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?