Southern Avenger

Kudos to Congressman John Duncan of Tennessee for an excellent speech yesterday during Wednesday's debate on the resolution to end the war in Afghanistan. Sadly, Duncan was only one of five Republicans who voted to bring the troops home. I've said it once and I'll say it again—every Republican who voted to continue Obama's war in Afghanistan are not serious about limited government or reducing spending, as perpetual war is the most expensive big government program of them all. Limited government and empire are wholly incompatible, something the Founders recognized and constantly warned against: (h/t Matt Hawes at C4L):

UPDATE: For some reason the John Duncan video above is marked as "private." You can view it by clicking here.

And of course, Ron Paul's speech on this subject was great, as always:

My latest commentary "Gunning Down the Constitution" has caused quite a stir amongst some conservatives, libertarians and gun rights advocates (I too, belong to all three categories). My argument is not that gun control is good (I believe it's hardly ever good, see here)—only that invoking the 2nd Amendment via the imaginary "incorporation doctrine" that federal courts have magically found in the 14th Amendment whenever it suits their fancy, only empowers the federal government further.

Kevin R. C. Gutzman is an American historian, Constitutional scholar, and New York Times bestselling author of three books, Who Killed the Constitution? The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution (co-authored with Tom Woods) and Virginia's American Revolution: from Dominion to Republic, 1776-1840. An associate professor of history at Western Connecticut State University, Gutzman holds a bachelor's degree, a master of public affairs degree, and a law degree from the University of Texas at Austin, as well as an MA and a PhD in American history from the University of Virginia. (Source: KevinGutzman.com)

I would add, Kevin is also a pretty cool guy.

So cool, in fact, that he was nice enough to defend my latest piece at length. The following is a repost from The American Conservative's comments section. I have included a critic asking good questions about my concept of the nature of the Constitution, followed by Gutzman's reply:

Bo Grimes, on March 5th, 2010 at 6:40 pm Said:
“The Bill of Rights was never intended to be a list of individual rights, but a list of things the federal government could not do to the states.”

So my state can establish a religion? Prohibit my free exercise of religion? Quarter troops in my house? Force me to testify against myself? Try me as many times as it takes to convict me? Subject me to cruel and unusual punishment? Control the press located within its borders?

I believe states should be a balance against the federal government, but I don’t think Mr. Henry would have argued that the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states as well as what has become the State.

Kevin R. C. Gutzman, on March 6th, 2010 at 8:57 am Said:
Mr. Grimes,

Yes, as originally understood, the Bill of Rights left it to each state to maintain its established religion. My own state of Connecticut, for example, kept the Puritan church that was the reason for Connecticut’s very existence until 1819, and no one ever thought that this violated the Establishment Clause. Why? Because it didn’t violate the Establishment Clause. The reason for the Establishment Clause was to keep Congress from doing anything “respecting an establishment of religion” — either establishing a national church or disestablishing a state church — as even John Marshall had to concede. (_Barron v. Baltimore_, 1833)

The Preamble to the Bill of Rights says, in part, “The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution….”

The “its” refers to the Constitution’s powers, and “the Government” refers to the Federal Government. In other words, the purpose of the federal Bill of Rights is to clarify the limits of Federal Government power. Its purpose is *not* to limit the state governments’ powers IN ANY WAY.

Rep. James Madison proposed an amendment in the First Congress that would have given federal judges veto power over state laws related to speech, press, and religion. That was the only one of his amendment proposals that Congress did not adopt. Why? Because the purpose of the Bill of Rights was to limit the Federal Government’s powers, not to give it additional power vis-a-vis the states.

The Incorporation Doctrine is a bogus left-wing invention that has been used for almost uniformly pernicious purposes since it saw the light of day 7 decades ago. Under the Incorporation Doctrine (the idea that federal courts can use twisted readings of their favorite Bill of Rights provisions against the states), federal courts have made flag burning a right, banned capital punishment in general, banned capital punishment of child rapists, banned school prayer, excluded certain evidence against criminal defendants, banned Nativity Scenes from public places, et cetera. And now you want them to apply this same unconstitutional doctrine to a new area of law.

Gun ownership will never be unregulated. Retarded people, insane people, blind people, felons, children, and various others will not be allowed to possess weapons. People who are allowed to possess weapons will never be allowed to take them anywhere they want anytime they want. The issue is who decides what the regulations will be.

Since the founding of Virginia in 1607, state authorities have had control over such questions. But you want them to be decided by unelected, unaccountable federal judges — the same ones who ban school prayer and Nativity Scenes and capital punishment of child rapists and so on. The model of government you are advocating is un-American.

But I predict that you are going to get your way. Federal Courts rarely refuse to take states’ power for themselves.

When the City of Chicago banned all handguns recently, countless Americans rightly cried foul. When it looked like the Supreme Court might overturn the ban, gun-rights advocates cheered the decision. But while their heart is in the right place, their enthusiasm is not, as what gun-rights advocates are really cheering is the federal government assuming even more power.

The Bill of Rights was never intended to be a list of individual rights, but a list of things the federal government could not do to the states. Patrick Henry and his anti-federalist friends did not want an all-powerful “national” government and insisted the Bill of Rights be added to the Constitution in order to make crystal clear that the federal government’s powers were few, limited, and only those delegated to it by the states. The rights to free speech, freedom of religion, and to keep and bear arms were rights the federal government could never take away from the states, allowing states to regulate speech, religion — and yes, firearms — as each saw fit. Today, the Founders would declare federal gun legislation like the Brady Bill to be unconstitutional, pointing to the 2nd, 9th, and 10th amendments. The Founders also would have declared Chicago’s gun ban constitutional (albeit stupid), also pointing to the 9th and 10th amendments. The 2nd amendment does not apply to the Chicago gun ban because the federal government is not involved — nor should it be.

Constitutional historian Kevin Gutzman put the Founders intentions into perspective during an interview with radio host Mike Church: “when we have a Second Amendment, essentially what that means is that the federal government is to have nothing to do with your ownership and use of weapons. But that doesn’t mean that nobody is able to regulate your ownership and use of weapons. If neither the federal government nor the states can regulate ownership of weapons, are we saying that retarded people and insane people and felons and children can all own weapons? Clearly some level of government has to be able to regulate the use and possession of firearms.”

So how can the Supreme Court overturn Chicago’s ridiculous, yet constitutional law using the 2nd amendment? Also, why should conservatives — typically champions for gun rights — be opposed to this court decision? Because this decision would trample the most important right of all — that of the states to limit the power of the federal government.

Reporting on the Chicago controversy, a Washington Times headline this week read, “Gun rights lawyer gives hope to liberal causes: 14th Amendment argument opens to gay rights, abortion.” Using what’s called the “incorporation doctrine,” the Supreme Court has argued that the 14th Amendment, which was meant to protect the basic rights of former slaves after the War for Southern Independence, magically turned the Bill of Rights into a list of individual rights. If this is true, as the Supreme Court is about to declare once again in the Chicago case, then federal law trumps state law anytime the court sees fit, completely ignoring the Bill of Rights’ intended purpose of limiting federal authority. What some consider a small victory for gun rights is actually a grand defeat for limited government. If Patrick Henry were alive, he would likely be reaching for his musket.

What happens when the court decides that gay marriage is a “right,” or that healthcare is a “right,” two concepts many liberal Democrats already subscribe to? States will be powerless to stop the invention of these and other new “rights” and completely at the mercy of federal judges. Reported the Washington Post: “Justice Stephen Breyer needled the majority about its rather situational view of federalism when it comes to ‘incorporating’ the Second Amendment to make it binding on states rather than just the federal government. ‘Without incorporation, it’s decided by state legislatures,’ he said. ‘With, it’s decided by federal judges.”

Read the entire column

In 2007, USA Today reported. “Like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It’s expanding by about $1.4 billion a day — or nearly $1 million a minute. What’s that mean to you? It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman, child and infant in the United States.” Three years later Congress has raised the national debt ceiling yet again — to an unprecedented and even more astronomical $14 trillion. From healthcare to climate change, stimulus to war, virtually every conversation coming out of today’s Washington, DC-regardless of which party is in power — is about how much money our government is going to spend next.

Not surprisingly, countless Americans are now realizing that the greatest threat to their life, liberty and property is their government. Describing such people as “deranged,” New York Times columnist Frank Rich seems to think the greatest danger on the horizon is not necessarily big government-but “extremists” hell-bent on fighting it. Writes Rich:

(M)ost Tea Party groups have no affiliation with the G.O.P. despite the party’s ham-handed efforts to co-opt them. The more we learn about the Tea Partiers, the more we can see why. They loathe John McCain and the free-spending, TARP-tainted presidency of George W. Bush. They really do hate all of Washington, and if they hate Obama more than the Republican establishment, it’s only by a hair or two. The Tea Partiers want to eliminate most government agencies, starting with the Fed and the I.R.S., and end spending on entitlement programs. They are not to be confused with the Party of No holding forth in Washington — a party that, after all, is now positioning itself as a defender of Medicare spending. What we are talking about here is the Party of No Government at All.

Rich paints a picture in which the supposedly respectable conservative movement of the recent past has been hijacked by the ghost of John Birch and the specter of Ron Paul. But Rich has it exactly backward-there has been no mainstream movement advocating for limited government conservatism for decades, only the GOP using conservative rhetoric as a marketing tool to win elections. The conservative movement isn’t being hijacked-it’s being resuscitated. Rich notices the difference; he just doesn’t like it:

The distinction between the Tea Party movement and the official G.O.P. is real, and we ignore it at our peril. While Washington is fixated on the natterings of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Michael Steele and the presumed 2012 Republican presidential front-runner, Mitt Romney, these and the other leaders of the Party of No are anathema or irrelevant to most Tea Partiers. Indeed, McConnell, Romney and company may prove largely irrelevant to the overall political dynamic taking hold in America right now. The old G.O.P. guard has no discernible national constituency beyond the scattered, often impotent remnants of aging country club Republicanism. The passion on the right has migrated almost entirely to the Tea Party’s counterconservatism.

Read the entire column

When Ann Coulter praised Ron Paul at the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., the right-wing author and provocateur said she supports everything the congressman stands for except foreign policy. This wasn’t the first time Coulter made this point.

Said Coulter at CPAC in 2008, “I must say I love Ron Paul on everything but Iraq.” Comparing Paul’s foreign policy stance to that of the congressman’s fellow non-interventionist Pat Buchanan, Coulter added “Whenever I listen to Ron Paul or Pat Buchanan I always think ‘I can’t listen too long or they might convince me.”

Coulter is essentially saying that when it comes to foreign policy-ignorance is bliss. Quite literally, conservatives can no longer afford this willful ignorance.

Being pro-war is to the mainstream Right what global warming is to the Left-an unassailable dogma that is integral to their respective political identities. Like global warming, believing in the righteousness and necessity of the “war on terror” is an act of political faith, and any heretic who holds challenging views is not to be tolerated-hence conservatives like Coulter, refusing to even listen.

And yet questioning government, especially on something as important and expensive as foreign policy, is unquestionably a conservative exercise. Much like conservatives have done when considering national healthcare, cap-and-trade and federal stimulus, is it “liberal” simply to consider a cost/benefit analysis of America’s recent foreign adventurism? Speaking at CPAC this year, retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski noted: “The phrase ‘war on terror’ has been used to justify trillions of dollars in spending, hundreds of thousands of new government positions, and thousands of new government contracts. At the same time, the ‘war on terror’ has produced very little in terms of new technology or enhanced security, has vastly increased the degree of national centralization, and has created many new permanent trees and branches in the gnarled world of federal and state institutions.”

Mainstream conservative’s usual retort to those who question US foreign policy is that national security is a top priority, for which any cost is justified. This is true. But is it possible that our government is as reckless with foreign policy as it is in every other sphere? During his speech at this year’s CPAC, Ron Paul made this distinction: “There’s nothing wrong with being a conservative, and come up with a conservative belief in foreign policy where we have a strong national defense and we don’t go to war so carelessly.”

Trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives later, too many right-wingers will still not consider-much less admit-that we went to war with Iraq carelessly. What did Iraq have to do with 9/11 or Al-Qaeda? Did Saddam Hussein really threaten the US? These questions are never asked, and are even considered treasonous by many conservatives. Allegedly to reduce the terrorist threat, we are now escalating our war in Afghanistan, bombing Pakistan, eyeballing Yemen and placing sanctions on Iran. How do any of these military actions abroad stop future “shoe bombers” or “underwear bombers” from striking at home? What does any of this have to do with America’s national interest and how does it make us safer? Few conservatives are connecting these dots or asking the obvious questions. On this subject, blindness to government incompetence and recklessness is now considered conservative.

Despite what his critics portray, Paul’s approach to Islamic terrorism is not to ignore it, but to examine motive and develop a sound strategy by pinpointing our defense. Just one month after 9/11, Paul introduced the “Marque and Reprisal Act of 2001,” legislation that would have allowed Congress and the President to specifically target Bin Laden and his associates by placing a bounty on Al-Qaeda leaders. Paul said the Act “allows Congress to narrowly target terrorist enemies, lessening the likelihood of a full-scale war with any Middle Eastern nations. The Act also threatens terrorist cells worldwide by making it more difficult for our enemies to simply slip back into civilian populations or hide in remote locations… Once letters of marque and reprisal are issued, every terrorist is essentially a marked man.”

In hindsight, what would have been the more conservative, productive approach after 9/11—spending three trillion dollars in Iraq or placing a $1billion bounty on Bin Laden and every other Al-Qaeda member’s head?

Read the entire article

An interview with New York Times bestselling author and Ludwig Von Mises senior fellow Thomas E. Woods, Jr. on 1250 AM WTMA, Charleston, South Carolina, February 16, 2010. Woods discusses his current book "Meltdown" and his forthcoming book on nullification and states' rights.

Rep. Ron Paul and I discuss the Tea Party movement, GOP and neoconservative attempts to co-opt it , National Review's Daniel Pipes recent suggestion that President Obama should "bomb Iran" to boost poll numbers, and the importance of addressing foreign policy when discussing spending and limited government.

During her speech to the first ever National Tea Party Convention in Nashville on Saturday, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin discouraged the very idea of a national organization, urging the movement to stay leaderless and decentralized. This was the most important and valuable part of Palin’s speech.

As for the rest of it—Sarah sounded pretty much like the same old Republican Party.

Despite the many independents that make up the movement, the tea parties in large part represent a long overdue reexamination of conservative principles. A big-spending Democratic president seems to have awakened grassroots conservatives enough to finally lament the big spending of the last Republican president, and plenty of incumbents from both parties face voter backlash in 2010 and possibly beyond, particularly if they supported bailouts, stimulus, national healthcare, or other massive debt-incurring legislation.

The tea partiers are right to acknowledge and denounce Bush’s big-government growth of Medicare, the implementation of No Child Left Behind, and Dubya’s other expansions of the domestic state. But what they still seem to forget is what made conservatives so tolerant of big government during that time—an almost religious preoccupation with supporting the Iraq War.

Today, defense spending remains the largest part of the federal budget, dwarfing the bailouts, stimulus, healthcare, and other government programs that offend tea partiers most, and President Obama is still expanding that budget and escalating our wars. One would think cost-conscious voters would at least question Obama’s wisdom in continuing Bush’s exorbitant foreign policy. Yet few tea partiers are asking such questions, and according to Palin, Obama’s primary weakness is that he’s not enough like George W. Bush.

Following up her tea party speech on “Fox News Sunday,” Palin said of Obama, “If he decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation and our allies, I think people would perhaps shift their thinking a little bit and decide, Well, maybe he’s tougher than …he is today, and there wouldn’t be as much passion to make sure that he doesn’t serve another four years.”

What is Palin trying to say? That tea party anger towards Obama would lessen if the president was to “toughen up,” becoming even more intent on waging war? Does Palin believe that the massive domestic spending conservatives don’t like would be tolerated so long as Obama increases the massive foreign spending conservatives do like? Isn’t this exactly what happened under Bush?

Read the entire article

After Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity are the two most popular rightwing talk hosts in America, defining for millions the definition of the term “conservative.” Lately, Beck has focused on attacking “progressivism,” often stressing that the progressive foreign policy of President Woodrow Wilson, who wanted to “make the world safe for democracy,” was identical to that of George W. Bush. Hannity takes a very different view, stating, “You can’t deny that George Bush was conservative on national security issues.” Yet, Beck does deny this, quite regularly. Who’s right? Better yet, who’s “conservative?”

That depends on your definition. The notion of “making the world safe for democracy” is unquestionably a liberal or “progressive” sentiment, but it is also true that it has been standard foreign policy for the mainstream Right for sometime. Self-described conservatives have associated endless military intervention with American “toughness” and viewed those who questioned the government’s wisdom in waging war as “weak” or “anti-American.” This has certainly been the view of Limbaugh and Hannity and for most of Bush’s eight years, it was also the view of Beck.

Yet the notion of America as the world’s policeman is not remotely conservative in the traditional sense, but “neoconservative,” a term most mainstream right-wingers are either ignorant of, embarrassed of, or don’t use because the wholesale takeover of the conservative movement by the neocons has made using the “neo” prefix unnecessary.

Neoconservatives care about one thing—war (and where they can wage it). Says contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, neocon Max Boot: “Neoconservatives believe in using American might to promote American ideals abroad,” a progressive, Wilsonian vision, if there ever was one. As for traditional conservative concerns like limited government, fiscal responsibility and constitutional fidelity, these are ideas neoconservatives will occasionally pay lip service to, so long as none of these principles interferes with their more important task of global military domination. It is no coincidence that George W. Bush—the first full-blown neoconservative presidential administration—did not limit government, was not fiscally responsible and shredded the Constitution, while still implementing the most radical foreign policy in American history. Writes conservative columnist George Will “The most magnificently misnamed neoconservatives are the most radical people in this town.”

Conservatives now seem more willing to question their recent radical past, and a populist rightwing movement consisting of tea parties, town hall protests and states rights’ rhetoric is not conducive to neoconservativism. With traditional conservatism being represented in its modern form most prominently by so-called “paleconservatives” like commentator Pat Buchanan or libertarians like Texas Congressman Ron Paul, Boot recently described such non-“neo”-conservatives to Newsweek: “A lot of them tend to be libertarian cranks: neo-Confederates, really insane, racist, xenophobic types.” “Libertarian cranks” could describe the current crop of constitutionally minded, anti-government protesters, and so-called “neo-Confederates” primary concern has always been states’ right, an increasingly hot topic. As for his portrayal of traditional conservatives as “really insane, racist, xenophobic” types, Boot’s criticism is not unlike the Left’s attempts to portray anti-Obama tea partiers as “racist,” and serves as a reminder of neoconservatives’ progressive inclinations.

Read the entire article

In the wake of the Haiti earthquake tragedy, something unusual has been happening amongst conservatives. On talk radio, the blogosphere and elsewhere, some have been wondering how our government can afford to help Haiti given the current economic crisis in the United States. Considering the magnitude of the tragedy in Haiti, I found this to be a rather insensitive question. It’s also a good one.

Republican opposition to the Democrats’ national healthcare agenda is in large part due to the exorbitant cost, perceived inefficiency and intrusive, bureaucratic character of the plan. Still, argue liberals, there are too many Americans suffering for government to do nothing. Conservatives argue that there is only so much government can, or should, do. It’s time for conservatives to apply their argument more comprehensively.

In 2007 during a FOX News interview, when Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul suggested that the US was involved too much militarily around the world, talk host Sean Hannity asked “Are you saying then that the world has no moral obligation, like in the first Gulf War, when an innocent country’s being pillaged, and people are being raped and murdered and slaughtered, or in the case of Saddam, he’s gassing his own people, are you suggesting we have no moral obligation there? Do you stand by and let that immorality happen?” Paul responded “We have, on numerous occasions.” Hannity’s co-host Alan Colmes chimed in “the fact is the Reagan administration stood by while the Kurds were being gassed, it happened in 1988, we didn’t do anything.” Paul followed up “And what did we do with Pol Pot, what did we do with Moscow, what did we do at the time? We stood by while they did it to their people.” Flustered, Hannity replied “We got it, Ron, you would stand by and do that, I would not… I think that’s immoral.”

President Obama and the Democrats believe it’s immoral for government to stand by and not help uninsured Americans receive healthcare. Hannity disagrees and devotes a significant portion of his radio and television programs to opposing national healthcare. Is Hannity being immoral? Or is he simply taking the conservative position that despite the suffering that exists, government benevolence has its limits?

A nation possessing the wealth and power of the US should be in a position to help Haiti, at least temporarily, and this is something countless Americans have already done privately, donating millions. But these same Americans might not think it’s a good idea to provide government healthcare in their own country. Does this mean they simply do not care? Americans who donated to Haiti may not believe, for instance, that we should send our military to stop the genocide in the war-torn nation of Darfur, something liberals have long advocated using the same “we can’t stand by and do nothing” logic many conservatives used with Iraq. In continuing to just stand by, does this make the US “immoral?” Will Hannity soon devote significant portions of his radio and television programs to highlighting Darfur, a country that’s “being pillaged, and people are being raped and murdered and slaughtered?”

Haiti is close to the US in proximity and the earthquake was so overwhelmingly disastrous that it makes sense to most Americans to lend a helping hand, something that occurred even without government prompting. The US should be able to afford to help Haiti and the extent to which we technically are not—our government operates on a monstrous debt—is due in large part to the hyper extension of our supposed benevolence in other areas. Yet, how many conservatives who now oppose national healthcare due to the cost, or even more strangely, now question the US’s ability to send dollars to Haiti given our own bad economy, didn’t blink an eye over spending trillions on wars in the Middle East, often citing humanitarian reasons as an excuse?

Read the entire column

That Sarah Palin will be speaking at what’s being billed as the first “National Tea Party Convention” makes complete sense. A popular movement that is still trying to figure out exactly what it is will be addressed by a popular woman still trying to figure out exactly what she is.

For now, this is OK. Come to think of it, this confusion or vagueness concerning ideology and identity amongst grassroots conservatives is much better than OK — it’s a necessary and encouraging journey.

As the Left and liberal media tries to portray outspoken Americans fed up with government spending as some sort of wacky fringe, the much-maligned “tea baggers” actually represent the first sign of sanity on the mainstream Right in some time. Perhaps it took the extreme spending example of President Obama’s Democratic Party to induce fear in so many about America’s future, but it is also significant that the tea partiers don’t seem to find any worthwhile value in the recent Republican past. In fact, Republican politicians who supported TARP or stimulus spending remain primary targets of the tea party set, and the big-government, big-spending, warmongering of the George W. Bush years seems to have become a distant, often embarrassing memory. Reported ABC News this month, “So-called ‘tea party patriots’ are members of a political movement sweeping America whose core beliefs center around fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free markets.”

“Fiscal responsibility?” “Constitutionally limited government?” “Free markets?” Isn’t this just long established, stock Republican language? It is. The difference is, unlike grassroots Republicans of the past 30 years, the mostly conservative and independent folks who make up the tea party movement are beginning to realize that the so-called party of “limited government” has not delivered.

But who might deliver? Generally not comfortable with the same old Republican establishment types, Palin is perceived as someone outside the Beltway, who is held at arm’s length by GOP elites and who is abused mercilessly by the mainstream media — just like the tea partiers. Given the dynamics in play, no one should be surprised that the tea party movement has embraced Palin. But it could be that Palin’s emergence as a tea party favorite is more indicative of a thirst for leadership than a thirst for Palin.

Read the entire column

Reacting to my current column, plenty of Obama-loving liberals are angry at me for pointing out the obvious—that on the one issue that most defined Obama's candidacy and the Bush presidency—the two men are indistinguishable.

Or as syndicated columnist Steve Chapman observes:

"The administration and its opponents both make much of its plan to withdraw all U.S. combat forces from Iraq by this summer and to pull the rest out by 2012. What both prefer to forget is that the previous president agreed to the same timetable. Obama's policy on the war he once opposed is not similar to Bush's: It is identical.

Afghanistan? Dick Cheney faults the president for allegedly failing to "talk about how we win," as if Obama were doing far less than the Bush administration. In fact, Obama has agreed to more than triple the U.S. troop presence in a war that his predecessor only talked about winning. McCain called for a "surge" in Afghanistan like the one in Iraq. Obama has given it to him.

Republicans nonetheless entertain the fantasy that at heart, Obama is a pacifist, bent on gutting our military might and naively trusting the good faith of our adversaries. Bush White House adviser Karl Rove recently complained that under this administration, "defense spending is being flattened: Between 2009 and 2010, military outlays will rise 3.6 percent while nondefense discretionary spending climbs 12 percent."

Read that again: Rove believes that when defense spending rises 3.6 percent, it's not really rising. Why? Because the rest of the budget is growing faster. By that logic, if I gained 10 pounds over the holidays but Rove gained 20, I'd need to have my pants taken in.

As it is, the United States spends more on defense than all the other countries on Earth combined. Yet we persist in thinking of ourselves as endangered by foreign countries that are military pipsqueaks.

Obama shares this view. He thinks the only problem with the American military is there isn't enough of it. He's expanding the size of both the Army and the Marine Corps. That's right: After we begin leaving Iraq, the biggest military undertaking in two decades, we won't need a smaller force. We'll need a bigger one.

Conservative talk-show host Sean Hannity accuses the president of "cutting back on defense," but he must be holding his chart upside down. The basic Pentagon budget (excluding money for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars) is scheduled to go up every year.

Over the next five years, defense spending, adjusted for inflation, would be higher than it was in the last five years, when Fox News commentators did not complain about inadequate funding. That's not counting the increases requested by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to provide an additional boost of nearly $60 billion over those five years.

What all this suggests is that Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us nothing about the folly of invading other countries and trying to turn them into modern democracies. The essential theme of the administration's national security policy is reflexive continuity. Why else would we need a bigger military except to do more of the same?

So we are stuck with the consensus that has ruled Washington for decades — the expensive, aggressive policy that has inflated the federal budget and bogged us down in two unsuccessful wars while furnishing an endless, priceless recruiting message for Islamic terrorists.

Too bad. None of this would have happened if Barack Obama had been elected."

Link

My latest at The American Conservative:

Author of the landmark 1953 book The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk once observed that “Human society is no machine, to be treated mechanically.” While progressives of all stripes have always sought to restructure society according to specific liberal mechanics (socialism, feminism, etc.), Kirk believed conservatives should stress that man’s grandiose vision is no match for his nature. To proceed with their Leftist programs and big-government schemes, liberals always tend to leave human nature out of their equations, while conservatives — almost by definition — cannot afford to. This fairly conventional conservative belief would have not been the least bit controversial at William F. Buckley’s National Review, a magazine Kirk helped establish in 1955.

Unfortunately, some at National Review seem to have “progressed” from conventional conservative views concerning human nature, or as current editor Rich Lowry wrote in his syndicated column recently:

“Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab couldn’t ignite the bomb in his underwear on Flight 253 on Christmas Day. All he managed to blow up was a worldview. His failed attempt put paid to the notion that terrorism is the byproduct of a few, specific U.S. policies and of our image abroad.”

This “worldview” that was allegedly “blown up” by Mutallab is usually considered common sense when discussing any subject besides US foreign policy-namely, that when you diddle with people, they will diddle back. In ignoring Human Nature 101, Lowry seems to be saying that unlike taxation and welfare, two intrusive government interventions conservatives have long insisted affect human behavior, intervening in the business of other nations by invading, occupying or bombing them-for decades — does not elicit any specific reactions from the native population. Predictably, Lowry’s explanation for the underwear bomber’s actions is the same, lacking government narrative we’ve all become accustomed to: “Abdul Mutallab was in the grip of a violent ideology with an existential hatred of the United States at its core.”

No doubt, radical Islamic ideology was an obvious, personal motivator for Mutallab. But was it just Islamic ideology that allowed him to reach out to a wider network of terrorists to help him in his efforts?

The title of Lowry’s syndicated column, as it ran in Charleston’s Post & Courier, was “Flight 253 provides reminder of the Left’s naiveté on terror.” While Lowry is correct that the Left is foolish to ignore the religious dimension to Islamic terrorism, the naiveté on the Right is just as ignorant and even more dangerous — as too many conservatives still fail to recognize that foreign interventionism is the motivating factor behind the current terrorist threat.

Read the entire column

The author of nine books and a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Thomas E. Woods, Jr. is one of the best thinkers on the American Right today—not to mention young, entertaining and always cheerful. Tom was nice enough to join me on New Year's Eve at WTMA to discuss his New York Times bestseller Meltdown (I highly recommend it, a very easy to read explanation of our current economic woes), the Federal Reserve, the increasing popularity of Austrian economics, antiwar conservatism and how US interventionism is a recipe for terror.

In 2 parts:

Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) was kind enough to join me for a WTMA radio interview on New Year's Eve (12/31/09), where we discussed national healthcare, foreign policy, non-interventionism and Paul answers Ben Stein's accusations of "anti-Semitism" stemming from an appearance on CNN's Larry King Live, Monday, Dec. 28.