THE WAR PARTY UNMASKED

Antiwar.com ^ | 8/25/03 | Justin Raimondo

[justshutupandtakeit]

These ideologues have to ignore the role of the milita in American history and their utter lack of reliability (but for a few instances) even to fight Indians. Washington wanted as little to do with them as possible since they impeded him more than the British.

[BlackElk]

In many years of activity in the conservative movement, I never encountered anyone other than a few libertarians who questioned what Franco did to the reds. There were conservatives who objected to Franco ending elections in Spain during his lifetime. That never bothered me though. As I have posted previously here, democracy, as such, is not freedom nor is it necessarily the goal.

A useful but ancient guide to this concept of the distinction between democracy and freedom is to be found in the Scaffold Speech of the British Stuart monarch Charles I, just prior to being beheaded by Cromwell. Among my friends, at least the ones at Yale's Party of the Right, he is known as Blessed Charles, King and Martyr. If you can google the speech, I don't want to take away from its exact wording. Charles phrased better than I can paraphrase. His speech is a pleasure not to be missed.

I had not thought you and I were arguing over Franco but rather over Hemingway or over foreign and military policy. I thought I was introducing a new strain into the conversation. Franco fought no foreign wars and confined himself to restoring his own country and its culture. IOf paleo has a good side, that would seem likely to be it.

If I am called fascist by anyone, I am flattered because I must be striking a nerve. The criticism says far more about the critic than about me. I am also reasonably immune to sticks and stones. They can call me Catholic and think that means fascist but they are wrong in such a false equivalency. Besides, I know the ending. In the long run, at the end, we win. It was in all the Bibles as the Peter passage in Matthew. Guaranteed on the very Highest Authority.

[JohnGalt]

Exactly, the neocons have no interest in preserving liberty.

Putting Washington in the same context as Lincoln and Hamilton is a disgrace, and yet, a tribute to the success of gubmint schools.

[JohnGalt]

We're on the same side with Franco, but how many of your new bedfellows care for him let alone have heard of him?

They think Daniel Pipes is a deep thinker.

[BlackElk]

I am a conservative. I am not a paleo. I am not a neo. I agree with most neo foreign policy. I agree with most neo military policy. I agree with neo opposition to quotas. I am appalled at what passes for paleo nowadays.

I am personaly acquainted with Donald Kagan. I have not asked him when I lived near him and, as GOP Town Chairman, had him as a speaker at a Lincoln Day Dinner but I would find it inconceivable that Kagan would favor communists or anarchists in the Spanish Civil War. He is a humble man with very little excuse for humility. He is a major scholar of Ancient Greece and of the Pelopponesian Wars. He stopped being on the left when he was a tenured history professor at Cornell and the Black Panthers seized the library with automatic weapons and bandoliers of bullets and the usual BS. He went with fellow professor and fellow liberal James McGregor Burns to the Cornell administration to demand immediate action and expulsion of any student involved. The administration caved to the Panthers. Kagan took his credentials to Yale where he later became the academic Dean of the University; Burns to Williams College. According to Kagan, Reagan made him a Republican and he accepted Reagan not necessarily vice versa.

I also knew Al Capp, the cartoonist of Little Abner. I met him when he spoke at a major national (Tenth Anniversary) YAF Conference in Connecticut. He had moved from rather hard left to rather hard right (except on abortion). He used to pay me to drive him between New York City and his home in Cambridge and his studio in Back Bay. I asked him about his move from left to right (he had been hauled before HUAC and SIS on many occasions). He told me that he had never joined the Communist Party in the Depression days when he was a student because he was too poor to pay a single dollar for membership. He then said that between the 1950s when he used his strip to attack capitalism and business and the 1970s, he had stayed put and the rest of the world had gone nuts. Nonetheless, by the time that I knew him in the 1970s, he despised communists and socialists and relentlessly attacked them in his strip.

Who are these "new bedfellows"? We had neos giving conferences for YAF and other conservative youth groups in the 1960s and 1970s. The conferences were organized by R. Emmett Tyrell. We were by no means in total agreement with them but they were very much worth the attention. We generally rejected their economics and some of the ideas that the constitution was meant to "grow" but more slowly. We thought the constitution said what it meant and meant what it said.

The "new" folks are the paleos. Russell Kirk is about as close to them as I can remember but he was presentable and capable of a practical approach. He made significant contributions to the ongoing conversation of mankind in works like Enemies of the Permanent Things and The Roots of American Order. Sam Francis does not. Tom Fleming does not. Raimondo does not. Kirk would be appalled at the factual errors alone in Chronicles and in the smarmy connections of Francis. Frank Meyer advocated fusionism between libertarians and traditionalists like Kirk. He would not, if alive today, advocate that anyone fuse with the paleos.

[JohnGalt]

The paleo-critique challenges you to explain yourself for advocating a policy that sends girls to the frontlines of the battlefield. While you throw up your hands, and say not my fault whilst you mumble about Clinton, the feminists, and the liberal media, you take no responsibility for being a CONSERVATIVE, one who challenges himself to take responsibility for the institutions that were handed down to them.

Across the board, on every issue, with every institution you appease like the Vichy traitors, a group that does not see the preservation of liberty as the soul and only purpose of a government.

Yes, the statists of Yale and Harvard still control the levers of power and will for some time, but in many ways, that is what gives the paleo-critique such patriotic appeal. It's the Yalies whose only critique is to blame the liberal media and Democrats and RINOs for why this country or that country is not bombed back to the Stone Age or as Bill Kristol said so anti-Christianly, 'crush Serb skulls.'

No worries though. Next year, when the bombers bail on Bush and announce their support for sale to the D who will promise to give them positions of power, you'll simply withdraw from the scene all together, focus on something more important in your life, and leave the mess you left for us younger folk to clean up.

"Social democracy is still here in all its variants, defining our entire respectable political spectrum, from advanced victimology and feminism on the left over to neoconservatism on the right. We are now trapped, in America, inside a Menshevik fantasy, with the narrow bounds of respectable debate set for us by various brands of Marxists. It is now our task, the task of the resurgent right, of the paleo movement, to break those bonds, to finish the job, to finish off Marxism forever."

Murray Rothbard, 1992

[UCANSEE2]

It was just a joke. You two argue like an old married couple. Know what I mean?

[BlackElk]

Reality time.

That girls go to the frontline of battle, as SOME may do, is not the result of conservatism. It is the result of equalitymongers on the left who share the paleo distaste for the military and desire to defang and weaken and sap and eliminate the American military other than to station the remnant along the almighty sacred Rio Grande and Baja borders to shoot any Mexicans with the effrontery to seek a better life. Send women to the front under idiot liberal court decisions OR stop having that icky old mmilitary altogether or all those icky old national purposes to be achieved by the projection of military force. I'm going with option 2 and so would Patton if he were around.

The fantasy of the "paleos" is to see the military reduced to machine-gunning the mamacitas and the bambinos and bambinas lest they somehow change the paleo fantasy of a lily-white but lily-livered group of brie munching, watercress sandwich-fed, chablis guzzling effete snobs who share the general agenda of the more honest leftist counterparts of their class.

I have yet to hear one peep out of you or virtually any paleo as to what you have actually DONE other than whine, moan and groan about the conservative movement, try to gull the suckers with ill-defined rants about Irving Kristol not meeting your ideal of liberty-seeking, whatever that ideal, if any, may be, redefine the historical vocabulary and revise the truth to your fantasy of conservatism as moral cowardice. Occasionally you pause to have a general nervous breakdown over the fact that the conservative movement is not and never was a movement of spineless trust fund types who want to avoid their own taxes and national military effort at all costs.

We conservatives saved you the trouble of being drafted by the Selective Slavery System and simultaneously took the whiners and moaners out of a position to bleat about how their dear litle backsides were being put in harm's way by those awful Pentagon bullies. In this way, by establishing a professional and volunteer military, we freed our nation to act like an actual nation in foreign policy commensurate with our resources as a nation.

Conservatives are also people like Ann Coulter who recognize the truth of the McCarthy era and not people like Tom Fleming who moan about the lost (sniff, sniff) Euro-American civilization of old cousins, blood and soil, and about his claim that Joe McCarthy ruined his father's friends or that labor unions (unlike his fathers prsumed ruined friends???) are all communist and other ridiculous inanities.

As to Murray Rothbard and the 1992 quote, what was his ideological flavor of that week?

I can think of a lot better uses for the American military than touching Serbia with somebody else's ten-foot pole, irrelevant little satrapy of extremist morons that it has been for so long. Resources? None. Strategic value at this time???? None. As a Catholic I would favor Croatia if geography and belief systems of the people are all that is at stake.

Vichy traitors????? May I remind you that they were the ones who knuckled under and accepted Nazi rule rather than fight. Same old, same old: Paleo French. Naturally France is the object of paleo-cowering affections. While you are whining about the "preservation of liberty" which you fund so lacking in Irving Kristol, and while you try in vain to recall anything that you have ever DONE by contrast in that cause other than shoot your keyboard off over the internet, define YOUR term of preservaton of liberty and enlighten us as to how you would see it preserved other than by national military cowardice.

I can hear it now: "If only (sniff, sniff) we could just stay home and mind our own business (here genuflect at the mention of business), clip our coupons and figure out how to throw more of thjose terribly expensive American workers off our payrolls, then (sniffle) WE (all twelve of us) could be free to read Hemingway full time."

Again, just precisely what have you personally DONE to take responsibility for being a CONSERVATIVE or to take responsibility for the institutions that were handed down to you other than Foppingham Manor?

To paraphrase Rothbard: "Libertoonians of the world: Unite!!! You have nothing to lose but your minds and a world in which to sin!!!!" Fortunately Rothbard did not die pursuing such weak tea but trying to persuade libertarians to ally with the Christian Right which he had joined.

Your second last paragraph: Your wishes and fantasies are not going to be fulfilled and your tail will never wag our dog.

This is a long post but stay focused on the main point: What have YOU DONE other than yak?

[JohnGalt]

The problem with resume conservatism is that its exactly what the geeks in your Yale club having going for them.

Since we are arguing in the polemic style, you rather declare surrender with your myopic focus on the individuals who are, apparently, leading the flock astray.

While I have never question that you are a conservative (though the same cannot be said for your own ideological purity tests), I do make note of the people you choose to defend, the threads you choose to post in, i.e. the ones that threaten your patriotic Cabal, and I note the threads you choose not to post on-- a good example being the threads posted by 'Yonif' which spews bile on a sitting President worse than I ever lobbed at Clinton.

These threads even go so far as to politic for Pollard, who case does resemble Richard 'Patriot' Perle, but really, is not the subject matter for a conservative website claiming a desire to roll back an intrusive government.

While you may wish to drag me into an ideological debate or get into some pissing contest to prove how conservative you are, I can safely say ideological battles are silly. I never once advocated taking your son half-way around the world, be responsible for collateral damage-- err civilian deaths, and build a global hegemony.

Run cover for 'em all you like, but the problem with your 'critique of the critique' is that your silence on the gross affronts to their brand of 'conservatism.'

I should start pinging you to the 'nuke Mecca or Syria or France or Iowa' threads I turn up on where they make up quotes and cite movies as the basis of their world view. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/970106/posts

Its just unimpressive with the exception that a few sheep, for all the wrong reasons, may read your post, and find that it gives them an apology to not consider other writers who do shape opinion on the Right and who are, believe it or not, patriots, even, yes, this is true, even if they do not agree with those nice fellas from Harvard and Yale.

[rdb3]

The fantasy of the "paleos" is to see the military reduced to machine-gunning the mamacitas and the bambinos and bambinas lest they somehow change the paleo fantasy of a lily-white but lily-livered group of brie munching, watercress sandwich-fed, chablis guzzling effete snobs who share the general agenda of the more honest leftist counterparts of their class.

You know, this faction of conservatism does indeed have an issue with race. There's no doubt about that.

[BlackElk]

To boil your latest point down to its essentials, you admit that you have accomplished precisely nothing but feel qualified as a paleowhatever to redefine conservatism.

I am also going to call you on the Ivy League references. I graduated a Jesuit prep school and then a small and not particlarly consequential private college in Connecticut, followed by the state law school. My wife is a Yale alumna. I was elected to the Party of the Right as an honor and as one of the few non-Yalies ever elected. On other threads you have referenced Ivy League connections in your own family (Princeton?) So you can cut the faux populism of the decidedly non-populist paleofussandfeathers crowd.

Whether or not you or the other twelve or fifteen paleos feel "impressed" is no concern of mine, save the following. If you were impressed, I might double check my premises. Pacifism is NOT conservatism. Isolationism is NOT conservatism. Pathetic sissies cowering in the corner sniffling over military action are NOT conservative. No one is taking your sons, if any, half way around the world as military folk unless they VOLUNTEER for which you may thank the actual conservative movement which demanded and got an end to the draft.

No paleo is forming opinions or influencing a d----d thing other than other gullibles who like their brie and chablis parties and worrywartism over "collateral damage". The New York City Fire Department lost more men and women on 9/11/01 than it had lost in its entire history stretching back to the seventeenth century. That is an institution that my generation inherited and yours did too. The last measure of vengeance should be extracted in their memory. The NYPD lost a lot of men and women that day too.

Do you have any idea how many innocent civilians were evacuated from the WTC by those cops and firefighters? They did not first set up a brie and chablis party to debate the fine points of the paleos concepts o the "morality" reflected by cowardice as national policy or as American foreign policy. They plunged in, lost hundreds of their own saving tens of thousands of others who were strangers to them. No paleos were known to have been in the ranks of the cops and firefighters.

I supported Dubya in 2000 and I will support him in 2004. The paleos are the ones whose rarified self-importance and pseudomoral pecksniffery finds Dubya beneath their fantasies. I do not believe that I have encountered Yonif on FR. I lose no sleep over Pollard who did a lot less harm than did the Arkansas Antichrist. Richard Perle and Daniel Pipes are your other targets du jour. Now, what do Pollard, Perle, Pipes and probably Yontif have in common? Hmmmm, are they all Jewish. Do they all support the US ally Israel? As O'Reilly might say, where might I be going wrong in encountering a whiff of anti-Semitism mixed in with the anti-Americanism?

Do not flatter the paleos. They lead no one anywhere. They and you ought to go back to DU with your friends.

[BlackElk]

Once conservatism tolerates within those who use bloodlines as their criteria, we have made a dreadful error. Ideological discipline within reason is a necessity for any political movement to retain coherence. Thanks for noticing.

[JohnGalt]

You are correct in so far that its the sons and daughters who care more about the Jets and the Giants than jihad, who pay the price when the schemes of the Manhattan elite blow up in their face.

As I have noted several times, I made the observation that the many schemers who pull the levers of power graduated from Ivy League schools in the period between 1965-75, including the Arkansas Caligula. When you were cheering on the National Guard firing into a crowd of smelly anti-American hippies, they were smoking dope, getting wasted on spirits, probably dabbling in the white powder, and wondering whether it would be a summer in the Hamptons or an internship in DC.

It is not populism I am referencing but an indictment of the faux meritocracy that declares failed businessmen fit to be chief executive because he got a Harvard MBA or a Yale Law Degree, and a resume full of important internships. Its an indictment of an entire class of politicians who by all accounts have been miserable leaders with completely discredited policies.

They corrupted the Reagan election of 1980 and effectively ended conservatism. Their scheming led to Iran Contra hearings, cocaine running, and plenty of other schemes not worthy of a man and a patriot who best represented his times. While Perle was sending secrets to Israel, but thankfully for his sake, he was not working for the government of the time, Reagan was actually attempting to in act his agenda.

And what about Michael Ledeen? The neo-fascist scrib has the nerve to first bring dishonor on the Reagan Administration, and now, by associating with the same figures of that era, threatens ever more disgrace on the Bush Administration. And still not a peep.

The only pleasure you receive is reports of a new country to attack while pictures of anti-American hippies are flashed on the screen to make your simplistic dichotomy raise your self esteem as the good American.

But, a board likes this won't work as a sounding board for the establishment because the Internet, by its nature is not the establishment. The dispensationalist loons who comes to this site via the 700 Club (at least according to the Alexa breakdown of web traffic to this site) make lousy bed fellows for a honest conservative Catholic like yourself.

Here in anonymous cyberspace, I simply enjoy the aesthetics of it all, the in the trenches, battles for a broad spectrum of opinion. Judging from my Freep Mail and the nice things some people say from the heart, I get some measure of pleasure at the end of the day when I tip back a pint of English ale with the wife and watch a Red Sox game. I'll leave ideological purity tests to Reds and Browns.

Those of us who discovered that something smelled about the latest operation come from every point of the right from neoconservative to radical localists like myself. We have learned a lot of each others point of view and learned to be more respectful. It's the silliness of those you personally have been running around with, Marshall Palpatine, and CopKiller hutch that gives the game away.

Left with only your last play, you wield out the anti-Semitic branding iron because yes Perle, Pipes...are Jewish in the sense that they probably had a briss when they were born. I condemn them for their words and their behavior, nothing else.

Sleep soundly in the warm stupor of victory in a land that does not vote, does not care, but pays the freight and the pensions for the fleet of idiots that rule us.

[BlackElk]

I had not realized that you were a member of RedSoxNation. My dad rooted for them from their last World Championship in 1918 when he was 7 and living in Southie or in Somerville until his death in 1993. Many of us entertained the notion that he was holding on in vain in the hope that he might witness the end of the Curse of the Bambino. Nonetheless, there is something pathological.....

I have moved to Northern Illinois, a cultural dead spot in the sense that it is difficult to see the world's greatest sporting franchise The New York Yankees for whom I have rooted since I was five and the Mick was a mere rookie.

Membership in RedSoxNation will do awful things. It is clearer now.

[JohnGalt]

Uncle David began watching the Sox in 1942 when he was 4. Died 3 days after Teddy Ballgame appeared at Fenway for the All Star game in '98. He had to watch on tv, safe in the Live Free or Die State, because he was too weak to move. (Thankfully, being 'connected' in the state, he had access to the pain medications he needed--though not much help to his faithful wife.)

Uncle David taught me about the Red Sox in 1980 or there abouts. One of the last things we talked in the last days of his life were the Red Sox and their chances.

His last words were a warning me to stay away from polemics (didn't stick)and a hope the Sox might win in my lifetime. And when I learned that yes, one could go their whole life loving something, and yet never achieve earthly 'victory' I reckon I probably did take a lesson that took a few years to sink in.

Three months later, the Sox came back from 2-0 to beat the Indians in 5 only to lose to the Yankees on a phantom tag at second from Knoblauch on Nomar.

[BlackElk]

Two baseball encouragements: The Chicago White Sox last won the Championship in 1917 and the Cubs in 1908. White Sox fans and Cubs fans do have hope spring eternal but they are not much help to their teams. They have a hard time even envisioning a pennant. Last Cubs' pennant: 1945. Last White Sox pennant: 1959.

The sports radio station in Chicago sometimes speculates as to whether anyone alive and competent can actually remember actually seeing the last Cubs' champions (who beat, who else?, the White Sox) since it has been 95 years.

[dennisw]

You know your history

[Burkeman1]

X knows his deal though I don't agree with him all the time. He is brighter than me.

[Burkeman1]

Yep- Forget all my many virulent Anti Clinton posts for years on this site. We used to mock President Clinton because of the few and far between press conferences he held. Clinton was the worst President ever for holding press conferences. That was- up until the current Bush.

But we are not supposed to notice stuff like that on FR now! Because Bush junior has an "R" after his name on the ballot we are supposed to act as if we are Clinton lovers- blind loyalty and spit on facts and truth. So we get yahoo's who paint anyone as a "communist" who dares question the direction of the GOP. Almost makes Archie Bunker seem like an intellectual.

[BlackElk]

Thanks.