Category Archives: Christian Right

The Value Of Lying

Christian Right, Conservatism, Debt, Politics, Religion, Republicans, Ron Paul, Sarah Palin

While we’re on the subject of liars and the lies they tell, a Values Voter Summit took place in Washington earlier today.

Read about John Boehner’s deceptions in this WSJ report.

Contra Boehner, the Democrats did not bankrupt the country; Bush did the dues before them; Barack is finishing what Bush began. The Republicans can’t “take our country back”; and Democrats have no more undermined national security than the Republicans did under Bush.

At the valueless summit, a straw poll was held and some straw men selected as favorites for president in 2012. Some learning curve, Middle America!

Huckabee grabbed nearly 29 percent of the vote. “Romney, Pawlenty, Palin and Pence each won roughly 12 percent of the 597 votes cast.”

Does anyone know if this hapless lot even invited Ron Paul?

Update III: Middle America Or Meathead’s America?

America, BAB's A List, Christian Right, Human Accomplishment, Iraq, Israel, Just War, Paleoconservatism, Palestinian Authority, Political Philosophy, Republicans, The State, Welfare

THE EXCERPT is from “Is heartland America Ignorant And Gullible?”, my new WND.COM column, now (Sept. 12) on Taki’s:

“Given the perpetual parade of ‘intellectuals’ who are not intelligent in our media — Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, PBS and the ‘parrot press’ — I don’t expect you to be familiar with political philosopher Paul E. Gottfried. Nevertheless, Paul (he’s a friend) is one of the most important intellectuals in America.”

“Historian Eugene Genovese calls Paul incorruptible, ‘an American intellectual of superior talent.’ Author and historian John Lukacs praises Professor Gottfried as ‘a very profound thinker.’ And L. Brent Bozell III salutes his ‘amazing intellectual courage’ — courage in the face of the malign, philistine forces of the liberal and neoconservative mainstream.”

Over the years, I’ve interviewed Professor Gottfried pursuant to the publication of his many books. I do so again on the occasion of the publication of “Encounters: My Life with Nixon, Marcuse, and Other Friends and Teachers.”

READ THE interview, “Is heartland America Ignorant And Gullible?”, now on WND.COM. And on Taki’s Magazine on the weekend.

Update I (Sept. 11): Please note that the always-genial and brutally candid Paul Gottfried has replied to his detractors in the Comments Section. Some of the critics have been quite harsh (and this forum is moderated).

Update II: Randy, the war on Iraq is not going to be adjudicated again here, not ever. I chronicled the invasion of Iraq at great length, applying fact and every ounce of reason in my possession to repudiate and denounce that war crime. The case is closed! Neoconservative ideologues stand in the dock for aiding and abetting a war crime. Any reader is welcome to read my article archive on the topic (search the blog archives too). I can well imagine that many ideologues who supported the war urgently need to make peace with their maker, or consciences, for their role in a crime of such moral and material magnitude.

Update III (Sept. 12): Hayim, one doesn’t have to endorse everything Paul Gottfried writes or espouses to appreciate his contribution and steadfast principles. As someone who is ostracized by even more factions than Paul, I recognize the strength of character it takes to resist group pressure to conform and compromise one’s notion of right and wrong.

As to the article you cited, and which I skimmed: I have quoted Dershowitz on Israel and find his commentary worthwhile. I do not appreciate the dichotomy—or hypocrisy—the likes of Dershowitz evince in that they are hard-core rightists when it comes to Israel’s right to preserve its ethnic identity. But anyone arguing that the preservation of the historical America is essential to the preservation of freedom itself is a racist in Dershowitz’ books. That aspect of the Jewish Diaspora sickens me. Israelis are nothing like these American Jews.

In “Harvard Hucksters Hype Israeli Pseudo-Historians,” I expressed exactly what I thought of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, authors of “The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.”

Norman Finkelstein I include among “dwarfs standing on the shoulders of Jewish giants. Noam Chomsky (‘The Godfather’), Steven and Hillary Rose … Joel Kovel, Tanya Reinhart in Tel Aviv, and Michael Cohen in Swansea—these are but a few of the new anti-Semitism’s leading Jewish lights.”

Where I agree with Paul is in his assertion that there is among the anointed Jewish leadership a crass abuse of “the Holocaust for propagandistic purposes.” No doubt about it. And it’s repulsive. To the extend Finkelstein exposes this, to that extent he makes a valid point. The Holocaust industry makes even me turn away from a catastrophe that has truncated my own family tree.

I also find the premise of the Daniel Goldhagen book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, appalling.

I think that on the whole Joan Peterson’s book is pretty good. If there are a few factual problems—and I don’t know that there are—they serve in this context as a fig leaf for those who would deny the central truth about the Jewish settlement of Israel:

“The territory within which the State of Israel was established did not form part of any larger state that opposed its creation. The territory was, moreover, one where Jews formed a majority on land they had purchased legitimately.”

Unanimously, this Jewish majority issued a declaration of independence promising that ‘the State of Israel will … foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants,’ not for the benefit of mankind. They promised that the country would ‘be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisioned by the prophets of Israel”; that it would ‘ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex,’ and ‘safeguard the Holy Places of all religions.”

It is a joke to claim, as the anti-Israel right does, that Israel doesn’t respect the rights of all its inhabitants, Arabs included. Let the Raimondos of this world—hopefully there is only one of his kind—go live/or vacation in the Palestinian Authority.

Above all, it is undeniable that Arabs had trashed the Holy Land throughout their occupation of the place. It took Jews to dry the swamps—they died in droves of malaria doing so—to plant orchards, start industries, and generally build from a howling wilderness a prosperous country.

You won’t find me lamenting that wonderful achievement.

Updated: Conservatives Add Another Blond To The Brain Trust

Celebrity, Christian Right, Conservatism, Gender, Homosexuality, Intelligence, Pop-Culture, Republicans

Michael Musto, the Village Voice’s machine gun, on Miss California: “This girl is a ding-dong. She’s not just a boob, but a fake boob. (An allusion to Carrie Prejean’s breast augmentation.) A beauty contestant with falsies and an opinion. Let the babe who needs a brain implant deflate. You’re telling me a lot of beauty contestants are fake? Next you’re going to be telling me their personalities are artificial too. There is no talent, no personality to these contestants, just parading down the runway like a ding-dong trying to cure cancer and find the right handbag to match her navel.”

Ding-dong has been stumble-bumbling on the morning shows. Expect Hannity’s Great American Panel to be next, the slutty Kim Kardashian having already blazed a trail with her famous tail on that Fox News show. I never thought I’d come to think of “Hannity and Colmes,” “Hannity” in his previous incarnation, as an intellectual high-water mark for this “news” program.

From the bimbo burlesque, let’s move on to the ding-dong’s area of expertise, same-sex nuptials. This is from my “MARRIAGE AND THE MANUFACTURING OF RIGHTS”:

“Not conferring the benefits of marriage on homosexual unions does not violate the rights of gays. Not if we adhere to the libertarian definition of rights as the inalienable rights to life, liberty and property. Since these are the only rights libertarians wish the state to enforce, equality under the law is thus the requirement that the state not deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process. …

“If we define rights properly, we must conclude that gay couples are not being denied their individual rights.” …

“Ideally, government should be entirely divorced from the nuptial business. But from the fact that the state upholds traditional marriage, why does it follow that it is violating the individual rights of same-sex couples who clearly don’t fit the definition or the profile?”

“Religious institutions ought to act as the ministers of marriage. If marriage were privatized, conservatives would have to accept that some liberal churches and synagogues (the mullahs in their mosques would resist) will wed homosexuals.”

Update (May 1): To read about other “conservative,” blond, ding-dongs, see:

A Cow Is Born

Elizabeth Hasselbeck

Pardon Me, Mr. President? Et tu, Pat Robertson?

Bush, Christian Right, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Law, Morality

The plenary power of pardon granted to the president is extremely broad.

But so far no word about the possible pardon by Bush of incarcerated Border-Patrol agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean.

The president had set a precedent in the case of Ramos and Compean. For defending their country, and in the process shooting a drug smuggler in the derriere, Bush sicced his bloodhound, U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, on these Border Patrol Agents who, absent a pardon, will remain locked up for over a decade.

Although Bush has yet to pardon Scooter Libby, you’ll recall that he commuted his sentence. Bush had spared his fall guy, Lewis Libby, but locked up these patriotic, heroic agents—Ramos and Compean—ostensibly throwing away the key. No remorse expressed from the Creep-in-Chief in their unjust conviction.

I’ve said it before: Bush would wrestle a crocodile for a criminal alien. Soon into his presidency, I also pronounced George W. Bush bad to the bone.

As have I defended evangelical leader Pat Robertson in the past. But he’s clearly just a cog in the well-oiled, oleaginous, Republican Party machine. Robertson was interviewed today by CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux, who asked him about the pardons.

Robertson put his moral might behind making the case for a Scooter-Libby pardon. Now, as I’ve written, “the ‘crime’ for which Libby was convicted was also the crime for which Martha Stewart went to jail: lying to the FBI. Not for leaking the identity of former (so-called) classified CIA operative Valerie Plame. Richard Armitage did that.”

This was yet another abuse of power by crooked outlaw, US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.

However, given his role in taking us to war, there was some poetic justice in the conviction of Libby (not that I support such justice).

There was no justice—poetic, or other—in the conviction of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean.