Posted on 06/03/2002 8:54:23 AM PDT by Texaggie79
Whenever someone writes a critical word about LewRockwell.com (LRC), Rockwell will place a banner on the site with the words Bother so and so: Send a donation to LRC. Who knows if this fundraising ploy raises any revenue, but it does get me to thinking why this obscure group bothers me.
LRC is the mother ship for people who call themselves paleos -- a fancy word that represents a combination of isolationists, Dixiecrats who long for the Old South where everyone knew their place (wink, wink), neoconfederates still smarting over the civil war which ended 137 years ago, Abe Lincoln-haters, and genteel anti-Semites who think Mary gave birth to Jesus in Berlin.
Ill admit that they do pay attention to economics and understand the free market. Most of them could probably run the corn dogs and elephant ears eateries at a state fair and make a tidy profit.
However, they give real-world conservatives a bad name and thats the big reason why they bug me. Real conservatives who are in the trenches fighting in elections and working to pass a Reaganesque agenda in state legislatures and Capitol Hill do not subscribe to the kooky notions that paleos shout out like teenagers spraying graffiti at night.
Here is a taste of some of the headlines and subheadings that you will find on LRC:
Warren Buffet Is a Communist
Are Seatbelts Unsafe?
The government's strap embraces you, against your will.
The War Street Journal
It's also the Anti-Capitalist Journal
Bill Bennett and AVOT
They're intergenerational thieves
Warmongering Libertarians
All God's Chil'un Got Agendas
John Bottoms on libertarians who defend Bill Bennett, of all people.
Heil, Abe
Driving Dixie Down
The war against the South continues.
The Nazis Were Socialists
Neocons and Demagogues
Why the Cherokees Were Confederates
The Ridiculous War on Terrorism
No King But Lincoln
The nationalist, neo-Unionist argument is a rope of sand.
The Trouble With the Constitution
It was a nationalist-Federalist trick.
Did Lincoln Do It?
Was the dictator incorrectly charged with plotting a crime?
Phony Lincoln
Joseph Sobran on Harry Jaffa's deification of the Great Tyrant.
The Neocon Trick
How they wrecked the conservative movement.
The Real Churchill
Joseph Sobran agrees with Ralph Raico: "Winston Churchill was a man of blood and a politico without principle."
Lincoln's Savagery
Joseph Sobran on why the Confederate flag is demonized, and the US has become a rogue nation.
The Shrinking Heart of DixieNext
Next let's change the name of the state to Fedabama.
Lincoln with Fangs
Lincolns Culture of Death
The Evil Empire Strikes Back: The Neocons and Us
Taking the Law Into Your Own Hands
It's a great idea, says William L. Anderson, since we can expect anything but justice from the modern state.
In Defense of Bob Jones
George W. Bush should be praised for speaking there.
Giving Vermin a Bad Name
Burton S. Blumert on Bill Bennett.
I Hate Rudy Giuliani
Thank goodness the little dictator's days are numbered, says Burton S. Blumert.
In Search of the Real Abe
He was one slippery character.
The Jefferson Davis Legacy
Joseph Sobran on our last president.
Who Killed the Iceman?
And how he relates to the murderous Abe.
Listen to Lincoln
Pay attention to his words, and to his monstrous deeds, says Joseph Sobran, and not the embalmed cliche he's become.
Hitler Was a Lincolnite
Libertarians Should Love the Confederate Flag
The Spirit of Dixie Lives
Despite Lincolnite lies.
I get a kick out of The Nazis were Socialists headline--as if that is the worst thing you can call those who gave us the Holocaust (and WWII). Paleos hate Abraham Lincoln more. They dont even think Rush Limbaugh is a true conservative.
These neoconfederates should get out of the house and discover that the Stars and Bars flag is usually displayed on a rusted post in some biker bar surrounded by goofballs extending their middle fingers at life. They are hardly strutting around like southern aristocratic peacocks quoting John Randolph of Roanoke.
These romanticists of the Old South will say silly things like "an estimated 65,000 African Americans assisted the Confederacy cause". Oh really? So 65,000 slaves assisted the southern rebels. Uh, ok.
Basically, this collection of oddballs and half-wits are still bitter that William F. Buckley became the standard bearer for conservatism in the 1950s, relegating them to the backyard compost heap of know-nothing thinking. But the event that really turned the paleos into rabid dogs had to do with Buckleys embrace of the neoconservatives. These are former Democrats interested in a hard-line foreign policy stance and most of them are Jewish. Paleos reserve much of their scorn for Norman Podhoretz, the founding father of neoconservatism and Commentary magazine.
Like most strict ideological groups, paleos are on a night and day quest to find that one nugget of history, that one scapegoat that can explain the ills of the world. They dont understand the nuances of human history or everyday living. Gene Callahan of LRC writes:
We might say it (Republicans' fight against Big Government) began "faltering" around 1952, with the nomination of Eisenhower as the Republican presidential candidate. Or perhaps it began "faltering" in 1928, when the socialist planner Hoover was made the Republican standard bearer. Or maybe even in 1860, when Republicans put a man who would expand the powers of the Federal government like no other president in history, Abraham Lincoln, forward as their nominee.
This is classic scapegoat thinking. Actually if you keep reading the articles on LRC, youll find that the timeline keeps going backward. If not for Thomas Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase, if not for the Constitutional Convention and the scrapping of the Articles of Confederation in 1787, if not and if not and before you know it, if not for Eve chatting with the serpent.
Paleos think that if only the private sector could rule that an earthly utopia might be achieved. This line of thought is as flawed as the socialist utopias. The paleo vision would give us a dog eat dog dot com world ruled by Al Capone types making us all pay protection money and may the fittest survive. Pick your poison.
Fight terrorists? Forget it. Paleos roll over like submissive dogs. They dont fight back. Matter of fact LRC wrote that the rest of America would do quite well if Washington was incinerated. (Is his article tongue-in-cheek? The tone of it seems so giddy. Perhaps he was drinking his privately produced and purchased champagne as he wrote it. You be the judge).
When it comes to solving real world problems, paleos remind me of the southern aristocrats who boasted in Gone with the Wind, "Why, we could lick them in a month!" But Rhett Butler (re: the real conservative movement for this analogy) has to explain the facts of life to these naïve goobers about the cannon and iron that the North possessed.
If the paleos ideas are so useful, how come they have elected no one to office except for Congressman Ron Paul of Texas? What are their practical solutions to our troubles and woes? What is their strategy for moving legislation to dismantle government through the Congress? They dont propose any concrete solutions because one, they dont have any and two, they would be held accountable for implementing them. They need to run for office. However it would help if they started with something lower than vice president, such as Joe Sobran, a celebrated paleo, reactionary utopian, and regular LRC contributor, attempted to do only to drop out after a few weeks on some forgettable fringe ticket.
Some years ago, Buckley fired Sobran, who was then writing for the National Review, when Sobran, many thought, started down the anti-Semitic road in his columns about Israel. He still keeps up the anti-Israel drumbeat today and unfortunately quotes dubious characters such as Mark Weber.
Mark Weber of the Institute for Historical Review has summed up the situation in one pithy sentence: The truth is that if we held Israel to the same standards that we apply to Serbia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, U.S. bombers and missiles would be blasting Tel Aviv, and wed be putting Israeli prime minister Sharon behind bars for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Weber and his ilk would like you to think that Jews merely died of a bad case of typhus and were not systematically exterminated. First off they were exterminated and second if Jews hadnt been caged like chickens maybe some would not have died of typhus.
I think Homer Simpson could run rings around these paleos.
The Anti-Defamation League unveils the Institute for Historical Review. Really now Joe, if youre going to cite passages from the IHR then we hope you drop your columns in support of the Catholic Church and, as you say, Christendom. Wed rather not have you on our team.
Lately many paleos are scared that Bill Bennett and G-man types are trying to shut down LRC. Its doubtful that a government that can waste huge amounts of time and money is going to waste that much time tracking LRCs crazy web site.
Oh these paleos, these Old South wannabees, these ideological multilevel marketing shills, and these haters of real conservatives. They will never go away, but then disease and pestilence never do.
That's not the point. The point is that the media have perpetrated a gigantic fraud over the last 50 years by implying that Nazis are the result when a nation moves to far to the right. The reality is that they were socialists, and therefore leftists.
They have no power. Their audience and subscribers of their philosophy are miniscule, and even that may be a conservative estimate (pun intended).
In a word, paleos are worthless.
You can quote me on that.
Exactly. And they should be publicly flogged on national TV along with the entire Left.
You can quote me on that.
I can only guess he/she got my name from FR and perhaps some of my criticizing posts on ole'
I stopped reading right there. The author is a real lightweight.
Publisher
Burton S. Blumert
is a Jew.
Is that a problem for you, Vinny?
Whatever you say, 17th century.
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