Posted on 01/09/2007 8:27:45 AM PST by jmc813
I’m greatly encouraged by the lengthy, indignant responses by prominent scare-mongers Joe Farah and Jerome Corsi to my on-air and on-blog denunciation (“Shame on Demagogues for Exploiting ‘North American Union’!”, 12/28) of their self-promoting paranoia regarding an alleged conspiracy to merge the US, Canada and Mexico. The defensive tone of their commentary suggests that these two have been appropriately embarrassed: Farah, in particular, dramatically deescalated his rhetoric.
While previous commentary on WorldNetDaily prominently and regularly featured the noun “plot” in defining this non-issue, his answer to my purposefully harsh attack omits that key word entirely and uses language in a vastly more responsible and rational style. If I can push an influential (and often insightful) journalist like Farah back toward reasoned debate and the mainstream, then I’ve already succeeded in my chief goal: to prevent conservatives from following self-interested Pied Pipers off a cliff into conspiracist cuckoo land.
I’m particularly gratified at the way that Farah worded his “Daily Poll” on this issue. He posed the question: “What do you make of the talk about the North American Union?” and offered only two alternatives (out of nine) that agreed with the lunatic alarmists on the subject. Those two choices declared: “The evidence keeps mounting. When will people stop being in denial?” and “Plans for a union are an absolute reality, and anyone who can’t see concerted attacks on U.S. sovereignty is blind.” Please note that in declaring “the evidence keeps mounting,” this response never specifies what, exactly this “evidence” is supposed to prove. Similarly, the statement that “plans for a union are an absolute reality” never suggests who it is who is making those plans. If the plans (not “plots” this time) for a North American Union are coming from forces on the left as marginal as the fringies on the right who worry about such shcemes, then there is, indeed, no reason for fear.
Amazingly enough, Farah himself supports this reassuring perspective in his muddled attempt to defend his previous hysteria. He identifies one Robert Pastor “as the man at the very center of the plans for a North American Union.” Pastor is a loony leftist, slightly unhinged professor at American University who was an enthusiastic supporter (and informal advisor) to John Kerry’s Presidential juggernaut--- and who bears no connection whatever to the Bush administration, or the dreaded Security and Prosperity Partnership. If an addled academic with zero power in the government and no clout whatever with the current administration is “the man at the very center of the plans for a North American Union” do those plans really sound so menacing and dire and imminent?
Moreover, even Professor Pastor (in an interview with NAU demagogue-in-chief Jerome Corsi, as quoted by Farah) specifically denies any desire for a North American Union. “Each of the proposals I have laid out represent (sic) more than just small steps,” Pastor proclaimed. “But it doesn’t represent a leap to a North American Union or even to some confederation of any kind. I don’t think either is plausible, necessary or even helpful to contemplate at this stage.” (Italics added)
I know that paranoids and conspiracy connoisseurs will seize on the last three words “at this stage” and scream, “Aha! The dreaded Pastor—the evil academic who’s the architect of the whole diabolical scheme – is suggesting at some later stage it WILL be plausible, necessary, or even helpful to contemplate a North American Union!”
But please, friends, consider this: if even the lefty professor who is considered the most dangerous plotter and visionary on the prospect of US-Mexican-Canadian merger explicitly denies any interest whatever in even contemplating that scheme at this stage, does it really make any sense—any sense at all – to frighten the public into believing that there is a current, powerful mass movement on behalf of such plans?
That’s the essence of my impassioned concern with the demagoguery on this subject: by focusing concern on a non-existent threat, people like Farah and Corsi take attention away from the very real dangers posed by the liberal ideologues who have taken over both houses of Congress.
There are open, undeniable, widely supported plans from the Democratic leadership to cripple the country in our war against Islamo-Nazis, to undermine our security agencies in the name of “constitutional rights,” to raise taxes, to punish productivity, to grow government, to undermine the traditional family, to nationalize health care, to force us all out of our cars (and onto useless mass transit) and to push through precisely the sort of immigration policies that most conservatives will absolutely hate. These plans demand a united Republican Party and a re-energized conservative movement that isn’t distracted and paralyzed by non-existent threats concerning non-existent plans to terminate the independent survival of the United States. (“PREMEDIATED MERGER: How Leaders are Stealthily Transforming USA into North American Union” reads one typical and current Farah headline.)
This is a fateful moment for the conservative moment that Barry Goldwater launched and that Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich and, yes, George W. Bush led to some significant triumphs. For the first time since Clinton first came to power 14 years ago, we are definitely in opposition --- coming out of our “thumpin’” in the 2006 elections, all the momentum and energy in Washington has currently shifted to the Democratic side. The next few months will help to determine whether Republicans and conservatives will fight the good fight over issues that matter or dissipate all chance of a return to power through in-fighting, defeatism and self-marginalization. Given the stakes involved with some of the current battles in Washington and around the world, how can any grownup, responsible activist justify focusing on black-helicopter-style threats like the border-dissolving, sovereignty-ending North American Union –- which no elected leaders of administration officials have ever endorsed?
Where, in the past, have conservatives succeeded in building majorities by concentrating on “secret plans” and “high level plots” by their fellow Republicans?
And this brings me to the unfortunate Jerome Corsi, who felt the need in his response to my scorn to bring up some long-ago misunderstanding between us in which he believed I had charged him with anti-Semitism. As I communicated to Corsi in a telephone conversation, I did not recall making that charge on the air and I still don’t believe I ever attacked him in that manner. If I had even hinted at Jew-hatred on Corsi’s part I was willing to apologize, I said.
But now that he’s brought up the long-dead matter once again, I went to the trouble of looking up some of his controversial (and profoundly embarrassing) internet postings from FreeRepublic.com that were publicized in 2004. One of them (03/04/2004) attacked “John F**ing Commie Kerry” as follows: “After he married TerRAHsa, didn’t John Kerry begin practicing Judiasm? (sic). He also has paternal grandparents that were Jewish. What religion is John Kerry?”
Given the fact that neither Kerry nor his wife (either wife, for that matter) ever practiced any form of Judaism (or “Judi-asm”, which might be a form of Judi worship), and given the fact that Theresa Heinz Kerry has never had any connection whatever to the Jewish people or the Jewish religion, and given the fact that Kerry himself has been a well-advertised, professing Catholic all his life, doesn’t Corsi’s snide little comment about Kerry’s “reverting” to the faith from which his paternal grandparents converted, give off unmistakable, fetid whiffs of anti-Semitic obsession?
In the same series of comments he also wrote of the beloved and revered Pope John Paul II: “Boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn’t reported by the liberal press” (03/03/2003) and “We may get one more Pope, when this senile one dies, but that’s probably about it.” (12/16/2002).
And now this same angry, venomous, irresponsible figure wants to be taken seriously when he warns of the looming, desperate danger of North American Union. He insists that he is utterly disinterested and selfless in promoting this grand conspiracy theory--- but then the final line of his posting gives the lie to this preposterous pose. That line announces about Mr. Corsi: “He will soon author a book on the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America and the prospect of the forthcoming North American Union.”
I have no desire whatever to help him promote his latest book which is why I won’t invite him as a guest to debate these issues on my radio show. If he wants to call in (with other members of the public) to make whatever points he chooses to make, he’s welcome to do so on the one national talk show that identifies itself as “Your Daily Dose of Debate” and we’ll move him to the front of the caller line. The phone number, Mr. Corsi (toll free, by the way) is 1-800-955-1776.
And concerning his challenge to me to debate him publicly and formally over his poisonous obsession over phantom dangers, I’ve never in my life turned away from a rhetorical challenge, and I’m not about to do so now. If Corsi wants a debate (over a non-issue that I don’t believe is even worthy of serious discussion) I’m willing to join him if he arranges an appropriate venue and I can participate without incurring debilitating travel or personal expense.
If this sort of confrontation can flush out fringe-figures like Jerome Corsi from the dank, turgid conspiracist fever-swamps he chooses to inhabit, it may perform an important hygienic purpose in returning the conservative movement to the robust health it needs for the serious battles that lie ahead.
"Dumb" is a vast understatement.
Well, it is upsetting. Being betrayed is never conducive to sleeping well at night.
As observed by Marcus Tullus Cicero:
A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder is less to fear.
And by our own Founders, such as the Adamses:
John Adams, quotes about Corruption:
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.Samuel Adams, quotes about Corruption:
How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!Samuel Adams,
The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.
As I recall the liberal press provided plenty of coverage, as did both liberal and conservative websites.
Doubtful in the extreme. He was an agrarian utopionist. He initially fought against protection, until he witnessed on his own watch, how critical it was to maintain U.S. independence, not just military/industrially, but politically/economically.
Anyways,
If you wanted to use historical precendent, and you were smart, you would have gone with Alexander Hamilton.
I was merely quoting the Times Magazine observation. Alexander Hamilton did get on our Currency anyways...just not on Mount Rushmore as he never got the chance to be President, since he was shot by Aaron Burr.
That being said, the economics of 18th century America (or even TR's America) are not a template for the current global economy.
So you "modern types" must just not be conservative enough. Perhaps they should be our templates today.
Today, information, materials, products, and consumers all move in a fashion that would be unrecognizable to the earlier eras.
So? You think they were idiots and wouldn't be able to adapt their protectionist policies accordingly? Typical LIBERAL presumption.
And there was no income tax back then either.
So? And how is it better to have that??? Give us back Hamilton. So that the Income tax, and your precious "global economy" can then go straight to Hell where they belong, LOL!
The U.S. did just fine without having to prostrate itself before foreign powers and World Government dictums.
Jerome Corsi is by all indications, unlike Kerry, a practicing Catholic.
Is he not entitled to an opinion or being a little piqued at the former Pope's demonstrably slow and weak efforts to clean house?
As for his suddenly being a "paranoid liar", he may or may not be paranoid, but "liar"? Where's your proof?
>those of us who claim to have isolated its main features are delusional.<
I was kind of enjoying this new status.
Yes, and if you will note, that is when action was finally taken.
Corsi's umbrage appears to be that it took just that kind of coverage...and falling Vatican revenues from the U.S. to prompt sterner measures.
Why is Corsi not entitled to concern that only bad publicity triggered a correction? That moral response was not the first response?
Since Corsi has both repudiated and apologized for that comment and other similar comments made here in the interest of being provocative, I don't see much point in discussing their validity.
Really? Then why did you cite the quotes? And maybe I missed something, but I guess I didn't read the apology the same way.
The Pope is certainly NOT "okay with boy buggering."
That is a sleazy lie.
I didn't, Medved did. Go back to posts 23-38-39-43. I was commenting on their dismissal as ad hominum attacks. Since it's his conclusion we're discussing, he hasn't proved a conspiracy, prior "conclusions" are relevant. The conspiracy charge could simply be stirring the pot, he's used the technique before. The apology was mand a couple years ago, it's old news.
Anyone who listens to Medved knows he's for open borders. From the article it appears the "antisemitism card" was played by Corsi. I conclude Corsi's positions are indefensible.
Uh, isn't it a matter of which Pope? The Vatican finally took a more-definitive stance against practicing gays in the clergy with its position paper released in November of 2005.
The Vatican policies of the 60's however...actually started this whole mess, I believe you will agree.
You meant Medved, I assume.
There's proof that the administration is involved in a conspiracy? I'd like to see it, I'd likely support impeachment.
Corsi presents facts, and draws conclusions from them. Previous examples of his decision making, more accurately his advocacy, are relevant to his advocacy today.
And this brings me to the unfortunate Jerome Corsi, who felt the need in his response to my scorn to bring up some long-ago misunderstanding between us in which he believed I had charged him with anti-Semitism. As I communicated to Corsi in a telephone conversation, I did not recall making that charge on the air and I still don’t believe I ever attacked him in that manner. If I had even hinted at Jew-hatred on Corsi’s part I was willing to apologize, I said.
Obviously this is Medved's opinion, but it sounds like Corsi brought it up.
"Utopianist" is the very definition of a liberal. Protectionism is the least efficient method that a government can use to raise funds, because it makes everything more expensive while at the same time driving companies that export out of buisness. This is not a liberal concept like, say raising taxes through tariffs. The average Mexican spends more money on US imports than the average American spends on Mexican imports. Same thing with Canada, our number one and two trading partners. I'm all for eliminating the income tax (or moving to a flat tax), but the more feasible way would be through the use of a sales tax.
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