Southern Avenger

Join the club Mark:

Meet the new boss... same as the old boss:

I don’t know much about economics. What I do know is that so many so-called “experts,” including politicians and economists, are wrong far more often than they are right. They’re wrong about virtually everything, and yet shamelessly keep selling the same old fairy tales. They are liars. They are cheats. They are whores.

As Congress plots government healthcare, Americans should remember how incredibly wrong Washington leaders were about the cost of programs like Medicare. Bush and Obama have already been proven irrevocably wrong about TARP and stimulus, and yet both claim it’s working. Months ago in South Carolina, Gov. Mark Sanford stood firm in refusing to sign off on extending unemployment benefits, demanding that that department be overhauled so that any future crisis might be averted. This week, a less aggressive, post-scandal Sanford signed off on allowing federal stimulus dollars to keep SC’s unemployed propped up for a few more weeks. Problem not solved, just prolonged. Sanford was right the first time.

And despite his apology, so was Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson when he called Federal Reserve adviser Linda Robertson a “K Street Whore.” During an appearance on the Alex Jones radio show, Grayson said “this lobbyist, this K street whore, is trying to teach me about economics.” Robertson had attacked Grayson for his efforts, along with Republicans like Congressman Ron Paul, Sen. Jim DeMint and others, to audit the Federal Reserve.

Probably most famous for saying Republicans who opposed Obama’s healthcare plan simply want Americans to “die quickly,” Grayson has quickly established himself as an outspoken congressman who pulls no punches.

When I heard conservative critics attacking Grayson this week for daring to call Robertson a “K Street Whore,” I had to laugh. Was the Right simply going after Grayson for his earlier attack on anti-government healthcare Republicans, or were they really upset that he would refer to a representative of the Federal Reserve as a whore? Is it not a primary function of conservatives, especially rightwing talk radio, to lambaste and lampoon the whoring politicians who run Capitol Hill? Hell, conservative humorist PJ O’Rourke’s 1991 take on the entire US government was a book entitled “Parliament of Whores.” If Robertson were a man, would there have been any controversy?

If anyone deserves to be called whores or worse it’s the criminals who run the Federal Reserve, a secretive institution that continues to steal from the American people by printing as much money as it sees fit. Before becoming a top lobbyist for the Fed, Robertson was, appropriately enough, a top lobbyist for Enron. Notes Grayson spokesman Todd Jurkowski, Robertson “attacked the Congressman and his efforts to promote a Republican bill to audit the Federal Reserve… She's a career lobbyist who used to work for Enron and advocates for whatever she gets paid to promote.” What Robertson has been paid to promote during her lobbying career are institutions primarily in the business of theft, and the Fed adviser has long worked the K Street strip like no other.

Obama’s massive healthcare agenda, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, our vast domestic welfare state, “stimulus” packages — every bit of big government imaginable — could not be afforded if the Federal Reserve did not allow the United States to live far beyond its means. The US borrows from China and prints more money. That’s how we get by. That’s how we get debt. Our leaders on Capitol Hill, from men like Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke to women like Robertson and Nancy Pelosi are liars, cheats, and yes, whores - and then some.

And more people should say so. One need not agree with Grayson’s opinions on everything to admire his blunt language about one of the US’s most destructive institutions and those who run it. If Republican Congressman Joe Wilson shouting “you lie!” at President Obama was arguably this year’s best summation of our Washington rulers, Democrat Congressman Alan Grayson calling the Federal Reserve’s head lobbyist a “K Street Whore” was a close second. But like Wilson, Grayson’s greatest mistake was in limiting his criticism to just one bureaucrat.

The following is a portion (it's too long to post the whole thing here) of my new article in The American Conservative about talk host Glenn Beck, his critics on the Right and what bothers them most about the FOX pundit's meteoric popularity (hint, it isn't just his wacky style):

Who Hates Glenn Beck?

By Jack Hunter

His talk-radio brethren have less of a problem with his histrionics than with his evolving libertarianism

Warning that popular talk radio and Fox News host Glenn Beck was “Harmful to the Conservative Movement,” Peter Wehner wrote on Commentary’s “Contentions” blog in September: “he seems to be more of a populist and libertarian than a conservative, more of a Perotista than a Reaganite. His interest in conspiracy theories is disquieting, as is his admiration for Ron Paul and his charges of American ‘imperialism.’ (He is now talking about pulling troops out of Afghanistan, South Korea, Germany, and elsewhere.)”

Wehner is not alone in his criticism. When Beck told CBS News’ Katie Couric, “John McCain would have been worse for the country than Barack Obama,” fellow radio talker and New York Times bestselling author Mark Levin fired back: “to say that he would be worse than a president who’s a Marxist, who’s running around the world apologizing for our nation, who’s slashing our defense budget … to say he would be worse is mindless … incoherent, as a matter of fact.”

Beck has been criticized from both Left and Right for his melodramatic, sometimes conspiracy-minded, intermittently bizarre style. But his conservative critics seem most offended not by Beck’s manner but by his deviationism. He won’t stick to the ideological script.

Conservative radio and TV punditry has a strict set of ground rules. Whatever Democrats are up to is bad; Republicans aren’t perfect, but they are worth cheering for and at least deserve the benefit of the doubt. Rush Limbaugh’s occasional guest host Michael Medved reflected talk-radio orthodoxy perfectly when he said, “For those Americans who want to fight back against the menacing expansion of government and the insanely irresponsible spending of the Obama administration, there is only one way to succeed: electing more Republicans to high office.” But as Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic notes, Beck is an exception: “Beck claims to be non-partisan. Conservative, yes, but disdainful of the GOP, with no vested interest in seeing Republicans return to power.”

During the George W. Bush years, Beck’s politics were less differentiated from those of other radio talkers. He deferred to the Bush administration, promoted militarism as patriotism, and called the day’s news along partisan lines. When Ron Paul received national attention for questioning America’s interventionist foreign policy during a 2007 GOP presidential primary debate, Beck called Paul “crazy” and asked, “how did this guy get on stage?” At the time there were no complaints about Beck from the likes of Wehner and Levin — because Beck sounded much like them.

Sometimes he still does, mashing recycled neoconservative jargon with wild-eyed panic about the growth of government power under Obama. But however politically incoherent or ideologically imperfect his rants may be, Beck, unlike other conservative media celebrities, seems to have learned something from the past eight years. He said in September:

I am becoming more and more libertarian every day, I guess the scales are falling off of my eyes, as I’m doing more and more research into history and learning real history. Back at the turn of the century in 1900, with Teddy Roosevelt — a Republican — we started this, ‘we’re going to tell the rest of the world,’ ‘we’re going to spread democracy,’ and we really became, down in Latin America, we really became thuggish and brutish. It only got worse with the next progressive that came into office — Teddy Roosevelt, Republican progressive — the next one was a Democratic progressive, Woodrow Wilson, and we did … we empire built. The Democrats felt we needed to empire build with one giant global government … The Republicans took it as, we’re going to lead the world and we’ll be the leader of it … I don’t think we should be either of those. I think we need to mind our own business and protect our own people. When somebody hits us, hit back hard, then come home.

When he made headlines by saying that McCain would have been worse than Obama, Beck explained to Couric, “McCain is this weird progressive like Theodore Roosevelt was.”

Read the entire article

When a runaway hot-air balloon reported to be carrying a six-year-old boy made headlines last week, many were surprised to find out it had all been a hoax. Admitted the six-year-old boy on live television, “We did this for a show.”

Another hot-air balloon by the name of Lindsey Graham also made headlines last week by putting on a show of his own, as the South Carolina Senator held court at a town hall meeting, touting his conservative credentials before an angry crowd that wasn’t buying it. “They’re a political fringe group” Graham said of his critics, “I’m the conservative in the room.”

Is Graham a “conservative?” Are his detractors merely a political fringe? In a headline reading “Graham aims to tackle ‘radical’ views,” The Greenville News reports:

“Political experts say a burgeoning group of right-wing activists long seen as the fringe of the party is growing in influence, fueled by economic fears and populist ire over Washington spending and magnified by the power of the Internet… Whether they represent a vocal minority or the seeds of a serious election challenge for Graham remains to be seen, though at least one Republican consultant believes the state’s senior senator has ‘real problems’ outside of just a raucous town hall meeting… ‘If he were running right now, he’d be in serious trouble,’ said Dave Woodard, a Clemson University political science professor and former campaign manager for Graham who said he has Upstate polling to support his view.”

Woodard’s findings coincide with another story published in the Wall Street Journal the same day entitled “Tea-Party Activists Complicate Republican Comeback Strategy” in which the author Naftali Bendavid notes:

“The rise of conservative ‘tea party’ activists around the country has created a dilemma for Republicans. They are breathing life into the party's quest to regain power. But they're also waging war on some candidates hand-picked by GOP leaders as the most likely to win… the tea-party movement appears aggressively nonpartisan, much like Ross Perot's supporters in 1992. ‘The tea-party movement, in my judgment, has proven to be very real, but it's precisely the fact that it's real that makes it difficult to take advantage of,’ says Vin Weber, a former Minnesota congressman and now a top Republican strategist. ‘They don't want to be co-opted by the Republican Party.”

For his entire career, Graham’s strategy for victory has been the same as his party’s - dangle conservative-sounding rhetoric before easily duped constituents during an election year so that Republicans can be returned to Washington to do as much damage as the Democrats. It’s refreshing to learn that according to some experts, a growing number of grassroots conservatives are tired of being duped.

Not that establishment Republicans won’t stop trying. Graham is a master of this long-standing Republican hoax, in which politicians will float their own hot-button, hot-air balloons, especially concerning social issues like gay marriage, abortion and the 2nd amendment, but are actually far more concerned with the much more important business of spending trillions of dollars on needless “bailouts” and stimulus packages, even more needless trillions on unnecessary wars, collaborating with the Democrats to expand the domestic welfare state and appointing liberal justices to the Supreme Court. Said Graham in Greenville last week “I’ll put my record as a pro-life politician against anybody in this country… I’m a lifelong NRA member.” It should be noted that alleged, staunch pro-lifer and gun rights advocate Graham has done very little to actually overturn Roe vs. Wade or federal gun laws, but has worked overtime to promote TARP, cap and trade and amnesty for illegal aliens.

Perhaps an even better example of Graham’s posturing was his bi-polar treatment of liberal Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Said Graham at first “When I look at her record, her ideology, I'm deeply troubled.” The Daily Beast even ran the headline “Lindsey Graham Attacks Sotomayor.” A few short weeks later, Graham became the sole Republican on the senate judiciary committee to confirm Sotomayor.

The biggest difference between the so-called “balloon boy” and Graham, is that the six-year-old finally admitted his disingenuousness. Sheriff Jim Alderden, who worked on the runaway balloon case, rightly noted that the boy’s family had “put on a very good show for us, and we bought it.” Graham and his Republican Party have put on a show for years - millions of conservative voters have bought it - and yet the GOP still refuses to fess up. Said Graham of his critics without the slightest hint of irony, “The reason I can stand up there and smile confidently and tell them I disagree is I know that most people are with me.”

Whether conservatives continue to buy Graham’s hot-air is something only time will tell. But rest assured that in the meantime, Lindsey Graham and similar self-described “conservatives” will never admit to their hoax - and worse - will insist that the same old Republican show must go on.

This isn't the best audio but more evidence of Sen. Lindsey Graham's complete dismissal of Ron Paul's adherence to rigid constitutional government. Notice in the first video that instead of addressing the woman's criticism head on, Graham simply asks her who she voted for in the presidential election. When she replied "Chuck Baldwin" Graham then attempts to marginalize her based on her support for the Constitution Party, slamming Ron Paul in the process.

The following took place 10/12/09 at a town hall meeting in Greenville, SC:

Ron Paul responds:

Gauging politicians and pundits’ various reactions to President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize last week was amusing. Even more amusing was the reaction from American conservatives.

Wrote Rush Limbaugh in an e-mail to the Politico:

“This fully exposes the illusion that is Barack Obama… And with this 'award' the elites of the world are urging Obama, THE MAN OF PEACE, to not do the surge in Afghanistan, not take action against Iran and its nuclear program and to basically continue his intentions to emasculate the United States... They love a weakened, neutered U.S and this is their way of promoting that concept.”

Said Texas Congressman Ron Paul:

“His policy is not exactly pro-peace. Right now it looks like the war will continue over there, Obama wants more troops into Afghanistan and more bombing in Pakistan, it looks like Pakistan is going to be the front of the war, there’s been no significant troop reduction in Iraq.”

Limbaugh and Paul’s reactions represent two, polar-opposite views on the same subject, and yet both men are generally perceived as right-wing conservatives, completely opposed to President Obama’s agenda. But on foreign policy, only Paul truly opposes this president. Limbaugh might rail against Obama all day, every day, but once you get past the rhetoric, both Rush and Barack essentially agree that it is the United States’ mission to be the world’s policeman. As officer Obama continues to patrol Bush’s old beat, even expanding into new neighborhoods, it is Paul who’s demanding the US fully and finally turn in its world’s police badge - while Rush would simply prefer a different sheriff.

If perception is indeed reality, the reality that Obama’s foreign policy is closer to Bush’s than not, is something not only lost on conservatives like Limbaugh, but the Nobel Committee. It is true this president has more international admirers than his predecessor, and Obama’s award seems to be more for his different, more diplomatic style than any substantive policy breaks from the old guard.

Psychologist and Huffington Post columnist Robert Epstein has called Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize the “Thank-God-You’re-Not-Bush” prize, and he makes a sound point - it is hard to imagine such an award being bestowed on Obama, who has basically done nothing, if he had instead followed Bill Clinton or George H.W. Bush rather than the disastrous Dubya. Epstein explains:

“The basic idea is simple: a prolonged experience with a stimulus that has strong negative or strong positive value distorts the way we view new stimuli of the same sort. If we've had prolonged experience with a strong positive stimulus, we'll tend to view new related stimuli negatively. And if we've had prolonged experience with a strong negative stimulus, we'll tend to view related new stimuli positively… The contrast effect works in many domains, including the political. And yes, it can even cause intelligent, well meaning people to confuse bringing peace to people with giving inspirational speeches about bringing peace to people.”

In Epstein’s view, the prejudice abroad or “negative stimuli” of George W. Bush is what primarily led the Nobel committee to award Obama its prestigious Peace Prize, though the president continues with policies similar to Bush. It also follows that staunch supporters of Bush’s foreign policy in the US, like Limbaugh, had a more positive impression of the last president and therefore react negatively to Obama for the same reason the Nobel committee reacted positively. This emotional, illogical phenomenon could be seen even more clearly recently in the gleeful response of Limbaugh, the Weekly Standard office and others on the Right, to the news that despite Obama’s efforts overseas, Chicago had been denied the 2016 Summer Olympics.

But one need not be a shrink to see that despite their more serious differences on domestic policy, Obama and Limbaugh essentially agree on foreign policy. They differ only in degree; not their basic philosophies. Paul notes the confusion:

“There should be debate on ‘should we be there?’ And ‘why are we there?’And ‘should we win the war?’ vs. ‘we shouldn’t be there.’ No, the debate is ‘how many troops should we send,’ ‘should the front lines be in Afghanistan or should the front lines be in Pakistan,’ ‘and how many contractors should replace the soldiers that we’re removing from Iraq,’ it’s the wrong, wrong debate.”

Paul is right. That Limbaugh believes Obama winning the Nobel Prize “fully exposes the illusion that is Barack Obama,” more accurately exposes the illusion of Rush and the mainstream conservative movement, who would have had far more disagreements on foreign policy with a strict constitutionalist president like Paul than a big spending liberal like Obama. And though neither Limbaugh nor Obama would ever say forthright, they believe America should police the world — in fact both would insist they reject the very notion — it never seems to stop mainstream conservatives and liberals from always defending the most ambitious military overstretch in history, in the name of “national security,” “world stability” and any other excuse to promote permanent American global hegemony.

Describing what he sees as the relative powerlessness of talk radio, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote last week:

“Let us take a trip back into history… It is the winter of 2007. The presidential primaries are approaching. The talk jocks like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and the rest are over the moon about Fred Thompson. They’re weak at the knees at the thought of Mitt Romney. Meanwhile, they are hurling torrents of abuse at the unreliable deviationists: John McCain and Mike Huckabee. Yet somehow, despite the fervor of the great microphone giants, the Thompson campaign flops like a fish. Despite the schoolgirl delight from the radio studios, the Romney campaign underperforms. Meanwhile, Huckabee surges. Limbaugh attacks him, but social conservatives flock. Along comes New Hampshire and McCain wins! McCain wins the South Carolina primary and goes on to win the nomination. The talk jocks can’t even deliver the conservative voters who show up at Republican primaries. They can’t even deliver South Carolina!”

Talk radio hosts gravitated toward Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney because both candidates best fit their ideal: non-threatening, marquee value GOP establishment types who project a “conservative” image, despite not having much of a record to match. The reason Mike Huckabee “surged” is because “values voters” cared more about electing one of their own than his lack of limited government credentials. John McCain won in South Carolina because the most military-heavy state in the union wanted to support a soldier, and the senator’s military record was valued more than his politics. Indeed, virtually every Republican who ran for president in 2008 represented a different form of identity politics on the Right.

And so does Brooks. Brooks advocates the same neoconservative Republican politics that animated Thompson, Romney, Huckabee and McCain, and his differences with the current conservative movement are more style than substance. The New York Times columnist would like to see a conservatism that stays faithful to the policies of the Bush administration, yet with the temperament and air-of-respectability of a New York Times columnist. His criticism is almost entirely cosmetic.

Calling himself a “reformist” Brooks seeks a conservative movement less abrasive than talk radio, less Christian than Mike Huckabee and pretty much exactly like John McCain, sans Sarah Palin. This kindler, gentler, or dare I say “compassionate” conservatism, differs little from the Republican brand that got its butt kicked in 2008, or as The American Conservative’s Jim Antle writes:

“Much of reformist conservatism is really an aesthetic judgment about the Republican Party and conservative movement... the reformists tended to support the very Bush-era policies that ushered in the Obama administration and Democratic congressional majorities. Virtually all of them favored invading Iraq. Although many of them now concede that the war did not go as well, pre-surge, as they had hoped, most of them continue to believe the decision to attack Iraq was justified. The Iraq War and the foreign-policy ideas that gave rise to it are conspicuous by their absence from reformists’ list of areas where Republicans or conservatives need to change.”

Indeed. And now Brooks and his ilk still argue over the righteousness of the war in Iraq, the need to stay in Afghanistan and are keeping a hawk’s eye on Iran. In the mind of Brooks, the Republicans didn’t lose the White House in 2008 because of George W. Bush, his policies or his wars — Americans were simply turned off by Sarah Palin. Brooks’ conservatism is anything but, and despite his rationalizations, the man is basically just a snob.

But if Brook’s snob conservatism, Thompson and Romney’s wannabe-Reagan-imitations, Huckabee’s holy-rolling and McCain’s mad-bomber mentality are all just stylistic variations of the same Republican policies, it is worth noting the one candidate in 2008 who attracted widespread, bipartisan support, based not only almost purely on his ideas — but ideas that stood in stark contrast to the rest of his party. Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign reflected the antiwar sentiment that helped elect Obama and the anti-government outrage that now defines the grassroots Right. Paul, unlike his fellow 2008 presidential contenders, not only rejected the failed policies of the Bush administration, but despite his lack of charisma, possessed the only political platform that might have had a chance of winning — while remaining conservative to the core.

But strict, limited government conservatism is of little concern to establishment men like Brooks, which makes him completely useless. Writes Antle: “the reformists, whose new ideas are not conservative and whose old ideas are the ones that destroyed the Bush GOP, are the very last pundits Republicans should heed.”

Indeed. And if the American Right needs a new, better identity — as many rightly believe it does - a good start might be to move as far away as possible from the politics and person of David Brooks.

The following is why guys like William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, who were wrong about everything in the lead up to war in Iraq, are considered solid foreign policy analysts worthy of television time, and Juan Cole (the author of this list) is not:

Belief: Iran is aggressive and has threatened to attack Israel, its neighbors or the US.

Reality: Iran has not launched an aggressive war in modern history (unlike the US or Israel), and its leaders have a doctrine of “no first strike.” This is true of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as of Revolutionary Guards commanders.

Belief: Iran is a militarized society bristling with dangerous weapons and a growing threat to world peace.

Reality: Iran’s military budget is a little over $6 billion annually. Sweden, Singapore and Greece all have larger military budgets. Moreover, Iran is a country of 70 million, so that its per capita spending on defense is tiny compared to these others, since they are much smaller countries with regard to population. Iran spends less per capita on its military than any other country in the Persian Gulf region with the exception of the United Arab Emirates.

Belief: Iran has threatened to attack Israel militarily and to “wipe it off the map.”

Reality: No Iranian leader in the executive has threatened an aggressive act of war on Israel, since this would contradict the doctrine of ‘no first strike’ to which the country has adhered. The Iranian president has explicitly said that Iran is not a threat to any country, including Israel.

Belief: But didn’t President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threaten to ‘wipe Israel off the map?’

Reality: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did quote Ayatollah Khomeini to the effect that “this Occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time” (in rezhim-e eshghalgar-i Qods bayad as safheh-e ruzgar mahv shavad). This was not a pledge to roll tanks and invade or to launch missiles, however. It is the expression of a hope that the regime will collapse, just as the Soviet Union did. It is not a threat to kill anyone at all.

Belief: But aren’t Iranians Holocaust deniers?

Actuality: Some are, some aren’t. Former president Mohammad Khatami has castigated Ahmadinejad for questioning the full extent of the Holocaust, which he called “the crime of Nazism.” Many educated Iranians in the regime are perfectly aware of the horrors of the Holocaust. In any case, despite what propagandists imply, neither Holocaust denial (as wicked as that is) nor calling Israel names is the same thing as pledging to attack it militarily.

Belief: Iran is like North Korea in having an active nuclear weapons program, and is the same sort of threat to the world.

Actuality: Iran has a nuclear enrichment site at Natanz near Isfahan where it says it is trying to produce fuel for future civilian nuclear reactors to generate electricity. All Iranian leaders deny that this site is for weapons production, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly inspected it and found no weapons program. Iran is not being completely transparent, generating some doubts, but all the evidence the IAEA and the CIA can gather points to there not being a weapons program. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate by 16 US intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, assessed with fair confidence that Iran has no nuclear weapons research program. This assessment was based on debriefings of defecting nuclear scientists, as well as on the documents they brought out, in addition to US signals intelligence from Iran. While Germany, Israel and recently the UK intelligence is more suspicious of Iranian intentions, all of them were badly wrong about Iraq’s alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction and Germany in particular was taken in by Curveball, a drunk Iraqi braggart.

Belief: The West recently discovered a secret Iranian nuclear weapons plant in a mountain near Qom.

Actuality: Iran announced Monday a week ago to the International Atomic Energy Agency that it had begun work on a second, civilian nuclear enrichment facility near Qom. There are no nuclear materials at the site and it has not gone hot, so technically Iran is not in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, though it did break its word to the IAEA that it would immediately inform the UN of any work on a new facility. Iran has pledged to allow the site to be inspected regularly by the IAEA, and if it honors the pledge, as it largely has at the Natanz plant, then Iran cannot produce nuclear weapons at the site, since that would be detected by the inspectors. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted on Sunday that Iran could not produce nuclear weapons at Natanz precisely because it is being inspected. Yet American hawks have repeatedly demanded a strike on Natanz.

Belief: The world should sanction Iran not only because of its nuclear enrichment research program but also because the current regime stole June’s presidential election and brutally repressed the subsequent demonstrations.

Actuality: Iran’s reform movement is dead set against increased sanctions on Iran, which likely would not affect the regime, and would harm ordinary Iranians.

Belief: Isn’t the Iranian regime irrational and crazed, so that a doctrine of mutally assured destruction just would not work with them?

Actuality: Iranian politicians are rational actors. If they were madmen, why haven’t they invaded any of their neighbors? Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded both Iran and Kuwait. Israel invaded its neighbors more than once. In contrast, Iran has not started any wars. Demonizing people by calling them unbalanced is an old propaganda trick. The US elite was once unalterably opposed to China having nuclear science because they believed the Chinese are intrinsically irrational. This kind of talk is a form of racism.

Belief: The international community would not have put sanctions on Iran, and would not be so worried, if it were not a gathering nuclear threat.

Actuality: The centrifuge technology that Iran is using to enrich uranium is open-ended. In the old days, you could tell which countries might want a nuclear bomb by whether they were building light water reactors (unsuitable for bomb-making) or heavy-water reactors (could be used to make a bomb). But with centrifuges, once you can enrich to 5% to fuel a civilian reactor, you could theoretically feed the material back through many times and enrich to 90% for a bomb. However, as long as centrifuge plants are being actively inspected, they cannot be used to make a bomb. The two danger signals would be if Iran threw out the inspectors or if it found a way to create a secret facility. The latter task would be extremely difficult, however, as demonstrated by the CIA’s discovery of the Qom facility construction in 2006 from satellite photos. Nuclear installations, especially centrifuge ones, consume a great deal of water, construction materiel, and so forth, so that constructing one in secret is a tall order. In any case, you can’t attack and destroy a country because you have an intuition that they might be doing something illegal. You need some kind of proof. Moreover, Israel, Pakistan and India are all much worse citizens of the globe than Iran, since they refused to sign the NPT and then went for broke to get a bomb; and nothing at all has been done to any of them by the UNSC."

In a recent column for the Charleston City Paper I explained how my moniker, the “Southern Avenger” came from my advocating for states’ rights and even secession in my early 20’s, a brand of politics I still subscribe to today. Long comfortable with such concepts, it’s easy to forget that plenty of folks are not, and was reminded promptly by a number of readers that the very notion of Americans no longer living under the same government is still considered “crazy” by many. Here are a few of those comments:

“Just great! What we need is to divide our country into a Balkanized mish-mash of impotent little ‘countries.’ This is crazy talk, meant only to incite as far as I can see.” Another wrote: "So, are we asking for the idea of 50 individual countries? Talk about a screwed up idea.” A kind critic wrote: “Jack - I'm a big fan… but the secession idea these days is on par with colonizing the moon. It just doesn't make sense.” And a less kind critic wrote: “You need to broaden your exposure to world ideas. This column shows how narrow your focus is. You haven't grown much from your early years. You thought you knew it all then and still do.”

While I’m always more fascinated by the amount of stuff I don’t know, than I am the narrow worldview that exists between my two ears, I am quite certain of two things: big government doesn’t work — and yet it is always considered sound, sane and respectable to advocate for it. And the opposite is also true - to advocate for smaller government is acceptable so long as you’re talking about voting Republican or lowering taxes, but the moment you try to actually seek limiting Washington, DC’s jurisdiction; it’s time for a straightjacket.

Upon his death in 2005, George Kennan was remembered for lots of things, but being crazy wasn’t among them. As a U.S. ambassador, adviser, political scientist and historian, Kennan was known as the “father of containment” and was one of the most influential architects of U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union. Kennan’s New York Times obituary described him as “the American diplomat who did more than any other envoy of his generation to shape United States policy during the cold war,” Gen. Colin Powell described him as “our best tutor” and Foreign Policy Magazine declared Kennan “the most influential diplomat of the 20th century.”

But in his later years, Kennan had also become a full-blown secessionist, advocating independence for the state of Vermont and imagining a United States that would break up into “a dozen constituent republics.”

In February, 2010, a group of activists, academics and intellectuals will meet in Charleston, South Carolina to pick up where Kennan left off. Known as the “Abbeville Institute” the theme of the conference is “State Nullification, Secession and the Human Scale of Political Order.” Say conference organizers:

“George Kennan, author of the Cold War policy to contain the Soviet Union and described by some as the ‘conscience of America,’ taught that a regime can become dysfunctional by simply becoming too large. Near the end of his long career in service to his country, where he stood for moderation and realism in international politics, he judged that the American regime had grown too large for the purposes of self government and that we should begin a public debate on how to divide it in the direction of a more human scale.”

The Abbeville Institute’s mission is to kick start Kennan’s desired public debate:

“For the first time in 144 years the topics of State nullification and secession have again entered public discourse. Nullification and secession were understood by the Founders as remedies to unconstitutional acts of the central government. Yet over a century of nationalist indoctrination and policy has largely hidden this inheritance from public scrutiny. The aim of the conference is to recover an understanding of that part of the American tradition and to explore its intimations for today.”

Speaking at the conference will be professors from as close to Charleston as Emory University in Atlanta and the University of South Carolina, and as far away as Edinburgh, Scotland.

America’s Founding Fathers were indeed revolutionary, but by no means “crazy.” The same was true of George Kennan and those who will attend the Abbeville Institute this winter in Charleston, who continue to explore his vision of devolving, limiting or breaking-up the modern state.

There is a big distinction to be made between radicalism and insanity. And the admittedly radical idea of states’ rights or secession is far more logical than the conventional, popular habit of pretending we still possess the wealth, will or cultural consensus to maintain and expand the American empire forever.

When FOX News host Glenn Beck said during an interview with Katie Couric this week, “John McCain would have been worse for the country than Barack Obama,” his comments made headlines. Beck explained that “McCain is this weird progressive like Theodore Roosevelt was.” Beck laid out this view in better detail on his television program earlier this month:

I am becoming more and more libertarian every day, I guess the scales are falling off of my eyes, as I’m doing more and more research into history and learning real history. Back at the turn of the century in 1900, with Teddy Roosevelt—a Republican—we started this, “we’re going to tell the rest of the world,” “we’re going to spread democracy,” and we really became, down in Latin America, we really became thuggish and brutish. It only got worse with the next progressive that came into office—Teddy Roosevelt, Republican progressive—the next one was a Democratic progressive, Woodrow Wilson, and we did … we empire built. The Democrats felt we needed to empire build with one giant global government ... The Republicans took it as, we’re going to lead the world and we’ll be the leader of it … I don’t think we should be either of those. I think we need to mind our own business and protect our own people. When somebody hits us, hit back hard, then come home.

Beck is trying to explain how Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican precursor to what historians call “liberal internationalism,” a foreign policy view that contends the role of the U.S. is to intervene around the globe to advance liberal objectives. This progressive doctrine, later called “Wilsonian” after Woodrow Wilson, was intended to “make the world safe for democracy,” to quote our 28th president. Wilsonian globalism was embraced fully by George W. Bush, and as Beck notes, was also a guiding philosophy for his could-have-been successor, John McCain. In their application, there is very little difference between “neoconservative” foreign policy and “liberal internationalism,” and both views are progressive in origin.

Preferring to keep his audience in the dark on such distinctions, neoconservative talk host Mark Levin was angry that Beck would dare shine a light on them. Said Levin this week:

McCain is no conservative… but to say that he would be worse than a president who’s a Marxist, who’s running around the world apologizing for our nation, who’s slashing our defense budget… to say he would be worse is mindless… incoherent, as a matter of fact. There’s our 5 PMer on FOX.

It should be noted that Beck’s FOX News program airs at 5 PM EST.

Who else does Levin consider mindless? He continues:

I don’t know who people are playing to; I don’t know why they’re playing to certain people. Ron Paul’s another one ... this fascination with Ron Paul. Ron Paul, who blames America! American “imperialism,” quote, unquote, for the attacks on 9/11. How can any conservative embrace that? And yet the 5 PMer does.

For eight years, hosts like Levin and even Glenn Beck promoted full-blown neoconservatism without ever calling it by that name. For these mainstream pundits, conservatism simply equaled neoconservatism, and during the Bush years there was no talk of limited government, no concern about “socialism” and no real worries about anything else, other than the War on Terror. The Republican Party was a single issue party; Ron Paul was considered crazy, Joe Lieberman was considered cool—and government exploded.

But much to Levin’s chagrin, that impenetrable neoconservative unity no longer exists. Unlike Levin, Beck now claims “the scales are falling off of my eyes,” and he now questions old assumptions about foreign policy, the value of the GOP, the worth of the two-party system, or even if McCain would have been any better than Obama. Conservative columnist George Will once cheered Bush’s foreign policy, but now thinks it’s time to bring the troops home from both Iraq and Afghanistan. When Sarah Palin spoke in Hong Kong this week, a Wall Street Journal headline read, “Palin, Sounding Like Ron Paul, Takes on the Fed.” Few conservatives get excited by Joe Lieberman anymore. But many are starting to talk like Ron Paul.

The attacks on Beck by Levin are a reflection of what’s happening on the American Right as a whole, where the old fools’ game of merely corralling grassroots conservatives into the Republican Party is suffering from a severe shortage of fools. I’m not saying that Beck is an all-around, reliable conservative figure, nor do I believe the Republican Party is going to start seriously listening to Paul in the future, but there are at least now, finally, tiny slivers of truth making their way into the mainstream, thanks in no small part to a handful of celebrity truth-seekers, no matter how eccentric or inconsistent they may be.

And if there’s one thing we can be sure of—there would be no tea parties, no town hall protests, no marches on Washington, no questioning foreign policy, no attacking the Federal Reserve, no new-and-improved Glenn Beck and no new respect for Ron Paul—if John McCain had won the election. The neoconservative agenda would have continued, undisturbed, and according to plan. And something tells me Mark Levin would have preferred to keep it that way.

On yesterday’s drive home I listened to Sean Hannity, as I often do. Hannity was upset, as he often is, about President Obama ”weakening” American defense - scrapping missile defense shields in Europe, not escalating troop levels fast enough in Afghanistan, ignoring an Iran on the verge of getting nukes - you know, not being “conservative.” “You’re a great American!” one lady caller told Hannity.

While I’m not sure how great an American he is, Glenn Beck at least deserves credit for trying to change the conversation on the talk radio Right by getting away from unqualified support for faux patriotism and blind militarism that still so-animates men like Hannity. As of late, Beck’s even become increasingly, and more solidly, antiwar.

Beck’s radio show is not carried on the station where I work, but our competitor (we have Hannity and Mark Levin. Blah.), and I had missed a rant by Beck last week where, as one WTMA listener said to a friend, “Glenn Beck was talkin’ about war like the Southern Avenger!”

While I did not get to hear Beck’s antiwar, supposedly ”Southern-Avenger-esque” rant, Jenn Morrill at the Salt Lake City Examiner apparently did. And it’s a good’n:

On his radio show last week, he apologized to libertarians everywhere for calling himself a libertarian in the past. He has long called himself a conservative with libertarian leanings, but he said he is now leaning so far libertarian that he is almost horizontal. He said, “I’m going through a change here.”

Beck would like the time machine to take him back eighteen months. Why? To go back to when he was calling Ron Paul a “crackpot on so many issues.” Now, he laments, “Gosh. I’d like to reexamine all those issues.” Among those issues is America’s occupation of many foreign countries; Beck specifically mentions Germany, Korea, and Afghanistan. He admits that America’s imperialism has caused a lot of problems. He said, “Progressive members of the Republican party wanted to make sure that we spread sunshine, lollipops, happiness, and democracy to all around the world. That’s great. But the best way to do that is to live a righteous life and be a good example.” And he repeated what Paul has been saying for years, “Besides, we can’t afford it anymore!”

When former president Jimmy Carter criticized the treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government in his 2006 book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, he was immediately denounced as an “anti-Semite.” To his critics, Carter’s actual argument seemed less important than the fact that he would dare make it. Carter was apparently not aware of the longstanding, unwritten rule that merely criticizing Israel is inherently anti-Semitic, something the former president learned quickly despite his denials.

The age of Obama has brought with it a new rule. To criticize this president is not merely an act of political dissent or policy difference—it’s racism. Just ask Jimmy Carter: “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man.”

Where is the evidence to back up Carter’s assertion? For many liberals, the proof is circumstantial—Obama is black and his most vocal critics, from town hall protesters to Joe Wilson—are mostly white. Media pundits have focused on random allegedly “racist” tea party protest signs, declaring Obama a Muslim or featuring the phrase “I want my country back!” The Obama “birther” movement is indeed silly, but does that make it racist? And could it be possible that grassroots conservatives simply want their country back from big government liberals? Did Democrats not want their “country back” from the last president? If it is true that whites criticizing blacks is inherently racist, as Carter is suggesting, then that same logic must dictate that Carter is indeed the anti-Semite his critics claim, as a Georgia-bred gentile has no business criticizing Israel.

Instead of using political partisanship and sloppy speculation to figure out who is or isn’t anti-Semitic or racist, truth seekers should instead ask this: When has criticizing Israel not been considered anti-Semitic? When has criticizing minorities not been considered racist?

I have reached a strange point in our way-too-politically correct public discourse, that when I see the terms “anti-Semite” or “racist” used, I automatically assume those being accused are doing something right. Not that I support or endorse anti-Semitism or racism mind you, it just seems that both slurs are more often used inaccurately to prevent a certain point of view from being considered, rather than as accurate descriptions. If I don’t believe welfare or affirmative action are proper uses of government and cause more trouble that they’re worth, it is assumed I am “racist.” The same goes for being concerned about illegal immigration and the national healthcare plan of a black president. If I don’t believe foreign intervention or aid on behalf of Israel are proper uses of government and cause more trouble than they’re worth, it is assumed I am “anti-Semitic.” This makes absolutely no sense, and yet too many in the media and elsewhere have wholly adopted such rigid PC orthodoxy and habitually reinforce such speech-stifling slanders.

Though many consider Carter the worst living president, I find that honor more accurately describes our last president. While we don’t know what sort of future post-presidency activities Bush might have planned, former president Carter has fearlessly taken many controversial positions to rectify what he sees as injustice in the Middle East, particularly as it relates to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and U.S. foreign policy. In doing so, Carter has been accused of being an “anti-Semite,” an intentional slander designed to undermine his very serious arguments, and that he would now use similar slurs to try to silence those fearful of Obama’s agenda is the height of hypocrisy. Carter’s recent comments make him no better than his critics and shame on a former president who should know better.

When country artist Taylor Swift won the “Best Female Video” award at the MTV Music Awards Sunday night, hip-hop artist Kanye West jumped onstage, grabbed her microphone and declared that singer Beyonce Knowles, not Swift, had the best video. Why would a black man humiliate a young white girl to protest her beating a black woman for an award for best video? Racism, pure and simple.

How can I be so sure that West’s actions were racist? I can’t nor is it even necessary to go there. West’s rude behavior was bad enough without having to attribute some sort of racial motive that would be arguable at best.

But some insist on finding racism in everything anyway. When Rep. Joe Wilson shouted “you lie!” during Obama’s speech on healthcare last week most believed his behavior to be rude, including many who agreed with his sentiment and even the congressman himself, who later apologized. But Wilson is a white man who misbehaved during a speech by a black president. For liberal columnist Maureen Dowd, it was race, not rudeness, that told the real story:

“Surrounded by middle-aged white guys—a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club—Joe Wilson yelled ‘You lie!’ at a president who didn’t. But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!”

For Dowd, that he thought Obama was being deceptive didn’t just make Wilson emotionally angry-he was reverting to his true Southern, segregationist self. Continues Dowd:

“The congressman, we learned, belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol and denounced as a ‘smear’ the true claim of a black woman that she was the daughter of Strom Thurmond, the ‘48 segregationist candidate for president. Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.”

Dowd’s description of Wilson is a cartoon caricature of what liberals assume conservative whites, particularly Southerners who still hold onto their heritage, are really like. Through the filter of racial and identity politics that informs the Leftist mind, we have seen this liberal prejudice on full display the last few months, where too many politicians and pundits don’t simply see tea partiers and town hall protesters who are angry about big government—but racist, redneck whites who are just pissed off that the president is black. Dowd even admits her prejudice:

“I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer - the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids - had much to do with race.”

On the morning after West humiliated Swift on television, I posted a blog entitled “Kanye West Hates White People” which was both a take-off on West’s comments during the Hurricane Katrina disaster that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” and my own intentionally absurd, “racist” example to parody the Left’s logic against Obama critics like Wilson. Many of the responses I received agreed that West’s behavior was rude but wanted to know on what grounds was I accusing the rapper of being racist? Where was the evidence? I really don’t have any and that’s the point. Neither does Maureen Dowd.

Dowd simply assumes racism must be the reason for the anger directed at Obama based on her own stereotypical perceptions of white conservatives and Southerners, with little to no contextual evidence to vindicate her assertion. That Taylor Swift is white and Kanye West is black does not necessarily make the rapper a racist despite his bad behavior. And that President Obama is black and Joe Wilson is white does not necessarily make the congressman a racist despite his bad behavior—not to mention his region of origin and Maureen Dowd’s imagination.

While I admit to being a fan of his hit song "Gold Digger," hip-hop artist Kanye West has always seemed like a big jerk. Of course, maybe that's just part of the persona of being a "thug" rapper. Who knows...

Image or not, rudeness is not cool and rudeness toward women is even worse. But after spending the last few days listening to liberals attribute Rep. Joe Wilson's "you lie!" outburst during Obama's recent speech to "racism" (it was "racism, pure and simple" says my friend Will Moredock), or pundits examining the supposed racism of those marching on Washington over the weekend - is it so farfetched or ridiculous to call a grown black man humiliating a young white girl "racist?" That's exactly what West did last night to country star Taylor Swift at the MTV Music Awards:

Assuming West is racist is no more farfetched or ridiculous than the charges the Left keeps lobbing at the Right simply because a black man occupies the White House.

UPDATE: YouTube has removed the video but here's the rundown of Kanye's bad behavior.

UPDATE 2: New, working video is posted.