Of Motes, Beams, and Holy Wars

 In his Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, James Madison famously denounced the proposal that Virginians -- or, for that matter, Americans anywhere else -- be compelled to pay so much as "three pence" to support the establishment of religion.

A lawsuit filed in late 2008 by the Thomas More Law Center on behalf of Iraq War veteran Kevin J. Murray accuses the federal government (particularly Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors) of violating Madison's "three pence" standard by indirectly financing "Sharia-Compliant" investments by way of the American International Group (AIG).

By the time it was nationalized in September 2008, AIG was practically worthless, as its former CEO Maurice Greenberg admitted. It was useful only as a way to facilitate a "backdoor bailout" of Goldman Sachs. Once AIG was nationalized -- an action that was unconstitutional on its face, in addition to being a world-historic crime -- some of the wealth plundered from taxpayers ended up being used to fund and promote "Sharia-compliant" financial services in Muslim markets.

PBUH: Sharia's champion in Iraq.

"As a Christian, a federal taxpayer, and a former U.S. Marine veteran of the war against Islamic terrorism, Plaintiff objects to and is harmed by the appropriation of disbursement of public funds to AIG and being forced as a taxpayer to contribute to the propagation of Islamic beliefs and practices predicated upon Shariah law," insisted the original version of the lawsuit, which named former Treasury Secretary (and former Goldman CEO) Henry Paulson as a plaintiff.


Murray "objects to and is harmed by the United States government's policy and practice of approving, endorsing, promoting, funding, and supporting Sharia-compliant finance," asserts the lawsuit. "The government's endorsement of Islamic law sends a message to Plaintiff, who is a non-adherent to Islam, that he is an outsider, not a full member of the political community, and an accompanying message to those who are adherents to Islam that they are insiders, favored members of the political community," continues the brief, which was written by someone who is a stranger to concision.

The specific amount extorted from Murray to subsidize AIG's "Sharia-compliant" investments may be infinitesimal, but under Madison's "three pence" standard, it's the principle that matters, not the size of the injury.


 A demand for summary judgment filed by the More Center earlier this year invoked the Supreme Court's 1947 ruling in Everson v. Board of Education that "No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion."

Warbots gag on these...

 Murray's contention that no American should be forced to subsidize Sharia in any form is incontestably correct, as is his objection to the utterly unconstitutional federal takeover of AIG. However, it's difficult to see how he has standing to sue, given that he volunteered his services to establish Sharia law in Iraq and Afghanistan -- a fact proudly detailed in his lawsuit.
 
"From March 2003 to October 2003, Plaintiff was deployed overseas in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom," recounts the lawsuit. "During this time, Plaintiff served as a Marine infantryman and was tasked with providing security for vital refueling and arming points throughout the initial combat phase of the war. These duties consisted of countless and stressful hours devoted to convoy security, manning perimeter defensive positions, and conducting combat patrols in hostile enemy territory in numerous locations throughout southern Iraq." 

Thanks to Murray's efforts, and those offered by hundreds of thousands of other Americans in uniform -- not to mention an estimated $3 trillion stolen from American taxpayers -- Sharia law is now firmly established in Iraq and Afghanistan.


This fact is acknowledged by Stephen C. Coughlin, an attorney and Major in the U.S. Army Reserve who is, according to his bio, "often cited as the Pentagon's leading expert on the nexus between Islamic law and jihad."

"The direct subordination of the law of the land to Shari'ah is reflected in the national constitutions of many Islamic countries, including the Constitutions the United States Government had oversight in drafting -- both Afghanistan and Iraq," writes Maj. Coughlin:

"For example, Article 2 of the Iraqi Constitution states that `Islam is the official religion of the State and it is a fundamental source of legislation.[...] No law that contradicts the established provisions of Islam may be established.' The Constitution of Afghanistan makes the association as well in Article 2 [Religions] where it states (1) The religion of the State of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is the sacred religion of Islam (2) Followers of other religions are free to exercise their faith and perform their religious rites within the limits of the provisions of law" -- the latter qualification effectively defining out of existence the "free exercise" clause immediately preceding it.

... but swallow these in a single gulp.

Maj. Coughlin's analysis is devastating to Murray's argument, which rests on the idea that he suffers a tangible and continuing injury by being forced to subsidize, in minuscule amounts, some peripheral business dealings by AIG.


How can it be an unendurable affront to be forced to surrender "three pence" to promote Sharia-compliant investments, when the Regime ruling us has spent three trillion (and counting) to impose Sharia law at gunpoint?

Ironically, Coughlin's cogent summary of Washington's role in promoting Sharia comes in a statement he filed as an "expert witness" on behalf of Murray's lawsuit.

Those seeking to define, by illustration, the expression "testimony against interest" need look no further.

Just weeks ago, Wadea Al Handal, chairman of Iraq's Ashur International Bank,  announced that he was awaiting approval from the country's Central Bank to offer "Islamic banking services."

"There is certainly clear interest in the Islamic market in Iraq but it is still a new idea for many," Handal told Reuters. "It's an education process ... we didn't really have much Islamic banking before."

What he meant, of course, is that there wasn't much of an Iraqi market for Islamic banking "before" Kevin Murray and his colleagues were sent to inflict a Sharia-centered government on that long-suffering country. Now, however, Handal has new opportunities to offer "lending services on a Sharia-compliant basis in order to tap growing interest in the market."

Washington remains deeply involved in taxpayer-subsidized "reconstruction" projects in Iraq designed to entrench and strengthen a government rooted in Sharia law. Why isn't the Thomas More Center suing to end that ongoing outrage? Why doesn't it file a suit seeking redress of damages inflicted on Murray as a result of deceiving him into risking his life in order to promote Islamic rule?
 

Yerushalmi in Israel with the late Jack Kemp.

One possible answer is suggested by the fact that David Yerushalmi, the Arizona-based attorney acting as co-lead counsel in the AIG case, is General Counsel to the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a Pentagon front group headed by febrile neo-con war hyena Frank Gaffney. Both Gaffney and his group energetically supported the war in Iraq, in which thousands of Americans (and tens of thousands of Iraqis) died to create a political order ruled by Sharia law.

Yerushalmi is one of the War Party's most energetic social networkers. He is a co-founder of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, an insta-demagogue group (just add flying spittle!)  working to drive the terminally credulous into a frenzy over the so-called Ground Zero Mosque. 

Yerushalmi considers it "morally reprehensible and intolerable" to forbid the torture of "terrorists," a term he uses as a functional synonym for "Muslim." He is the founder of a secretive vigilante group calling itself the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE), which has set out to "map" every center of Islamic worship and culture in the United States on the assumption that each of them is involved in a plot to overthrow the government.

 The co-founder of SANE, which is headquartered in Yerushalmi's Arizona law office, is Dave Gaubatz, who served 12 years in the U.S. Air Force's Office of Special Operations. Three years ago Gaubatz made the remarkable -- and completely unverified -- claim that he "discovered" Saddam's WMD bunkers, which (he insists) were vacant after the illicit weapons had been shipped to Syria, Iran, and other likely targets of armed "liberation" by Washington.

Shortly after its creation, SANE's leadership enacted a resolution calling on Congress to enact legislation making it "a felony punishable by 20 years in prison" knowingly to "act in furtherance of, or to support the adherence to, Shar'ia."

If Yerushalmi were serious about that proposal, wouldn't he have to seek the imprisonment of his client -- as well as the elected and appointed officials who dispatched him (and hundreds of thousands of other Americans) to promote Islamist rule in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Thanks so much for your help in keeping Pro Libertate on-line; God bless! 
 

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Dum spiro, pugno!

Ron Paul's Immigration Misfire

Since there is only One of woman born who was perfect, it's hardly a news bulletin that Ron Paul, though a decent and principled man, is susceptible to error.


It's easy to make allowances where Dr. Paul is simply mistaken, since he has proven repeatedly that he's willing to change his views as dictated by the facts, while remaining true to his principles. But it is disappointing to see him succumb to the impulse to pander to a certain slice of the GOP's activist base, as is the case with his most recent campaign ad on immigration policy. (See it here or at the bottom of this essay.)

One suitable definition of the verb “to pander” would be: “To promise something clearly impossible in the hopes of winning votes.” By that definition relatively little in that advertisement qualifies as pandering.

Three elements of the five-point plan recommended by the ad – no amnesty for illegal immigrants, no welfare benefits for the same, and an end to “birthright citizenship” -- are either sound or at least defensible. But they are sandwiched between two thick, crusty slices of pure pandering – the promise to secure the border physically, and to end “student visas from terrorist nations.”

It's always a bad sign when a candidate begins his pitch by offering something that is impossible. It is entirely impossible to create a physical barricade around our nation that will prevent illegal immigration. Attempting to do so (as I've pointed out before) will cause immense harm to the property rights of American citizens who live near the border. And with the Regime increasingly taking on the character of an undisguised garrison state, do we really want it to be in the business of sealing up the border?

Dr. Paul, an immensely intelligent man, knows all of this, which is why this element of his ad is particularly disappointing.

In his critique of the Paul campaign ad, Justin Raimondo correctly points out that the second slice of unmitigated pandering – the promise to end “student visas from terrorist nations” -- traffics in “the concept of collective guilt....[I]s every citizen of these unnamed `terrorist nations' to be declared persona non grata on account of the actions of a minuscule number of their countrymen?”

If we're going to get into the business of assigning collective national guilt for the terrorist actions of a few, how could we object if Americans were subject to international travel restrictions because of the crimes committed by Bush and Cheney and their ilk?

While the other points presented in the ad are worthier of Dr. Paul, the same can't be said of their presentation. The imagery of dusky-skinned immigrants swarming into the country is a classic Brown Peril trope, as is the ominous voice-over informing us: “Today, illegal immigrants violate our borders and overwhelm our hospitals, schools, and social services.”

Why the border fence won't work, assuming it's ever built.

Speaking on his own behalf in the Republican debates, Dr. Paul has dealt with the same subject in a way that addresses the fundamental economics of the issue: We cannot have a centralized welfare state and a fiat money economy and long, permeable borders without having immigration-related problems of the sort under discussion.

Witness Dr. Paul's comments during the Univision debate earlier this month. Taking issue with the idea of a “tamper-proof ID for illegals or immigrants,” which he said (correctly) would lead to a national ID card, Dr. Paul offered a brief lecture on the economics of immigration:

“But we have to realize where the resentment [against illegal immigrants] comes from. I believe it's related to our economy. When the economy is weakening and there's resentment because of our welfare system – jobs are going overseas; our good jobs, [and] pay is going down.... There's a lot of resentments because the welfare system is based on mandates from the federal government to put pressure on states like Florida and Texas to provide services which the local taxpayers resent. Some of our hospitals are closing. So it's an economic issue, too. If we deal with the welfare state and a healthy economy and a sound money [system] and all this wasteful spending overseas, we would have a healthy economy; I think this problem [with illegal immigration] would be greatly reduced.” (Emphasis added.)

This analysis puts the blame for overburdened “hospitals, schools, and social services” on the central government and its onerous mandates, rather than placing it entirely on the backs of the swarthy northbound masses from Latin America.

Lest it be thought that Dr. Paul was pandering in that answer – seeking to ingratiate himself in a Spanish-language debate before a Latino audience – it's worth recalling what he did just a few minutes later.

In one of the most insanely courageous acts of political principle I've ever seen, Dr. Paul – speaking in the teeth of outraged boos from the audience – defended re-opening diplomatic and economic relations with Cuba and Venezuela on the basis of the principles laid down by George Washington. He then managed to win over at least part of the house by explaining that “we create the Chavezes of the world, we create the Castros of the world, by interfering and creating chaos in their countries” -- a process which also does quite a bit to generate pressures that lead to illegal immigration.

In an interview with Newsweek, Dr. Paul reflected on the fact that as an obstetrician (is there any profession that can more properly be described as “doing God's work”?) he delivered children now referred to as “anchor babies” -- US citizens born to parents here illegally – who were “immediately put on [welfare] benefits. They can get housing allowances, food allowances, and Americans resent it because our economy is weak.... I want a healthy economy. Then we will be able to have a much more generous immigration policy, which would fit my personal philosophy and our Constitution.” (Again, emphasis added.)

Perhaps his clearest expression of this point came in Dr. Paul's interview with an Iowa newspaper editorial board, in which he elaborated on the dangers of government-enforced multiculturalism, including compelled bilingualism and welfare benefits for non-citizens.





Something to remember, lest we get just a little too sanctimonious in decrying the immigrant "invasion"....


After reiterating his complaints about the impact of those policies on local communities, Dr. Paul cut to what he considers the nub of the issue: "I'm also convinced that if we didn't have the welfare state, this would be a non-issue. If we had sound money, no welfare state, and we were thriving.... It's because we're having these economic problems that I say the illegal alien becomes an easy scapegoat."


There's the word that only Ron Paul, of all the Republican contenders, would have the candor and credibility to use. And that's the word, tragically, that best summarizes the use of illegal immigration in the most recent Paul campaign ad.


That ad is redolent of the influence of opportunistic PR flacks -- people who reflexively seek to blunt principled messages, as if they're afraid of cutting themselves on sharply defined positions. It certainly doesn't reflect what Dr. Paul has described as his "personal philosophy" regarding the issue. It also suggests that Dr. Paul needs to impose some message discipline on his campaign right now, before it falls victim to consultants and others lured by his fundraising achievements -- the sort of people who would re-brand him as the thinking man's Tom Tancredo, as if such a creature could exist.




Dum spiro, pugno!

S-CHIP Of Fools

"You know, I was amazed how easily people fell for the idea that we actually disagree! Um, Bill -- could you spot me an intern until next Tuesday?" Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, co-architects of the much-discussed S-CHIP program.

Nothing of substance stands to be accomplished as a result of the “debate” over the proposed expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) and Bush's veto of the same. The program, after all, is the purebred offspring of an incestuous union cloaked in the euphemism "bipartisanship."

A federal “block grant” program jointly created by Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, S-CHIP was passed by a Republican-dominated Congress and signed into law in August 1997 by a Democratic president whose fiscal performance placed him comfortably to the right of the incumbent Republican. As with any other welfare state measure, S-CHIP was designed to expand, and in recent weeks this objective has been stated clearly by both George W. Bush and by Mike Leavitt, the Bush Regime's minister for welfare.

In his veto message – a rarity, given that the Grand and Glorious Decider claims the power to nullify legislation through “signing statements” -- Bush pointed out that he sought to expand funding for S-CHIP “twenty percent ... over the next five years.”

After conceding his agreement with the Democratic congressional leadership that S-CHIP should grow, Bush claimed that his real intention was to see the program shrink: “[T]his legislation would move health care in this country in the wrong direction.... Our goal should be to move children who have no health insurance to private coverage, not to move children who already have private health insurance to government coverage.”

The disagreement here was based on an expansion of S-CHIP coverage to include “some families of four earning almost $83,000 a year,” which would mean turning the program into a middle-class entitlement.

And let it not be forgotten, insisted Bush, that the S-CHIP expansion bill “does not fully fund all its new spending, obscuring [its] true cost... [and] raising taxes on working Americans.”

So Bush took out his veto crayon and went to work, spelling that challenging four-letter word with relatively little difficulty (although, to be fair, Dick Cheney helped guide the Bushling's hand).

This veto was cast by the same apostle of small government and fiscal austerity whose congressional minions employed blackmail, threats, bribes, and unethical parliamentary stalling tactics to pass an immeasurably larger enhancement of the socialized health care system on November 22, 2003.

This was done for reasons of vulgar political opportunism: Current and soon-to-be Medicare beneficiaries vote, and so the Bushite Republicans decided to bribe that chunk of the electorate with hundreds of billions of dollars to be stolen from the young and yet-to-be-born.

As the incomparable James Bovard recalls, the Medicare expansion bill – which was a pure product of Republican partisanship – actually lost when the Roll Call was taken at 2 a.m. However, the White House-allied Republican leadership kept the vote open for four hours while various arm-twisters bribed, browbeat, and bullied enough Republicans to create a “victory” margin. Even then, only two congressmen succumbed to White House pressure.

In the case of Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) -- who, to his everlasting credit, voted against the bill – the tactics included the offer of a $100,000 campaign donation to his son, a Republican congressional candidate. That bribe was coupled with a threat: Vote against the bill, Smith was told, and your son is (in the words of now-convicted Republican former congressman Randy Cunningham) “dead meat.”

Behind the gangland tactics and Banana Republic parliamentary procedures employed on the House floor, the White House was committing several varieties of perjury and and accounting fraud in calculating the costs of the Medicare enhancement. The White House's proud boast was that the expanded program would cost no more than $400 billion over the next decade (such a trifling sum to those in the business of official plunder).

Apparently that arbitrary figure was produced when some tertiary administration official pulled it from his emunctory aperture. And the White House was careful to cover up more rational cost estimates. As Bovard recounts:

“Richard S. Foster, the top actuary at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, privately estimated in June 2003 – five months before the final vote – that the bill would actually cost $550 billion. He was contacted by Democratic staffers seeking estimates on the cost of the Bush proposal. By law, he was obligated to provide them the information. Thomas Scully, the chief Medicare administrator, is reported to have threatened to fire Foster if he provided the information. Foster later commented that `there was a pattern of withholding information for what I perceived to be political purposes.' The much higher estimate of the cost of the Medicare bill was apparently known by top officials at the White House.”

Eventually the Bu'ushists admitted – long the bill was enacted – that the new Medicare benefit would cost at least $1.2 trillion over the next decade.

In a nice bit of hypocritical parallelism with the S-CHIP, Bush and his cronies deliberately shot down a proposal offered by 30 House Republicans to extend Medicare drug benefits only to seniors without private insurance coverage. And a study of the measure by the Congressional Budget Office concluded that because of the expanded Medicare program, “at least one-third of all private companies will dump their retirees into the Medicare system” -- which is an entirely predictable outcome.

So Bush's Medicare expansion was guilty of all the offenses that made the S-CHIP expansion so eminently worthy of a Bush veto. The chief difference, once again, is that Bush's enrichment of socialized health care is monumentally more destructive, since it constitutes one of the demographic cluster-bombs set to detonate as the Baby Boomers retire.

So when the economy collapses and intergenerational warfare erupts over Social Security, Medicare, and other old age entitlements, we should remember to express proper thanks to George W. Bush and his adherents.

"When we say `Don't trust anybody over 30,' we mean it!" The dystopian State depicted in Logan's Run imposed mandatory euthanasia at age 30; a fraudulent ritual called "Carousel" extended the bogus promise of "renewal" to those who qualified, but nobody ever did. That system represented one way to control old age entitlement costs -- not that I intend to give the supervisors of our quasi-socialized health care system any ideas....

The air was not rent with outraged cries from Republican-aligned media personalities when Bush got his Medicare expansion. Yet that same claque of concubines can be heard execrating the Democrats for their S-CHIP proposal – which, while bad enough, is nowhere near as disastrous as Bush's entitlement.

And efforts to defend the Chimpster's veto have broken new ground in partisan viciousness, including an unprecedented campaign to traduce young children whose catastrophic medical expenses were subsidized through S-CHIP.

That the benefits received by those families have no constitutional sanction is clear and important, but not immediately germane to this discussion – since we're examining the actions of a party apparatus that is utterly disdainful of the Constitution and incapable of fiscal restraint.

The only reason why Republican media whores -- from the Hogarthian caricature of egotistical gluttony called Rush Limbaugh, to the caustic little callat named Michelle Malkin – targeted 12-year-old Graeme Frost and his family was because his rebuttal to a presidential radio address was seen as an attack on the Dear Leader and the One True Party.

The same is true of the utterly vile suggestion, made by National Review's Mark Hemmingway, that the parents of Bethany Wilkerson, a toddler who received S-CHIP subsidies (and who stars in a Democrat-created political ad) made a “bad decision” by having children:

“Dara [Bethany's mother] admitted to me that she and Brian had been talking about having children since before they were married. She further admitted that after they were married she voluntarily left a job at a country club that had good health insurance, because the situation was `unmanageable.' From there she took a job at a restaurant with no health insurance, and the couple went on to have a baby anyway, presuming that others would pay for it and certainly long before they knew their daughter would have a heart defect that probably cost the gross national product of Burkina Faso to fix. But not knowing about future health problems is the reason we have insurance in the first place.”(Emphasis added.)

“I hope Bethany grows up strong — I’m worried about her,” wrote Hemmingway in the tone of sneering, condescending mock-sympathy that comes easily to comfortable people devoid of principles. “Not because I’m worried that the state won’t take care of her, but I’m afraid that her parents will continue to set a bad example.”

How dare Bethany's mother decide to quit her job before having children! How inept of the parents not to exercise oracular insight regarding the hidden medical problems that would eventually afflict their yet-to-be-conceived child! More to the point – how dare that family defy the wisdom of the Dear Leader, and publicly oppose the designs of his One True Party!

Such people really shouldn't be allowed to breed.

Having sloughed off the ideological pretense of being a conservative Party, the Bushified element of the GOP stands before us in the full majesty of its reptilian evil. It really is a totalitarian cult held together only by the worship of power.

"A sprawling apparatus of coercion, surveillance, and social regimentation? Oh, George and Dick, you shouldn't have!" --

Hillary the Red's delighted reaction as she unwraps her house-warming gift on the morning of January 20, 2009.


And the unfiltered nastiness of that cult's media allies will probably guarantee that in January 2009 our country will be blessed with a government headed by an unabashed socialist who will eagerly build on the legacy of her predecessor.






A Personal Note

Thanks, so much, for the prayers and very generous expressions of support for Korrin and for myself. I promise to keep you apprised of how she's doing. Your friendship, and concern for my family, are among my biggest blessings.

Please be sure to visit The Right Source and the Liberty Minute archive.

Dum spiro, pugno!

Weimar Republicans

"Patriots" from the pro-war group "A Gathering of Eagles" swarm anti-war demonstrator Carlos Arredondo, a Gold Star Father whose son, Lance Corporal Alexander S. Arredondo, USMC, was killed in Iraq.



Carlos Arrendondo, a native of Costa Rica, wasn't even a citizen of the United States when he learned on August 25, 2004, that his oldest son Alexander had been killed in Iraq.

It was Carlos's birthday. Rather than a phone call from Alex, however, Carlos received a visit at his Hollywood, Florida home from a Marine Corps "Casualty Assistance Team," who informed him that his son -- just twenty days after his own 20th birthday -- had been killed fighting the Idiot King's useless war in Iraq.


Carlos Arrendondo, a member of "Gold Star Families for Peace," participates in an anti-war demonstration.



On learning of this irrecoverable loss, Carlos suffered an epic breakdown.

"At that moment, not expect [sic] those words, my world tumbled and I felt my heart go down to the ground and rush up through my throat," Carlos wrote later. Like many parents confronted with the news that their children had been killed in the service of the State, Carlos was seized with the desperate thought that if he could force the Marines to leave, his son would still be alive.


Momentarily deranged, Carlos went into his garage and grabbed a container of gasoline and a welding torch, which he used to set the Marine Casualty Assistance Team's van on fire -- igniting himself in the process. Although understandably startled by vehemence of Carlos's reaction, the Marines acted quickly to save Carlos's life, retrieving him from the burning van, suffocating the flames that threatened to kill him, and arranging for medical attention.


Since that horrible morning, Carlos has become a U.S. citizen and enlisted in the anti-war movement. He is often found at anti-war protests displaying photographs of his lost son. During the recent anti-war rally in Washington, Carlos brought up the rear of the march, pulling a mock-up of a flag-draped casket bearing his son's name and photograph.


It is reasonable to believe that this wasn't the most appropriate way for Carlos to display his opposition to the war, or express his abiding grief for his son -- but the important point is that Alexander was his son.


Long before becoming a Marine, and then a corpse, Alexander Arredondo was a flesh-and-blood human being -- his father's firstborn son. From his eyes radiated the promise of a long and happy life, of years to come in which he and his children would provide joy and satisfaction to his proud and grateful father.


That light was extinguished because a vainglorious idiot working on behalf of an unfathomably evil power elite started a useless war halfway around the world.


I can understand why Carlos, after being deprived of his son in that fashion, erupted in fury and collapsed on himself in desolation. His grief is sacred. We may not share it, but decency requires that we respect it.


Those who believe that the demands of the State trump the bonds of the family will find Carlos's grief inexplicable; a sub-set of those people who fetishize the State's killing apparatus find that grief offensive.


Thus it was that ex-Marine Fred Peterson, who might otherwise be a thoroughly decent man, saw fit to desecrate Carlos's memorial to his son during the September 15 war protest. Peterson was in Washington as part of a group calling itself "A Gathering of Eagles," which is best understood as a kind of loosely organized, Republican-aligned freikorps (specializing in street theater rather than actual armed combat) that materializes on occasion to confront anti-war demonstrators.


According to an account published by National (Socialist) Review Online, Peterson was "offended by the marcher's politics and [his] perceived lack of patriotism" and also believed that because Carlos was "exploiting the death of a fallen Marine," he had "crossed a line." Accordingly, "Fred walked out into the street and snatched the picture off the casket."


Here's Mr. Peterson's account of the incident, written in stilted prose that might strike even the most emo adolescent as excessively melodramatic:


My teams broke up at the Capitol, mission accomplished, and I was walking alone back to the Mall when I saw the photo-image of a proud young Marine in dress blues being held hostage in company not of his own choosing and affixed to a coffin not his own. The insult to his honor and disrespect to his Corps and cause by his captors was immediately obvious and intended. These same peddlers of provocation are paid to push their coffin-prop all over the country they revile. They subvert a common will and undermine the cause and country for which this hostage-Marine had sacrificed his very life. The captive Marine was not among his own. He was surrounded and outnumbered by those who shamelessly exploit his image and memory, disgrace his uniform, his brothers in arms, and his willing sacrifice. He would never choose such company. He needed a rescue.... I liberated his image from the midst of the hostile crowd, intending to replace it in a position of honor [in] Arlington, where he would rest with heroes and among his own...."


In fact, by this time the "hostile crowd" had moved on (remember, Carlos was bringing up the rear of the protest). So Peterson didn't display any "boldness" by "liberating" Alexander's picture -- an act better described as theft, vandalism and -- in a sense -- desecration.


What is genuinely revealing here is that Peterson claimed to be acting as an agent of the "common will," and that he claims (on behalf of the State's military affiliate) an exclusive proprietary claim on the image and memory of Carlos Arredondo's son.


Shortly afterward, Peterson was surprised to be tackled from behind by Carlos, whose rage was understandable even if -- once again -- his method of expressing it was questionable. As for Peterson, he got more or less what his arrogant presumption had bought: He was knocked flat on the ground by the father he had offended.


And then Peterson's fellow heroes joined in, swarming Carlos and -- according to eyewitnesses -- beating and kicking the distraught Gold Star Father. The police intervened and broke up the scrum, and no charges were filed.


Granted, it could have been much worse. (Given the brutality routinely practiced by the WWI-era antecedents of "A Gathering of Eagles," we can expect it to get worse.) But what happened was bad enough. And it was brought about because a "right-wing" provocateur considered it entirely appropriate to commit an act of aggression against a grieving father who was guilty of undermining the "common will."


A more genteel version of the same thuggish, militarist collectivism was behind the White House-orchestrated drive to condemn the left-wing group MoveOn.org for running a New York Times advertisement critical of General David Petraeus , whom George W. Bush cravenly exploited as the political equivalent of a human shield. (In keeping with their recent performance, most Senate Democrats supported the resolution condemning the activist group.)


"I felt like the ad was an attack not only on Gen. Petraeus but on the U.S. military," drooled Bush in response to a planted question at a White House press conference. "Most Democrats are [more] afraid of irritating a left-wing group like MoveOn.org ... than they are of irritating the United States military. That was a sorry deal."


Why should citizens of a supposedly free republic be "afraid ... of irritating the United States military"? As someone who briefly lived under military rule in Guatemala I find myself wondering if Bush sincerely meant to suggest that it would it be better if citizens were afraid of the military.


Kentucky Senator "Chinless" Mitch McConnell described the ad as "abhorrent," theatrically wailed: "Who would have ever expected anybody to go after a general in the field at a time of war, launch a smear campaign against a man we've entrusted with our mission in Iraq?"


Yes, it just might be this obvious.


McConnell didn't explain why it is scandalous or inappropriate for citizens to criticize any government official at any time -- whether peacetime or time of war, and whether the official wears a suit or a military uniform. And Senate Democrats, palsied with terror over being accused of undermining the "common will," enshrined in precedent the idea that a publicly condemning a cynical exercise in war propaganda is in some sense a civic crime.

Not surprisingly, given the finely attuned political instincts she shares with the spouse with whom she no longer shares a bed, Hillary Clinton has embraced the same view. Weeks after she had chided Petraeus for offering an implausibly optimistic assessment of the Iraq occupation, Clinton has condemned the MoveOn.org advertisement.


Hillary's transparently opportunistic gesture won't placate her critics on the militarist right -- but they're not the intended audience. Madame Hillary is in full triangulation mode, building "centrist" credentials intended to make her palatable to that vast and (for her) dimly understood region west of the Hudson River.


For years, both in the streets and in government, conservatives of the Bu'ushist variety -- call them Weimar Republicans -- have been diligently mowing down legal and constitutional restraints on presidential power. Their objective has been to entrench and exalt Republican power uber alles. Meanwhile, Madame Hillary has quietly abetted this process in the serene confidence that she will be the eventual beneficiary of the Republican Party's decision to embrace executive dictatorship.


After all, as the irreplaceable Chris Floyd points out, the Clintons and their political caste are just as wedded to the Military-Industrial-Media-Homeland Security Complex as are the Bushes. Clinton was just as inclined toward the promiscuous use of the military as his successor. And Hillary herself is as militaristic as any of the soi-disant heroes on the Right. She wouldn't have any difficulty arranging needless wars in which young men like Alexander Arredondo would die, leaving fathers like Carlos Arrendondo broken and desolate.


So we shouldn't be surprised to learn that Bush has all but anointed Hillary to be his successor, or that he is quietly giving her advice on how best to perpetuate the war she would inherit on January 20, 2009.

Should she be enthroned as our nation's first distaff dictator, Hillary will inherit the radically enhanced apparatus of coercion the Republicans kindly built on her behalf. The German Communists in the early 1930s, along with their Soviet patrons, tried to pull of the same stunt by quietly supporting the National Socialists in the hope of inheriting a ready-made dictatorship.

"Nach Hitler, kommen wir" -- "After Hitler, we come," was the optimistic refrain of the German Communist Party. That approach didn't work out for them. Hillary and her comrades, however, just might pull it off.

Be sure to visit The Right Source and the Liberty Minute archive.

Huckabee Hound: The Face of the GOP "Honor-Killing" Cult

Christian statesman Ron Paul confronts Mike Huckabee, the War Party's Elmer Gantry.


"The word `honor' in the mouth of Daniel Webster is like the word `love' in the mouth of a whore." -- John Randolph

Despite the commendable achievement of losing roughly one hundred pounds of bodyfat, Mike Huckabee retains enough butter in his veins to ooze out oleaginous platitudes at will. Perhaps this trait, which he shares with another former Governor of Arkansas, is a prerequisite for holding that, ahem, august office. It certainly endears him to the sort of people who perceive high-viscosity insincerity as a form of charisma.

Huckabee Hound displayed this dubious skill to memorable effect the other night when he unwisely confronted Ron Paul about the Texas statesman's principled opposition to the war in Iraq.

However svelte he's become, Huckabee -- in an intellectual sense -- resembles a can of Spam, which is mostly fat. The whippet-thin Ron Paul, by way of contrast, is sharper than a Ginsu knife. The result of Huckabee's imprudent decision to take on Dr. Paul was as predictable as a clash between a ring bologna and a freshly sharpened slicer.



















Want Herr Huckabee to address your Bund meeting, but he's over-booked? This potted "meat" product will make a suitable substitute.

The Huckster got off to a bad start by committing an act of rhetorical larceny -- trying to steal some of the prestige John McCain enjoys because of his war wounds (which he received, I hasten to point out, in the course of an earlier illegal, immoral, undeclared and useless war).

Figuratively wrapping himself in the robes of McCain the Martyr, Huckabee insisted that we can't leave Iraq "until we've left with honor.... [W]hether or not we should have gone to Iraq is a discussion that historians can have, but we're there. We bought it because we broke it. We've got a responsibility to the honor of this country and to the honor of every man and woman who has served in Iraq and ever served in our military to not leave them with anything less than the honor that they deserve."

Rep. Paul -- who, unlike Huckabee, has served honorably in the military -- correctly pointed out that the "honor" of our nation would not be injured by withdrawal, since American people never committed themselves to the war in the only constitutionally legitimate fashion: A formal congressional declaration of war. With scalpel-like incisiveness, Dr. Paul likewise laid bare the fundamental obscenity at the heart of Huckabee's bromide-laden pronouncement:

"How many more [lives] do you want to lose? How long are we going to be there? How long -- what do we have to pay to save face? That's all we're doing is saving face. It's time we came home!"

Like Bill Clinton, the original "Man from Hope" -- who was actually born in Hot Springs, which Mafia defector Joe Valachi identified as a key spot in the Mob's southern network-- Huckabee is adept at disguising a huge, malodorous lie inside a bouquet of pleasant-smelling platitudes. (Once again I find myself wondering if such a facility is a mandatory prerequisite for those seeking to occupy the large, tacky building at 1800 Center Street in Little Rock.) The lie in this instance was that Huckabee is zealous to uphold our nation's "honor," when he is clearly and obviously concerned about the prestige of the ruling elite.

When one has been caught committing a crime, honor requires that he desist and pay the appropriate penalty.

The invasion of Iraq was essentially an act of armed robbery carried out by a rogue regime.

That crime is compounded by mass murder -- the death through state-sanctioned violence of American troops, Iraqi soldiers, Iraqi civilian non-combatants, and those legitimate resistance fighters who have taken up arms against the foreign invaders illegally occupying their country.

Honor requires, at the very least, an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. It may also require that Washington pay reparations to the people of that nation, although this would pose some serious constitutional problems. Rehabilitating our national honor definitely requires the prosecution of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and their neo-Trotskyite retinue, for crimes against our Constitution and what that document refers to (see Article I, sec. 8, clause 10) as the "law of nations."

But Herr Huckabee, like nearly everyone in the political caste, is a stranger in the house of honor. Rather than confronting the unyielding moral realities of the Iraq war, Huckabee takes refuge in the notion that the acquiescence of a deceived public in an illegal war constitutes a morally binding act of consent, while insisting that neither the public nor its elected representatives can withdraw their consent once the deception becomes unambiguous.

We are "one nation," presumably under one quasi-divine Decider, maintains Huckabee. The subtext here is that the Grand and Glorious Decider (peace be upon him) had his "accountability moment" in 2004, and thus can be said to embody the common will. And he has decided to let the killing continue in Iraq for the cynical, self-serving purpose of avoiding an injury to his personal prestige: He wants his successor to deal with the mess Iraq has become, and preside over the withdrawal that inevitably must come. And Bush is supported by like-minded people from across the narrow partisan divide who wish to preserve the grotesquely bloated powers of the imperial presidency.

This is "honor" in the lexicon of the fascist cult that runs the Republican Party.

Apologists for the envisioned "Long War" against the Islamic world occasionally invoke the genuinely repellent spectacle of "honor killings" sometimes carried out by Muslim males against female relatives accused of disgracing the family name.

















Above, below: Iraqi civilians confront the threat from the Bush-bot "honor-killing" cult.

The Bush regime and its supporters, however, are engaged in an immeasurably larger and bloodier version of the same depraved exercise. They claim the right -- nay, the duty -- to kill thousands, or tens of thousands, of Americans and Iraqis simply to "save face."


Preserving the Regime's prestige an objective not worth so much as a papercut's worth of human blood, let alone the life of a single human being. One would expect that an individual like Mike Huckabee who professes to be "pro-life" would understand and act on that professed conviction by ending a useless war in order to save innocent lives.

If he did, however, he wouldn't be Mike Huckabee. He'd be Ron Paul.


Please visit The Right Source for frequent updates on the unfolding "Economic Armageddon," and the Liberty Minute archive for audio commentaries about the Larry Craig scandal, the recent anniversary of the massacre at Ruby Ridge, and other important topics.

Ron Paul: This Is A Man. Take Notes.

Courtesy of the indispensable Scott Horton, here are the key excerpts from Ron Paul's performance at the New Hampshire Republican "debate":



By now it should be obvious even to the most insensate observer that the Republican Party -- with the heroic exception of Ron Paul and a few over whom he's had a healthy influence -- is a fascist cult. Witness Herr Huckabee's invocation of "ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Fuhrer" as a riposte to Paul's irrefutable logic. (The same purported Christian, incidentally, is down with the Mark of the Beast, calling for a human inventory control system to track people like packages.)

Here's the Fox "News" account of the key exchange between Paul and Huckabee:

"Texas Rep. Ron Paul stirred much of the excitement of the evening, repeating his anti-war stance and getting into a sparring match with Huckabee over whether it's time for the United States to leave Iraq.

`Going into Iraq and Afghanistan and threatening Iran is the worst thing we can do for our national security. I am less safe, the American people are less safe for this. It's the policy that is wrong,' Paul said, adding that he disagrees with war supporters who warn against leaving prematurely.

`The people who say there will be a bloodbath are the ones who said it will be a cakewalk or it will be a slam dunk, and that it will be paid for by oil. Why believe them?' he asked.

In response, Huckabee said that the United States agreed before the war started that if they break Iraq, it must buy it.

`Congressman, whether or not we should have gone to Iraq is a discussion the historians can have, but we're there. We bought it because we broke it. We've got a responsibility to the honor of this country and to the honor of every man and woman who has served in Iraq and ever served in our military to not leave them with anything less than the honor that they deserve,' Huckabee said.

Paul then responded: `The American people didn't go in. A few people advising this administration, a small number of people called the neoconservatives hijacked our foreign policy. They're responsible, not the American people.'

Huckabee retorted that the United States is one nation. `We can't be divided. We have to be one nation, under God. That means if we make a mistake, we make it as a single country: the United States of America, not the divided states of America,' he said.

`No, when we make a mistake — when we make a mistake, it is the obligation of the people, through their representatives, to correct the mistake, not to continue the mistake,' Paul replied."

Think of it: Herr Huckabee's position is that Americans literally have a moral obligation to kill and die on behalf of a mistake: "Honor" requires no less. As an anti-Vietnam War activist in the early 1970s, John Kerry once asked: Who will be the last to die for a mistake? Huckabee's position, shared by the Red State Fascists in the audience and the GOP leadership, is essentially that it is the duty of Americans to kill and die for as long as their rulers decree -- even after the foolishness, corruption, and dishonesty of the policy is obvious.

This is pure, unfiltered cultism of an authentically fascist variety. Clearly, Ron Paul was the only sane man on the stage, which is why his statements were greeted with nervous laughter -- as demented as it was derisive -- by one of the cretinous fiends sharing that platform with him.

He's on the wrong side of the biblical threescore-and-ten, his demeanor is as mild as buttermilk, and his physique is wraith-like, but Ron Paul is a steel-spined ass-kicker with dangling anatomy made of solid brass. He is a man in full.

In his honor, I offer the following Tom Petty video featuring my unofficial Ron Paul theme song:



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Praying for a Terrorist Strike: The GOP's Newest Political Strategy

Nuclear terrorism: If it happens, it will be an answer to Republican prayers.

Former Republican Senator Rick Santorum made the grand crusade against “Islamic fascism” the central focus of his unsuccessful 2006 re-election effort.

On numerous occasions the preening Keystone State solon – who couldn't glance at a mirror without seeing Churchill's bulldog demeanor glowering back at him – insisted that it was the “destiny” of “this generation” to fight an apocalyptic war against radical Islam. Unlike his more equivocal comrades in the Republican branch of the War Party, Santorum made it clear that his preferred “exit strategy” for Iraq would be to invade (or at least bomb) Iran.

After long acquaintance with, and scrutiny of, Mr. Santorum, Pennsylvania's voters decided he was more Church Lady than Churchill,* and gave him a chance to pursue new opportunities in the private sector. So Santorum delivered a suitably melodramatic farewell address and retreated into a comfortable sinecure as a Washington lobbyist.

Despair not for Rick Santorum during that bleak season when he, like Churchill before him, toils in the exile into which he was cast by an ungrateful electorate. He has never abandoned the hope that the American public will come to embrace the wisdom of a generational war. It's just that Santorum has now invested that hope in the murderous intentions of the Islamic fanatics he has warned about. To put the matter bluntly, Santorum is obviously hoping, and perhaps even praying, for Americans to die at the hands of Jihadists.

How else are rational people supposed to understand the following remarks offered by Santorum during a July 7 interview on Hugh Hewitt's syndicated radio program:

“[C]onfronting Iran in the Middle East as an absolute linchpin for our success in that region.... And while it may not be a popular thing to talk about right now, and I know public sentiment is against it [namely, the war in Iraq and expanding the conflict to Iran] ... between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public’s going to have a very different view of this war, and it will be because, I think, of some unfortunate events, that like we’re seeing unfold in the UK. But I think the American public’s going to have a very different view....”

As others have pointed out, Santorum is not the only prominent Republican figure to predict that wayward Americans, having allowed themselves to doubt the divine insight of the Dear Leader, will soon be smitten by the chastening hand of history.

Just weeks ago, Arkansas Republican chairman Dennis Milligan, who describes himself as “150 percent” behind Bush and his Iraq war, said in an on-the-record interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: “At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001 ], and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country.”

Both of those abhorrent comments are riffs on a familiar Rovian theme: Vote Republican and support the Dear Leader, or die. Speaking of Rove: In the current issue of American Spectator conservative actor and economist Ben Stein, a long-time war supporter who now considers the Iraq venture to be “an unmitigated disaster,” describes a recent dinner at Rove's house with GOP adviser Aram Bakshian. Both Rove and Bakshian were “very upbeat about the GOP and the war,” which to minds as cynical as my own suggests that something Santorum would consider usefully “unfortunate” may soon transpire.

People like Santorum and Milligan (and Dana Rohrabacher, the stupidest consequential public figure not named Bush or Hannity) ache for disaster. They pant after it with vulgar, undisguised lust. They are tremulous with unconsummated desire for validation in the form of dead Americans and ruined cities.

Revolting and vile as this is, it is not unique. In fact, these repellent people are firmly and squarely in the interventionist tradition of American politics, in which cheerfully anticipating the death of Americans has a long and venerable history.

Writing in Foreign Affairs a dozen years ago (excerpt), the late Establishment historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote that “it is to Joseph Stalin that Americans owe the 40-year suppression of the isolationist impulse.”

Stalin's regime slaughtered scores of millions, helped precipitate the Second World War, and (thanks to the connivance of Washington) acquired thermonuclear weapons capable of incinerating much of the world – but at least he wasn't an isolationist. Stalin and his successors were immeasurably useful allies for the American Power Elite against their common enemy – Americans and others who wanted to cultivate their own gardens and live in freedom and peace.

In 1947, Senator Arthur Vandenberg described Washington's foreign policy at the beginning of the Cold War as that of “scaring hell out of the American people.” In the same year, Senator Robert Taft, who yielded to nobody in his detestation for Communism and other forms of collectivism, described himself as being “more than a bit tired of having the Russian menace invoked as a reason for doing any- and everything that might or might not be desirable or necessary on its own merits.”

By 1950, American public sentiment was fiercely anti-Communist and just as passionately opposed to the interventionist foreign policy “consensus.” It was at that moment of crisis, recalled former Secretary of State Dean Acheson in 1954, that the Korean war “came along and saved us.”

Some scenes from the Korean War, also known as "Saving Secretary Acheson (and his Interventionist Buddies)."

Saving the plans of Acheson and his comrades cost the lives of more than 50,000 Americans in a war that has never formally been brought to an end.

Interventionists have always known that Americans aren't naturally inclined to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy, unless the monsters in question kill a suitably large number of Americans. That's why FDR, Dean Acheson, and people of that ilk offered a prayer of gratitude for Josef Stalin six decades ago, and why the likes of Rick Santorum are praying for Jihadists to strike today.

*I do not want to leave the impression that Churchill himself was an entirely commendable figure.

A personal note --

I want to express my earnest gratitude for the prayers, kind wishes, and generous help provided to my family in recent days. You have blessed us beyond measure. Thank you so much, and I will keep you apprised of Korrin's progress.

A quick clarification:

Deferring to the good folks over at Freedom's Phoenix, I happily point out that the wise and distinguished Dr. Ron Paul is emphatically not among those Bush-bot Republicans eagerly hoping for a politically exploitable terrorist attack. Dr. Paul's party affiliation is Republican, but as he points out he is a Republican of the Robert Taft persuasion, rather than a curdled, petty militarist of the sort so commonplace in today's GOP. My deepest and most sincere apologies for leaving the impression that I consider Dr. Paul to be in any way similar to the likes of Rick Santorum and Dennis Milligan.

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