Posted on 11/04/2003 3:08:17 PM PST by quidnunc
Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? It’s the Left — liberals, left-wingers, socialists, commies, pinkos, the Noam Chomskys and Alec Baldwins and Barbra Streisands — that hates America. But the Right – good old flag-waving patriotic God Bless America conservatives? How could they possibly be anti-American? It sounds ridiculous.
Yet whatever sense or nonsense it makes, anti-Americanism is seeping into the entire conservative movement and is threatening to splinter it into pieces.
I’m not talking about the racist nuts, the white supremacists and militia types. I’m talking about mainstream heartland conservatives. Howard Phillips, head of the famed Conservative Caucus, is one of the founders of the entire modern conservative movement in America. He is a dear friend whom I care for personally, with whom I worked closely on organizing support for the Reagan Doctrine in dismantling the Soviet Empire.
Yet Howard Phillips’ writings and speeches now are indistinguishable from those of Howard Dean’s in their outpouring of vitriol and condemnation of President Bush, accusing him of “war crimes against the people of Iraq.”
Jon Utley, an influential conservative writer and activist of long anti-Communist standing during the Cold War, has simply gone around the bend in his hatred for everything America does in terms of foreign policy and everything the Bush administration does, foreign and domestic.
The same is true for conservative economist Paul Craig Roberts, whose syndicated columns have become so rabid that they seem deranged with hate – such as the claim that the Bush administration is “organizing genocide for Arabs.”
David Keene, head of the American Conservative Union, organizer of the annual C-PAC conference (the largest gathering of conservatives in the country) and member of the Board of Directors of the National Rifle Association, is now in bed with the ACLU in its efforts to demonize Attorney General John Ashcroft and prevent the Patriot Act from catching Moslem terrorists.
Former Congressman Bob Barr, who led the impeachment of Bill Clinton in Congress and is also an NRA board member, has become a paid whore for the ACLU, and now makes a living bashing Bush and Ashcroft.
The single most influential conservative activist in Washington, Grover Norquist, is being investigated by the FBI for his long-standing connections to a network of financiers of Moslem terrorists.
There are many people in Washington who look upon Grover as the conservative movement’s most valuable asset. His Americans for Tax Reform is in the forefront of the entire conservative tax reduction effort.
Yet ATR shares office space and staff with the Islamic Institute at 1920 L Street. The same receptionist answers both groups’ phones. Grover is the founding chairman of the Islamic Institute and got the seed money from Abdurahman Alamoudi, just indicted by federal prosecutors for financial connections to al-Qaeda terrorists.
Grover is the conservative movement’s “gatekeeper” to Karl Rove and the White House, yet he is doing everything he can to demonize John Ashcroft, recently appearing on a panel with Alec Baldwin to denounce the attorney general.
Grover is amazingly smart, talented and influential. The source of his pro-Moslem obsession and his passionate defense of radical Moslems linked to Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda is a mystery to many.
The source of many conservatives’ and libertarians’ hatred for America is, however, no mystery: the baneful influence of the founder of the Libertarian Party, Murray Rothbard. He is the reason why so much of the entire libertarian movement is in bed with the hate-America left, and why so many conservatives are getting under the same covers.
The intellectual parents of the libertarian movement are philosopher Ayn Rand and economist Murray Rothbard, whose followers caused an ideological split in the movement in the 1970s. Randian libertarians are pro-defense, pro-America; Rothbardians are the opposite. Tragically, the latter seized control of the Libertarian Party and have not relinquished it since.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
NewsMax was very critical of Clinton measures that it considered anti-liberty. Those who raise the same criticisms today may well be wrong, but NewsMax ought to at least give a fair hearing to those arguments. Circumstances may dictate a change in policy, but not the vilification of those one shares or shared principles with.
Rothbard has been a bad influence, but it's not clear that he's been that much of a factor within the Libertarian Party -- he has his own little Rockwellite clique or cult. He certainly was a utopianist, but he's not the only one to have painted himself into a corner or gone out on a limb. Some who are beating the war drums lately are quite radical and out of touch with the realm of political possibilities.
May the people who denounce Bush's right-wing critics as traitors be the first to feel the effects of a democrat using the PATRIOT Act. I for one will laugh my ass off when they get detained indefinitely.
Maybe in the past. But that's not what I hear coming out of the Rand Institute these-a-days.
Into the audiogram booth for you as your hearing needs a check. The Ayn Rand Institute has consistently produced essays that are very hawkish and advocated force in Iran and N. Korea, as well as in the Palestinean mess.
I thought that I’d heard some pro-Iraqi invasion stuff coming out of there. What did you read?
Maybe you can’t differentiate between, “disagreeing with one policy or another” and accusing Bush of “war crimes against the people of Iraq” and “organizing genocide for Arabs”.
If they start putting up candidates who can win, then it will be serious. Until then, it's just hot air.
lol.....no doubt. It's as if he and the rest of these anti-war-at-all-costs, Islam-loving ("the enemy of my enemy is my friend"), self-hating, so-called conservatives are all infected with some nasty degenerative spiritual disease.
I have seen several tv interviews with that very odd fellow (Leonard Pleitikoff?) who was incoherently and rabidly anti-war. I think he heads the Rand Institute.
If I'm wrong, I sure some objectivist around here will chop my subjective little head off.
Here's one for Iran. Free Iran
You might also appreciate this one. Israel is Moral
The Patriot Act is Anti-American.
Former Congressman Bob Barr, who led the impeachment of Bill Clinton in Congress and is also an NRA board member, has become a paid whore for the ACLU, and now makes a living bashing Bush and Ashcroft.
Maybe because Ashcroft is now pushing for bills like the unPatriot Act which he fought for as a senator. He's now turned into Janet Reno without the WACO.
Now that's really a scary thought, and cause to question the wisdom of too much power concentrated in any one place.
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