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Of the many people I've met over the last two years who are opponents of an Article V Convention of States to Propose Amendments to the Constitution, one of my greatest regrets is that there are many with whom I would most likely agree on virtually every other issue in modern-day political discourse. Many of them, however, almost proudly admit that their positions on a COS are rooted in a decades-old fear of the unknown and an inability to trust their fellow citizens, while most COS proponents put their faith in stringent, new safeguards and an optimistic view of the...

Christopher Hitchens got a chance to analyze the Tea Party in 2011, the same year cancer took his life. In a Vanity Fair article titled "Tea'd Off," the great polemicist explains that populist movements like the Tea Party are a reaction to social and political change. Hitchens writes that before the Revolutionary War costumes, America had seen a somewhat similar phenomenon with the John Birch Society: The John Birch Society possessed such a mainstream message--the existence of a Communist world system with tentacles in the United States--that it had a potent influence over whole sections of the Republican Party. It...

Friday, 27 June 2014 12:30 “After America Comes North America,” Gen. Petraeus Boasts Written by Alex Newman “After America Comes North America,” Gen. Petraeus Boasts Former general and CIA chief David Petraeus (shown), a key figure in the globalist Council on Foreign Relations and the shadowy Bilderberg network, boasted at a recent conference that the United States of America is set to be merged into the continental regime being erected under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Speaking at the Margaret Thatcher Conference on Liberty last week in London, the ex-commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq essentially...

The John Birch Society describes itself as a constitutionalist organization, yet it is highly critical of a very important component of the Constitution. The JBS does not like Article V’s provision that allows the States to unilaterally propose and ratify amendments to the Constitution. George Mason demanded that this provision be included in Article V because he correctly forecast the situation we face today. He predicted that Washington, D.C. would violate its constitutional limitations and the States would need to make adjustments to the constitutional text in order to rein in the abuse of power by the federal government. Current...

Conner contends that today's tea party is the modern-day rebirth of the John Birch Society. They share a worldview, she says. The same paranoid distrust of government. The same desire to protect the rich. The same cruel streak that blames the poor for their poverty and seeks to deny government help on that basis. The same willingness to believe all manner of bizarre claims against political leaders they don't like.

The city of Sanford, Florida, already has a secret law-enforcement plan to deal with potential riots and unrest in the wake of a possible acquittal of George Zimmerman. Miami has efforts to keep the peace underway as well. Across America, pundits and analysts have been warning that a “not guilty” verdict in the controversial case could set off an explosive wave of deadly violence rivaling the mass riots that ensued following the 1992 Rodney King trial. If mayhem does strike, analysts say the establishment media, President Obama, and assorted race-profiteers would bear much of the blame. Well before the verdict...

The Freedom Index: A Congressional Scorecard Based on the U.S. Constitution rates congressmen based on their adherence to constitutional principles of limited government, fiscal responsibility, national sovereignty, and a traditional foreign policy of avoiding foreign entanglements. The percentages below are cumulative scores are based on key votes from 1999 through 2013. Click on a senator's or representative's name to get a detailed breakdown of his or her voting record. Senators: Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky - 93%Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas - 90%Sen. Mike Lee, Utah - 90%Sen. Ron Johnson, Wisconsin - 86%Sen. James Risch, Idaho - 84%Sen. Jeff Flake, Arizona...

A cancer is eating away at a once Grand Old Party, and if the party doesn't wake up and take precautions, it may wind up only a shadow of its better self -- a hollowed-out refuge for haters and paranoids and the kind of ideological parasites that can reduce a major party to a minor one. The historian Richard Hofstadter spoke of a "paranoid style in American politics," and noted its "sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy." He called it "an old and recurrent phenomenon in our public life," one that it isn't confined to left or right....

“Anyone who embarks on a study of Abraham Lincoln … must first come to terms with the Lincoln myth. The effort to penetrate the crust of legend that surrounds Lincoln … is both a formidable and intimidating task. Lincoln, it seems, requires special considerations that are denied to other figures.” — Robert W. Johannsen Lincoln, the South, and Slavery Indeed, it would not seem a safe time to critique the wisdom, motivations, and character of Abraham Lincoln. Steven Spielberg’s reverential motion picture epic Lincoln fills screens across America. The public increasingly accepts him as America’s greatest leader. Academics from the...

To toil at National Review is to know what it’s like to read “Buckley must be spinning in his grave!” at the beginning of umpteen letters, e-mails, blog posts, and tweets from less-than-gruntled critics supremely assured of their originality. The beauty of this evergreen — and its cheap presumptions about a great man — is that it can be wielded with equal convenience by trolls of every political persuasion and in response to any number of detected heresies.But, with the whiff of bigotry and malice that so many smell in popular politics since the tranquil days when the last Bush...

When James Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, looks at the Tea Party today, he flashes back to 1964 and sees the John Birch Society. "The Tea Party, these right wingers are basically the modern-day John Birch Society," he told U.S. News. "They are being extremists." The John Birch Society gained traction in the earl 60s with its vehemently anti-communist rhetoric and distrust in government. Hoffa says just like in the early 60s when the John Birch Society pushed for Barry Goldwater, who was the more conservative candidate, to be the Republican presidential nominee, the Tea Party has...

I received the link to this video clip in a recent email and I don’t know what to make of it. Years ago I remember my Dad (God rest his soul) contributing to the John Birch Society whenever possible. They seem to be pro-conservative and pro-Constitutional. Pardon me if I am among the last to learn all the information contained in this video. I find it quite disconcerting. I’m one of the ones who just loved (and prayed nightly) for Sarah Palin and thought for sure she was going to run. When that didn’t happen, I then looked to Bachmann,...

John F. McManus anaylzes the voting record and actions of former Congressman Newt Gingrich, revealing that Gingrich is not the conservative he portrays himself to be.

Welch was right! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZU0c8DAIU4&feature=related

Last week the unthinkable happened.  While you were distracted by the banal and only marginally important presidential primaries, the lion, Harvard Law School, publicly lay down with the lamb, the Tea Party Patriots.  The long-term political implications are, potentially, far more potent than a mere presidency. The SuperElite and the SuperPopulists convened at Harvard for a “Conference for a Constitutional Convention.”  It was co-hosted by Lawrence Lessig, from Harvard, and by Mark Meckler, co-founder of the 850,000 member Tea Party Patriots. Lessig is a leading figure on the social democratic left, the director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for...

The article focused on Perry’s comments at a Border Summit speech in south Texas (8-22-01), days before the 9-11 attacks, about bi-national health insurance — Texas-funded coverage for both U.S. and Mexican border residents. The governor’s statement favored a study, required by the Legislature, about "the feasibility of bi-national health insurance.” The DMN continued, "Katherine Cesinger, spokeswoman for Perry’s campaign, downplayed the topic of bi-national health insurance. 'A bill was passed by the Legislature that authorized a study to look into this issue, which ultimately concluded there were numerous barriers to accomplishing that idea, and the Legislature took no further...

As early as January of 2005, high-ranking officials were discussing the best way to sell the idea of North American “integration” to the public and policymakers while getting around national constitutions. The prospect of creating a monetary unit to replace national currencies was a hot topic as well. Some details of the schemes were exposed in a secret 2005 U.S. embassy cable from Ottawa signed by then-Ambassador Paul Cellucci. The document was released by WikiLeaks on April 28. But so far, it has barely attracted any attention in the United States, Canada, or Mexico beyond a few mentions in some...

US Pacific Command’s Adm William Fallon says the group wasn’t conducting anti-sub operations, but the fact remains that the submarine did slip past the group’s security screen undetected and popped up within firing range of the Kitty Hawk.

This Matthew Continetti  cover story — on Glenn Beck, Rick Santelli, and the Tea Party — from the latest Weekly Standard has recently been the locus of a bit of internecine warfare on the right.One of Beck's producers called it "intentionally misleading," a "collection of lies," and "a hit piece barely worthy of Media Matters." He also provided a toll-free number readers could use to cancel their subscriptions to TWS (while bizarrely claiming that he didn't support boycotts).Now, Beck and his associates have been known to avail themselves of the full emotive power of the English language to press home...

Things that are going on today with the economy, and how the goverenmet is handling all of it, was specifically predicted back in 1958 by Robert Welch.