Posted on 03/16/2013 7:10:58 AM PDT by kindred
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Many years ago, when I interviewed the great avant-garde saxophonist Charles Gayle, I asked him about bitter criticism he had received for his tendency to preach a pro-life message in the middle of his concerts. “Yeah,” he said with some amusement, “they always call me ‘right-wing.’ Man, I ain’t got no wings!” Neither do I. And as the events of the past week have shown, I am not “right-wing,” either; nor, by the standards of some of the organizers and chief figures of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), am I a conservative.
Throughout my public career, of course, the mainstream media has insisted that my colleagues and I are indeed “right-wing,” and often even “far right.” Since the “far right” is the label generally given to advocates of authoritarian government and racist discrimination, this label, as common as it is, is a sheer calumny, since we are not only advocates of neither one, but opponents of a system that advances both. If working to defend the principles of the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the equality of rights of all people before the law is “far right,” then we should all be “far rightists”; but in reality this label is just a tool of the foes of those principles, used to discredit those who defend them.
But I am nonetheless generally considered to be a conservative. It is a label I have used myself, as a way of distinguishing my position from that of the liberals and Leftists who have generally sold out to the jihad, so blind in their hatred of Western civilization and the United States of America that they eagerly cast their lot with the foremost enemies of both. And on a practical level, that identification has been easy: Regnery Publishing, a foremost conservative publishing house, has published six of my books. Many of my books have been endorsed by the late, lamented Conservative Book Club.
Nonetheless, for all that, I am not a CPAC conservative. You want a CPAC conservative? Mitt Romney is a conservative. He is still a key leader of the Republican Party, the party of conservatives, and he is addressing CPAC this weekend. But during his presidential campaign, he called for the creation of a Palestinian state, which I oppose on the grounds that it will be used as a new base for jihad attacks against an Israel weakened by its creation. During his third debate with Barack Obama, he kept agreeing with Obama that the Syrian “rebels” and other forces of “democracy” in the Middle East had to be aided with our tax dollars – despite the fact that jihadis dominate the Syrian rebellion and that an Islamic state even more hostile to the U.S. than the Assad regime is likely to be the result of their victory. He has said that “jihadism” has nothing to do with Islam, which is just an absurd statement.
So if Mitt Romney is a conservative, which he undoubtedly is by the lights of CPAC, then I must not be one. And then there is Grover Norquist, who is even more of a conservative, as far as CPAC is concerned, than Mitt Romney. Norquist’s conservative bona fides are impeccable: as the leader of Americans for Tax Reform, he has a huge base of supporters among fiscal conservatives and the politicians who want their votes. But he also has extensive ties to Islamic supremacists. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) called Norquist out for this on the House floor in October 2011, saying of the anti-tax hero: “Documentation shows that he has deep ties to supporters of Hamas and other terrorist organizations that are sworn enemies of the United States and our ally Israel.” He pointed out that “around the years 2000 and 2001, Mr. Norquist’s firm represented Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was convicted two years later for his role in a terrorist plot and who is presently serving a 23-year sentence in federal prison.”
Despite this, however, Norquist remains such a powerful force among conservatives that he is a feared eminence gris at CPAC. Last year, his protege (and another conservative with extensive ties to Islamic supremacist Muslim Brotherhood groups) Suhail Khan boasted to me that I had been barred from speaking at CPAC because I dared to question the Muslim Brotherhood ties of some of its foremost figures.
And just last week, after my website www.jihadwatch.org overwhelmingly won a vote for CPAC’s “People’s Choice Blog Award,” John Hawkins of Right Wing News (whether on his own initiative, as he now claims, or as the errand boy of shadowy and unnamed higher-ups, as he initially told me over the phone) told me that I was not to speak about the Muslim Brotherhood ties of Norquist and Khan when I received the award. Needless to say, I could not accept this gag order, and will not be receiving the award: the truth is more important than a trophy.
But that was the end of my identification as a conservative, by CPAC’s lights. Grover Norquist is a CPAC conservative. Suhail Khan is a CPAC conservative. John Hawkins is a CPAC conservative. I, on the other hand, am not acceptable either as a speaker or an award recipient at the nation’s foremost conservative gathering. I must not be a conservative.
Yet some are fighting back. The Breitbart group has invited me to be on a panel they’re holding – at CPAC! — called “The Uninvited.” Also featured there will be my colleague Pamela Geller, another human rights and freedom advocate whom mainstream, timid, clueless and compromised conservatives have shunned.
So what ultimately is conservativism? I can only answer that for myself: I am an advocate of freedom: of the freedom of speech, of the equal treatment of all people under the law. Consequently, I am a foe of the global jihad and Islamic supremacism, which are enemies of both those principles. I know that there are many others like me, but neither party seems interested in us right now, and neither does the conservative movement as it is represented at CPAC.
It is time for a new conservative movement, a genuine movement of freedom, one that is not compromised, not beholden, and not corrupted. Are there enough free Americans left to mount such a movement? That I do not know. But I do know that if there aren’t, all is lost, and the denouement will come quickly – more quickly than most people expect.
Jer 45:4 “Thus you shall say to him, ‘Thus says the LORD: “Behold, what I have built I will break down, and what I have planted I will pluck up, that is, this whole land.
Jer 45:5 And do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them; for behold, I will bring adversity on all flesh,” says the LORD. “But I will give your life to you as a prize in all places, wherever you go.” ‘ “
You are either conservative or not—there are no differences among conservatives. It is the phony conservatives who are really liberal who are set against conservatives and cause division—no conservative is set against another conservative. No conservative will stand with liberals to be destroyed.
Now that Dick Morris has declared that the pro life stance is a GOP loser, I think the 2nd amendment is the only conservative stance that hasn’t been thrown overboard by the GOP (but CPAC isn’t over yet)
So who is behind the effort to crash our liberties and tear-up the U.S.Constitution? Who is out to destroy Conservatives?
Watch the DVD by Bill Still called The Money Masters. It is available on youtube or you can buy the DVD online.
Thank you for this post. We are inundated with so much information that most often the critically important lessons/messages get lost in the “noise” of overwhelming data streams. We need more of these clear concise posts which “connect the dots” and shine a bright light on the demons hiding in the shadows. That’s why Glenn Beck was so effective and had to be dealt with, he posted pictures, names, dates, places, quotes...and visually made the connections. Wouldn’t surprise me if Norquist/Kahn were involved in pressuring Fox to boot him.
Yes indeed. The left will probably forcibly attempt to destroy the right wing conservative movement and force it underground as all dictatorships do and all right wing talk show hosts as well as Christian radio hosts who tell the truth will be removed as the evil one works against God and His Christ. Psalm 2 is being enacted as far as I can see and Israel is under attack for protecting itself from pagan barbarians world wide as well as the left wing anti christs of America. Only Jesus the Christ can save America now.
I would disagree somewhat. Conservatives have a spectrum of beliefs, unlike liberals who strive for philosophical purity.
Much of what conservatives argue about among themselves has to do with what drives their “flavor” of conservatism. Here are some of the different motivations, of which there is considerable overlap:
1) “Classical” conservatives. They see the purpose of government as being managerial, not innovative. They are overall content with the status quo, whatever it is, not wanting radical change in any direction, only gradual, methodical change, except with situations that are intolerable.
2) “Religious” conservatives. They are unsatisfied with popular or relativistic ethics, or the embrace of man-made laws when they contravene the morality of religious laws.
3) “Business” conservatives, who truly appreciate President Harding’s statement that “The chief business of the American people is business.” This group has endless subgroups that reflect the complexity of economics, but otherwise are least likely to integrate the views of non-business conservatives.
4) “Militarist” and “Law & Order” conservatives. They believe that the primary purposes of government is to defend the nation as a whole from external or internal threats, with everything else being somewhat superfluous. W. Bush took this to the extreme, with his War on Terror lashing out at terrorists around the world (good), but also with the promulgation of a police state directed at innocent American citizens at home (not so good), seeing grand threats within that did not exist. They always vote for more money for the Pentagon, the 16 intelligence agencies, and the 100+ federal police agencies.
5) “Libertarian” conservatives. The least appreciated of the conservatives, they really reject the idea of the federal government involving itself directly in the lives of the citizenry at all, instead of through the states. And many do not wish to be annoyed by the states, or corporate entities, either.
6) “Social and Secular” conservatives. An unusual blend of other groups, for the most part rejecting everything leftist, but very dubious about religion as well, though embracing many of its goals. Miscellaneous.
7) “Faux and fake” conservatives, which includes the Eisenhower-era “Country Club” Republicans, the modern RINOs, the “Beltway Bandits”, consultants and spin doctors, lobbyists and corporate proxies, bureaucrat Mandarins and functionaries, and perpetual lickspittles and hangers-on.
8) Yes, I undoubtedly missed some.
On the contrary there are wide differences among conservatives a fact rooted in the very definition of conservatives.
To be a conservative is to believe in the preservation or restoration of what was, or at least what one believed once was in their nation and/or state.
As we come from different states & backgrounds with different history’s and an infitie number of different times. What defines one conservatives is very easily a completely different thing that defines anther.
In regard to Grover Norquist, guilt by association is not grounds for condemnation, nor does it make his ideas in regard to a balanced budget invalid.
It is a noted fact of human nature that men are usually wrong(unsuccessful) in many areas of life while right(successful) in others. Obama is a good politician but none of us would claim that he has a lick of sense in managing anything.
What's the single word, accurate, and catchy moniker for an armed and quasi-militant believer in constitutionally limited government, free enterprise as the best and most productive economic system ever conceived by the mind of man, and the sacred right of the Jewish people to the homeland G*d bestowed on them circa 3,000 years ago?
Same thing with libs, at least the rank and file, is filled with competing interests (environmentalists, union workers, blacks, gays). It is the nature of the game for both parties.
You can certainly sift out who is conservative and who is not from that bunch. Libertarians cannot be, by definition; while I hear lots of claims towards applying the constitution as written, I hear nothing about the intent of the Founding Fathers (some liberal twisted falsehoods, but never “private morality” or other such things).
Meanwhile, the left greatly rallies around Marx’s twisted philosophies—liberals without realizing it, which makes them easy for the hard leftists to control. That uniformity can be a strength, but it also makes them enemies of the true higher power.
Merely calling oneself a conservative does not make one so. Especially in Norquist’s case (he calls himself “libertarian” besides, IIRC).
Yeah, but what does the GOP establishment's push-pollster, Frank Luntz, say?
No, conservative is pretty simple, it is liberals who want to try and pretend that someone can be a traditional, conservative American while accepting things that would have gotten them lynched and thrown into asylums in the past, things like abortion on demand, homosexualizing the military, “gay marriage” legalizing and openly advertising Sodom and Gomorrah debauchery etc.
That is what liberals would *pretend* conservatives are like “from the outside”, that they are, weirdly enough, monolithic and “radical”, as ridiculous as that sounds, for opposing liberal-radical change. “Radical” for wanting the status quo or less.
But within conservatism, it is an entirely different picture. Conservatives do not drive people who disagree with one of our ideas out of our ranks, unlike liberals who demand lock-step obedience from all on their side. This is because conservatives debate and argue ideas, but once liberals decide on something, there must be unanimous agreement or the “disbelievers” are “heretical” and expelled. Belief must be absolute, until they order it changed.
Well you got a pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, anti-Christian cult leader in 2012, so maybe you are right, but we conservatives are trying to fix that and make sure that we eliminate the corrosive penetration by the hard left agenda into conservative ranks.
Conservative still means what it used to, but there is a real effort to eliminate it’s meaning, by making it mean nothing and everything, which is what you are doing with your ridiculous list of contradictions and narrow categories.
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