by David Morgan
(note by Jeffrey Robbins, And you thought they were an ally? Note the hedge at the end of the article by speaker...why shouldn't we consider them potential immediate threat in large scope of operating through agent countries they supply?)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russian efforts to obtain secrets on U.S. political and military decision-making have reached levels not seen since the Cold War, the top U.S. counterintelligence official said on Thursday.
Joel Brenner, the Bush administration's National Counterintelligence Executive, said a new intensive assault by Moscow is intent on gaining insights into "the upper echelon of U.S. decision-making" rather than stealing secrets about sensitive U.S. technology.
"The Russians are back to Cold War levels in their efforts against the United States," he said in a speech to the American Bar Association.
Brenner, whose job is to oversee counterintelligence strategy and policy for U.S. intelligence czar Mike McConnell, did not provide details about suspected Russian intelligence operations in the United States. Sensitive counterintelligence activities are classified.
But he said Moscow appears less interested in U.S. commercial and military technology than other countries including China, which U.S. officials have described as the greatest counterintelligence threat facing the United States.
Brenner's remarks come at a time when Russian officials including President Vladimir Putin have become more openly confrontational about U.S. policy such as Washington's plan to deploy a missile defense system in Eastern Europe.
Putin, himself a former KGB official, accused the United States of trying to dominate the world in a February speech.
U.S. officials and independent analysts view Russia as a country determined to return to great power status it enjoyed during the Cold War, largely through its oil wealth and the reconstitution of its military and intelligence capabilities.
McConnell also warned the Senate last month that Russia was taking a step backward in its democratic progress and could be heading for a controlled succession to Putin. Moscow responded by describing his remarks as "outdated assumptions."
The U.S. government has suffered several embarrassing security breaches at the hands of Russian and Soviet intelligence moles, including former CIA case officer Aldrich Ames and former FBI agent Robert Hanssen.
Brenner said Ames provided the Soviets with enough information about U.S. officials to "decapitate" America's leadership in the event of war.
But Moscow intelligence does not now appear interested in posing a physical threat to American leaders. "It's not a strike threat they're after. I don't want to give that impression," Brenner said.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Kissinger Presidency
by Robert Dallek
(note by Jeffrey Robbins: I would encourage you to use hyperlink to read all four pages of the article, an interesting look into the likely power of Cabinets in relation to Presidential post itself. Below is paste of page 1 only...)
Battered by Watergate in 1973, President Nixon was losing his epic power struggle with Henry Kissinger. Then the Middle East exploded. In an excerpt from his new book, using freshly opened archives, the author describes how the secretary of state took control.
by Robert Dallek May 2007
Excerpted from Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power, by Robert Dallek, to be published this month by HarperCollins Publishers; © 2007 by the author.
Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, 1972. Rauchwetter/dba/Landov. Enlarge this photo.
Henry Kissinger never wanted the 20,000 pages of his telephone transcripts made public—not while he was alive, at any rate. And for good reason. It was Kissinger's practice while he served as Richard M. Nixon's national-security adviser and, later, as his secretary of state to have assistants listen in on dead-key extensions and make verbatim transcripts. The result is a record of conversations and decision-making rivaled only by the Nixon tapes—and a real-time rendering of events often at variance with official portrayals. It is ironic: Nixon and Kissinger presided over an administration that was unsurpassed (until the current one) in its secrecy, and yet produced the richest trove of presidential records in history, making the Nixon White House more transparent in retrospect than any before or since.
During the past four years I have sifted through much of the Nixon administration's recently opened archives: all of those Kissinger telephone transcripts, for instance, along with the unpublished portions of the diaries of Nixon's first chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman; hundreds of hours of newly available Nixon tapes; and the national-security records (which total close to a million pages) that include Kissinger's private office files and the previously unread papers of Alexander M. Haig Jr., who was Kissinger's deputy at the National Security Council and then took Haldeman's place as chief of staff. Put it all together and an intimate picture emerges of the complex relationship between Nixon and Kissinger, men who were allies but also rivals—paranoid and insecure, deceitful and manipulative, ruthless and strangely vulnerable.
Nixon is dead, but Henry Kissinger remains very much a man in public life. In recent years, President George W. Bush has consulted him for advice on the Iraq war, which Kissinger has supported. Since 2001, Kissinger has, according to Bob Woodward's State of Denial, met with the president every other month, and with Vice President Dick Cheney every month, and he has advised President Bush that "victory … is the only meaningful exit strategy" for Iraq. So it is a good moment to visit the newly available documents and transcripts for the fresh detail they provide. They show Kissinger at moments of high drama—for instance, during the Yom Kippur War, when he made decisions of utmost gravity while keeping Nixon at arm's length. They show a man whose growing power derived from Nixon's deepening incapacity. And they reveal Kissinger's troubling personality and methods across a broad front.
The Prima Donna. Nixon did not anticipate the extent to which Kissinger, whom he barely knew when he appointed him national-security adviser, in 1969, would be envious and high-strung—a maintenance project of the first order. Nixon had a running conversation with Haldeman about "the K problem," as Haldeman noted in his diaries. Nixon complained in one taped conversation with the chief of staff: "Henry's personality problem is just too goddamn difficult for us to deal [with].… Goddamn it, Bob, he's psychopathic about trying to screw [Secretary of State William] Rogers." Haldeman feared that if Kissinger "wins the battle with Rogers" he might not be "livable with afterwards." Nixon agreed that he would "be a dictator." "Did you know that Henry worries every time I talk on the phone with anybody?" he told Haldeman and domestic counselor John Ehrlichman in another taped conversation. "His feeling is that he must be present every time I see anybody important."
Vietnam. Using language that has a painfully contemporary echo, Kissinger and Nixon very quickly came to private conclusions about Vietnam that they never revealed publicly and denied entertaining. "In Saigon the tendency is to fight the war to victory," Nixon told Kissinger, according to the transcript of a 1969 phone conversation. "But you and I know it won't happen—it is impossible." Even so, according to Haldeman's unpublished diaries, Nixon later urged that Democratic critics making this same point should be labeled "the party of surrender." When someone told Kissinger that Nixon could not be re-elected, because of Vietnam, he disputed it and added, according to a memo of a conversation, that "anytime we want to get out of Vietnam we can," and that "we will get out of Vietnam before the [1972] election." Nixon wanted to plan the removal of all U.S. troops by the end of 1971, but Kissinger cautioned that, if North Vietnam then de-stabilized Saigon during the following year, events could have an adverse effect on the president's campaign. According to Haldeman's diaries, Kissinger advocated a pullout in the fall of 1972, "so that if any bad results follow they will be too late to affect the election." He apparently had nothing to say about the American lives that would be lost by deliberately prolonging the war. Just before a peace treaty was signed, Kissinger in a phone conversation advised Nixon against stating that this was a "lasting peace or guaranteed peace because this thing is almost certain to blow up sooner or later."
The Pentagon Papers. Kissinger was deeply unsettled by the revelation, in June of 1971, that the Pentagon's secret history of the Vietnam War had been given to The New York Times by a former adviser to Kissinger on Vietnam, Daniel Ellsberg. Would Kissinger be tarred by association? When he saw Nixon, according to a taped conversation, Kissinger said of Ellsberg, "That son-of-a-bitch. I know him well. He is completely nuts.… He always seemed a little bit unbalanced." As for The New York Times, Nixon and Kissinger were determined to come down hard. "Goddamn newspapers—they're a bunch of sluts," Nixon said. In another taped conversation, two weeks later, he said, "I don't give a goddamn about repression, do you?" "No," Kissinger replied.
Mental Health. Nixon confided to Haldeman, according to the unpublished diaries, that he was "quite shocked" at how Kissinger had "ranted and raved" at Alexander Haig during a 1971 phone conversation, telling Haig that he "had handled everything wrong," and calling U.N. ambassador George H. W. Bush "an idiot." Nixon believed that something more serious was going on, and it is known that he once mused to Ehrlichman that Kissinger might need psychiatric help. The subject of Kissinger's stability came up again in 1972. Having read The Will to Live, by Dr. Arnold Hutschnecker, his former psychotherapist, Nixon recommended it to Haldeman as providing a road map to what Nixon, according to Haldeman's unpublished diary notes, called "K's suicidal complex." Haldeman went on: "He also wants to be sure I make extensive memoranda about K's mental processes and so on, for his file."
(note by Jeffrey Robbins: I would encourage you to use hyperlink to read all four pages of the article, an interesting look into the likely power of Cabinets in relation to Presidential post itself. Below is paste of page 1 only...)
Battered by Watergate in 1973, President Nixon was losing his epic power struggle with Henry Kissinger. Then the Middle East exploded. In an excerpt from his new book, using freshly opened archives, the author describes how the secretary of state took control.
by Robert Dallek May 2007
Excerpted from Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power, by Robert Dallek, to be published this month by HarperCollins Publishers; © 2007 by the author.
Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, 1972. Rauchwetter/dba/Landov. Enlarge this photo.
Henry Kissinger never wanted the 20,000 pages of his telephone transcripts made public—not while he was alive, at any rate. And for good reason. It was Kissinger's practice while he served as Richard M. Nixon's national-security adviser and, later, as his secretary of state to have assistants listen in on dead-key extensions and make verbatim transcripts. The result is a record of conversations and decision-making rivaled only by the Nixon tapes—and a real-time rendering of events often at variance with official portrayals. It is ironic: Nixon and Kissinger presided over an administration that was unsurpassed (until the current one) in its secrecy, and yet produced the richest trove of presidential records in history, making the Nixon White House more transparent in retrospect than any before or since.
During the past four years I have sifted through much of the Nixon administration's recently opened archives: all of those Kissinger telephone transcripts, for instance, along with the unpublished portions of the diaries of Nixon's first chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman; hundreds of hours of newly available Nixon tapes; and the national-security records (which total close to a million pages) that include Kissinger's private office files and the previously unread papers of Alexander M. Haig Jr., who was Kissinger's deputy at the National Security Council and then took Haldeman's place as chief of staff. Put it all together and an intimate picture emerges of the complex relationship between Nixon and Kissinger, men who were allies but also rivals—paranoid and insecure, deceitful and manipulative, ruthless and strangely vulnerable.
Nixon is dead, but Henry Kissinger remains very much a man in public life. In recent years, President George W. Bush has consulted him for advice on the Iraq war, which Kissinger has supported. Since 2001, Kissinger has, according to Bob Woodward's State of Denial, met with the president every other month, and with Vice President Dick Cheney every month, and he has advised President Bush that "victory … is the only meaningful exit strategy" for Iraq. So it is a good moment to visit the newly available documents and transcripts for the fresh detail they provide. They show Kissinger at moments of high drama—for instance, during the Yom Kippur War, when he made decisions of utmost gravity while keeping Nixon at arm's length. They show a man whose growing power derived from Nixon's deepening incapacity. And they reveal Kissinger's troubling personality and methods across a broad front.
The Prima Donna. Nixon did not anticipate the extent to which Kissinger, whom he barely knew when he appointed him national-security adviser, in 1969, would be envious and high-strung—a maintenance project of the first order. Nixon had a running conversation with Haldeman about "the K problem," as Haldeman noted in his diaries. Nixon complained in one taped conversation with the chief of staff: "Henry's personality problem is just too goddamn difficult for us to deal [with].… Goddamn it, Bob, he's psychopathic about trying to screw [Secretary of State William] Rogers." Haldeman feared that if Kissinger "wins the battle with Rogers" he might not be "livable with afterwards." Nixon agreed that he would "be a dictator." "Did you know that Henry worries every time I talk on the phone with anybody?" he told Haldeman and domestic counselor John Ehrlichman in another taped conversation. "His feeling is that he must be present every time I see anybody important."
Vietnam. Using language that has a painfully contemporary echo, Kissinger and Nixon very quickly came to private conclusions about Vietnam that they never revealed publicly and denied entertaining. "In Saigon the tendency is to fight the war to victory," Nixon told Kissinger, according to the transcript of a 1969 phone conversation. "But you and I know it won't happen—it is impossible." Even so, according to Haldeman's unpublished diaries, Nixon later urged that Democratic critics making this same point should be labeled "the party of surrender." When someone told Kissinger that Nixon could not be re-elected, because of Vietnam, he disputed it and added, according to a memo of a conversation, that "anytime we want to get out of Vietnam we can," and that "we will get out of Vietnam before the [1972] election." Nixon wanted to plan the removal of all U.S. troops by the end of 1971, but Kissinger cautioned that, if North Vietnam then de-stabilized Saigon during the following year, events could have an adverse effect on the president's campaign. According to Haldeman's diaries, Kissinger advocated a pullout in the fall of 1972, "so that if any bad results follow they will be too late to affect the election." He apparently had nothing to say about the American lives that would be lost by deliberately prolonging the war. Just before a peace treaty was signed, Kissinger in a phone conversation advised Nixon against stating that this was a "lasting peace or guaranteed peace because this thing is almost certain to blow up sooner or later."
The Pentagon Papers. Kissinger was deeply unsettled by the revelation, in June of 1971, that the Pentagon's secret history of the Vietnam War had been given to The New York Times by a former adviser to Kissinger on Vietnam, Daniel Ellsberg. Would Kissinger be tarred by association? When he saw Nixon, according to a taped conversation, Kissinger said of Ellsberg, "That son-of-a-bitch. I know him well. He is completely nuts.… He always seemed a little bit unbalanced." As for The New York Times, Nixon and Kissinger were determined to come down hard. "Goddamn newspapers—they're a bunch of sluts," Nixon said. In another taped conversation, two weeks later, he said, "I don't give a goddamn about repression, do you?" "No," Kissinger replied.
Mental Health. Nixon confided to Haldeman, according to the unpublished diaries, that he was "quite shocked" at how Kissinger had "ranted and raved" at Alexander Haig during a 1971 phone conversation, telling Haig that he "had handled everything wrong," and calling U.N. ambassador George H. W. Bush "an idiot." Nixon believed that something more serious was going on, and it is known that he once mused to Ehrlichman that Kissinger might need psychiatric help. The subject of Kissinger's stability came up again in 1972. Having read The Will to Live, by Dr. Arnold Hutschnecker, his former psychotherapist, Nixon recommended it to Haldeman as providing a road map to what Nixon, according to Haldeman's unpublished diary notes, called "K's suicidal complex." Haldeman went on: "He also wants to be sure I make extensive memoranda about K's mental processes and so on, for his file."
Friday, March 16, 2007
How The Tax System Works: The Looters
(note: I "stole" this from an email forwarded to me, there was no attribution.)
Just in case you are not completely clear on this issue, the following might help. Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do: The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until on day, the owner threw them a curve. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20."Drinks for the ten now cost just $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. What about the other six men, those paying the tab? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?' They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. "I only got a dollar out of the $20,"declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man," but he got $10!" "Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!" "That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!" "Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!" The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill! And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore.
Just in case you are not completely clear on this issue, the following might help. Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do: The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until on day, the owner threw them a curve. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20."Drinks for the ten now cost just $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. What about the other six men, those paying the tab? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?' They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. "I only got a dollar out of the $20,"declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man," but he got $10!" "Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!" "That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!" "Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!" The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill! And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Justice Dept.: FBI Misused Patriot Act
by Lara Jakes Jordan
The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States, a Justice Department audit concluded Friday.
And for three years the FBI has underreported to Congress how often it forced businesses to turn over the customer data, the audit found.
FBI agents sometimes demanded the data without proper authorization, according to the 126-page audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. At other times, the audit found, the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances.
The audit blames agent error and shoddy record-keeping for the bulk of the problems and did not find any indication of criminal misconduct.
Still, "we believe the improper or illegal uses we found involve serious misuses of national security letter authorities," the audit concludes.
At issue are the security letters, a power outlined in the Patriot Act that the Bush administration pushed through Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The letters, or administrative subpoenas, are used in suspected terrorism and espionage cases. They allow the FBI to require telephone companies, Internet service providers, banks, credit bureaus and other businesses to produce highly personal records about their customers or subscribers _ without a judge's approval.
About three-fourths of the national security letters were issued for counterterror cases, and the other fourth for spy investigations.
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller called Fine's audit "a fair and objective review of the FBI's use of a proven and useful investigative tool."
The finding "of deficiencies in our processes is unacceptable," Mueller said in a statement.
"We strive to exercise our authorities consistent with the privacy protections and civil liberties that we are sworn to uphold," Mueller said. "Anything less will not be tolerated. While we've already taken some steps to address these shortcomings, I am ordering additional corrective measures to be taken immediately."
Fine's annual review is required by Congress, over the objections of the Bush administration.
The audit released Friday found that the number of national security letters issued by the FBI skyrocketed in the years after the Patriot Act became law.
In 2000, for example, the FBI issued an estimated 8,500 letters. By however, that number jumped to 39,000. It rose again the next year, to about 56,000 letters in 2004, and dropped to approximately 47,000 in 2005.
Over the entire three-year period, the audit found the FBI issued 143,074 national security letters requesting customer data from businesses.
The FBI vastly underreported the numbers. In 2005, the FBI told Congress that its agents in 2003 and 2004 had delivered only 9,254 national security letters seeking e-mail, telephone or financial information on 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal residents over the previous two years.
Additionally, the audit found, the FBI identified 26 possible violations in its use of the national security letters, including failing to get proper authorization, making improper requests under the law and unauthorized collection of telephone or Internet e-mail records.
Of the violations, 22 were caused by FBI errors, while the other four were the result of mistakes made by the firms that received the letters.
The FBI also used so-called "exigent letters," signed by officials at FBI headquarters who were not authorized to sign national security letters, to obtain information. In at least 700 cases, these exigent letters were sent to three telephone companies to get toll billing records and subscriber information.
"In many cases, there was no pending investigation associated with the request at the time the exigent letters were sent," the audit concluded.
The letters inaccurately said the FBI had requested subpoenas for the information requested _ "when, in fact, it had not," the audit found.
Senators outraged over the conclusions signaled they would provide tougher oversight of the FBI _ and perhaps limit its power.
"The report indicates abuse of the authority" Congress gave the FBI, said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. "You cannot have people act as free agents on something where they're going to be delving into your privacy."
The committee's top Republican, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, said the FBI appears to have "badly misused national security letters." The senator said, "This is, regrettably, part of an ongoing process where the federal authorities are not really sensitive to privacy and go far beyond what we have authorized."
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., another member on the panel that oversees the FBI, said the report "proves that 'trust us' doesn't cut it."
Justice spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said Attorney General Alberto Gonzales "commends the work of the inspector general in uncovering serious problems in the FBI's use of NSLs."
The American Civil Liberties Union said the audit proves Congress must amend the Patriot Act to require judicial approval anytime the FBI wants access to sensitive personal information. "The Attorney General and the FBI are part of the problem and they cannot be trusted to be part of the solution," said Anthony D. Romero, the ACLU's executive director.
The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States, a Justice Department audit concluded Friday.
And for three years the FBI has underreported to Congress how often it forced businesses to turn over the customer data, the audit found.
FBI agents sometimes demanded the data without proper authorization, according to the 126-page audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. At other times, the audit found, the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances.
The audit blames agent error and shoddy record-keeping for the bulk of the problems and did not find any indication of criminal misconduct.
Still, "we believe the improper or illegal uses we found involve serious misuses of national security letter authorities," the audit concludes.
At issue are the security letters, a power outlined in the Patriot Act that the Bush administration pushed through Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The letters, or administrative subpoenas, are used in suspected terrorism and espionage cases. They allow the FBI to require telephone companies, Internet service providers, banks, credit bureaus and other businesses to produce highly personal records about their customers or subscribers _ without a judge's approval.
About three-fourths of the national security letters were issued for counterterror cases, and the other fourth for spy investigations.
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller called Fine's audit "a fair and objective review of the FBI's use of a proven and useful investigative tool."
The finding "of deficiencies in our processes is unacceptable," Mueller said in a statement.
"We strive to exercise our authorities consistent with the privacy protections and civil liberties that we are sworn to uphold," Mueller said. "Anything less will not be tolerated. While we've already taken some steps to address these shortcomings, I am ordering additional corrective measures to be taken immediately."
Fine's annual review is required by Congress, over the objections of the Bush administration.
The audit released Friday found that the number of national security letters issued by the FBI skyrocketed in the years after the Patriot Act became law.
In 2000, for example, the FBI issued an estimated 8,500 letters. By however, that number jumped to 39,000. It rose again the next year, to about 56,000 letters in 2004, and dropped to approximately 47,000 in 2005.
Over the entire three-year period, the audit found the FBI issued 143,074 national security letters requesting customer data from businesses.
The FBI vastly underreported the numbers. In 2005, the FBI told Congress that its agents in 2003 and 2004 had delivered only 9,254 national security letters seeking e-mail, telephone or financial information on 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal residents over the previous two years.
Additionally, the audit found, the FBI identified 26 possible violations in its use of the national security letters, including failing to get proper authorization, making improper requests under the law and unauthorized collection of telephone or Internet e-mail records.
Of the violations, 22 were caused by FBI errors, while the other four were the result of mistakes made by the firms that received the letters.
The FBI also used so-called "exigent letters," signed by officials at FBI headquarters who were not authorized to sign national security letters, to obtain information. In at least 700 cases, these exigent letters were sent to three telephone companies to get toll billing records and subscriber information.
"In many cases, there was no pending investigation associated with the request at the time the exigent letters were sent," the audit concluded.
The letters inaccurately said the FBI had requested subpoenas for the information requested _ "when, in fact, it had not," the audit found.
Senators outraged over the conclusions signaled they would provide tougher oversight of the FBI _ and perhaps limit its power.
"The report indicates abuse of the authority" Congress gave the FBI, said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. "You cannot have people act as free agents on something where they're going to be delving into your privacy."
The committee's top Republican, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, said the FBI appears to have "badly misused national security letters." The senator said, "This is, regrettably, part of an ongoing process where the federal authorities are not really sensitive to privacy and go far beyond what we have authorized."
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., another member on the panel that oversees the FBI, said the report "proves that 'trust us' doesn't cut it."
Justice spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said Attorney General Alberto Gonzales "commends the work of the inspector general in uncovering serious problems in the FBI's use of NSLs."
The American Civil Liberties Union said the audit proves Congress must amend the Patriot Act to require judicial approval anytime the FBI wants access to sensitive personal information. "The Attorney General and the FBI are part of the problem and they cannot be trusted to be part of the solution," said Anthony D. Romero, the ACLU's executive director.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
FDR's legacy: Tyranny
by Ellis Washington
The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money. – Alexis de Tocqueville
I didn't earn it, I don't deserve it, but if the government misses one of my payments, I'll raise hell! – Grandpa Simpson (from the TV show "The Simpsons")
On Feb. 5, 2007, President George W. Bush submitted a budget for Congress to consider passing. It contained $2.9 trillion dollars in spending, not including $235 billion in additional military spending for the war in Iraq for 2007 and 2008. Regrettably, what you don't hear from Democrats or Republicans is that the overwhelming majority of that spending is against the original intent of the framers of the Constitution, yet it exists and is growing exponentially in the face of a multi-trillion dollar U.S. deficit largely being financed by, of all nations, China. What if China calls in our several trillion dollars in U.S. debt they presently hold? Bye bye, USA.
The origins of what is ubiquitously referred to as "Big Government" dates back 75 years to the first of four terms of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-45). FDR's legacy essentially rests on replacing God with Big Government to fulfill human needs. The church, philosophy, Jewish, Christian and other religious organizations became secondary and increasingly irrelevant in the face of this unprecedented leviathan government expansion. FDR and his socialist bureaucrats would never again rely on the religion-based charity or the church to help the people in need. The State, proud and lifted up, had ascended Parnassus as the new god of the latest, dynamic, Progressive Era and would provide all needs for everyone. FDR's legacy was his comprehensive and utter demoralization of America's can-do spirit called the "New Deal."
(Column continues below)
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The Great Depression of October 1929 was a godsend for Roosevelt. America's dire economic conditions, including 25 percent unemployment (up from 4 percent) and the collapse of manufacturing output by one-third, sent prices falling everywhere – making the burden of the repayment of debts almost impossible. Heavy industry, mining, lumbering and agriculture all felt its impact. These very grave economic circumstances gave FDR the perfect pretext for fundamentally changing America from a democratic-republican form of government to a socialist state. He wasted no time. Within the first 100 days of taking office, he and his advisers quickly formulated a series of leviathan programs, and between 1933 and 1937 – with the goal of relief, recovery and reform of the United States economy – the U.S. moved slowly out of its economic malaise during the Great Depression (at least that was the rhetoric from the propaganda press).
Scottish historian Sir Alex Fraser Tyler long ago predicted a man like FDR seizing power:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapse over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
The three Rs of FDR's New Deal programs were direct relief, economic recovery and financial reform. Relief was the immediate effort to help the one-third of the population that was hardest hit by the depression. Reform was based on the supposition that the depression was caused by the inherent instability of the market and that government intrusion was necessary to justify, correct and stabilize the economy, and to balance the interests of farmers, business and labor. Recovery would be a series of program initiatives that in theory pull the U.S. completely out of the Great Depression.
By 1934, the Supreme Court starting ruling against of FDR's New Deal programs as unconstitutional. In his second term, Roosevelt, flush from his 1936 landside presidential victory, was outraged and was convinced he had a mandate from the people to continue and expand his New Deal programs. This conflict between the Court and the Executive branches of government lead to FDR's court-packing bill in 1937. Although the bill failed, the Supreme Court, fearing FDR's attempt to neutralize them, began declaring his New Deal laws constitutional.
By 1942, the Supreme Court had virtually stopped its conservative "judicial activism" of striking down congressional laws passed by New Dealers. Through an unconstitutional expansion of Article I, Section 8, the Supreme Court, in cases like Wickard v. Filburn, ruled that the Commerce Clause applied to virtually any regulation allowing the necessary expansion of federal power to make the New Deal "constitutional." The fix was in, and in subsequent decades, as the federal government grew in power over the people, their constitutionally enumerated freedoms became a dead letter (i.e., Ninth and 10th Amendments, Commerce Clause protection, etc.).
Historian Clarence B. Carson captured the intoxicating optimism of the 1930s regarding government's comprehensive and exalted role to solve all the problems that have plagued mankind since ancient times, saying:
At this remove in time from the early days of the New Deal, it is difficult to recapture, even in imagination, the heady enthusiasm among a goodly number of intellectuals for a government-planned economy ... as General Hugh Johnson put it, from "the murderous doctrine of savage and wolfish individualism, looking to dog-eat-dog and devil take the hindmost."
Mr. Carson's rather dour assessment of free-market capitalism pre-FDR is exactly what made America the greatest nation in the history of humanity – each individual, limited only by his ability and imagination, had the freedom to pursue in Jefferson's words – "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" by God's power, not government's encroachment on We the People's inalienable rights.
What is FDR's legacy to America? In a word, tyranny. C.S. Lewis put it is thusly:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.
FDR taught American to forsake to three things that made her great – free-market capitalism, its Judeo-Christian traditions and rugged American individualism. How? By pitting church against state, sacred against secular, men against women, race against race, rich against poor, creed against creed, Jew against Gentile, liberals against conservatives, class against class, the haves against the have nots. What is the result of this state of affairs in modern times? – Thou shalt covet thy neighbor's ass.
The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money. – Alexis de Tocqueville
I didn't earn it, I don't deserve it, but if the government misses one of my payments, I'll raise hell! – Grandpa Simpson (from the TV show "The Simpsons")
On Feb. 5, 2007, President George W. Bush submitted a budget for Congress to consider passing. It contained $2.9 trillion dollars in spending, not including $235 billion in additional military spending for the war in Iraq for 2007 and 2008. Regrettably, what you don't hear from Democrats or Republicans is that the overwhelming majority of that spending is against the original intent of the framers of the Constitution, yet it exists and is growing exponentially in the face of a multi-trillion dollar U.S. deficit largely being financed by, of all nations, China. What if China calls in our several trillion dollars in U.S. debt they presently hold? Bye bye, USA.
The origins of what is ubiquitously referred to as "Big Government" dates back 75 years to the first of four terms of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-45). FDR's legacy essentially rests on replacing God with Big Government to fulfill human needs. The church, philosophy, Jewish, Christian and other religious organizations became secondary and increasingly irrelevant in the face of this unprecedented leviathan government expansion. FDR and his socialist bureaucrats would never again rely on the religion-based charity or the church to help the people in need. The State, proud and lifted up, had ascended Parnassus as the new god of the latest, dynamic, Progressive Era and would provide all needs for everyone. FDR's legacy was his comprehensive and utter demoralization of America's can-do spirit called the "New Deal."
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The Great Depression of October 1929 was a godsend for Roosevelt. America's dire economic conditions, including 25 percent unemployment (up from 4 percent) and the collapse of manufacturing output by one-third, sent prices falling everywhere – making the burden of the repayment of debts almost impossible. Heavy industry, mining, lumbering and agriculture all felt its impact. These very grave economic circumstances gave FDR the perfect pretext for fundamentally changing America from a democratic-republican form of government to a socialist state. He wasted no time. Within the first 100 days of taking office, he and his advisers quickly formulated a series of leviathan programs, and between 1933 and 1937 – with the goal of relief, recovery and reform of the United States economy – the U.S. moved slowly out of its economic malaise during the Great Depression (at least that was the rhetoric from the propaganda press).
Scottish historian Sir Alex Fraser Tyler long ago predicted a man like FDR seizing power:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapse over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
The three Rs of FDR's New Deal programs were direct relief, economic recovery and financial reform. Relief was the immediate effort to help the one-third of the population that was hardest hit by the depression. Reform was based on the supposition that the depression was caused by the inherent instability of the market and that government intrusion was necessary to justify, correct and stabilize the economy, and to balance the interests of farmers, business and labor. Recovery would be a series of program initiatives that in theory pull the U.S. completely out of the Great Depression.
By 1934, the Supreme Court starting ruling against of FDR's New Deal programs as unconstitutional. In his second term, Roosevelt, flush from his 1936 landside presidential victory, was outraged and was convinced he had a mandate from the people to continue and expand his New Deal programs. This conflict between the Court and the Executive branches of government lead to FDR's court-packing bill in 1937. Although the bill failed, the Supreme Court, fearing FDR's attempt to neutralize them, began declaring his New Deal laws constitutional.
By 1942, the Supreme Court had virtually stopped its conservative "judicial activism" of striking down congressional laws passed by New Dealers. Through an unconstitutional expansion of Article I, Section 8, the Supreme Court, in cases like Wickard v. Filburn, ruled that the Commerce Clause applied to virtually any regulation allowing the necessary expansion of federal power to make the New Deal "constitutional." The fix was in, and in subsequent decades, as the federal government grew in power over the people, their constitutionally enumerated freedoms became a dead letter (i.e., Ninth and 10th Amendments, Commerce Clause protection, etc.).
Historian Clarence B. Carson captured the intoxicating optimism of the 1930s regarding government's comprehensive and exalted role to solve all the problems that have plagued mankind since ancient times, saying:
At this remove in time from the early days of the New Deal, it is difficult to recapture, even in imagination, the heady enthusiasm among a goodly number of intellectuals for a government-planned economy ... as General Hugh Johnson put it, from "the murderous doctrine of savage and wolfish individualism, looking to dog-eat-dog and devil take the hindmost."
Mr. Carson's rather dour assessment of free-market capitalism pre-FDR is exactly what made America the greatest nation in the history of humanity – each individual, limited only by his ability and imagination, had the freedom to pursue in Jefferson's words – "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" by God's power, not government's encroachment on We the People's inalienable rights.
What is FDR's legacy to America? In a word, tyranny. C.S. Lewis put it is thusly:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.
FDR taught American to forsake to three things that made her great – free-market capitalism, its Judeo-Christian traditions and rugged American individualism. How? By pitting church against state, sacred against secular, men against women, race against race, rich against poor, creed against creed, Jew against Gentile, liberals against conservatives, class against class, the haves against the have nots. What is the result of this state of affairs in modern times? – Thou shalt covet thy neighbor's ass.
Dead Russian reporter was investigating arms sales to Iran, Syria
posted at breitbart.com
A Russian reporter who died after falling out of a window was investigating sales of weapons by Russia to Syria and Iran, his newspaper Kommersant said Tuesday.
Ivan Safronov had told his newspaper that he had "received information" about the sale of Sukhoi-34 fighter jets to Syria and S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Iran via Belarus.
The business daily said the arms were being sold "via Belarus to avoid the west accusing Russia of arming rogue states". Safronov, a former colonel, specialised in writing about the army and space.
Russian prosecutors on Monday opened an investigation into the "incitement to suicide" of Safronov.
But his newspaper has dismissed claims that he committed suicide, while Russian journalists union the SJR said Tuesday it might conduct its own inquiry.
"From what we know already it is clear it was not suicide," the union's Secretary General Igor Yakovenko told Moscow Echo radio.
"The chances that it was a murder linked to the exercise of his profession are very high," he added.
Kommersant said Safronov had called from a major Middle East arms fair in Abu Dhabi in late February to say that he had "irrefutable confirmation" of the sales.
On his return to Moscow he had spoken to his colleagues of the "signature by Russia and Syria of contracts for the Pantsir CI anti-aircraft system, Mig-29 fighter jets and Iskander tactical missiles," it said.
However, he told his colleagues he could not write the story immediately because he had been warned about the risk of an international scandal and an inquiry by the FSB security service for divulging secrets.
He did not say that this amounted to pressure.
In May 2006 the British defence magazine Jane's had reported a contract had been signed for the sale of S-300 SP missiles from Russia to Belarus, with the aim of selling arms indirectly to Iran.
At the time the Russian defence ministry had said that Belarus would not sell S-300 missiles to Iran.
According to Kommersant, two young students last week heard the noise of a falling body, saw Safronov lying on the snow and called an ambulance, which refused to come as it had "no time to go picking up every drunkard".
The two girls said they heard no sounds of a struggle and saw no-one leaving the apartment house after the fall.
A Russian reporter who died after falling out of a window was investigating sales of weapons by Russia to Syria and Iran, his newspaper Kommersant said Tuesday.
Ivan Safronov had told his newspaper that he had "received information" about the sale of Sukhoi-34 fighter jets to Syria and S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Iran via Belarus.
The business daily said the arms were being sold "via Belarus to avoid the west accusing Russia of arming rogue states". Safronov, a former colonel, specialised in writing about the army and space.
Russian prosecutors on Monday opened an investigation into the "incitement to suicide" of Safronov.
But his newspaper has dismissed claims that he committed suicide, while Russian journalists union the SJR said Tuesday it might conduct its own inquiry.
"From what we know already it is clear it was not suicide," the union's Secretary General Igor Yakovenko told Moscow Echo radio.
"The chances that it was a murder linked to the exercise of his profession are very high," he added.
Kommersant said Safronov had called from a major Middle East arms fair in Abu Dhabi in late February to say that he had "irrefutable confirmation" of the sales.
On his return to Moscow he had spoken to his colleagues of the "signature by Russia and Syria of contracts for the Pantsir CI anti-aircraft system, Mig-29 fighter jets and Iskander tactical missiles," it said.
However, he told his colleagues he could not write the story immediately because he had been warned about the risk of an international scandal and an inquiry by the FSB security service for divulging secrets.
He did not say that this amounted to pressure.
In May 2006 the British defence magazine Jane's had reported a contract had been signed for the sale of S-300 SP missiles from Russia to Belarus, with the aim of selling arms indirectly to Iran.
At the time the Russian defence ministry had said that Belarus would not sell S-300 missiles to Iran.
According to Kommersant, two young students last week heard the noise of a falling body, saw Safronov lying on the snow and called an ambulance, which refused to come as it had "no time to go picking up every drunkard".
The two girls said they heard no sounds of a struggle and saw no-one leaving the apartment house after the fall.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
The Deniers -- The National Post's series on scientists who buck the conventional wisdom on climate science
by Lawrence Solomon at The National Post (Canada)
This link (click on article title) will bring you to a whole series on the "Deniers."
This link (click on article title) will bring you to a whole series on the "Deniers."
Global warming labeled a 'scam'
posted by Washington Times
(Note by Jeffrey Robbins: The irony of the last line is amusing too...)
LONDON -- With a packet of claims that are almost certain to defy conventional wisdom, a television documentary to be aired in Britain this week condemns man-made global warming as a myth that has become "the biggest scam of modern times." The program titled "The Great Global Warming Scandal" and set for screening by TV Channel 4 on Thursday dismisses claims that high levels of greenhouse gases generated by human activity causes climate change. Instead, the program suggests that the sun itself is the real culprit. The documentary, directed by filmmaker Martin Durkin, is at odds with scientific opinion as outlined in a United Nations report in February, which blames mankind for global warming. In his program, Mr. Durkin rejects the concept of man-made climate change, calling it "a lie ... the biggest scam of modern times." The truth, he says, is that global warming "is a multibillion-dollar worldwide industry, created by fanatically anti-industrial environmentalists, supported by scientists peddling scare stories to chase funding, and propped up by compliant politicians and the media." Channel 4 says that the program features "an impressive roll-call of experts," including nine professors, who are experts in climatology, oceanography, meteorology, biogeography and paleoclimatology. It also says the experts come from prestigious institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the Danish National Space Center and universities and other schools in London, Ottawa, Jerusalem, Alabama, Virginia and Winnipeg, Canada. "It's very rare that a film changes history," says Martin Durkin, "but I think this is a turning point, and in five years the idea that the greenhouse effect is the main reason behind global warming will be seen as total bunk," he says. His program collides sharply with the premise outlined in former Vice President Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," which presents a bleak picture of how a buildup in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide affects the global climate, with potentially disastrous consequences. "Al Gore might have won an Oscar," says Mr. Durkin, in a preview of the documentary, "but the film is very misleading, and he has got the relationship between [carbon dioxide] and climate change the wrong way around." One of the filmmaker's experts, paleontologist professor Ian Clark of the University of Ottawa, says that global warming could be caused by increased activity on the sun, such as massive eruptions, and that ice-core samples from Antarctica show that, in fact, warmer periods in Earth's history have come about 800 years before rises in carbon dioxide levels. Mr. Clark's findings appear to contradict the work of other scientists, who have used similar ice-core samples to illustrate that raised levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have accompanied the various global warming periods.
"The fact is that [carbon dioxide] has no proven link to global temperatures," says Mr. Durkin. "Solar activity is far more likely to be the culprit." Scientists in the Channel 4 documentary cite what they claim is another discrepancy involving conventional research, saying that most of the recent global warming occurred before 1940, after which temperatures around the world fell for four decades. Mr. Durkin's skeptical specialists view this as a flaw in the official view, because the worldwide economic boom that followed the end of World War II produced more carbon dioxide, and therefore should have meant a rise in global temperatures -- something he says did not happen. "The Great Global Warming Swindle" also questions an assertion by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report, published last month, that it was backed by some 2,500 of the world's leading scientists. Another of Mr. Durkin's professors, Paul Reiter of Paris' Pasteur Institute, an expert in malaria, calls the U.N. report a "sham" because, he says, it included the names of scientists -- including his own -- who disagreed with the report and who resigned from the panel. "That is how they make it seem that all the top scientists are agreed," he says. "It's not true." Mr. Reiter says his name was removed only after he threatened legal action against the panel. The report itself, he adds, was finalized by government appointees. Yet another expert in the Durkin documentary, Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, is more circumspect. "The [climate] system is too complex to say exactly what the effect of cutting back on [carbon dioxide] production would be or, indeed, of continuing to produce [carbon dioxide]." "The greenhouse effect theory worried me from the start," Mr. Stott says, "because you can't say that just one factor can have this effect." "At the moment, there is almost a McCarthyism movement in science where the greenhouse effect is like a puritanical religion, and this is dangerous," he says.
(Note by Jeffrey Robbins: The irony of the last line is amusing too...)
LONDON -- With a packet of claims that are almost certain to defy conventional wisdom, a television documentary to be aired in Britain this week condemns man-made global warming as a myth that has become "the biggest scam of modern times." The program titled "The Great Global Warming Scandal" and set for screening by TV Channel 4 on Thursday dismisses claims that high levels of greenhouse gases generated by human activity causes climate change. Instead, the program suggests that the sun itself is the real culprit. The documentary, directed by filmmaker Martin Durkin, is at odds with scientific opinion as outlined in a United Nations report in February, which blames mankind for global warming. In his program, Mr. Durkin rejects the concept of man-made climate change, calling it "a lie ... the biggest scam of modern times." The truth, he says, is that global warming "is a multibillion-dollar worldwide industry, created by fanatically anti-industrial environmentalists, supported by scientists peddling scare stories to chase funding, and propped up by compliant politicians and the media." Channel 4 says that the program features "an impressive roll-call of experts," including nine professors, who are experts in climatology, oceanography, meteorology, biogeography and paleoclimatology. It also says the experts come from prestigious institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the Danish National Space Center and universities and other schools in London, Ottawa, Jerusalem, Alabama, Virginia and Winnipeg, Canada. "It's very rare that a film changes history," says Martin Durkin, "but I think this is a turning point, and in five years the idea that the greenhouse effect is the main reason behind global warming will be seen as total bunk," he says. His program collides sharply with the premise outlined in former Vice President Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," which presents a bleak picture of how a buildup in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide affects the global climate, with potentially disastrous consequences. "Al Gore might have won an Oscar," says Mr. Durkin, in a preview of the documentary, "but the film is very misleading, and he has got the relationship between [carbon dioxide] and climate change the wrong way around." One of the filmmaker's experts, paleontologist professor Ian Clark of the University of Ottawa, says that global warming could be caused by increased activity on the sun, such as massive eruptions, and that ice-core samples from Antarctica show that, in fact, warmer periods in Earth's history have come about 800 years before rises in carbon dioxide levels. Mr. Clark's findings appear to contradict the work of other scientists, who have used similar ice-core samples to illustrate that raised levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have accompanied the various global warming periods.
"The fact is that [carbon dioxide] has no proven link to global temperatures," says Mr. Durkin. "Solar activity is far more likely to be the culprit." Scientists in the Channel 4 documentary cite what they claim is another discrepancy involving conventional research, saying that most of the recent global warming occurred before 1940, after which temperatures around the world fell for four decades. Mr. Durkin's skeptical specialists view this as a flaw in the official view, because the worldwide economic boom that followed the end of World War II produced more carbon dioxide, and therefore should have meant a rise in global temperatures -- something he says did not happen. "The Great Global Warming Swindle" also questions an assertion by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report, published last month, that it was backed by some 2,500 of the world's leading scientists. Another of Mr. Durkin's professors, Paul Reiter of Paris' Pasteur Institute, an expert in malaria, calls the U.N. report a "sham" because, he says, it included the names of scientists -- including his own -- who disagreed with the report and who resigned from the panel. "That is how they make it seem that all the top scientists are agreed," he says. "It's not true." Mr. Reiter says his name was removed only after he threatened legal action against the panel. The report itself, he adds, was finalized by government appointees. Yet another expert in the Durkin documentary, Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, is more circumspect. "The [climate] system is too complex to say exactly what the effect of cutting back on [carbon dioxide] production would be or, indeed, of continuing to produce [carbon dioxide]." "The greenhouse effect theory worried me from the start," Mr. Stott says, "because you can't say that just one factor can have this effect." "At the moment, there is almost a McCarthyism movement in science where the greenhouse effect is like a puritanical religion, and this is dangerous," he says.
Monday, March 05, 2007
THE NORTH AMERICAN 'SOVIET' UNION
by Charlotte Iserbyt
There is one common thread running through all articles and speeches by elected officials, well-known writers, and commentators in opposition to the merging of the United States into a political and economic regional arrangement known as the North American Union. To my knowledge, not one of them has chosen to use the “C” word (communism) when warning Americans of the dangers of this unconstitutional merger about to be foisted upon us without proper hearings in Congress. Excellent speeches and articles are being given and written warning us of all sorts of bad things related to this merger, including the fact that we will lose our sovereignty, but we are not being told that all these bad things are necessary for the full implementation of The North American Soviet Union (communistic/regional system). Isn’t the “C” word the one and only word which might shock Americans out of their state of conditioned apathy, thereby bringing about citizen activism which might result in killing this “regional” monster?
Morris Zeitlin, a communist writer for the Communist Party’s Daily World said in an article entitled “Planning is Socialism’s Trademark,” November 8, 1975: “We (USA) have no regional government and no comprehensive regional planning to speak of. Regional government and planning remain concepts our urban scholars and planners have long advocated in vain…In socialist countries, metropolitan regions enjoy metropolitan regional government and comprehensive planning. The economic and functional efficiencies and the social benefits that comprehensive national, regional and city planning make possible in socialist society explain the Soviet Union’s enormous and rapid economic social progress…”
Of interest regarding Zeitlin’s comment about “the Soviet Union’s enormous and rapid economic social progress…” is the following admission made by former President Gorbachev at the 2005 National School Board Association conference that “half the world’s population and two-thirds of Russia’s lives in poverty.”
The United States Government, at all levels, has since 1975 accepted wholeheartedly Zeitlin’s advice, to the extent that our country is, believe it or not, almost 100 percent socialist in its political, economic, social and environmental (sustainable development) policies. For documentation please read “Walks Like a Duck, Talks Like a Duck.”
The regionalization (consolidation) of the world is quite similar to the three-stage plan outlined by Stalin at the 1936 Communist International. At that meeting, the official program proclaimed:
“Dictatorship can be established only by a victory of socialism in different countries or groups of countries, after which there would be federal unions of the various groupings of these socialist countries, and the third stage would be an amalgamation of these regional federal unions into a world union of socialist nations.” (Ed note: The third stage is taking place right now as we in the United States of America become part of a federal union, the North American Union, which will in the near future become part of a world union of socialist nations.)
Former President of the Soviet Union Gorbachev on March 23, 2000, in London, referred to the European Union (EU) as "the New European Soviet.” If he refers to the EU in that way, it only stands to reason that he would refer to the North American Union (NAU) as the “New American Soviet,” since the NAU is modeled on the EU. Gorbachev also said in his speech to the Soviet Central Committee on November 2, 1987, published by Novosti Press Agency Publishing House:
“We are moving toward a new world, the world of communism. We shall never turn off that road.”
How is it possible that if American citizens or United States officials involved in putting us under the North American Union were aware of Gorbachev’s statements, they would not be very concerned regarding our nation becoming part of a communist world? Have we forgotten the many hundreds of millions of innocent people tortured, starved, murdered and incarcerated by communist regimes around the world? Authorities say “over 20 million people suffered in purges under Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin -- and that more than 10 million died before Stalin's death in 1953. Some put the number even higher.” [Read]
Do we really believe the communists have changed or gone away?
United States government officials, elected and unelected, with enormous financial assistance from the tax-exempt foundations, have for many years been working to implement unconstitutional regional planning at the local, state, national and international level, all of this required for full implementation of a One World Socialist Government. For the 3000-page transcript of 1953 Congressional (Reece and Cox Committee) Hearings to Investigate the Tax-Exempt Foundations and for superb research on the history of regional government, go to americandeception.com and type the following into its search engine: Reece Committee, Don Bell Reports, Maureen Heaton, the Mantooth Report, and The Emerging North American Union.
One very important government official in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, Under Secretary of State George W. Ball, spelled out very clearly what the Insiders were planning for our nation in The New York Times, 1/24/88: “…If we could internationalize by using the United Nations in conjunction with the Soviet Union, because we now no longer have to fear in most cases a Soviet veto, then we could begin to transform the shape of the world and might get the UN back doing something useful. …Sooner or later we’re going to have to face restructuring our institutions so that they’re not confined merely to the nation states. Start first on a regional, and ultimately you can move to a world, basis.” (emphasis added).
Has our education system so successfully conditioned and dumbed down Americans that they no longer are able to apply logic to the above quotes? Are they no longer capable of transferring that knowledge, processing it into new knowledge and conclusions which might help them understand and oppose the present destruction of our Constitutional Republic?
Since all regional groupings being set up around the world are based on the communistic Free Trade “redistribute the wealth” philosophy, why is it that the adjective “Communist” is never used when discussing GATT, NAFTA, CAFTA and the NAU? Those patriotic writers could at least describe those agreements as “Communism LITE,” couldn’t they?
For those Americans who recall the days of elected officials, not unelected, appointed task forces and “councils” (soviets, according to most dictionaries), running our towns, schools, counties, states, nation and world, recognizing this change in our form of government should not be too difficult.
However, for those younger Americans denied an education in American history and government due to the activities of the tax-exempt foundations, especially the Rockefeller, Ford, and Carnegie Foundations, the loss of elected officials through regionalism does not seem to bother them. Go to americandeception.com and type into search engine “Kenny Hignite” and you will see a most astonishing six-page 1954 “Test on the United States Constitution” on which Hignite received a grade of 99 – “Excellent!” There is absolutely no way that Kenny Hignite, now 66 years old, having received such an excellent education on the U.S. Constitution in a public school in Central California in 1954, would not be questioning the present deliberate destruction of our representative form of government through the implementation of communistic regional government!
Those Americans under fifty years old, and too often those over 50 years old (!), will ask you “What’s wrong with members of the community or faceless state bureaucrats being appointed to assist our elected officials in their work which has become increasingly complicated?” The simple answer is “If you don’t approve of what those unelected officials are doing, you can’t get rid of them at the polls.”
Uneducated Americans will also ask you:
“What’s wrong with consolidation of school districts, services, the merging of individual school and town budgets to “save taxpayers money?” (Ed note: In Maine our Senate Education Committee is about to approve Governor Baldacci’s proposal to slash school districts by proposing 26 regional school units statewide with 26 superintendents, compared to the existing 152 superintendents and 290 school units!);
“What’s wrong with merging 16 towns under one county council as was recently proposed in Cumberland County, Maine, thereby eliminating representative government?”;
“What’s wrong with getting rid of local school boards and having our schools run by city Mayors, or contracting education out to private organizations connected with the corporations?”;
“What possible objection could you have to public school morals and values education even if those programs are forbidden to teach ‘absolute’ morals and values based on the Ten Commandments?”;
“What’s wrong with publicly-funded charter schools which have no elected school boards?”;
“What’s wrong with Cuban-style school-to-work job training replacing a K-12 liberal arts curriculum? Even if my child can’t read, I sure want him/her to be able to get a job.”;
“What’s wrong with public/private partnerships?”
“What’s wrong with the federal government mandating mental health screening for my child?”;
“What’s wrong with members of the community assisting the local police in monitoring citizen activities and/or the police handing out awards to citizens who do good deeds, as is the case with the Community-Oriented Policing System (COPS) in Maine?”;
“What’s wrong with putting the UN’s lifelong learning agenda, all community services (birth through death), under the umbrella of the school district? (Go to americandeception.com and type “Feld” into search engine for a remarkable research paper on the history of Community Education)
“What’s wrong with a National I.D. card reportedly designed by two Russian ex-KGB Chiefs?”;
“What’s wrong with students being required to perform community service in order to graduate?”;
“What’s wrong with federal funding of religious organizations (faith-based initiative)?”;
“What’s wrong with federally-funded school choice proposals?”;
“What’s wrong with dropping borders between states?” as is in the offing.
And, the subject of this article: “What’s wrong with regional government?” And many more “What’s Wrong With?” questions from good Americans who have, over many years, through no fault of their own, been deliberately dumbed down and didn’t receive the public education which required the likes of Kenny Hignite to know their Constitution and form of government.
How many Americans realize that almost all the programs mentioned in the above “What’s Wrong With” section have already been implemented in our schools, communities, and states and that they are based on communist/socialist collectivist philosophy? The planners are waiting only for the full implementation of the North American Union (final nail in coffin) which will allow them to write and approve, as was done in Europe, the North American Union’s Constitution (Communist Manifesto) which will include all the above “What’s Wrong With?” programs. That will be the infamous day when the U.S. Constitution is formally relegated to history’s trash bin. And, as with the EU Constitution, or the Communist Manifesto, the practice of Christianity will be outlawed… a thing of the past. All religions will be considered equal and inevitably superior to Christianity. Go to americandeception.com and type into search engine “Religion and Governance” an important position paper by Harlan Cleveland, notorious supporter of global government, long-time member of the internationalist Aspen Institute, and first U.S. Ambassador to the Common Market (1960), and Marc Luycx, a Belgian change agent bureaucrat. This paper was prepared by the Foreward Study Group of the European Commission and was undoubtedly used by those drafting the EU Constitution. It will give you a picture of the non-role of Christianity in world region constitutions.
Our elected officials in Congress, who have sworn to uphold the Constitution, should not be immune to multi-million dollar lawsuits for injuries sustained by the citizens of this country. Is not the loss of our freedoms due to elected officials’ malpractice (lying to us in regard to putting us under the communistic regional North American Union and not holding hearings on the subject) even more important than the death of one patient due to a doctor’s malpractice, the scalding of a woman who spilled her “too-hot” coffee at a McDonald’s takeout, or the death from cancer of a woman who smoked too many cigarettes? How can we ignore the fact that 651,008 Americans have died in battle to protect and defend the constitutional freedoms which will vanish under this new international regional arrangement? Is there really no penalty to be exacted of these highly-paid Congressional traitors other than voting them out of office, which it seems is impossible to do due to both political parties having the same agenda, controlled media, manipulated political conventions, and election fraud?
Americans have been conditioned to NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, since the days of McCarthyism and the phony fall of communism, mention the “C” word. The word must, as George Orwell might have said, be removed from the dictionaries of all languages, especially English. Otherwise, we might wise up and tackle this treason with all our might and brains since we surely don't want our children and grandchildren living under any “ism” form of government, much less “communism.” The Insiders know that “communism” is the one and only word that must be banished from use. They are not concerned over excellent anti-North American Union rantings and ravings as long as the “C” word is NOT used.
The Insiders, most if not all of whom are corporate communists, have no fear of the coming totalitarian system since they have been assured they will be sitting in the catbird seat, having eliminated all economic competition and self-government (elected officials), and will have the world as their playground. The majority of the world’s population, the Insiders’ “human resources”, will be their highly trained and conditioned serfs, lifelong.
One might ask, how can this be? It is a well-known and documented fact that Wall Street funded the Bolshevik Revolution and the corporate communists and our government have been supporting the communist regime in Russia since 1917. Extensive exchange agreements covering political, municipal, cultural, economic, legal, law enforcement, education, science, sports, medicine, etc. have been signed since 1958 between the USSR and the USA, including of special importance the 1985 education agreements signed by Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev which merged our two education systems and caused to be implemented the Soviet polytechnical work force/job quota system and the Pavlovian outcomes-based method of conditioning/training. Go to americandeception.com for full text of “Agreement between U.S.A. and USSR.”
Regionalism is communism no matter how you slice it. The sooner Americans get that unpleasant fact permanently entered into their brains, and process that information into appropriate action, the sooner we will be able to escape what Orwell described so well in his novel 1984:
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on the human face--forever...and remember, that is forever."
Forward this article to your friends and to your elected officials at the local, state, and national level. Of equal importance restore the "C" word to your vocabulary and use it often.
© 2007 Charlotte T. Iserbyt - All Rights Reserved
Sign Up For Free E-Mail Alerts
Charlotte Iserbyt is the consummate whistleblower! Iserbyt served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the first Reagan Administration, where she first blew the whistle on a major technology initiative which would control curriculum in America's classrooms. Iserbyt is a former school board director in Camden, Maine and was co-founder and research analyst of Guardians of Education for Maine (GEM) from 1978 to 2000. She has also served in the American Red Cross on Guam and Japan during the Korean War, and in the United States Foreign Service in Belgium and in the Republic of South Africa.
Iserbyt is a speaker and writer, best known for her 1985 booklet Back to Basics Reform or OBE: Skinnerian International Curriculum and her 1989 pamphlet Soviets in the Classroom: America's Latest Education Fad which covered the details of the U.S.-Soviet and Carnegie-Soviet Education Agreements which remain in effect to this day. She is a freelance writer and has had articles published in Human Events, The Washington Times, The Bangor Daily News, and included in the record of Congressional hearings.
There is one common thread running through all articles and speeches by elected officials, well-known writers, and commentators in opposition to the merging of the United States into a political and economic regional arrangement known as the North American Union. To my knowledge, not one of them has chosen to use the “C” word (communism) when warning Americans of the dangers of this unconstitutional merger about to be foisted upon us without proper hearings in Congress. Excellent speeches and articles are being given and written warning us of all sorts of bad things related to this merger, including the fact that we will lose our sovereignty, but we are not being told that all these bad things are necessary for the full implementation of The North American Soviet Union (communistic/regional system). Isn’t the “C” word the one and only word which might shock Americans out of their state of conditioned apathy, thereby bringing about citizen activism which might result in killing this “regional” monster?
Morris Zeitlin, a communist writer for the Communist Party’s Daily World said in an article entitled “Planning is Socialism’s Trademark,” November 8, 1975: “We (USA) have no regional government and no comprehensive regional planning to speak of. Regional government and planning remain concepts our urban scholars and planners have long advocated in vain…In socialist countries, metropolitan regions enjoy metropolitan regional government and comprehensive planning. The economic and functional efficiencies and the social benefits that comprehensive national, regional and city planning make possible in socialist society explain the Soviet Union’s enormous and rapid economic social progress…”
Of interest regarding Zeitlin’s comment about “the Soviet Union’s enormous and rapid economic social progress…” is the following admission made by former President Gorbachev at the 2005 National School Board Association conference that “half the world’s population and two-thirds of Russia’s lives in poverty.”
The United States Government, at all levels, has since 1975 accepted wholeheartedly Zeitlin’s advice, to the extent that our country is, believe it or not, almost 100 percent socialist in its political, economic, social and environmental (sustainable development) policies. For documentation please read “Walks Like a Duck, Talks Like a Duck.”
The regionalization (consolidation) of the world is quite similar to the three-stage plan outlined by Stalin at the 1936 Communist International. At that meeting, the official program proclaimed:
“Dictatorship can be established only by a victory of socialism in different countries or groups of countries, after which there would be federal unions of the various groupings of these socialist countries, and the third stage would be an amalgamation of these regional federal unions into a world union of socialist nations.” (Ed note: The third stage is taking place right now as we in the United States of America become part of a federal union, the North American Union, which will in the near future become part of a world union of socialist nations.)
Former President of the Soviet Union Gorbachev on March 23, 2000, in London, referred to the European Union (EU) as "the New European Soviet.” If he refers to the EU in that way, it only stands to reason that he would refer to the North American Union (NAU) as the “New American Soviet,” since the NAU is modeled on the EU. Gorbachev also said in his speech to the Soviet Central Committee on November 2, 1987, published by Novosti Press Agency Publishing House:
“We are moving toward a new world, the world of communism. We shall never turn off that road.”
How is it possible that if American citizens or United States officials involved in putting us under the North American Union were aware of Gorbachev’s statements, they would not be very concerned regarding our nation becoming part of a communist world? Have we forgotten the many hundreds of millions of innocent people tortured, starved, murdered and incarcerated by communist regimes around the world? Authorities say “over 20 million people suffered in purges under Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin -- and that more than 10 million died before Stalin's death in 1953. Some put the number even higher.” [Read]
Do we really believe the communists have changed or gone away?
United States government officials, elected and unelected, with enormous financial assistance from the tax-exempt foundations, have for many years been working to implement unconstitutional regional planning at the local, state, national and international level, all of this required for full implementation of a One World Socialist Government. For the 3000-page transcript of 1953 Congressional (Reece and Cox Committee) Hearings to Investigate the Tax-Exempt Foundations and for superb research on the history of regional government, go to americandeception.com and type the following into its search engine: Reece Committee, Don Bell Reports, Maureen Heaton, the Mantooth Report, and The Emerging North American Union.
One very important government official in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, Under Secretary of State George W. Ball, spelled out very clearly what the Insiders were planning for our nation in The New York Times, 1/24/88: “…If we could internationalize by using the United Nations in conjunction with the Soviet Union, because we now no longer have to fear in most cases a Soviet veto, then we could begin to transform the shape of the world and might get the UN back doing something useful. …Sooner or later we’re going to have to face restructuring our institutions so that they’re not confined merely to the nation states. Start first on a regional, and ultimately you can move to a world, basis.” (emphasis added).
Has our education system so successfully conditioned and dumbed down Americans that they no longer are able to apply logic to the above quotes? Are they no longer capable of transferring that knowledge, processing it into new knowledge and conclusions which might help them understand and oppose the present destruction of our Constitutional Republic?
Since all regional groupings being set up around the world are based on the communistic Free Trade “redistribute the wealth” philosophy, why is it that the adjective “Communist” is never used when discussing GATT, NAFTA, CAFTA and the NAU? Those patriotic writers could at least describe those agreements as “Communism LITE,” couldn’t they?
For those Americans who recall the days of elected officials, not unelected, appointed task forces and “councils” (soviets, according to most dictionaries), running our towns, schools, counties, states, nation and world, recognizing this change in our form of government should not be too difficult.
However, for those younger Americans denied an education in American history and government due to the activities of the tax-exempt foundations, especially the Rockefeller, Ford, and Carnegie Foundations, the loss of elected officials through regionalism does not seem to bother them. Go to americandeception.com and type into search engine “Kenny Hignite” and you will see a most astonishing six-page 1954 “Test on the United States Constitution” on which Hignite received a grade of 99 – “Excellent!” There is absolutely no way that Kenny Hignite, now 66 years old, having received such an excellent education on the U.S. Constitution in a public school in Central California in 1954, would not be questioning the present deliberate destruction of our representative form of government through the implementation of communistic regional government!
Those Americans under fifty years old, and too often those over 50 years old (!), will ask you “What’s wrong with members of the community or faceless state bureaucrats being appointed to assist our elected officials in their work which has become increasingly complicated?” The simple answer is “If you don’t approve of what those unelected officials are doing, you can’t get rid of them at the polls.”
Uneducated Americans will also ask you:
“What’s wrong with consolidation of school districts, services, the merging of individual school and town budgets to “save taxpayers money?” (Ed note: In Maine our Senate Education Committee is about to approve Governor Baldacci’s proposal to slash school districts by proposing 26 regional school units statewide with 26 superintendents, compared to the existing 152 superintendents and 290 school units!);
“What’s wrong with merging 16 towns under one county council as was recently proposed in Cumberland County, Maine, thereby eliminating representative government?”;
“What’s wrong with getting rid of local school boards and having our schools run by city Mayors, or contracting education out to private organizations connected with the corporations?”;
“What possible objection could you have to public school morals and values education even if those programs are forbidden to teach ‘absolute’ morals and values based on the Ten Commandments?”;
“What’s wrong with publicly-funded charter schools which have no elected school boards?”;
“What’s wrong with Cuban-style school-to-work job training replacing a K-12 liberal arts curriculum? Even if my child can’t read, I sure want him/her to be able to get a job.”;
“What’s wrong with public/private partnerships?”
“What’s wrong with the federal government mandating mental health screening for my child?”;
“What’s wrong with members of the community assisting the local police in monitoring citizen activities and/or the police handing out awards to citizens who do good deeds, as is the case with the Community-Oriented Policing System (COPS) in Maine?”;
“What’s wrong with putting the UN’s lifelong learning agenda, all community services (birth through death), under the umbrella of the school district? (Go to americandeception.com and type “Feld” into search engine for a remarkable research paper on the history of Community Education)
“What’s wrong with a National I.D. card reportedly designed by two Russian ex-KGB Chiefs?”;
“What’s wrong with students being required to perform community service in order to graduate?”;
“What’s wrong with federal funding of religious organizations (faith-based initiative)?”;
“What’s wrong with federally-funded school choice proposals?”;
“What’s wrong with dropping borders between states?” as is in the offing.
And, the subject of this article: “What’s wrong with regional government?” And many more “What’s Wrong With?” questions from good Americans who have, over many years, through no fault of their own, been deliberately dumbed down and didn’t receive the public education which required the likes of Kenny Hignite to know their Constitution and form of government.
How many Americans realize that almost all the programs mentioned in the above “What’s Wrong With” section have already been implemented in our schools, communities, and states and that they are based on communist/socialist collectivist philosophy? The planners are waiting only for the full implementation of the North American Union (final nail in coffin) which will allow them to write and approve, as was done in Europe, the North American Union’s Constitution (Communist Manifesto) which will include all the above “What’s Wrong With?” programs. That will be the infamous day when the U.S. Constitution is formally relegated to history’s trash bin. And, as with the EU Constitution, or the Communist Manifesto, the practice of Christianity will be outlawed… a thing of the past. All religions will be considered equal and inevitably superior to Christianity. Go to americandeception.com and type into search engine “Religion and Governance” an important position paper by Harlan Cleveland, notorious supporter of global government, long-time member of the internationalist Aspen Institute, and first U.S. Ambassador to the Common Market (1960), and Marc Luycx, a Belgian change agent bureaucrat. This paper was prepared by the Foreward Study Group of the European Commission and was undoubtedly used by those drafting the EU Constitution. It will give you a picture of the non-role of Christianity in world region constitutions.
Our elected officials in Congress, who have sworn to uphold the Constitution, should not be immune to multi-million dollar lawsuits for injuries sustained by the citizens of this country. Is not the loss of our freedoms due to elected officials’ malpractice (lying to us in regard to putting us under the communistic regional North American Union and not holding hearings on the subject) even more important than the death of one patient due to a doctor’s malpractice, the scalding of a woman who spilled her “too-hot” coffee at a McDonald’s takeout, or the death from cancer of a woman who smoked too many cigarettes? How can we ignore the fact that 651,008 Americans have died in battle to protect and defend the constitutional freedoms which will vanish under this new international regional arrangement? Is there really no penalty to be exacted of these highly-paid Congressional traitors other than voting them out of office, which it seems is impossible to do due to both political parties having the same agenda, controlled media, manipulated political conventions, and election fraud?
Americans have been conditioned to NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, since the days of McCarthyism and the phony fall of communism, mention the “C” word. The word must, as George Orwell might have said, be removed from the dictionaries of all languages, especially English. Otherwise, we might wise up and tackle this treason with all our might and brains since we surely don't want our children and grandchildren living under any “ism” form of government, much less “communism.” The Insiders know that “communism” is the one and only word that must be banished from use. They are not concerned over excellent anti-North American Union rantings and ravings as long as the “C” word is NOT used.
The Insiders, most if not all of whom are corporate communists, have no fear of the coming totalitarian system since they have been assured they will be sitting in the catbird seat, having eliminated all economic competition and self-government (elected officials), and will have the world as their playground. The majority of the world’s population, the Insiders’ “human resources”, will be their highly trained and conditioned serfs, lifelong.
One might ask, how can this be? It is a well-known and documented fact that Wall Street funded the Bolshevik Revolution and the corporate communists and our government have been supporting the communist regime in Russia since 1917. Extensive exchange agreements covering political, municipal, cultural, economic, legal, law enforcement, education, science, sports, medicine, etc. have been signed since 1958 between the USSR and the USA, including of special importance the 1985 education agreements signed by Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev which merged our two education systems and caused to be implemented the Soviet polytechnical work force/job quota system and the Pavlovian outcomes-based method of conditioning/training. Go to americandeception.com for full text of “Agreement between U.S.A. and USSR.”
Regionalism is communism no matter how you slice it. The sooner Americans get that unpleasant fact permanently entered into their brains, and process that information into appropriate action, the sooner we will be able to escape what Orwell described so well in his novel 1984:
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on the human face--forever...and remember, that is forever."
Forward this article to your friends and to your elected officials at the local, state, and national level. Of equal importance restore the "C" word to your vocabulary and use it often.
© 2007 Charlotte T. Iserbyt - All Rights Reserved
Sign Up For Free E-Mail Alerts
Charlotte Iserbyt is the consummate whistleblower! Iserbyt served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the first Reagan Administration, where she first blew the whistle on a major technology initiative which would control curriculum in America's classrooms. Iserbyt is a former school board director in Camden, Maine and was co-founder and research analyst of Guardians of Education for Maine (GEM) from 1978 to 2000. She has also served in the American Red Cross on Guam and Japan during the Korean War, and in the United States Foreign Service in Belgium and in the Republic of South Africa.
Iserbyt is a speaker and writer, best known for her 1985 booklet Back to Basics Reform or OBE: Skinnerian International Curriculum and her 1989 pamphlet Soviets in the Classroom: America's Latest Education Fad which covered the details of the U.S.-Soviet and Carnegie-Soviet Education Agreements which remain in effect to this day. She is a freelance writer and has had articles published in Human Events, The Washington Times, The Bangor Daily News, and included in the record of Congressional hearings.
Global tax scheme pushed to battle 'climate change'
U.N.-backed scientists warn of doomsday unless greenhouse gas emissions are cut
Posted: February 28, 200710:38 a.m. Eastern
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
Harvard Professor John HoldrenWASHINGTON – A panel of 18 scientists from 11 countries reported to the United Nations today that catastrophic climate change is inevitable without a global tax on greenhouse gas emissions – a plan that would impact the U.S. disproportionately to the rest of the world.
John Holdren, the Teresa and John Heinz professor of environmental policy at Harvard University, speaking for the panel said the world must establish a consensus on an acceptable ceiling for temperature rise and find ways to cope with the damage already wrought by climate change. However, these measures will be ineffective in themselves if they are not accompanied by a global tax on greenhouse gas emissions, he added.
"We don't think ultimately society will get it right in terms of the full range and scope of activities needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions until there is an additional incentive in the form of a price on greenhouse gas emissions, either through a carbon tax or a cap and trade approach," he said.
(Story continues below)
The report was requested by the United Nations and partially funded by the U.N. Foundation. It predicts global warming trends leading to dangerous rising sea levels, increasingly turbulent weather, droughts and weather-related pestilences.
It is the latest of a stream of dire forecasts about climate change. Three weeks ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded global warming was real and caused by human activity. Two weeks ago, the board of directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science issued a statement claiming atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is higher than it has been for at least 650,000 years.
"Climate change is real," said Holdren today. "It's already happening. It's already causing harm. It's accelerating and we need to do something about it, and we need to do something about it seriously, starting now. Our specific conclusions are that if the world were to go past the point of an increase above pre-industrial temperatures greater than 2 to 2.5 degrees Celsius, we would be in a regime where the danger of intolerable and unmanageable impacts on well-being would rise very rapidly."
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is considering calling a summit on climate change later this year.
Posted: February 28, 200710:38 a.m. Eastern
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
Harvard Professor John HoldrenWASHINGTON – A panel of 18 scientists from 11 countries reported to the United Nations today that catastrophic climate change is inevitable without a global tax on greenhouse gas emissions – a plan that would impact the U.S. disproportionately to the rest of the world.
John Holdren, the Teresa and John Heinz professor of environmental policy at Harvard University, speaking for the panel said the world must establish a consensus on an acceptable ceiling for temperature rise and find ways to cope with the damage already wrought by climate change. However, these measures will be ineffective in themselves if they are not accompanied by a global tax on greenhouse gas emissions, he added.
"We don't think ultimately society will get it right in terms of the full range and scope of activities needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions until there is an additional incentive in the form of a price on greenhouse gas emissions, either through a carbon tax or a cap and trade approach," he said.
(Story continues below)
The report was requested by the United Nations and partially funded by the U.N. Foundation. It predicts global warming trends leading to dangerous rising sea levels, increasingly turbulent weather, droughts and weather-related pestilences.
It is the latest of a stream of dire forecasts about climate change. Three weeks ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded global warming was real and caused by human activity. Two weeks ago, the board of directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science issued a statement claiming atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is higher than it has been for at least 650,000 years.
"Climate change is real," said Holdren today. "It's already happening. It's already causing harm. It's accelerating and we need to do something about it, and we need to do something about it seriously, starting now. Our specific conclusions are that if the world were to go past the point of an increase above pre-industrial temperatures greater than 2 to 2.5 degrees Celsius, we would be in a regime where the danger of intolerable and unmanageable impacts on well-being would rise very rapidly."
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is considering calling a summit on climate change later this year.
Hypocrisy in the Middle East
By Hon. Dr. Ron PaulFebruary 26, 2007
Hundreds of thousands of American troops already occupy Afghanistan and Iraq, a number that is rising as the military surge moves forward. The justification, given endlessly since September 11th, is that both support terrorism and thus pose a risk to the United States. Yet when we step back and examine the region as a whole, it’s obvious that these two impoverished countries, neither of which has any real military, pose very little threat to American national security when compared to other Middle Eastern nations. The decision to attack them, while treating some of region’s worst regimes as allies, shows the deadly hypocrisy of our foreign policy in the Middle East. Consider Saudi Arabia, the native home of most of the September 11th hijackers. The Saudis, unlike the Iraqis, have proven connections to al Qaeda. Saudi charities have funneled money to Islamic terrorist groups. Yet the administration insists on calling Saudi Arabia a “good partner in the war on terror.” Why? Because the U.S. has a longstanding relationship with the Saudi royal family, and a long history of commercial interests relating to Saudi oil. So successive administrations continue to treat the Saudis as something they are not: a reliable and honest friend in the Middle East. The same is true of Pakistan, where General Musharaf seized power by force in a 1999 coup. The Clinton administration quickly accepted his new leadership as legitimate, to the dismay of India and many Muslim Pakistanis. Since 9/11, we have showered Pakistan with millions in foreign aid, ostensibly in exchange for Musharaf’s allegiance against al Qaeda. Yet has our new ally rewarded our support? Hardly. The Pakistanis almost certainly have harbored bin Laden in their remote mountains, and show little interest in pursuing him or allowing anyone else to pursue him. Pakistan has signed peace agreements with Taliban leaders, and by some accounts bin Laden is a folk hero to many Pakistanis. Furthermore, more members of al Qaeda probably live within Pakistan than any other country today. North Korea developed its nuclear capability with technology sold to them by the Pakistanis. Yet somehow we remain friends with Pakistan, while Saddam Hussein, who had no connection to bin Laden and no friends in the Islamic fundamentalist world, was made a scapegoat. The tired assertion that America "supports democracy" in the Middle East is increasingly transparent. It was false 50 years ago, when we supported and funded the hated Shah of Iran to prevent nationalization of Iranian oil, and it’s false today when we back an unelected military dictator in Pakistan- just to name two examples. If honest democratic elections were held throughout the Middle East tomorrow, many countries would elect religious fundamentalist leaders hostile to the United States. Cliché or not, the Arab Street really doesn’t like America, so we should stop the charade about democracy and start pursuing a coherent foreign policy that serves America’s long-term interests. A coherent foreign policy is based on the understanding that America is best served by not interfering in the deadly conflicts that define the Middle East. Yes, we need Middle Eastern oil, but we can reduce our need by exploring domestic sources. We should rid ourselves of the notion that we are at the mercy of the oil-producing countries- as the world’s largest oil consumer, their wealth depends on our business. We should stop the endless game of playing faction against faction, and recognize that buying allies doesn’t work. We should curtail the heavy militarization of the area by ending our disastrous foreign aid payments. We should stop propping up dictators and putting band-aids on festering problems. We should understand that our political and military involvement in the region creates far more problems that it solves. All Americans will benefit, both in terms of their safety and their pocketbooks, if we pursue a coherent, neutral foreign policy of non-interventionism, free trade, and self-determination in the Middle East.
Hundreds of thousands of American troops already occupy Afghanistan and Iraq, a number that is rising as the military surge moves forward. The justification, given endlessly since September 11th, is that both support terrorism and thus pose a risk to the United States. Yet when we step back and examine the region as a whole, it’s obvious that these two impoverished countries, neither of which has any real military, pose very little threat to American national security when compared to other Middle Eastern nations. The decision to attack them, while treating some of region’s worst regimes as allies, shows the deadly hypocrisy of our foreign policy in the Middle East. Consider Saudi Arabia, the native home of most of the September 11th hijackers. The Saudis, unlike the Iraqis, have proven connections to al Qaeda. Saudi charities have funneled money to Islamic terrorist groups. Yet the administration insists on calling Saudi Arabia a “good partner in the war on terror.” Why? Because the U.S. has a longstanding relationship with the Saudi royal family, and a long history of commercial interests relating to Saudi oil. So successive administrations continue to treat the Saudis as something they are not: a reliable and honest friend in the Middle East. The same is true of Pakistan, where General Musharaf seized power by force in a 1999 coup. The Clinton administration quickly accepted his new leadership as legitimate, to the dismay of India and many Muslim Pakistanis. Since 9/11, we have showered Pakistan with millions in foreign aid, ostensibly in exchange for Musharaf’s allegiance against al Qaeda. Yet has our new ally rewarded our support? Hardly. The Pakistanis almost certainly have harbored bin Laden in their remote mountains, and show little interest in pursuing him or allowing anyone else to pursue him. Pakistan has signed peace agreements with Taliban leaders, and by some accounts bin Laden is a folk hero to many Pakistanis. Furthermore, more members of al Qaeda probably live within Pakistan than any other country today. North Korea developed its nuclear capability with technology sold to them by the Pakistanis. Yet somehow we remain friends with Pakistan, while Saddam Hussein, who had no connection to bin Laden and no friends in the Islamic fundamentalist world, was made a scapegoat. The tired assertion that America "supports democracy" in the Middle East is increasingly transparent. It was false 50 years ago, when we supported and funded the hated Shah of Iran to prevent nationalization of Iranian oil, and it’s false today when we back an unelected military dictator in Pakistan- just to name two examples. If honest democratic elections were held throughout the Middle East tomorrow, many countries would elect religious fundamentalist leaders hostile to the United States. Cliché or not, the Arab Street really doesn’t like America, so we should stop the charade about democracy and start pursuing a coherent foreign policy that serves America’s long-term interests. A coherent foreign policy is based on the understanding that America is best served by not interfering in the deadly conflicts that define the Middle East. Yes, we need Middle Eastern oil, but we can reduce our need by exploring domestic sources. We should rid ourselves of the notion that we are at the mercy of the oil-producing countries- as the world’s largest oil consumer, their wealth depends on our business. We should stop the endless game of playing faction against faction, and recognize that buying allies doesn’t work. We should curtail the heavy militarization of the area by ending our disastrous foreign aid payments. We should stop propping up dictators and putting band-aids on festering problems. We should understand that our political and military involvement in the region creates far more problems that it solves. All Americans will benefit, both in terms of their safety and their pocketbooks, if we pursue a coherent, neutral foreign policy of non-interventionism, free trade, and self-determination in the Middle East.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Why America's government invites rampant illegal immigration
May 2006 – ALIEN NATION: Secrets of the Invasion – Why America's government invites rampant illegal immigration
It's widely regarded as America's biggest problem: Between 12 and 20 million aliens – including large numbers of criminals, gang members and even terrorists – have entered this nation illegally, with countless more streaming across our scandalously unguarded borders daily.
The issue polarizes the nation, robs citizens of jobs, bleeds taxpayers, threatens America's national security and dangerously balkanizes the country into unassimilated ethnic groups with little loyalty or love for America's founding values. Indeed, the de facto invasion is rapidly transforming America into a totally different country than the one past generations have known and loved.
And yet – most Americans have almost no idea what is really going on, or why it is happening.
While news reports depict demonstrations and debates, and while politicians promise "comprehensive border security programs," no real answers ever seem to emerge.
But there are answers. Truthful answers. Shocking answers.
In its groundbreaking May edition, WND's acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine reveals the astounding hidden agendas, plans and people behind America's immigration nightmare.
Titled "ALIEN NATION," the issue is subtitled "SECRETS OF THE INVASION: Why government invites rampant illegal immigration." Indeed, it reveals pivotal secrets very few Americans know. For example:
Did you know that the powerfully influential Council on Foreign Relations – often described as a “shadow government" – issued a comprehensive report last year laying out a five-year plan for the "establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community" with a common "outer security perimeter"?
Roughly translated: In the next few years, according to the 59-page report titled "Building a North American Community," the U.S. must be integrated with the socialism, corruption, poverty and population of Mexico and Canada. "Common perimeter" means wide-open U.S. borders between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. As Phyllis Schlafly reveals in this issue of Whistleblower: "This CFR document asserts that President Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin 'committed their governments' to this goal when they met at Bush's ranch and at Waco, Texas, on March 23, 2005. The three adopted the 'Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America' and assigned 'working groups' to fill in the details. It was at this same meeting, grandly called the North American Summit, that President Bush pinned the epithet 'vigilantes' on the volunteers guarding our border in Arizona."
The CFR report – important excerpts of which are published in Whistleblower – also suggests North American elitists begin getting together regularly, and presumably secretly, "to buttress North American relationships, along the lines of the Bilderberg or Wehrkunde conferences, organized to support transatlantic relations." The Bilderberg and Wehrkunde conferences are highly secret conclaves of the powerful. For decades, there have been suspicions that such meetings were used for plotting the course of world events and especially the centralization of global decision-making.
Did you know that radical immigrant groups – including the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) and the National Council of La Raza (La Raza) – not only share a revolutionary agenda of conquering America's southwest, but they also share common funding sources, notably the Ford and Rockefeller foundations?
''California is going to be a Hispanic state," said Mario Obeldo, former head of MALDEF. "Anyone who does not like it should leave." And MEChA's goal is even more radical: an independent ''Aztlan,'' the collective name this organization gives to the seven states of the U.S. Southwest – Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and Utah. So why would the Rockefeller and Ford foundations support such groups? Joseph Farah tells the story in this issue of Whistleblower.
Why have America's politicians – of both major parties – allowed the illegal alien invasion of this nation to continue for the last 30 years unabated? With al-Qaida and allied terrorists promising to annihilate major U.S. cities with nuclear weapons, with some big-city hospital emergency rooms near closure due to the crush of so many illegals, with the rapid spread throughout the U.S. of MS-13, the super-violent illegal alien gang – with all this and more, why do U.S. officials choose to ignore the laws of the land and the will of the people to pursue, instead, policies of open borders and lax immigration enforcement?
The answers to all this and much more are in Whistleblower's "ALIEN NATION" issue.
Is there hope? Or is America lost to a demographic invasion destined to annihilate its traditional Judeo-Christian culture, and to the ever-growing likelihood that nuclear-armed jihadists will cross our porous borders and wreak unthinkable destruction here?
There most definitely is hope, according to this issue of Whistleblower. Although most politicians of both major political parties have long since abdicated their responsibility for securing America's borders and dealing effectively with the millions already here illegally, there are a few exceptions – most notably Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo.
May's Whistleblower includes an exclusive sneak preview of Tancredo's forthcoming blockbuster book, "In Mortal Danger: The Battle for America’s Border and Security." In an extended excerpt, Whistleblower presents Tencredo's expert and inspired analysis of exactly how to solve the nation's most vexing problem.
It's widely regarded as America's biggest problem: Between 12 and 20 million aliens – including large numbers of criminals, gang members and even terrorists – have entered this nation illegally, with countless more streaming across our scandalously unguarded borders daily.
The issue polarizes the nation, robs citizens of jobs, bleeds taxpayers, threatens America's national security and dangerously balkanizes the country into unassimilated ethnic groups with little loyalty or love for America's founding values. Indeed, the de facto invasion is rapidly transforming America into a totally different country than the one past generations have known and loved.
And yet – most Americans have almost no idea what is really going on, or why it is happening.
While news reports depict demonstrations and debates, and while politicians promise "comprehensive border security programs," no real answers ever seem to emerge.
But there are answers. Truthful answers. Shocking answers.
In its groundbreaking May edition, WND's acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine reveals the astounding hidden agendas, plans and people behind America's immigration nightmare.
Titled "ALIEN NATION," the issue is subtitled "SECRETS OF THE INVASION: Why government invites rampant illegal immigration." Indeed, it reveals pivotal secrets very few Americans know. For example:
Did you know that the powerfully influential Council on Foreign Relations – often described as a “shadow government" – issued a comprehensive report last year laying out a five-year plan for the "establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community" with a common "outer security perimeter"?
Roughly translated: In the next few years, according to the 59-page report titled "Building a North American Community," the U.S. must be integrated with the socialism, corruption, poverty and population of Mexico and Canada. "Common perimeter" means wide-open U.S. borders between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. As Phyllis Schlafly reveals in this issue of Whistleblower: "This CFR document asserts that President Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin 'committed their governments' to this goal when they met at Bush's ranch and at Waco, Texas, on March 23, 2005. The three adopted the 'Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America' and assigned 'working groups' to fill in the details. It was at this same meeting, grandly called the North American Summit, that President Bush pinned the epithet 'vigilantes' on the volunteers guarding our border in Arizona."
The CFR report – important excerpts of which are published in Whistleblower – also suggests North American elitists begin getting together regularly, and presumably secretly, "to buttress North American relationships, along the lines of the Bilderberg or Wehrkunde conferences, organized to support transatlantic relations." The Bilderberg and Wehrkunde conferences are highly secret conclaves of the powerful. For decades, there have been suspicions that such meetings were used for plotting the course of world events and especially the centralization of global decision-making.
Did you know that radical immigrant groups – including the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) and the National Council of La Raza (La Raza) – not only share a revolutionary agenda of conquering America's southwest, but they also share common funding sources, notably the Ford and Rockefeller foundations?
''California is going to be a Hispanic state," said Mario Obeldo, former head of MALDEF. "Anyone who does not like it should leave." And MEChA's goal is even more radical: an independent ''Aztlan,'' the collective name this organization gives to the seven states of the U.S. Southwest – Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and Utah. So why would the Rockefeller and Ford foundations support such groups? Joseph Farah tells the story in this issue of Whistleblower.
Why have America's politicians – of both major parties – allowed the illegal alien invasion of this nation to continue for the last 30 years unabated? With al-Qaida and allied terrorists promising to annihilate major U.S. cities with nuclear weapons, with some big-city hospital emergency rooms near closure due to the crush of so many illegals, with the rapid spread throughout the U.S. of MS-13, the super-violent illegal alien gang – with all this and more, why do U.S. officials choose to ignore the laws of the land and the will of the people to pursue, instead, policies of open borders and lax immigration enforcement?
The answers to all this and much more are in Whistleblower's "ALIEN NATION" issue.
Is there hope? Or is America lost to a demographic invasion destined to annihilate its traditional Judeo-Christian culture, and to the ever-growing likelihood that nuclear-armed jihadists will cross our porous borders and wreak unthinkable destruction here?
There most definitely is hope, according to this issue of Whistleblower. Although most politicians of both major political parties have long since abdicated their responsibility for securing America's borders and dealing effectively with the millions already here illegally, there are a few exceptions – most notably Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo.
May's Whistleblower includes an exclusive sneak preview of Tancredo's forthcoming blockbuster book, "In Mortal Danger: The Battle for America’s Border and Security." In an extended excerpt, Whistleblower presents Tencredo's expert and inspired analysis of exactly how to solve the nation's most vexing problem.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Criticism of neoconservatism
Also good notes on libertarianism v. neoconservatism
original source unknown (probable Wikipedia.org)
Jacobinism, Bolshevism
The "traditional" conservative Claes G. Ryn has argued that neoconservatives are "a variety of neo-Jacobins." Ryn maintains that true conservatives deny the existence of a universal political and economic philosophy and model that is suitable for all societies and cultures, and believe that a society's institutions should be adjusted to suit its culture, while Neo-Jacobins
are attached in the end to ahistorical, supranational principles that they believe should supplant the traditions of particular societies. The new Jacobins see themselves as on the side of right and fighting evil and are not prone to respecting or looking for common ground with countries that do not share their democratic preferences. (Ryn 2003: 387)
Further examining the relationship between Neoconservatism and moral rhetoric, Ryn argues that
Neo-Jacobinism regards America as founded on universal principles and assigns to the United States the role of supervising the remaking of the world. Its adherents have the intense dogmatic commitment of true believers and are highly prone to moralistic rhetoric. They demand, among other things, "moral clarity" in dealing with regimes that stand in the way of America's universal purpose. They see themselves as champions of "virtue." (p. 384).
Thus, according to Ryn, neoconservatism is analogous to Bolshevism: in the same way that the Bolsheviks wanted to destroy established ways of life throughout the world to replace them with communism, the neoconservatives want to do the same, only imposing free-market capitalism and American-style liberal democracy instead of socialism.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, had the following to say in a December, 2005 interview with the German weekly Der Spiegel: "They are not new conservatives. They're Jacobins. Their predecessor is French Revolution leader Maximilien Robespierre." [19]
Conflict with Libertarian Conservatives
There is also conflict between neoconservatives and libertarian conservatives. Libertarian conservatives are ideologically opposed to government programs and regard neoconservative foreign policy ambitions with outspoken distrust. Rep Ron Paul, a Republican libertarian who holds a Texas district, has spoken out harshly against the Bush Administration's foreign wars on both a fiscal point and as a moral point on non-intervention.
Disagreement with Business Lobby, fiscal conservatives
There has been considerable conflict between neoconservatives and business conservatives in some areas. Neoconservatives tend to see China as a looming threat to the United States and argue for harsh policies to contain that threat. Business conservatives see China as a business opportunity and see a tough policy against China as opposed to their desires for trade. Business conservatives also appear much less distrustful of international institutions. In fact, where China is concerned neoconservatives tend to find themselves more often in agreement with liberal Democrats than with business conservatives. Indeed, Americans for Democratic Action - widely regarded as an "authority" of sorts on liberalism by both the American left and right alike - credit Senators and members of the House of Representatives with casting a "liberal" vote if they oppose legislation that would treat China favourably in the realm of foreign trade and many other matters.
Friction with paleoconservatism
Main article: Neoconservative - Paleoconservative Conflict
Disputes over Israel and public policy contributed to a sharp conflict with "paleoconservatives," starting in the 1980s. The movement's name ("old conservative") was taken as a rebuke to the "neo" side. The "paleocons" view the neoconservatives as "militarist social democrats" and interlopers who deviate from traditional conservatism agenda on issues as diverse as federalism, immigration, foreign policy, the welfare state, and in some cases abortion, feminism and homosexuality. All of this leads to a debate over what counts as conservatism.[citation needed]
The paleoconservatives argue that neoconservatives (and Straussians) are an illegitimate addition to the conservative movement. Pat Buchanan calls neoconservatism "a globalist, interventionist, open borders ideology."[20] The open rift is often traced back to a 1981 dispute over Ronald Reagan's nomination of Mel Bradford, a Southerner, to run the National Endowment for the Humanities. Bradford withdrew after neoconservatives complained that he had criticized Abraham Lincoln; the paleoconservatives supported Bradford.
Besides Buchanan and Bradford, the most prominent paleoconservatives include Paul Craig Roberts, Paul Gottfried, Thomas Fleming, Chilton Williamson, Joseph Sobran, and Clyde N. Wilson. The two leading paleoconservative publications are Chronicles and The American Conservative, which Buchanan helped create. In addition, paleolibertarianism is a parallel movement that stresses free market economics;
Neoconservatism, American Jews, and "Dual Loyalty"
Some opponents of neoconservatives have sought to emphasize their interest in Israel and the relatively large proportion of Jewish neoconservatives, and have raised the question of "dual loyalty". A number of critics, such as Pat Buchanan, Juan Cole, and Kathleen and Bill Christison have accused them of putting Israeli interests above those of America[21]. In turn these critics have been labeled as anti-Semites by prominent Jewish organizations.[22]
David Duke and some other white nationalists attack neoconservatism as advancing Jewish interests. They say a "Jewish supremacist" movement exists in the United States[23]. Similarly, during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the politically left-wing magazine AdBusters published a list of the "50 most influential neocons in the United States", noting that half of these were Jewish,[24] and insinuating that the preponderance of Jews in neoconservatism leads them to "not distinguish enough between American and Israeli interests". The article asks "For example, whose interests were they protecting in pushing for war in Iraq?", and ends with the statement "And half of the them are Jewish."
Political commentators like those in the AdBusters article state that their criticism is not aimed towards the political views of American Jewry as a whole, but rather that the commentary is specifically about neoconservative Jews and their apparent success in steering American Mideast policy in a pro-Israeli direction (at times to the detriment of American interests) [25] [26].
Neoconservatives say that they were much less interested in Israel before the June 1967 Six Day War. It was only after this conflict, which raised the specter of unopposed Soviet influence in the Middle East, that the neoconservatives became interested in Israel's security interests. They promote the view that Israel is the United States' strongest ally in the Middle East as the sole Western-style democracy in the region, aside from Turkey.
Commenting on the alleged overtones of this view in more mainstream discourse, David Brooks, in his January 6, 2004 New York Times column wrote, "To hear these people describe it, PNAC is sort of a Yiddish Trilateral Commission, the nexus of the sprawling neocon tentacles". In a similar vein, Michael Lind, a self-described 'former neoconservative,' wrote in 2004, "It is true, and unfortunate, that some journalists tend to use 'neoconservative' to refer only to Jewish neoconservatives, a practice that forces them to invent categories like nationalist conservative or Western conservative for Rumsfeld and Cheney. But neoconservatism is an ideology, like paleoconservatism and libertarianism, and Rumsfeld and Dick and Lynne Cheney are full-fledged neocons, as distinct from paleocons or libertarians, even though they are not Jewish and were never liberals or leftists."[11]
Lind argues that, while "there were, and are, very few Northeastern WASP mandarins in the neoconservative movement", its origins are not specifically Jewish. "...[N]eoconservatism recruited from diverse 'farm teams' including Roman Catholics (William Bennett and Michael Novak) and populists, socialists and New Deal liberals in the South and Southwest (the pool from which Jeane Kirkpatrick, James Woolsey and I [that is, Lind himself] were drawn)".[11]
Related publications and institutions
Institutions
American Enterprise Institute
Bradley Foundation
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies
Henry Jackson Society
Hudson Institute
Project for the New American Century
Publications
Commentary
Weekly Standard
Political magazines featuring neoconservative ideas:
Front Page Magazine
The National Interest
National Review
Policy Review
The Public Interest
original source unknown (probable Wikipedia.org)
Jacobinism, Bolshevism
The "traditional" conservative Claes G. Ryn has argued that neoconservatives are "a variety of neo-Jacobins." Ryn maintains that true conservatives deny the existence of a universal political and economic philosophy and model that is suitable for all societies and cultures, and believe that a society's institutions should be adjusted to suit its culture, while Neo-Jacobins
are attached in the end to ahistorical, supranational principles that they believe should supplant the traditions of particular societies. The new Jacobins see themselves as on the side of right and fighting evil and are not prone to respecting or looking for common ground with countries that do not share their democratic preferences. (Ryn 2003: 387)
Further examining the relationship between Neoconservatism and moral rhetoric, Ryn argues that
Neo-Jacobinism regards America as founded on universal principles and assigns to the United States the role of supervising the remaking of the world. Its adherents have the intense dogmatic commitment of true believers and are highly prone to moralistic rhetoric. They demand, among other things, "moral clarity" in dealing with regimes that stand in the way of America's universal purpose. They see themselves as champions of "virtue." (p. 384).
Thus, according to Ryn, neoconservatism is analogous to Bolshevism: in the same way that the Bolsheviks wanted to destroy established ways of life throughout the world to replace them with communism, the neoconservatives want to do the same, only imposing free-market capitalism and American-style liberal democracy instead of socialism.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, had the following to say in a December, 2005 interview with the German weekly Der Spiegel: "They are not new conservatives. They're Jacobins. Their predecessor is French Revolution leader Maximilien Robespierre." [19]
Conflict with Libertarian Conservatives
There is also conflict between neoconservatives and libertarian conservatives. Libertarian conservatives are ideologically opposed to government programs and regard neoconservative foreign policy ambitions with outspoken distrust. Rep Ron Paul, a Republican libertarian who holds a Texas district, has spoken out harshly against the Bush Administration's foreign wars on both a fiscal point and as a moral point on non-intervention.
Disagreement with Business Lobby, fiscal conservatives
There has been considerable conflict between neoconservatives and business conservatives in some areas. Neoconservatives tend to see China as a looming threat to the United States and argue for harsh policies to contain that threat. Business conservatives see China as a business opportunity and see a tough policy against China as opposed to their desires for trade. Business conservatives also appear much less distrustful of international institutions. In fact, where China is concerned neoconservatives tend to find themselves more often in agreement with liberal Democrats than with business conservatives. Indeed, Americans for Democratic Action - widely regarded as an "authority" of sorts on liberalism by both the American left and right alike - credit Senators and members of the House of Representatives with casting a "liberal" vote if they oppose legislation that would treat China favourably in the realm of foreign trade and many other matters.
Friction with paleoconservatism
Main article: Neoconservative - Paleoconservative Conflict
Disputes over Israel and public policy contributed to a sharp conflict with "paleoconservatives," starting in the 1980s. The movement's name ("old conservative") was taken as a rebuke to the "neo" side. The "paleocons" view the neoconservatives as "militarist social democrats" and interlopers who deviate from traditional conservatism agenda on issues as diverse as federalism, immigration, foreign policy, the welfare state, and in some cases abortion, feminism and homosexuality. All of this leads to a debate over what counts as conservatism.[citation needed]
The paleoconservatives argue that neoconservatives (and Straussians) are an illegitimate addition to the conservative movement. Pat Buchanan calls neoconservatism "a globalist, interventionist, open borders ideology."[20] The open rift is often traced back to a 1981 dispute over Ronald Reagan's nomination of Mel Bradford, a Southerner, to run the National Endowment for the Humanities. Bradford withdrew after neoconservatives complained that he had criticized Abraham Lincoln; the paleoconservatives supported Bradford.
Besides Buchanan and Bradford, the most prominent paleoconservatives include Paul Craig Roberts, Paul Gottfried, Thomas Fleming, Chilton Williamson, Joseph Sobran, and Clyde N. Wilson. The two leading paleoconservative publications are Chronicles and The American Conservative, which Buchanan helped create. In addition, paleolibertarianism is a parallel movement that stresses free market economics;
Neoconservatism, American Jews, and "Dual Loyalty"
Some opponents of neoconservatives have sought to emphasize their interest in Israel and the relatively large proportion of Jewish neoconservatives, and have raised the question of "dual loyalty". A number of critics, such as Pat Buchanan, Juan Cole, and Kathleen and Bill Christison have accused them of putting Israeli interests above those of America[21]. In turn these critics have been labeled as anti-Semites by prominent Jewish organizations.[22]
David Duke and some other white nationalists attack neoconservatism as advancing Jewish interests. They say a "Jewish supremacist" movement exists in the United States[23]. Similarly, during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the politically left-wing magazine AdBusters published a list of the "50 most influential neocons in the United States", noting that half of these were Jewish,[24] and insinuating that the preponderance of Jews in neoconservatism leads them to "not distinguish enough between American and Israeli interests". The article asks "For example, whose interests were they protecting in pushing for war in Iraq?", and ends with the statement "And half of the them are Jewish."
Political commentators like those in the AdBusters article state that their criticism is not aimed towards the political views of American Jewry as a whole, but rather that the commentary is specifically about neoconservative Jews and their apparent success in steering American Mideast policy in a pro-Israeli direction (at times to the detriment of American interests) [25] [26].
Neoconservatives say that they were much less interested in Israel before the June 1967 Six Day War. It was only after this conflict, which raised the specter of unopposed Soviet influence in the Middle East, that the neoconservatives became interested in Israel's security interests. They promote the view that Israel is the United States' strongest ally in the Middle East as the sole Western-style democracy in the region, aside from Turkey.
Commenting on the alleged overtones of this view in more mainstream discourse, David Brooks, in his January 6, 2004 New York Times column wrote, "To hear these people describe it, PNAC is sort of a Yiddish Trilateral Commission, the nexus of the sprawling neocon tentacles". In a similar vein, Michael Lind, a self-described 'former neoconservative,' wrote in 2004, "It is true, and unfortunate, that some journalists tend to use 'neoconservative' to refer only to Jewish neoconservatives, a practice that forces them to invent categories like nationalist conservative or Western conservative for Rumsfeld and Cheney. But neoconservatism is an ideology, like paleoconservatism and libertarianism, and Rumsfeld and Dick and Lynne Cheney are full-fledged neocons, as distinct from paleocons or libertarians, even though they are not Jewish and were never liberals or leftists."[11]
Lind argues that, while "there were, and are, very few Northeastern WASP mandarins in the neoconservative movement", its origins are not specifically Jewish. "...[N]eoconservatism recruited from diverse 'farm teams' including Roman Catholics (William Bennett and Michael Novak) and populists, socialists and New Deal liberals in the South and Southwest (the pool from which Jeane Kirkpatrick, James Woolsey and I [that is, Lind himself] were drawn)".[11]
Related publications and institutions
Institutions
American Enterprise Institute
Bradley Foundation
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies
Henry Jackson Society
Hudson Institute
Project for the New American Century
Publications
Commentary
Weekly Standard
Political magazines featuring neoconservative ideas:
Front Page Magazine
The National Interest
National Review
Policy Review
The Public Interest
Attack of the Trotsky-cons!
by Justin Raimondo (at Chronicles Magazine)
Murray N. Rothbard must have seen the post-September 11 era in a dream to be able to sum it up as well as he did in his 1992 inaugural address to the John Randolph Club:"Social democracy is still here in all its variants, defining our entire respectable political spectrum, from advanced victimology and feminism on the left over to neoconservatism on the right. We are now trapped, in America, inside a Menshevik fantasy, with the narrow bounds of respectable debate set for us by various brands of Marxists. It is now our task, the task of the resurgent right, of the paleo movement, to break those bonds, to finish the job, to finish off Marxism forever."Rothbard foresaw our current predicament: We are trapped inside a Menshevik fantasy, a nightmare world of perpetual war and growing government power.In a review of Eric Hobsbawm’s memoirs, Christopher Hitchens remarked that Tony Blair is “at once the most radical and the most conservative of politicians. Very many of Blair’s tough young acolytes received their political baptism in what I try to call the Marxist Right.”This ideological category—the Marxist right—is quite useful. It explains not only the policies that plunder our purses and wreak havoc on the world but the distinctly Soviet style of our rulers and their Amen Corner, as they demonize their enemies and seek to silence them.Many of the top chieftains of the War Party are ex-leftists of one sort or another. They owe more to Hegel, Marx, and Leon Trotsky than to Russell Kirk, Friedrich Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises. The “godfather” of the neoconservative movement, Irving Kristol, was a Trotskyite in his youth, and the kibitzing that went on in Cubicle B at City College of New York has achieved the status of legend. The official line, of course, is that this was all just a youthful indiscretion and that any such allegiances have long since been put away in a trunk somewhere. The reality, however, is quite different.The collaboration between social democrats of the Blairite variety and the official conservative movement represented by National Review has been going on since the Reagan years. By that time, a group of ex-Trotskyites associated with Max Shachtman—Trotsky’s former chief American lieutenant—had wormed its way into the good graces of the American labor movement and into the office of Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson, whose fulsome support for an interventionist foreign policy won the heart of the fanatically anti-Soviet Shachtman.Shachtman supported the Vietnam War and the Bay of Pigs Invasion yet still kept his devotion to socialism intact. He took over the old Socialist Party apparatus in the late 1950’s and changed its name to Social Democrats, USA. In this incarnation, the group had an influence well beyond its small numbers—not on the left, which was going in a different direction, but on the American right. During the Reagan era, a number of top Social Democrat leaders and activists were given key niches in the government bureaucracy, including Jeane Kirkpatrick, the U.S. delegate to the United Nations; Elliott Abrams, a former staffer for Senator Jackson, a major figure in the Iran-Contra affair, and assistant secretary of state for Inter-American Affairs under Reagan; Carl Gershman, the first president of the National Endowment for Democracy; and Arch Puddington, who worked for the U.S. Information Agency’s Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.National Review celebrated May Day 2002 by publishing a report by Joshua Muravchik on a kind of family reunion sponsored by SDUSA in Washington:"among those sponsoring or joining the evening’s festivities—funded mainly by the estate of the widow of Trotskyist icon Max Shachtman—were, on the right, Jeane Kirkpatrick, former Christian Coalition spokesman Marshall Wittmann, [and] former Secretary of Labor nominee Linda Chavez."Muravchik, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former national chairman of the Young Peoples Socialist League—the Shachtmanite youth group—was also in attendance.This penetration of the conservative movement by ideologically alien intruders extended into the ranks. Some years ago, a private discussion club for conservative writers and activists in the San Francisco Bay Area met at the Union Club. Participants included Bill Rusher, former publisher of National Review; San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders; Stephen Schwartz; and myself. The young man who organized the meetings told me how he had been recruited into the SDUSA, and then into the conservative movement, because the Social Democrats had come to his campus in support of Poland’s Solidarity movement. He described going to their meetings and feeling “weird” when they opened and closed the proceedings by singing the “Internationale.” He explained that it was “only a tradition,” but, when he said it, he did not seem so sure.We are now seeing the implementation of a long-standing neoconservative ambition: the imposition of a world order—in effect, an American Empire, with Washington, D.C., at its center. The infiltration and co-opting of the conservative movement by the Marxist right and its transformation into an instrument of an ideology that is statist, globalist, and militantly expansionist was the first step on the road to empire. Once the Marxist right had seized control of the think tanks, magazines, and activist organizations of the American right, they moved to exert control over the Republican Party.Both the ideology and the methods of the Marxist left have been imported into the conservative movement. Ideologically, the so-called third-camp socialism of Shachtman and his followers has been transmuted into the worship of “Democracy” as the be-all and end-all of human development. The neocons have simply stood the old Trotskyism on its head and said that the American system—like the old Soviet system—cannot stand alone and isolated but must spread itself over the earth or face defeat at the hands of its enemies.The ideological framework of neoconservative ideology is deeply rooted in the Marxist tradition. Francis Fukuyama, the boy wonder of the neocons, even came up with an application of the Hegelian dialectic as the ultimate rationale for American global hegemony in his famous article on “The End of History.” The Marxists, too, saw themselves as agents of History, and they constantly evoked images of modernity to justify their innumerable crimes against humanity. They came as “liberators”—a favorite word of Red Army propagandists, and one that our own Pentagon has since taken up with alacrity.The neocons retain the methods as well as the ideology of the left: party-line politics, periodic purges, and the nasty habit of smearing their opponents rather than engaging them in debate. The neocon method echoes that of its leftist progenitors: Once the party line is established—Israel must be unconditionally defended, Iraq must be utterly destroyed, Pat Buchanan must be smeared into silence—anyone who deviates is demonized.In an interview with Stephen Schwartz in Canada’s National Post, Jeet Heer showed just how deeply the Marxist right has burrowed into the Bush administration:
To this day, Schwartz speaks of Trotsky affectionately as “the old man” and “L.D.” . . . “To a great extent, I still consider myself to be [one of the] disciples of L.D.,” he admits, and he observes that in certain Washington circles, the ghost of Trotsky still hovers around. At a party in February celebrating a new book about Iraq, Schwartz exchanged banter with Wolfowitz about Trotsky, the Moscow Trials and Max Shachtman. “I’ve talked to Wolfowitz about all of this,” Schwartz notes. “We had this discussion about Shachtman. He knows all that stuff, but was never part of it. He’s definitely aware.”
“Ideology is political fanaticism, an endeavor to rule the world by rigorous abstract dogmata,” said Russell Kirk in a 1991 Heritage Foundation lecture. “The dogmata of an abstract ‘democratic capitalism’ may be as mischievous as the dogmata of Marx.” I would add only that these two “rival” dogmas are as intimately related as are the offspring of the same parents.“The yoking together of Paul Wolf-owitz and Leon Trotsky sounds odd,” writes Heer, “but a long and tortuous history explains the link between the Bolshevik left and the Republican right.”Defending his remarks in the National Post, Schwartz proudly proclaimed his Trotskyite heritage on National Review Online and even coined a term for this growing grouplet: Trotsky-cons!The Bolsheviks of the left were eventually defeated, but it took half a century to do it. If we face another 50 years of struggle against the Bolsheviks of the right—well, then, so be it. As George W. Bush said in quite another context: “Bring it on!”
Murray N. Rothbard must have seen the post-September 11 era in a dream to be able to sum it up as well as he did in his 1992 inaugural address to the John Randolph Club:"Social democracy is still here in all its variants, defining our entire respectable political spectrum, from advanced victimology and feminism on the left over to neoconservatism on the right. We are now trapped, in America, inside a Menshevik fantasy, with the narrow bounds of respectable debate set for us by various brands of Marxists. It is now our task, the task of the resurgent right, of the paleo movement, to break those bonds, to finish the job, to finish off Marxism forever."Rothbard foresaw our current predicament: We are trapped inside a Menshevik fantasy, a nightmare world of perpetual war and growing government power.In a review of Eric Hobsbawm’s memoirs, Christopher Hitchens remarked that Tony Blair is “at once the most radical and the most conservative of politicians. Very many of Blair’s tough young acolytes received their political baptism in what I try to call the Marxist Right.”This ideological category—the Marxist right—is quite useful. It explains not only the policies that plunder our purses and wreak havoc on the world but the distinctly Soviet style of our rulers and their Amen Corner, as they demonize their enemies and seek to silence them.Many of the top chieftains of the War Party are ex-leftists of one sort or another. They owe more to Hegel, Marx, and Leon Trotsky than to Russell Kirk, Friedrich Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises. The “godfather” of the neoconservative movement, Irving Kristol, was a Trotskyite in his youth, and the kibitzing that went on in Cubicle B at City College of New York has achieved the status of legend. The official line, of course, is that this was all just a youthful indiscretion and that any such allegiances have long since been put away in a trunk somewhere. The reality, however, is quite different.The collaboration between social democrats of the Blairite variety and the official conservative movement represented by National Review has been going on since the Reagan years. By that time, a group of ex-Trotskyites associated with Max Shachtman—Trotsky’s former chief American lieutenant—had wormed its way into the good graces of the American labor movement and into the office of Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson, whose fulsome support for an interventionist foreign policy won the heart of the fanatically anti-Soviet Shachtman.Shachtman supported the Vietnam War and the Bay of Pigs Invasion yet still kept his devotion to socialism intact. He took over the old Socialist Party apparatus in the late 1950’s and changed its name to Social Democrats, USA. In this incarnation, the group had an influence well beyond its small numbers—not on the left, which was going in a different direction, but on the American right. During the Reagan era, a number of top Social Democrat leaders and activists were given key niches in the government bureaucracy, including Jeane Kirkpatrick, the U.S. delegate to the United Nations; Elliott Abrams, a former staffer for Senator Jackson, a major figure in the Iran-Contra affair, and assistant secretary of state for Inter-American Affairs under Reagan; Carl Gershman, the first president of the National Endowment for Democracy; and Arch Puddington, who worked for the U.S. Information Agency’s Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.National Review celebrated May Day 2002 by publishing a report by Joshua Muravchik on a kind of family reunion sponsored by SDUSA in Washington:"among those sponsoring or joining the evening’s festivities—funded mainly by the estate of the widow of Trotskyist icon Max Shachtman—were, on the right, Jeane Kirkpatrick, former Christian Coalition spokesman Marshall Wittmann, [and] former Secretary of Labor nominee Linda Chavez."Muravchik, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former national chairman of the Young Peoples Socialist League—the Shachtmanite youth group—was also in attendance.This penetration of the conservative movement by ideologically alien intruders extended into the ranks. Some years ago, a private discussion club for conservative writers and activists in the San Francisco Bay Area met at the Union Club. Participants included Bill Rusher, former publisher of National Review; San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders; Stephen Schwartz; and myself. The young man who organized the meetings told me how he had been recruited into the SDUSA, and then into the conservative movement, because the Social Democrats had come to his campus in support of Poland’s Solidarity movement. He described going to their meetings and feeling “weird” when they opened and closed the proceedings by singing the “Internationale.” He explained that it was “only a tradition,” but, when he said it, he did not seem so sure.We are now seeing the implementation of a long-standing neoconservative ambition: the imposition of a world order—in effect, an American Empire, with Washington, D.C., at its center. The infiltration and co-opting of the conservative movement by the Marxist right and its transformation into an instrument of an ideology that is statist, globalist, and militantly expansionist was the first step on the road to empire. Once the Marxist right had seized control of the think tanks, magazines, and activist organizations of the American right, they moved to exert control over the Republican Party.Both the ideology and the methods of the Marxist left have been imported into the conservative movement. Ideologically, the so-called third-camp socialism of Shachtman and his followers has been transmuted into the worship of “Democracy” as the be-all and end-all of human development. The neocons have simply stood the old Trotskyism on its head and said that the American system—like the old Soviet system—cannot stand alone and isolated but must spread itself over the earth or face defeat at the hands of its enemies.The ideological framework of neoconservative ideology is deeply rooted in the Marxist tradition. Francis Fukuyama, the boy wonder of the neocons, even came up with an application of the Hegelian dialectic as the ultimate rationale for American global hegemony in his famous article on “The End of History.” The Marxists, too, saw themselves as agents of History, and they constantly evoked images of modernity to justify their innumerable crimes against humanity. They came as “liberators”—a favorite word of Red Army propagandists, and one that our own Pentagon has since taken up with alacrity.The neocons retain the methods as well as the ideology of the left: party-line politics, periodic purges, and the nasty habit of smearing their opponents rather than engaging them in debate. The neocon method echoes that of its leftist progenitors: Once the party line is established—Israel must be unconditionally defended, Iraq must be utterly destroyed, Pat Buchanan must be smeared into silence—anyone who deviates is demonized.In an interview with Stephen Schwartz in Canada’s National Post, Jeet Heer showed just how deeply the Marxist right has burrowed into the Bush administration:
To this day, Schwartz speaks of Trotsky affectionately as “the old man” and “L.D.” . . . “To a great extent, I still consider myself to be [one of the] disciples of L.D.,” he admits, and he observes that in certain Washington circles, the ghost of Trotsky still hovers around. At a party in February celebrating a new book about Iraq, Schwartz exchanged banter with Wolfowitz about Trotsky, the Moscow Trials and Max Shachtman. “I’ve talked to Wolfowitz about all of this,” Schwartz notes. “We had this discussion about Shachtman. He knows all that stuff, but was never part of it. He’s definitely aware.”
“Ideology is political fanaticism, an endeavor to rule the world by rigorous abstract dogmata,” said Russell Kirk in a 1991 Heritage Foundation lecture. “The dogmata of an abstract ‘democratic capitalism’ may be as mischievous as the dogmata of Marx.” I would add only that these two “rival” dogmas are as intimately related as are the offspring of the same parents.“The yoking together of Paul Wolf-owitz and Leon Trotsky sounds odd,” writes Heer, “but a long and tortuous history explains the link between the Bolshevik left and the Republican right.”Defending his remarks in the National Post, Schwartz proudly proclaimed his Trotskyite heritage on National Review Online and even coined a term for this growing grouplet: Trotsky-cons!The Bolsheviks of the left were eventually defeated, but it took half a century to do it. If we face another 50 years of struggle against the Bolsheviks of the right—well, then, so be it. As George W. Bush said in quite another context: “Bring it on!”
We've Been Neo-Conned
by Ron Paul
Ron Paul in the US House of Representatives, July 10, 2003
The modern-day, limited-government movement has been co-opted. The conservatives have failed in their effort to shrink the size of government. There has not been, nor will there soon be, a conservative revolution in Washington. Political party control of the federal government has changed, but the inexorable growth in the size and scope of government has continued unabated. The liberal arguments for limited government in personal affairs and foreign military adventurism were never seriously considered as part of this revolution.
Since the change of the political party in charge has not made a difference, who’s really in charge? If the particular party in power makes little difference, whose policy is it that permits expanded government programs, increased spending, huge deficits, nation building and the pervasive invasion of our privacy, with fewer Fourth Amendment protections than ever before?
Someone is responsible, and it’s important that those of us who love liberty, and resent big-brother government, identify the philosophic supporters who have the most to say about the direction our country is going. If they’re wrong – and I believe they are – we need to show it, alert the American people, and offer a more positive approach to government. However, this depends on whether the American people desire to live in a free society and reject the dangerous notion that we need a strong central government to take care of us from the cradle to the grave. Do the American people really believe it’s the government’s responsibility to make us morally better and economically equal? Do we have a responsibility to police the world, while imposing our vision of good government on everyone else in the world with some form of utopian nation building? If not, and the enemies of liberty are exposed and rejected, then it behooves us to present an alternative philosophy that is morally superior and economically sound and provides a guide to world affairs to enhance peace and commerce.
One thing is certain: conservatives who worked and voted for less government in the Reagan years and welcomed the takeover of the U.S. Congress and the presidency in the 1990s and early 2000s were deceived. Soon they will realize that the goal of limited government has been dashed and that their views no longer matter.
The so-called conservative revolution of the past two decades has given us massive growth in government size, spending and regulations. Deficits are exploding and the national debt is now rising at greater than a half-trillion dollars per year. Taxes do not go down – even if we vote to lower them. They can’t, as long as spending is increased, since all spending must be paid for one way or another. Both Presidents Reagan and the elder George Bush raised taxes directly. With this administration, so far, direct taxes have been reduced – and they certainly should have been – but it means little if spending increases and deficits rise.
When taxes are not raised to accommodate higher spending, the bills must be paid by either borrowing or “printing” new money. This is one reason why we conveniently have a generous Federal Reserve chairman who is willing to accommodate the Congress. With borrowing and inflating, the “tax” is delayed and distributed in a way that makes it difficult for those paying the tax to identify it. For instance, future generations, or those on fixed incomes who suffer from rising prices, and those who lose jobs – they certainly feel the consequences of economic dislocations that this process causes. Government spending is always a “tax” burden on the American people and is never equally or fairly distributed. The poor and low-middle income workers always suffer the most from the deceitful tax of inflation and borrowing.
Many present-day conservatives, who generally argue for less government and supported the Reagan/Gingrich/Bush takeover of the federal government, are now justifiably disillusioned. Although not a monolithic group, they wanted to shrink the size of government.
Early in our history, the advocates of limited, constitutional government recognized two important principles: the rule of law was crucial, and a constitutional government must derive “just powers from the consent of the governed.” It was understood that an explicit transfer of power to government could only occur with power rightfully and naturally endowed to each individual as a God-given right. Therefore, the powers that could be transferred would be limited to the purpose of protecting liberty. Unfortunately, in the last 100 years, the defense of liberty has been fragmented and shared by various groups, with some protecting civil liberties, others economic freedom, and a small diverse group arguing for a foreign policy of nonintervention.
The philosophy of freedom has had a tough go of it, and it was hoped that the renewed interest in limited government of the past two decades would revive an interest in reconstituting the freedom philosophy into something more consistent. Those who worked for the goal of limited government power believed the rhetoric of politicians who promised smaller government. Sometimes it was just plain sloppy thinking on their part, but at other times, they fell victim to a deliberate distortion of a concise limited-government philosophy by politicians who misled many into believing that we would see a rollback on government intrusiveness.
Yes, there was always a remnant who longed for truly limited government and maintained a belief in the rule of law, combined with a deep conviction that free people and a government bound by a Constitution were the most advantageous form of government. They recognized it as the only practical way for prosperity to be spread to the maximum number of people while promoting peace and security.
That remnant – imperfect as it may have been – was heard from in the elections of 1980 and 1994 and then achieved major victories in 2000 and 2002 when professed limited-government proponents took over the administration, the Senate and the House. However, the true believers in limited government are now shunned and laughed at. At the very least, they are ignored – except when they are used by the new leaders of the right, the new conservatives now in charge of the U.S. government.
The remnant’s instincts were correct, and the politicians placated them with talk of free markets, limited government, and a humble, non-nation-building foreign policy. However, little concern for civil liberties was expressed in this recent quest for less government. Yet, for an ultimate victory of achieving freedom, this must change. Interest in personal privacy and choices has generally remained outside the concern of many conservatives – especially with the great harm done by their support of the drug war. Even though some confusion has emerged over our foreign policy since the breakdown of the Soviet empire, it’s been a net benefit in getting some conservatives back on track with a less militaristic, interventionist foreign policy. Unfortunately, after 9-ll, the cause of liberty suffered a setback. As a result, millions of Americans voted for the less-than-perfect conservative revolution because they believed in the promises of the politicians.
Now there’s mounting evidence to indicate exactly what happened to the revolution. Government is bigger than ever, and future commitments are overwhelming. Millions will soon become disenchanted with the new status quo delivered to the American people by the advocates of limited government and will find it to be just more of the old status quo. Victories for limited government have turned out to be hollow indeed.
Since the national debt is increasing at a rate greater than a half-trillion dollars per year, the debt limit was recently increased by an astounding $984 billion dollars. Total U.S. government obligations are $43 trillion, while total net worth of U.S. households is just over $40 trillion. The country is broke, but no one in Washington seems to notice or care. The philosophic and political commitment for both guns and butter – and especially for expanding the American empire – must be challenged. This is crucial for our survival.
In spite of the floundering economy, the Congress and the administration continue to take on new commitments in foreign aid, education, farming, medicine, multiple efforts at nation building, and preemptive wars around the world. Already we’re entrenched in Iraq and Afghanistan, with plans to soon add new trophies to our conquest. War talk abounds as to when Syria, Iran and North Korea will be attacked.
How did all this transpire? Why did the government do it? Why haven’t the people objected? How long will it go on before something is done? Does anyone care?
Will the euphoria of grand military victories – against non-enemies – ever be mellowed? Someday, we as a legislative body must face the reality of the dire situation in which we have allowed ourselves to become enmeshed. Hopefully, it will be soon!
We got here because ideas do have consequences. Bad ideas have bad consequences, and even the best of intentions have unintended consequences. We need to know exactly what the philosophic ideas were that drove us to this point; then, hopefully, reject them and decide on another set of intellectual parameters.
There is abundant evidence exposing those who drive our foreign policy justifying preemptive war. Those who scheme are proud of the achievements in usurping control over foreign policy. These are the neoconservatives of recent fame. Granted, they are talented and achieved a political victory that all policymakers must admire. But can freedom and the Republic survive this takeover? That question should concern us.
Neoconservatives are obviously in positions of influence and are well-placed throughout our government and the media. An apathetic Congress put up little resistance and abdicated its responsibilities over foreign affairs. The electorate was easily influenced to join in the patriotic fervor supporting the military adventurism advocated by the neoconservatives.
The numbers of those who still hope for truly limited government diminished and had their concerns ignored these past 22 months, during the aftermath of 9-11. Members of Congress were easily influenced to publicly support any domestic policy or foreign military adventure that was supposed to help reduce the threat of a terrorist attack. Believers in limited government were harder to find. Political money, as usual, played a role in pressing Congress into supporting almost any proposal suggested by the neocons. This process – where campaign dollars and lobbying efforts affect policy – is hardly the domain of any single political party, and unfortunately, is the way of life in Washington.
There are many reasons why government continues to grow. It would be naïve for anyone to expect otherwise. Since 9-11, protection of privacy, whether medical, personal or financial, has vanished. Free speech and the Fourth Amendment have been under constant attack. Higher welfare expenditures are endorsed by the leadership of both parties. Policing the world and nation-building issues are popular campaign targets, yet they are now standard operating procedures. There’s no sign that these programs will be slowed or reversed until either we are stopped by force overseas (which won’t be soon) or we go broke and can no longer afford these grandiose plans for a world empire (which will probably come sooner than later.)
None of this happened by accident or coincidence. Precise philosophic ideas prompted certain individuals to gain influence to implement these plans. The neoconservatives – a name they gave themselves – diligently worked their way into positions of power and influence. They documented their goals, strategy and moral justification for all they hoped to accomplish. Above all else, they were not and are not conservatives dedicated to limited, constitutional government.
Neo-conservatism has been around for decades and, strangely, has connections to past generations as far back as Machiavelli. Modern-day neo-conservatism was introduced to us in the 1960s. It entails both a detailed strategy as well as a philosophy of government. The ideas of Teddy Roosevelt, and certainly Woodrow Wilson, were quite similar to many of the views of present-day neocons. Neocon spokesman Max Boot brags that what he advocates is “hard Wilsonianism.” In many ways, there’s nothing “neo” about their views, and certainly nothing conservative. Yet they have been able to co-op the conservative movement by advertising themselves as a new or modern form of conservatism.
More recently, the modern-day neocons have come from the far left, a group historically identified as former Trotskyists. Liberal Christopher Hitchins, has recently officially joined the neocons, and it has been reported that he has already been to the White House as an ad hoc consultant. Many neocons now in positions of influence in Washington can trace their status back to Professor Leo Strauss of the University of Chicago. One of Strauss’ books was Thoughts on Machiavelli. This book was not a condemnation of Machiavelli’s philosophy. Paul Wolfowitz actually got his PhD under Strauss. Others closely associated with these views are Richard Perle, Eliot Abrams, Robert Kagan and William Kristol. All are key players in designing our new strategy of preemptive war. Others include: Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute; former CIA Director James Woolsy; Bill Bennett of Book of Virtues fame; Frank Gaffney; Dick Cheney; and Donald Rumsfeld. There are just too many to mention who are philosophically or politically connected to the neocon philosophy in some varying degree.
The godfather of modern-day neo-conservatism is considered to be Irving Kristol, father of Bill Kristol, who set the stage in 1983 with his publication Reflections of a Neoconservative. In this book, Kristol also defends the traditional liberal position on welfare.
More important than the names of people affiliated with neo-conservatism are the views they adhere to. Here is a brief summary of the general understanding of what neocons believe:
They agree with Trotsky on permanent revolution, violent as well as intellectual.
They are for redrawing the map of the Middle East and are willing to use force to do so.
They believe in preemptive war to achieve desired ends.
They accept the notion that the ends justify the means – that hard-ball politics is a moral necessity.
They express no opposition to the welfare state.
They are not bashful about an American empire; instead they strongly endorse it.
They believe lying is necessary for the state to survive.
They believe a powerful federal government is a benefit.
They believe pertinent facts about how a society should be run should be held by the elite andwithheld from those who do not have the courage to deal with it.
They believe neutrality in foreign affairs is ill-advised.
They hold Leo Strauss in high esteem.
They believe imperialism, if progressive in nature, is appropriate.
Using American might to force American ideals on others is acceptable. Force shouldnot be limited to the defense of our country.
9-11 resulted from the lack of foreign entanglements, not from too many.
They dislike and despise libertarians (therefore, the same applies to all strict constitutionalists.)
They endorse attacks on civil liberties, such as those found in the Patriot Act, as being necessary.
They unconditionally support Israel and have a close alliance with the Likud Party.
Various organizations and publications over the last 30 years have played a significant role in the rise to power of the neoconservatives. It took plenty of money and commitment to produce the intellectual arguments needed to convince the many participants in the movement of its respectability.
It is no secret – especially after the rash of research and articles written about the neocons since our invasion of Iraq – how they gained influence and what organizations were used to promote their cause. Although for decades, they agitated for their beliefs through publications like The National Review, The Weekly Standard, The Public Interest, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, and the New York Post, their views only gained momentum in the 1990s following the first Persian Gulf War – which still has not ended even with removal of Saddam Hussein. They became convinced that a much more militant approach to resolving all the conflicts in the Middle East was an absolute necessity, and they were determined to implement that policy.
In addition to publications, multiple think tanks and projects were created to promote their agenda. A product of the Bradley Foundation, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) led the neocon charge, but the real push for war came from the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) another organization helped by the Bradley Foundation. This occurred in 1998 and was chaired by Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. Early on, they urged war against Iraq, but were disappointed with the Clinton administration, which never followed through with its periodic bombings. Obviously, these bombings were motivated more by Clinton’s personal and political problems than a belief in the neocon agenda.
The election of 2000 changed all that. The Defense Policy Board, chaired by Richard Perle played no small role in coordinating the various projects and think tanks, all determined to take us into war against Iraq. It wasn’t too long before the dream of empire was brought closer to reality by the election of 2000 with Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld playing key roles in this accomplishment. The plan to promote an “American greatness” imperialistic foreign policy was now a distinct possibility. Iraq offered a great opportunity to prove their long-held theories. This opportunity was a consequence of the 9-11 disaster.
The money and views of Rupert Murdock also played a key role in promoting the neocon views, as well as rallying support by the general population, through his News Corporation, which owns Fox News Network, the New York Post and Weekly Standard. This powerful and influential media empire did more to galvanize public support for the Iraqi invasion than one might imagine. This facilitated the Rumsfeld/Cheney policy as their plans to attack Iraq came to fruition. It would have been difficult for the neocons to usurp foreign policy from the restraints of Colin Powell’s State Department without the successful agitation of the Rupert Murdock empire. Max Boot was satisfied, as he explained: “Neoconservatives believe in using American might to promote American ideals abroad.” This attitude is a far cry from the advice of the Founders, who advocated no entangling alliances and neutrality as the proper goal of American foreign policy.
Let there be no doubt, those in the neocon camp had been anxious to go to war against Iraq for a decade. They justified the use of force to accomplish their goals, even if it required preemptive war. If anyone doubts this assertion, they need only to read of their strategy in “A Clean Break: a New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” Although they felt morally justified in changing the government in Iraq, they knew that public support was important, and justification had to be given to pursue the war. Of course, a threat to us had to exist before the people and the Congress would go along with war. The majority of Americans became convinced of this threat, which, in actuality, never really existed. Now we have the ongoing debate over the location of weapons of mass destruction. Where was the danger? Was all this killing and spending necessary? How long will this nation-building and dying go on? When will we become more concerned about the needs of our own citizens than the problems we sought in Iraq and Afghanistan? Who knows where we’ll go next – Iran, Syria or North Korea?
At the end of the Cold War, the neoconservatives realized a rearrangement of the world was occurring and that our superior economic and military power offered them a perfect opportunity to control the process of remaking the Middle East.
It was recognized that a new era was upon us, and the neocons welcomed Frances Fukuyama’s “end of history” declaration. To them, the debate was over. The West won; the Soviets lost. Old-fashioned communism was dead. Long live the new era of neoconservatism. The struggle may not be over, but the West won the intellectual fight, they reasoned. The only problem is that the neocons decided to define the philosophy of the victors. They have been amazingly successful in their efforts to control the debate over what Western values are and by what methods they will be spread throughout the world.
Communism surely lost a lot with the breakup of the Soviet Empire, but this can hardly be declared a victory for American liberty, as the Founders understood it. Neoconservatism is not the philosophy of free markets and a wise foreign policy. Instead, it represents big-government welfare at home and a program of using our military might to spread their version of American values throughout the world. Since neoconservatives dominate the way the U.S. government now operates, it behooves us all to understand their beliefs and goals. The breakup of the Soviet system may well have been an epic event but to say that the views of the neocons are the unchallenged victors and that all we need do is wait for their implementation is a capitulation to controlling the forces of history that many Americans are not yet ready to concede. There is surely no need to do so.
There is now a recognized philosophic connection between modern-day neoconservatives and Irving Kristol, Leo Strauss and Machiavelli. This is important in understanding that today’s policies and the subsequent problems will be with us for years to come if these policies are not reversed.
Not only did Leo Strauss write favorably of Machiavelli, Michael Ledeen, a current leader of the neoconservative movement, did the same. In 1999, Ledeen titled his book, Machiavelli on Modern Leadership, and subtitled: Why Machiaveli’s iron rules are as timely and important today as five centuries ago. Ledeen is indeed an influential neocon theorist whose views get lots of attention today in Washington. His book on Machiavelli, interestingly enough, was passed out to Members of Congress attending a political strategy meeting shortly after its publication and at just about the time A Clean Break was issued.
In Ledeen’s most recent publication, The War Against the Terror Masters, he reiterates his beliefs outlined in this 1999 Machaivelli book. He specifically praises: “Creative destruction…both within our own society and abroad…(foreigners) seeing America undo traditional societies may fear us, for they do not wish to be undone.” Amazingly, Ledeen concludes: “They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission.”
If those words don’t scare you, nothing will. If they are not a clear warning, I don’t know what could be. It sounds like both sides of each disagreement in the world will be following the principle of preemptive war. The world is certainly a less safe place for it.
In Machiavelli on Modern Leadership, Ledeen praises a business leader for correctly understanding Machiavelli: “There are no absolute solutions. It all depends. What is right and what is wrong depends on what needs to be done and how.” This is a clear endorsement of situation ethics and is not coming from the traditional left. It reminds me of: “It depends on what the definition of the word ‘is’ is.”
Ledeen quotes Machiavelli approvingly on what makes a great leader. “A prince must have no other objectives or other thoughts or take anything for his craft, except war.” To Ledeen, this meant: “…the virtue of the warrior are those of great leaders of any successful organization.” Yet it’s obvious that war is not coincidental to neocon philosophy, but an integral part. The intellectuals justify it, and the politicians carry it out. There’s a precise reason to argue for war over peace according to Ledeen, for “…peace increases our peril by making discipline less urgent, encouraging some of our worst instincts, in depriving us of some of our best leaders.” Peace, he claims, is a dream and not even a pleasant one, for it would cause indolence and would undermine the power of the state. Although I concede the history of the world is a history of frequent war, to capitulate and give up even striving for peace – believing peace is not a benefit to mankind – is a frightening thought that condemns the world to perpetual war and justifies it as a benefit and necessity. These are dangerous ideas, from which no good can come.
The conflict of the ages has been between the state and the individual: central power versus liberty. The more restrained the state and the more emphasis on individual liberty, the greater has been the advancement of civilization and general prosperity. Just as man’s condition was not locked in place by the times and wars of old and improved with liberty and free markets, there’s no reason to believe a new stage for man might not be achieved by believing and working for conditions of peace. The inevitability and so-called need for preemptive war should never be intellectually justified as being a benefit. Such an attitude guarantees the backsliding of civilization. Neocons, unfortunately, claim that war is in man’s nature and that we can’t do much about it, so let’s use it to our advantage by promoting our goodness around the world through force of arms. That view is anathema to the cause of liberty and the preservation of the Constitution. If it is not loudly refuted, our future will be dire indeed.
Ledeen believes man is basically evil and cannot be left to his own desires. Therefore, he must have proper and strong leadership, just as Machiavelli argued. Only then can man achieve good, as Ledeen explains: “In order to achieve the most noble accomplishments, the leader may have to ‘enter into evil.’ This is the chilling insight that has made Machiavelli so feared, admired and challenging…we are rotten,” argues Ledeen. “It’s true that we can achieve greatness if, and only if, we are properly led.” In other words, man is so depraved that individuals are incapable of moral, ethical and spiritual greatness, and achieving excellence and virtue can only come from a powerful authoritarian leader. What depraved ideas are these to now be influencing our leaders in Washington? The question Ledeen doesn’t answer is: “Why do the political leaders not suffer from the same shortcomings and where do they obtain their monopoly on wisdom?”
Once this trust is placed in the hands of a powerful leader, this neocon argues that certain tools are permissible to use. For instance: “lying is central to the survival of nations and to the success of great enterprises, because if our enemies can count on the reliability of everything you say, your vulnerability is enormously increased.” What about the effects of lying on one’s own people? Who cares if a leader can fool the enemy? Does calling it “strategic deception” make lying morally justifiable? Ledeen and Machiavelli argue that it does, as long as the survivability of the state is at stake. Preserving the state is their goal, even if the personal liberty of all individuals has to be suspended or canceled.
Ledeen makes it clear that war is necessary to establish national boundaries – because that’s the way it’s always been done. Who needs progress of the human race! He explains: “Look at the map of the world: national boundaries have not been drawn by peaceful men leading lives of spiritual contemplation. National boundaries have been established by war, and national character has been shaped by struggle, most often bloody struggle.”
Yes, but who is to lead the charge and decide which borders we are to fight for? What about borders 6,000 miles away unrelated to our own contiguous borders and our own national security? Stating a relative truism regarding the frequency of war throughout history should hardly be the moral justification for expanding the concept of war to settle man’s disputes. How can one call this progress?
Machiavelli, Ledeen and the neocons recognized a need to generate a religious zeal for promoting the state. This, he claims, is especially necessary when force is used to promote an agenda. It’s been true throughout history and remains true today, each side of major conflicts invokes God’s approval. Our side refers to a “crusade;” theirs to a “holy Jihad.” Too often wars boil down to their god against our God. It seems this principle is more a cynical effort to gain approval from the masses, especially those most likely to be killed for the sake of the war promoters on both sides who have power, prestige and wealth at stake.
Ledeen explains why God must always be on the side of advocates of war: “Without fear of God, no state can last long, for the dread of eternal damnation keeps men in line, causes them to honor their promises, and inspires them to risk their lives for the common good.” It seems dying for the common good has gained a higher moral status than eternal salvation of one’s soul. Ledeen adds: “Without fear of punishment, men will not obey laws that force them to act contrary to their passions. Without fear of arms, the state cannot enforce the laws…to this end, Machiavelli wants leaders to make the state spectacular.”
It's of interest to note that some large Christian denominations have joined the neoconservatives in promoting preemptive war, while completely ignoring the Christian doctrine of a Just War. The neocons sought and openly welcomed their support.
I’d like someone to glean anything from what the Founders said or placed in the Constitution that agrees with this now-professed doctrine of a “spectacular” state promoted by those who now have so much influence on our policies here at home and abroad. Ledeen argues that this religious element, this fear of God, is needed for discipline of those who may be hesitant to sacrifice their lives for the good of the “spectacular state.”
He explains in eerie terms: “Dying for one’s country doesn’t come naturally. Modern armies, raised from the populace, must be inspired, motivated, indoctrinated. Religion is central to the military enterprise, for men are more likely to risk their lives if they believe they will be rewarded forever after for serving their country.” This is an admonition that might just as well have been given by Osama bin Laden, in rallying his troops to sacrifice their lives to kill the invading infidels, as by our intellectuals at AEI, who greatly influence our foreign policy.
Neocons – anxious for the U.S. to use force to realign the boundaries and change regimes in the Middle East – clearly understand the benefit of a galvanizing and emotional event to rally the people to their cause. Without a special event, they realized the difficulty in selling their policy of preemptive war where our own military personnel would be killed. Whether it was the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, the Gulf of Tonkin or the Maine, all served their purpose in promoting a war that was sought by our leaders.
Ledeen writes of a fortuitous event (1999): “…of course, we can always get lucky. Stunning events from outside can providentially awaken the enterprise from its growing torpor, and demonstrate the need for reversal, as the devastating Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 so effectively aroused the U.S. from its soothing dreams of permanent neutrality.”
Amazingly, Ledeen calls Pearl Harbor a “lucky” event. The Project for a New American Century, as recently as September 2000, likewise, foresaw the need for “a Pearl Harbor event” that would galvanize the American people to support their ambitious plans to ensure political and economic domination of the world, while strangling any potential “rival.”
Recognizing a “need” for a Pearl Harbor event, and referring to Pearl Harbor as being “lucky” are not identical to support and knowledge of such an event, but that this sympathy for a galvanizing event, as 9-11 turned out to be, was used to promote an agenda that strict constitutionalists and devotees of the Founders of this nation find appalling, is indeed disturbing. After 9-11, Rumsfeld and others argued for an immediate attack on Iraq, even though it was not implicated in the attacks.
The fact that neo-conservatives ridicule those who firmly believe that U.S. interests and world peace would best be served by a policy of neutrality and avoiding foreign entanglements should not go unchallenged. Not to do so is to condone their grandiose plans for an American world hegemony.
The current attention given neocons usually comes in the context of foreign policy. But there’s more to what’s going on today than just the tremendous influence the neocons have on our new policy of preemptive war with a goal of empire. Our government is now being moved by several ideas that come together in what I call “neoconism.” The foreign policy is being openly debated, even if its implications are not fully understood by many who support it. Washington is now driven by old views brought together in a new package.
We know those who lead us – both in the administration and in Congress – show no appetite to challenge the tax or monetary systems that do so much damage to our economy. The IRS and the Federal Reserve are off limits for criticism or reform. There’s no resistance to spending, either domestic or foreign. Debt is not seen as a problem. The supply-siders won on this issue, and now many conservatives readily endorse deficit spending.
There’s no serious opposition to the expanding welfare state, with rapid growth of the education, agriculture and medical-care bureaucracy. Support for labor unions and protectionism are not uncommon. Civil liberties are easily sacrificed in the post 9-11 atmosphere prevailing in Washington. Privacy issues are of little concern, except for a few members of Congress. Foreign aid and internationalism – in spite of some healthy criticism of the UN and growing concerns for our national sovereignty – are championed on both sides of the aisle. Lip service is given to the free market and free trade, yet the entire economy is run by special-interest legislation favoring big business, big labor and, especially, big money.
Instead of the “end of history,” we are now experiencing the end of a vocal limited-government movement in our nation’s capital. While most conservatives no longer defend balanced budgets and reduced spending, most liberals have grown lazy in defending civil liberties and now are approving wars that we initiate. The so-called “third way” has arrived and, sadly, it has taken the worst of what the conservatives and liberals have to offer. The people are less well off for it, while liberty languishes as a result.
Neocons enthusiastically embrace the Department of Education and national testing. Both parties overwhelmingly support the huge commitment to a new prescription drug program. Their devotion to the new approach called “compassionate conservatism” has lured many conservatives into supporting programs for expanding the federal role in welfare and in church charities. The faith-based initiative is a neocon project, yet it only repackages and expands the liberal notion of welfare. The intellectuals who promoted these initiatives were neocons, but there’s nothing conservative about expanding the federal government’s role in welfare.
The supply-siders’ policy of low-marginal tax rates has been incorporated into neoconism, as well as their support for easy money and generous monetary inflation. Neoconservatives are disinterested in the gold standard and even ignore the supply-siders’ argument for a phony gold standard.
Is it any wonder that federal government spending is growing at a rate faster than in any time in the past 35 years?
Power, politics and privilege prevail over the rule of law, liberty, justice and peace. But it does not need to be that way. Neoconism has brought together many old ideas about how government should rule the people. It may have modernized its appeal and packaging, but authoritarian rule is authoritarian rule, regardless of the humanitarian overtones. A solution can only come after the current ideology driving our government policies is replaced with a more positive one. In a historical context, liberty is a modern idea and must once again regain the high moral ground for civilization to advance. Restating the old justifications for war, people control and a benevolent state will not suffice. It cannot eliminate the shortcomings that always occur when the state assumes authority over others and when the will of one nation is forced on another – whether or not it is done with good intentions.
I realize that all conservatives are not neoconservatives, and all neocons don’t necessarily agree on all points – which means that in spite of their tremendous influence, most members of Congress and those in the administration do not necessarily take their marching orders from AEI or Richard Perle. But to use this as a reason to ignore what neoconservative leaders believe, write about and agitate for – with amazing success I might point out – would be at our own peril. This country still allows open discourse – though less everyday – and we who disagree should push the discussion and expose those who drive our policies. It is getting more difficult to get fair and balanced discussion on the issues, because it has become routine for the hegemons to label those who object to preemptive war and domestic surveillance as traitors, unpatriotic and un-American. The uniformity of support for our current foreign policy by major and cable-news networks should concern every American. We should all be thankful for C-SPAN and the Internet.
Michael Ledeen and other neoconservatives are already lobbying for war against Iran. Ledeen is pretty nasty to those who call for a calmer, reasoned approach by calling those who are not ready for war “cowards and appeasers of tyrants.” Because some urge a less militaristic approach to dealing with Iran, he claims they are betraying America’s best “traditions.” I wonder where he learned early American history! It’s obvious that Ledeen doesn’t consider the Founders and the Constitution part of our best traditions. We were hardly encouraged by the American revolutionaries to pursue an American empire. We were, however, urged to keep the Republic they so painstakingly designed.
If the neoconservatives retain control of the conservative, limited-government movement in Washington, the ideas, once championed by conservatives, of limiting the size and scope of government will be a long-forgotten dream.
The believers in liberty ought not deceive themselves. Who should be satisfied? Certainly not conservatives, for there is no conservative movement left. How could liberals be satisfied? They are pleased with the centralization of education and medical programs in Washington and support many of the administration’s proposals. But none should be pleased with the steady attack on the civil liberties of all American citizens and the now-accepted consensus that preemptive war – for almost any reason – is an acceptable policy for dealing with all the conflicts and problems of the world.
In spite of the deteriorating conditions in Washington – with loss of personal liberty, a weak economy, exploding deficits, and perpetual war, followed by nation building – there are still quite a number of us who would relish the opportunity to improve things, in one way or another. Certainly, a growing number of frustrated Americans, from both the right and the left, are getting anxious to see this Congress do a better job. But first, Congress must stop doing a bad job.
We’re at the point where we need a call to arms, both here in Washington and across the country. I’m not talking about firearms. Those of us who care need to raise both arms and face our palms out and begin waving and shouting: Stop! Enough is enough! It should include liberals, conservatives and independents. We’re all getting a bum rap from politicians who are pushed by polls and controlled by special-interest money.
One thing is certain, no matter how morally justified the programs and policies seem, the ability to finance all the guns and butter being promised is limited, and those limits are becoming more apparent every day.
Spending, borrowing and printing money cannot be the road to prosperity. It hasn’t worked in Japan, and it isn’t working here either. As a matter of fact, it’s never worked anytime throughout history. A point is always reached where government planning, spending and inflation run out of steam. Instead of these old tools reviving an economy, as they do in the early stages of economic interventionism, they eventually become the problem. Both sides of the political spectrum must one day realize that limitless government intrusion in the economy, in our personal lives and in the affairs of other nations cannot serve the best interests of America. This is not a conservative problem, nor is it a liberal problem – it’s a government intrusion problem that comes from both groups, albeit for different reasons. The problems emanate from both camps who champion different programs for different reasons. The solution will come when both groups realize that it’s not merely a single-party problem, or just a liberal or just a conservative problem.
Once enough of us decide we’ve had enough of all these so-called good things that the government is always promising – or more likely, when the country is broke and the government is unable to fulfill its promises to the people – we can start a serious discussion on the proper role for government in a free society. Unfortunately, it will be some time before Congress gets the message that the people are demanding true reform. This requires that those responsible for today’s problems are exposed and their philosophy of pervasive government intrusion is rejected.
Let it not be said that no one cared, that no one objected once it’s realized that our liberties and wealth are in jeopardy. A few have, and others will continue to do so, but too many – both in and out of government – close their eyes to the issue of personal liberty and ignore the fact that endless borrowing to finance endless demands cannot be sustained. True prosperity can only come from a healthy economy and sound money. That can only be achieved in a free society.
Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.
Ron Paul in the US House of Representatives, July 10, 2003
The modern-day, limited-government movement has been co-opted. The conservatives have failed in their effort to shrink the size of government. There has not been, nor will there soon be, a conservative revolution in Washington. Political party control of the federal government has changed, but the inexorable growth in the size and scope of government has continued unabated. The liberal arguments for limited government in personal affairs and foreign military adventurism were never seriously considered as part of this revolution.
Since the change of the political party in charge has not made a difference, who’s really in charge? If the particular party in power makes little difference, whose policy is it that permits expanded government programs, increased spending, huge deficits, nation building and the pervasive invasion of our privacy, with fewer Fourth Amendment protections than ever before?
Someone is responsible, and it’s important that those of us who love liberty, and resent big-brother government, identify the philosophic supporters who have the most to say about the direction our country is going. If they’re wrong – and I believe they are – we need to show it, alert the American people, and offer a more positive approach to government. However, this depends on whether the American people desire to live in a free society and reject the dangerous notion that we need a strong central government to take care of us from the cradle to the grave. Do the American people really believe it’s the government’s responsibility to make us morally better and economically equal? Do we have a responsibility to police the world, while imposing our vision of good government on everyone else in the world with some form of utopian nation building? If not, and the enemies of liberty are exposed and rejected, then it behooves us to present an alternative philosophy that is morally superior and economically sound and provides a guide to world affairs to enhance peace and commerce.
One thing is certain: conservatives who worked and voted for less government in the Reagan years and welcomed the takeover of the U.S. Congress and the presidency in the 1990s and early 2000s were deceived. Soon they will realize that the goal of limited government has been dashed and that their views no longer matter.
The so-called conservative revolution of the past two decades has given us massive growth in government size, spending and regulations. Deficits are exploding and the national debt is now rising at greater than a half-trillion dollars per year. Taxes do not go down – even if we vote to lower them. They can’t, as long as spending is increased, since all spending must be paid for one way or another. Both Presidents Reagan and the elder George Bush raised taxes directly. With this administration, so far, direct taxes have been reduced – and they certainly should have been – but it means little if spending increases and deficits rise.
When taxes are not raised to accommodate higher spending, the bills must be paid by either borrowing or “printing” new money. This is one reason why we conveniently have a generous Federal Reserve chairman who is willing to accommodate the Congress. With borrowing and inflating, the “tax” is delayed and distributed in a way that makes it difficult for those paying the tax to identify it. For instance, future generations, or those on fixed incomes who suffer from rising prices, and those who lose jobs – they certainly feel the consequences of economic dislocations that this process causes. Government spending is always a “tax” burden on the American people and is never equally or fairly distributed. The poor and low-middle income workers always suffer the most from the deceitful tax of inflation and borrowing.
Many present-day conservatives, who generally argue for less government and supported the Reagan/Gingrich/Bush takeover of the federal government, are now justifiably disillusioned. Although not a monolithic group, they wanted to shrink the size of government.
Early in our history, the advocates of limited, constitutional government recognized two important principles: the rule of law was crucial, and a constitutional government must derive “just powers from the consent of the governed.” It was understood that an explicit transfer of power to government could only occur with power rightfully and naturally endowed to each individual as a God-given right. Therefore, the powers that could be transferred would be limited to the purpose of protecting liberty. Unfortunately, in the last 100 years, the defense of liberty has been fragmented and shared by various groups, with some protecting civil liberties, others economic freedom, and a small diverse group arguing for a foreign policy of nonintervention.
The philosophy of freedom has had a tough go of it, and it was hoped that the renewed interest in limited government of the past two decades would revive an interest in reconstituting the freedom philosophy into something more consistent. Those who worked for the goal of limited government power believed the rhetoric of politicians who promised smaller government. Sometimes it was just plain sloppy thinking on their part, but at other times, they fell victim to a deliberate distortion of a concise limited-government philosophy by politicians who misled many into believing that we would see a rollback on government intrusiveness.
Yes, there was always a remnant who longed for truly limited government and maintained a belief in the rule of law, combined with a deep conviction that free people and a government bound by a Constitution were the most advantageous form of government. They recognized it as the only practical way for prosperity to be spread to the maximum number of people while promoting peace and security.
That remnant – imperfect as it may have been – was heard from in the elections of 1980 and 1994 and then achieved major victories in 2000 and 2002 when professed limited-government proponents took over the administration, the Senate and the House. However, the true believers in limited government are now shunned and laughed at. At the very least, they are ignored – except when they are used by the new leaders of the right, the new conservatives now in charge of the U.S. government.
The remnant’s instincts were correct, and the politicians placated them with talk of free markets, limited government, and a humble, non-nation-building foreign policy. However, little concern for civil liberties was expressed in this recent quest for less government. Yet, for an ultimate victory of achieving freedom, this must change. Interest in personal privacy and choices has generally remained outside the concern of many conservatives – especially with the great harm done by their support of the drug war. Even though some confusion has emerged over our foreign policy since the breakdown of the Soviet empire, it’s been a net benefit in getting some conservatives back on track with a less militaristic, interventionist foreign policy. Unfortunately, after 9-ll, the cause of liberty suffered a setback. As a result, millions of Americans voted for the less-than-perfect conservative revolution because they believed in the promises of the politicians.
Now there’s mounting evidence to indicate exactly what happened to the revolution. Government is bigger than ever, and future commitments are overwhelming. Millions will soon become disenchanted with the new status quo delivered to the American people by the advocates of limited government and will find it to be just more of the old status quo. Victories for limited government have turned out to be hollow indeed.
Since the national debt is increasing at a rate greater than a half-trillion dollars per year, the debt limit was recently increased by an astounding $984 billion dollars. Total U.S. government obligations are $43 trillion, while total net worth of U.S. households is just over $40 trillion. The country is broke, but no one in Washington seems to notice or care. The philosophic and political commitment for both guns and butter – and especially for expanding the American empire – must be challenged. This is crucial for our survival.
In spite of the floundering economy, the Congress and the administration continue to take on new commitments in foreign aid, education, farming, medicine, multiple efforts at nation building, and preemptive wars around the world. Already we’re entrenched in Iraq and Afghanistan, with plans to soon add new trophies to our conquest. War talk abounds as to when Syria, Iran and North Korea will be attacked.
How did all this transpire? Why did the government do it? Why haven’t the people objected? How long will it go on before something is done? Does anyone care?
Will the euphoria of grand military victories – against non-enemies – ever be mellowed? Someday, we as a legislative body must face the reality of the dire situation in which we have allowed ourselves to become enmeshed. Hopefully, it will be soon!
We got here because ideas do have consequences. Bad ideas have bad consequences, and even the best of intentions have unintended consequences. We need to know exactly what the philosophic ideas were that drove us to this point; then, hopefully, reject them and decide on another set of intellectual parameters.
There is abundant evidence exposing those who drive our foreign policy justifying preemptive war. Those who scheme are proud of the achievements in usurping control over foreign policy. These are the neoconservatives of recent fame. Granted, they are talented and achieved a political victory that all policymakers must admire. But can freedom and the Republic survive this takeover? That question should concern us.
Neoconservatives are obviously in positions of influence and are well-placed throughout our government and the media. An apathetic Congress put up little resistance and abdicated its responsibilities over foreign affairs. The electorate was easily influenced to join in the patriotic fervor supporting the military adventurism advocated by the neoconservatives.
The numbers of those who still hope for truly limited government diminished and had their concerns ignored these past 22 months, during the aftermath of 9-11. Members of Congress were easily influenced to publicly support any domestic policy or foreign military adventure that was supposed to help reduce the threat of a terrorist attack. Believers in limited government were harder to find. Political money, as usual, played a role in pressing Congress into supporting almost any proposal suggested by the neocons. This process – where campaign dollars and lobbying efforts affect policy – is hardly the domain of any single political party, and unfortunately, is the way of life in Washington.
There are many reasons why government continues to grow. It would be naïve for anyone to expect otherwise. Since 9-11, protection of privacy, whether medical, personal or financial, has vanished. Free speech and the Fourth Amendment have been under constant attack. Higher welfare expenditures are endorsed by the leadership of both parties. Policing the world and nation-building issues are popular campaign targets, yet they are now standard operating procedures. There’s no sign that these programs will be slowed or reversed until either we are stopped by force overseas (which won’t be soon) or we go broke and can no longer afford these grandiose plans for a world empire (which will probably come sooner than later.)
None of this happened by accident or coincidence. Precise philosophic ideas prompted certain individuals to gain influence to implement these plans. The neoconservatives – a name they gave themselves – diligently worked their way into positions of power and influence. They documented their goals, strategy and moral justification for all they hoped to accomplish. Above all else, they were not and are not conservatives dedicated to limited, constitutional government.
Neo-conservatism has been around for decades and, strangely, has connections to past generations as far back as Machiavelli. Modern-day neo-conservatism was introduced to us in the 1960s. It entails both a detailed strategy as well as a philosophy of government. The ideas of Teddy Roosevelt, and certainly Woodrow Wilson, were quite similar to many of the views of present-day neocons. Neocon spokesman Max Boot brags that what he advocates is “hard Wilsonianism.” In many ways, there’s nothing “neo” about their views, and certainly nothing conservative. Yet they have been able to co-op the conservative movement by advertising themselves as a new or modern form of conservatism.
More recently, the modern-day neocons have come from the far left, a group historically identified as former Trotskyists. Liberal Christopher Hitchins, has recently officially joined the neocons, and it has been reported that he has already been to the White House as an ad hoc consultant. Many neocons now in positions of influence in Washington can trace their status back to Professor Leo Strauss of the University of Chicago. One of Strauss’ books was Thoughts on Machiavelli. This book was not a condemnation of Machiavelli’s philosophy. Paul Wolfowitz actually got his PhD under Strauss. Others closely associated with these views are Richard Perle, Eliot Abrams, Robert Kagan and William Kristol. All are key players in designing our new strategy of preemptive war. Others include: Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute; former CIA Director James Woolsy; Bill Bennett of Book of Virtues fame; Frank Gaffney; Dick Cheney; and Donald Rumsfeld. There are just too many to mention who are philosophically or politically connected to the neocon philosophy in some varying degree.
The godfather of modern-day neo-conservatism is considered to be Irving Kristol, father of Bill Kristol, who set the stage in 1983 with his publication Reflections of a Neoconservative. In this book, Kristol also defends the traditional liberal position on welfare.
More important than the names of people affiliated with neo-conservatism are the views they adhere to. Here is a brief summary of the general understanding of what neocons believe:
They agree with Trotsky on permanent revolution, violent as well as intellectual.
They are for redrawing the map of the Middle East and are willing to use force to do so.
They believe in preemptive war to achieve desired ends.
They accept the notion that the ends justify the means – that hard-ball politics is a moral necessity.
They express no opposition to the welfare state.
They are not bashful about an American empire; instead they strongly endorse it.
They believe lying is necessary for the state to survive.
They believe a powerful federal government is a benefit.
They believe pertinent facts about how a society should be run should be held by the elite andwithheld from those who do not have the courage to deal with it.
They believe neutrality in foreign affairs is ill-advised.
They hold Leo Strauss in high esteem.
They believe imperialism, if progressive in nature, is appropriate.
Using American might to force American ideals on others is acceptable. Force shouldnot be limited to the defense of our country.
9-11 resulted from the lack of foreign entanglements, not from too many.
They dislike and despise libertarians (therefore, the same applies to all strict constitutionalists.)
They endorse attacks on civil liberties, such as those found in the Patriot Act, as being necessary.
They unconditionally support Israel and have a close alliance with the Likud Party.
Various organizations and publications over the last 30 years have played a significant role in the rise to power of the neoconservatives. It took plenty of money and commitment to produce the intellectual arguments needed to convince the many participants in the movement of its respectability.
It is no secret – especially after the rash of research and articles written about the neocons since our invasion of Iraq – how they gained influence and what organizations were used to promote their cause. Although for decades, they agitated for their beliefs through publications like The National Review, The Weekly Standard, The Public Interest, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, and the New York Post, their views only gained momentum in the 1990s following the first Persian Gulf War – which still has not ended even with removal of Saddam Hussein. They became convinced that a much more militant approach to resolving all the conflicts in the Middle East was an absolute necessity, and they were determined to implement that policy.
In addition to publications, multiple think tanks and projects were created to promote their agenda. A product of the Bradley Foundation, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) led the neocon charge, but the real push for war came from the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) another organization helped by the Bradley Foundation. This occurred in 1998 and was chaired by Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. Early on, they urged war against Iraq, but were disappointed with the Clinton administration, which never followed through with its periodic bombings. Obviously, these bombings were motivated more by Clinton’s personal and political problems than a belief in the neocon agenda.
The election of 2000 changed all that. The Defense Policy Board, chaired by Richard Perle played no small role in coordinating the various projects and think tanks, all determined to take us into war against Iraq. It wasn’t too long before the dream of empire was brought closer to reality by the election of 2000 with Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld playing key roles in this accomplishment. The plan to promote an “American greatness” imperialistic foreign policy was now a distinct possibility. Iraq offered a great opportunity to prove their long-held theories. This opportunity was a consequence of the 9-11 disaster.
The money and views of Rupert Murdock also played a key role in promoting the neocon views, as well as rallying support by the general population, through his News Corporation, which owns Fox News Network, the New York Post and Weekly Standard. This powerful and influential media empire did more to galvanize public support for the Iraqi invasion than one might imagine. This facilitated the Rumsfeld/Cheney policy as their plans to attack Iraq came to fruition. It would have been difficult for the neocons to usurp foreign policy from the restraints of Colin Powell’s State Department without the successful agitation of the Rupert Murdock empire. Max Boot was satisfied, as he explained: “Neoconservatives believe in using American might to promote American ideals abroad.” This attitude is a far cry from the advice of the Founders, who advocated no entangling alliances and neutrality as the proper goal of American foreign policy.
Let there be no doubt, those in the neocon camp had been anxious to go to war against Iraq for a decade. They justified the use of force to accomplish their goals, even if it required preemptive war. If anyone doubts this assertion, they need only to read of their strategy in “A Clean Break: a New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” Although they felt morally justified in changing the government in Iraq, they knew that public support was important, and justification had to be given to pursue the war. Of course, a threat to us had to exist before the people and the Congress would go along with war. The majority of Americans became convinced of this threat, which, in actuality, never really existed. Now we have the ongoing debate over the location of weapons of mass destruction. Where was the danger? Was all this killing and spending necessary? How long will this nation-building and dying go on? When will we become more concerned about the needs of our own citizens than the problems we sought in Iraq and Afghanistan? Who knows where we’ll go next – Iran, Syria or North Korea?
At the end of the Cold War, the neoconservatives realized a rearrangement of the world was occurring and that our superior economic and military power offered them a perfect opportunity to control the process of remaking the Middle East.
It was recognized that a new era was upon us, and the neocons welcomed Frances Fukuyama’s “end of history” declaration. To them, the debate was over. The West won; the Soviets lost. Old-fashioned communism was dead. Long live the new era of neoconservatism. The struggle may not be over, but the West won the intellectual fight, they reasoned. The only problem is that the neocons decided to define the philosophy of the victors. They have been amazingly successful in their efforts to control the debate over what Western values are and by what methods they will be spread throughout the world.
Communism surely lost a lot with the breakup of the Soviet Empire, but this can hardly be declared a victory for American liberty, as the Founders understood it. Neoconservatism is not the philosophy of free markets and a wise foreign policy. Instead, it represents big-government welfare at home and a program of using our military might to spread their version of American values throughout the world. Since neoconservatives dominate the way the U.S. government now operates, it behooves us all to understand their beliefs and goals. The breakup of the Soviet system may well have been an epic event but to say that the views of the neocons are the unchallenged victors and that all we need do is wait for their implementation is a capitulation to controlling the forces of history that many Americans are not yet ready to concede. There is surely no need to do so.
There is now a recognized philosophic connection between modern-day neoconservatives and Irving Kristol, Leo Strauss and Machiavelli. This is important in understanding that today’s policies and the subsequent problems will be with us for years to come if these policies are not reversed.
Not only did Leo Strauss write favorably of Machiavelli, Michael Ledeen, a current leader of the neoconservative movement, did the same. In 1999, Ledeen titled his book, Machiavelli on Modern Leadership, and subtitled: Why Machiaveli’s iron rules are as timely and important today as five centuries ago. Ledeen is indeed an influential neocon theorist whose views get lots of attention today in Washington. His book on Machiavelli, interestingly enough, was passed out to Members of Congress attending a political strategy meeting shortly after its publication and at just about the time A Clean Break was issued.
In Ledeen’s most recent publication, The War Against the Terror Masters, he reiterates his beliefs outlined in this 1999 Machaivelli book. He specifically praises: “Creative destruction…both within our own society and abroad…(foreigners) seeing America undo traditional societies may fear us, for they do not wish to be undone.” Amazingly, Ledeen concludes: “They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission.”
If those words don’t scare you, nothing will. If they are not a clear warning, I don’t know what could be. It sounds like both sides of each disagreement in the world will be following the principle of preemptive war. The world is certainly a less safe place for it.
In Machiavelli on Modern Leadership, Ledeen praises a business leader for correctly understanding Machiavelli: “There are no absolute solutions. It all depends. What is right and what is wrong depends on what needs to be done and how.” This is a clear endorsement of situation ethics and is not coming from the traditional left. It reminds me of: “It depends on what the definition of the word ‘is’ is.”
Ledeen quotes Machiavelli approvingly on what makes a great leader. “A prince must have no other objectives or other thoughts or take anything for his craft, except war.” To Ledeen, this meant: “…the virtue of the warrior are those of great leaders of any successful organization.” Yet it’s obvious that war is not coincidental to neocon philosophy, but an integral part. The intellectuals justify it, and the politicians carry it out. There’s a precise reason to argue for war over peace according to Ledeen, for “…peace increases our peril by making discipline less urgent, encouraging some of our worst instincts, in depriving us of some of our best leaders.” Peace, he claims, is a dream and not even a pleasant one, for it would cause indolence and would undermine the power of the state. Although I concede the history of the world is a history of frequent war, to capitulate and give up even striving for peace – believing peace is not a benefit to mankind – is a frightening thought that condemns the world to perpetual war and justifies it as a benefit and necessity. These are dangerous ideas, from which no good can come.
The conflict of the ages has been between the state and the individual: central power versus liberty. The more restrained the state and the more emphasis on individual liberty, the greater has been the advancement of civilization and general prosperity. Just as man’s condition was not locked in place by the times and wars of old and improved with liberty and free markets, there’s no reason to believe a new stage for man might not be achieved by believing and working for conditions of peace. The inevitability and so-called need for preemptive war should never be intellectually justified as being a benefit. Such an attitude guarantees the backsliding of civilization. Neocons, unfortunately, claim that war is in man’s nature and that we can’t do much about it, so let’s use it to our advantage by promoting our goodness around the world through force of arms. That view is anathema to the cause of liberty and the preservation of the Constitution. If it is not loudly refuted, our future will be dire indeed.
Ledeen believes man is basically evil and cannot be left to his own desires. Therefore, he must have proper and strong leadership, just as Machiavelli argued. Only then can man achieve good, as Ledeen explains: “In order to achieve the most noble accomplishments, the leader may have to ‘enter into evil.’ This is the chilling insight that has made Machiavelli so feared, admired and challenging…we are rotten,” argues Ledeen. “It’s true that we can achieve greatness if, and only if, we are properly led.” In other words, man is so depraved that individuals are incapable of moral, ethical and spiritual greatness, and achieving excellence and virtue can only come from a powerful authoritarian leader. What depraved ideas are these to now be influencing our leaders in Washington? The question Ledeen doesn’t answer is: “Why do the political leaders not suffer from the same shortcomings and where do they obtain their monopoly on wisdom?”
Once this trust is placed in the hands of a powerful leader, this neocon argues that certain tools are permissible to use. For instance: “lying is central to the survival of nations and to the success of great enterprises, because if our enemies can count on the reliability of everything you say, your vulnerability is enormously increased.” What about the effects of lying on one’s own people? Who cares if a leader can fool the enemy? Does calling it “strategic deception” make lying morally justifiable? Ledeen and Machiavelli argue that it does, as long as the survivability of the state is at stake. Preserving the state is their goal, even if the personal liberty of all individuals has to be suspended or canceled.
Ledeen makes it clear that war is necessary to establish national boundaries – because that’s the way it’s always been done. Who needs progress of the human race! He explains: “Look at the map of the world: national boundaries have not been drawn by peaceful men leading lives of spiritual contemplation. National boundaries have been established by war, and national character has been shaped by struggle, most often bloody struggle.”
Yes, but who is to lead the charge and decide which borders we are to fight for? What about borders 6,000 miles away unrelated to our own contiguous borders and our own national security? Stating a relative truism regarding the frequency of war throughout history should hardly be the moral justification for expanding the concept of war to settle man’s disputes. How can one call this progress?
Machiavelli, Ledeen and the neocons recognized a need to generate a religious zeal for promoting the state. This, he claims, is especially necessary when force is used to promote an agenda. It’s been true throughout history and remains true today, each side of major conflicts invokes God’s approval. Our side refers to a “crusade;” theirs to a “holy Jihad.” Too often wars boil down to their god against our God. It seems this principle is more a cynical effort to gain approval from the masses, especially those most likely to be killed for the sake of the war promoters on both sides who have power, prestige and wealth at stake.
Ledeen explains why God must always be on the side of advocates of war: “Without fear of God, no state can last long, for the dread of eternal damnation keeps men in line, causes them to honor their promises, and inspires them to risk their lives for the common good.” It seems dying for the common good has gained a higher moral status than eternal salvation of one’s soul. Ledeen adds: “Without fear of punishment, men will not obey laws that force them to act contrary to their passions. Without fear of arms, the state cannot enforce the laws…to this end, Machiavelli wants leaders to make the state spectacular.”
It's of interest to note that some large Christian denominations have joined the neoconservatives in promoting preemptive war, while completely ignoring the Christian doctrine of a Just War. The neocons sought and openly welcomed their support.
I’d like someone to glean anything from what the Founders said or placed in the Constitution that agrees with this now-professed doctrine of a “spectacular” state promoted by those who now have so much influence on our policies here at home and abroad. Ledeen argues that this religious element, this fear of God, is needed for discipline of those who may be hesitant to sacrifice their lives for the good of the “spectacular state.”
He explains in eerie terms: “Dying for one’s country doesn’t come naturally. Modern armies, raised from the populace, must be inspired, motivated, indoctrinated. Religion is central to the military enterprise, for men are more likely to risk their lives if they believe they will be rewarded forever after for serving their country.” This is an admonition that might just as well have been given by Osama bin Laden, in rallying his troops to sacrifice their lives to kill the invading infidels, as by our intellectuals at AEI, who greatly influence our foreign policy.
Neocons – anxious for the U.S. to use force to realign the boundaries and change regimes in the Middle East – clearly understand the benefit of a galvanizing and emotional event to rally the people to their cause. Without a special event, they realized the difficulty in selling their policy of preemptive war where our own military personnel would be killed. Whether it was the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, the Gulf of Tonkin or the Maine, all served their purpose in promoting a war that was sought by our leaders.
Ledeen writes of a fortuitous event (1999): “…of course, we can always get lucky. Stunning events from outside can providentially awaken the enterprise from its growing torpor, and demonstrate the need for reversal, as the devastating Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 so effectively aroused the U.S. from its soothing dreams of permanent neutrality.”
Amazingly, Ledeen calls Pearl Harbor a “lucky” event. The Project for a New American Century, as recently as September 2000, likewise, foresaw the need for “a Pearl Harbor event” that would galvanize the American people to support their ambitious plans to ensure political and economic domination of the world, while strangling any potential “rival.”
Recognizing a “need” for a Pearl Harbor event, and referring to Pearl Harbor as being “lucky” are not identical to support and knowledge of such an event, but that this sympathy for a galvanizing event, as 9-11 turned out to be, was used to promote an agenda that strict constitutionalists and devotees of the Founders of this nation find appalling, is indeed disturbing. After 9-11, Rumsfeld and others argued for an immediate attack on Iraq, even though it was not implicated in the attacks.
The fact that neo-conservatives ridicule those who firmly believe that U.S. interests and world peace would best be served by a policy of neutrality and avoiding foreign entanglements should not go unchallenged. Not to do so is to condone their grandiose plans for an American world hegemony.
The current attention given neocons usually comes in the context of foreign policy. But there’s more to what’s going on today than just the tremendous influence the neocons have on our new policy of preemptive war with a goal of empire. Our government is now being moved by several ideas that come together in what I call “neoconism.” The foreign policy is being openly debated, even if its implications are not fully understood by many who support it. Washington is now driven by old views brought together in a new package.
We know those who lead us – both in the administration and in Congress – show no appetite to challenge the tax or monetary systems that do so much damage to our economy. The IRS and the Federal Reserve are off limits for criticism or reform. There’s no resistance to spending, either domestic or foreign. Debt is not seen as a problem. The supply-siders won on this issue, and now many conservatives readily endorse deficit spending.
There’s no serious opposition to the expanding welfare state, with rapid growth of the education, agriculture and medical-care bureaucracy. Support for labor unions and protectionism are not uncommon. Civil liberties are easily sacrificed in the post 9-11 atmosphere prevailing in Washington. Privacy issues are of little concern, except for a few members of Congress. Foreign aid and internationalism – in spite of some healthy criticism of the UN and growing concerns for our national sovereignty – are championed on both sides of the aisle. Lip service is given to the free market and free trade, yet the entire economy is run by special-interest legislation favoring big business, big labor and, especially, big money.
Instead of the “end of history,” we are now experiencing the end of a vocal limited-government movement in our nation’s capital. While most conservatives no longer defend balanced budgets and reduced spending, most liberals have grown lazy in defending civil liberties and now are approving wars that we initiate. The so-called “third way” has arrived and, sadly, it has taken the worst of what the conservatives and liberals have to offer. The people are less well off for it, while liberty languishes as a result.
Neocons enthusiastically embrace the Department of Education and national testing. Both parties overwhelmingly support the huge commitment to a new prescription drug program. Their devotion to the new approach called “compassionate conservatism” has lured many conservatives into supporting programs for expanding the federal role in welfare and in church charities. The faith-based initiative is a neocon project, yet it only repackages and expands the liberal notion of welfare. The intellectuals who promoted these initiatives were neocons, but there’s nothing conservative about expanding the federal government’s role in welfare.
The supply-siders’ policy of low-marginal tax rates has been incorporated into neoconism, as well as their support for easy money and generous monetary inflation. Neoconservatives are disinterested in the gold standard and even ignore the supply-siders’ argument for a phony gold standard.
Is it any wonder that federal government spending is growing at a rate faster than in any time in the past 35 years?
Power, politics and privilege prevail over the rule of law, liberty, justice and peace. But it does not need to be that way. Neoconism has brought together many old ideas about how government should rule the people. It may have modernized its appeal and packaging, but authoritarian rule is authoritarian rule, regardless of the humanitarian overtones. A solution can only come after the current ideology driving our government policies is replaced with a more positive one. In a historical context, liberty is a modern idea and must once again regain the high moral ground for civilization to advance. Restating the old justifications for war, people control and a benevolent state will not suffice. It cannot eliminate the shortcomings that always occur when the state assumes authority over others and when the will of one nation is forced on another – whether or not it is done with good intentions.
I realize that all conservatives are not neoconservatives, and all neocons don’t necessarily agree on all points – which means that in spite of their tremendous influence, most members of Congress and those in the administration do not necessarily take their marching orders from AEI or Richard Perle. But to use this as a reason to ignore what neoconservative leaders believe, write about and agitate for – with amazing success I might point out – would be at our own peril. This country still allows open discourse – though less everyday – and we who disagree should push the discussion and expose those who drive our policies. It is getting more difficult to get fair and balanced discussion on the issues, because it has become routine for the hegemons to label those who object to preemptive war and domestic surveillance as traitors, unpatriotic and un-American. The uniformity of support for our current foreign policy by major and cable-news networks should concern every American. We should all be thankful for C-SPAN and the Internet.
Michael Ledeen and other neoconservatives are already lobbying for war against Iran. Ledeen is pretty nasty to those who call for a calmer, reasoned approach by calling those who are not ready for war “cowards and appeasers of tyrants.” Because some urge a less militaristic approach to dealing with Iran, he claims they are betraying America’s best “traditions.” I wonder where he learned early American history! It’s obvious that Ledeen doesn’t consider the Founders and the Constitution part of our best traditions. We were hardly encouraged by the American revolutionaries to pursue an American empire. We were, however, urged to keep the Republic they so painstakingly designed.
If the neoconservatives retain control of the conservative, limited-government movement in Washington, the ideas, once championed by conservatives, of limiting the size and scope of government will be a long-forgotten dream.
The believers in liberty ought not deceive themselves. Who should be satisfied? Certainly not conservatives, for there is no conservative movement left. How could liberals be satisfied? They are pleased with the centralization of education and medical programs in Washington and support many of the administration’s proposals. But none should be pleased with the steady attack on the civil liberties of all American citizens and the now-accepted consensus that preemptive war – for almost any reason – is an acceptable policy for dealing with all the conflicts and problems of the world.
In spite of the deteriorating conditions in Washington – with loss of personal liberty, a weak economy, exploding deficits, and perpetual war, followed by nation building – there are still quite a number of us who would relish the opportunity to improve things, in one way or another. Certainly, a growing number of frustrated Americans, from both the right and the left, are getting anxious to see this Congress do a better job. But first, Congress must stop doing a bad job.
We’re at the point where we need a call to arms, both here in Washington and across the country. I’m not talking about firearms. Those of us who care need to raise both arms and face our palms out and begin waving and shouting: Stop! Enough is enough! It should include liberals, conservatives and independents. We’re all getting a bum rap from politicians who are pushed by polls and controlled by special-interest money.
One thing is certain, no matter how morally justified the programs and policies seem, the ability to finance all the guns and butter being promised is limited, and those limits are becoming more apparent every day.
Spending, borrowing and printing money cannot be the road to prosperity. It hasn’t worked in Japan, and it isn’t working here either. As a matter of fact, it’s never worked anytime throughout history. A point is always reached where government planning, spending and inflation run out of steam. Instead of these old tools reviving an economy, as they do in the early stages of economic interventionism, they eventually become the problem. Both sides of the political spectrum must one day realize that limitless government intrusion in the economy, in our personal lives and in the affairs of other nations cannot serve the best interests of America. This is not a conservative problem, nor is it a liberal problem – it’s a government intrusion problem that comes from both groups, albeit for different reasons. The problems emanate from both camps who champion different programs for different reasons. The solution will come when both groups realize that it’s not merely a single-party problem, or just a liberal or just a conservative problem.
Once enough of us decide we’ve had enough of all these so-called good things that the government is always promising – or more likely, when the country is broke and the government is unable to fulfill its promises to the people – we can start a serious discussion on the proper role for government in a free society. Unfortunately, it will be some time before Congress gets the message that the people are demanding true reform. This requires that those responsible for today’s problems are exposed and their philosophy of pervasive government intrusion is rejected.
Let it not be said that no one cared, that no one objected once it’s realized that our liberties and wealth are in jeopardy. A few have, and others will continue to do so, but too many – both in and out of government – close their eyes to the issue of personal liberty and ignore the fact that endless borrowing to finance endless demands cannot be sustained. True prosperity can only come from a healthy economy and sound money. That can only be achieved in a free society.
Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.
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