Romney, a man so empty he makes Peer Gynt's onion look like an over-stuffed calzone, worships only power. So despite differences over doctrine -- you know, relatively inconsequential stuff dealing with where and how we'll spend eternity, as well as how we're supposed to treat each other during mortality -- Romney and Rev. Jones are on the same page of scripture. To wit: An adulterated version of Romans Chapter 13.


I don't know what dwells within the heart of Rev. Jones or the other pulpit whores who have joined the GOP's seraglio. It is clear that where political matters are concerned, people of that ilk are entirely fixated on power -- obtaining it, retaining it, exercising it, cultivating it, serving it. Their kingdom is entirely of this world. They eagerly promote war and bloodshed, tyranny and torture.














A map, courtesy of Andrew Sullivan, graphically illustrating the geographic concentrations of Ron Paul's donor base.


Today, as he picked up Rev. Jones' endorsement, Mitt "Double Guantanamo" Romney also expanded his campaign team to include a national security adviser who blithely says he would commit or order torture "in a heartbeat." That fellow will be in suitable company with Mel Sembler, Robert Lichfield, and other prominent Romney backers who have profited from the torture of American teenagers.


A Personal Note

My friends -- those of you who are people of faith -- please, please pray on behalf of Korrin. She once again is seriously, dangerously ill, and I'm entirely at a loss in trying to help her. At present she's not in the hospital again (as I write, she's sleeping and we're receiving visits from a medical professional), but absent a dramatic turn-around, she's headed there once more.

This morning she was convinced that she was going to die. Please, keep her in your prayers.

In making that request I do not mean to slight or demean those of you, my friends, who are not believers. My faith is integral to who I am and how I view the world; it's why I am utterly obsessed with the matter of individual freedom and dignity, and why I detest war and tyranny to the uttermost depths of my soul. And at times like this my faith is the most important source of strength and solace.

I invite others to share it, but I have no right to impose it, even if that were possible: Each individual has to find it for himself. It's my hope that this is understood by those who share my passion for freedom but not my convictions about God.


Please be sure to visit The Right Source and the Liberty Minute archive.

The "Showtime Syndrome"

You've been protected and served! Josh Adams displays the wounds of honor he received while attempting to protect his wife from a criminal police assault. The injury was inflicted by a police-issue Maglite flashlight (see below a photograph of the bloodstains left on the floor of the Adams' home.)

Owing to budget shortfalls, Beaver Village, Ohio (pop. 464 as of the most recent census) disbanded its police department for several years, relying instead on the Pike County Sheriff's Department to handle emergency calls.

About a year ago, the village repudiated its blessing by reconstituting its police force, which consisted of Chief Daniel Seal, auxiliary officer Brady Ratzlaff, and officer trainee Adam Mather.

I say “consisted” because last Monday the entire force was suspended after an October 7 incident in which local resident Steve Adams was forced to make a 911 call to the Pike County Sheriff begging for help because “the cops beat my son up.”

(Listen to the call here.)

“Are the police there now?” asked the 911 operator, audibly puzzled that someone would be calling the Sheriff to intervene with the police.

“The police are there and they just beat my son up!” repeated Adams, his voice colored with exasperation. “The f****n' Beaver Police.”

As recounted in the Chillicothe Gazette, the police arrived early Sunday morning following an Oktoberfest celebration. Apparently, somebody in the village had been setting of firecrackers late at night, an act of unsanctioned civic exuberance that would have dramatic consequences for Josh Adams and his wife.

After midnight on Sunday morning, Josh, 34, and his 31-year-old wife Christina had tucked their three small children into bed. Christina noticed lights in her driveway an instant before hearing a loud, insistent knock. She opened the front door to find three men standing outside – the much-heralded Beaver Police.

“They asked me what's going on,” recalled Christina, a nursing student at Ohio State's Chillicothe extension. “I told them I have no idea what's going on, you tell me. They told me they saw me on my porch shooting a shotgun.”

This struck Christina as exceptionally odd, since she had never fired a gun in her entire life. Since the police hadn't presented a warrant or identified her as a criminal suspect, she did exactly the right thing: She denied them access to her home.

“I never even stepped out on the porch,” Christina continues. “I cracked the door to look out.... I told them I'm not telling you anything, I'm going to get my husband.”

Now, at this point, if the police had been concerned that Christina had been repelling an intruder, they should have said so, politely. If they suspected her of committing a crime, they should have said so, politely. In either case, what happened next was not police work, but an armed home invasion and assault on an innocent young couple.

Rather than waiting for Christina and her husband to return to the door, Chief Seal violated the family's property by placing his foot in the door (a tactic I've seen police use on many occasions) and then slamming it open. He then attacked the terrified young mother, tackling her to the floor.

When Josh came into the room and saw an unidentified man molesting his wife, he would have been within his legal and moral rights to shoot him dead, assuming he could do so without injuring Christina. Unarmed at the time, Josh ordered Seal to get off his wife. One of Seal's homiez responded by clubbing Josh in the head with a Maglite flashlight and then spraying him with mace. Beaver's “Finest” then handcuffed the couple and left them on the floor of their home.

At some point during the assault, Josh's cellphone fell out of his pocket. Christina was somehow able to flip it open and dial Josh's father, Steve, who lived nearby.

When he arrived to see three individuals standing over his prone and bleeding son and traumatized daughter-in-law, Steve understandably exclaimed: “What the hell are you doing?”

Ever zealous to protect and serve, one of the Beaver Police snarled, “Do you want to go to jail?”

Call it the "T.J. Hooker Model": A weaponized Maglite flashlight.

Steve then proceeded to make the 911 call, which summoned the Sheriff's Department and Mayor Rocky Brown. With their intervention Josh and Christina were released. Although Seal and his heroic sidekicks were suspended – much to Mayor Brown's dismay – no charges were filed in the incident. At a minimum, the three Beaver Police officers should be charged with felony assault.

Josh believes that the police were on the prowl for the elusive kids who set off the fireworks earlier that evening. “I feel like they were out to get someone that night ... there was no explanation,” he told the local paper. “It seems to me they were aggravated they couldn't catch these kids down here.”

For her part, Christina described her family's experience as “like something you see on TV” -- such as “COPS,” for instance, or “Dallas SWAT,” or any of the other “reality” programs that indoctrinate the public in the gospel of righteous police violence.

We could call this the “Showtime Syndrome”: Mimicking the behavior displayed by police in “reality” programs of this sort, many police clearly lust for an excuse to use overwhelming force in situations where it is clearly unjustified.

While Josh and Christina nursed their wounds, another couple – Richard Silva and his fiancee, Blair Austin – were dealing with the aftermath of their own “Showtime” experience, which took place on September 28, Richard's birthday.

Richard, who works as a federal contractor overseas, had just returned to Charlottesville, Virginia from three years in Afghanistan and Iraq. He and Blair were crossing the street on their way to a local restaurant when a Charlottesville Police SUV came roaring down the street on a collision course with several pedestrians in the crosswalk.

According to witnesses, the SUV's running lights were on but not its siren. Austin also recalls that the driver made a turn without a signal. Several pedestrians scrambled out of the way before the police vehicle came screeching to a halt a few feet in front of the crosswalk.

Startled and angry over what could have been a multiple-fatality accident, Richard Silva lost his composure, yelling something either “Slow your a**!” down, or “Slow the f*** down,” or some other outraged command of that flavor.

Whereupon the heroic Officer Mike Flaherty of the Charlottesville Police almost certainly said to himself: “It's Showtime!”

Blair Austin, photographed at the intersection where she and her finance, Richard Silva, were criminally assaulted by Charlottesville, Virginia Police officer Mike Flaherty.



Flaherty erupted from the SUV, seized Richard, and then began to handcuff him. Blair, who was wearing a formal dress and high heels, exclaimed, “Why are you arresting him?”

According to eyewitnesses, Flaherty replied to that inquiry by shoving Blair with both hands, knocking her flat on the asphalt.

“She hit [the pavement] so hard she spun to the ground,” attests Anjani Solonen, who was with a group of four students from nearby Liberty University.

“He hit her hard enough that it would have knocked me down,” added Chris Ryan, a friend of the couple.

As the cuffs were being put on Richard Silva's wrists, eyewitness Carrie Stuart yelled: “Don't you dare arrest that man – he did nothing wrong!” At about the same time, Blair had regained her footing and was making the same demand. The latter gesture prompted the bold and intrepid Officer Flaherty to instruct a back-up officer to arrest Blair, presumably for the crime of being on the receiving end of an unprovoked police assault.

A crowd of outraged witnesses had materialized by this time, some of whom dialed 911. The above- mentioned Chris Ryan collected relevant details and explained the incident to Sergeant Shawn Bayles, the midnight shift supervisor, who ...

... wait for it ...

... wait for it...

“...supported Flaherty's actions.”

Wasn't the suspense terrific?

After all, the department explained to the local newspaper, The Hook, Flaherty “is an experienced policeman" with a “good reputation” among his colleagues.

Aren't they all?

Sgt. Bayles also offered one reflexive comment that left Ryan puzzled. After Ryan described what had happened, Bayles replied: “Well, to tell you the truth, we've had a lot of problems with a lot of the young liberals going to college causing problems.”


The "liberals" in this particular instance, of course, were students from nearby* Liberty University -- surely the Mecca of campus leftism.

Richard and Blair were held in jail overnight. He was charged with “public swearing and intoxication,” and faces a $250 fine. Astonishingly, Blair, whose only “offense” was to demand that the police leave her fiance alone, was charged with “obstructing justice without force,” for which she confronts a $2,500 fine and a year in jail.

Remember, she's the one who was assaulted by Flaherty, the gallant Blue Knight sans pareil. A medical examination found that Blair had suffered injuries comparable to those experienced in a car crash.

Several of the eyewitnesses – including, once again, students from that bastion of tie-dyed cultural Marxism, Liberty University (more accurately called Jerry Falwell U.) – offered to testify on behalf of Richard and Blair. In that fact we can find a faint but precious flicker of hope. The same is true of the fact that this time, after so many recent episodes of unalloyed police barbarism, someone was at least willing to confront the police in the middle of their rampage.

Recalling the crowd's reaction as Flaherty shoved Blair to the ground, Chris Ryan remarks: “I though there was going to be a damn riot.”

There damn well should have been. It's long past time that we put the “riot” back into patriotism.

(Thanks to Jeri Lynn Ward, J.D., for tipping me to these stories.)

A BRIEF POSTSCRIPT ...

... courtesy of Radley Balko.

Common citizens, from the point of view of the State's armed enforcers, are literally worth less than dogs.

A Pittsburgh man was arrested and held on $100,000 bond for the supposed crime of yelling at a police dog to shut up.

The man was charged with "taunting a police officer."

"A police dog is a police officer. There is no difference under the law," belched Criminal Court Justice Gene Ricciardi. "They are not pets and they are trained in the purposes of law enforcement and anyone who would taunt a police officer can be considered a threat to the community."

Does this mean a police officer -- whether human or canine -- can defecate on my yard with impunity? Well, why not?

Please be sure to visit The Right Source and the Liberty Minute archive.

_____________________________________________________

*Thanks to DixieDog, a frequent contributor on our comments thread, for his timely and useful clarification. And thanks once again to Jeri Lynn WARD, not "Ryan," for catching a particularly embarrassing typo.

Ah, the perils of being one's own editor... and trying to type with two lovely young girls, ages 4 and 2, clinging to an arm apiece....

Dum spiro, pugno!