The Hate That Never Dies
Jonah Goldberg has a piece in yesterday's USA Today defending television loudmouth Glenn Beck from his critics. In the course of his piece, Goldberg takes a swipe at Pat Buchanan for not being a Republican and for writing a revisionist history of the start of World War II, making the same sort of arguments that used to be made in books published by such conservative publishers as Regnery and Devin-Adair.
Since Buchanan is not one of those criticizing Beck, he is completely irrelevant to Goldberg's piece. But he is not irrelevant to Goldberg's larger purpose, which is to drive from the scene anyone to the right of National Review. Indeed, Goldberg also praises Beck and Limbaugh for being "more cheerful—and more responsible—warriors than the populist right-wingers of yesteryear." The clearest evidence that Beck and Limbaugh and indeed the tea parties pose no real threat to the governing elite is Goldberg's praise for them.
But Goldberg's piece is not without humor, albeit unintentional. He praises Beck for getting "people to read serious books," a reference to Goldberg's own Liberal Fascism, a silly book that has inspired Beck to rant and rave about the "fascist" messages being conveyed by the art and architecture of Rockefeller Plaza. A movement with Goldberg as its leading thinker, and Beck as its most visible mouthpiece, deserves the obscurity to which it is heading.
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Mr.Piatak,
Thanks again for plodding through the monotonous cant of National Review so we don't need to. Your observation that "He, (Pat Buchanan), is not irrelevant to Goldberg’s larger purpose, which is to drive from the scene anyone to the right of National Review," is correct but inadequate. Pat is not always to the right of Goldberg and his ilk. Pat, for instance, is not trying to limit debate (sometimes a fascist practice shared with other ideologues) on the issues facing our country, rather his presence broadens the debate to include traditional principles ignored and despised by the current group of kids espousing the banal platitudes of NRO/ and
their Big Repub support groups--more immigration, more multi-culuturalism, more fashionable and secular understanding of freedom and more hog feed for the masses --such as whether Obama should have taken his wife to watch a Broadway play or lobbied for the Olympics in Chicago. The good news is one can now read the same names of all the scoundrels in several different forums bringing the ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center and NRO all to the same table of agreement ---that ancient practices are always suspect and new destruction projects always the goal for conservatives of every age. They have done a good job of destroying our military, our economy, our country, but should be thanked by all of us for their
assistance in destroying the Republican party. If they can enlist Sarah Palin or another Bush to run in 2012 that should just about do it for them --- AND US!
This piece is spot on! It has gotten extremely difficult to argue in favor of any paleo-conservative ideas with folks whose only view of the "conservative" movement is of people like Beck, Goldberg and the war-mongering, keyboard commandos at FOX News and the National Review.
To think that commode-worthy books like Beck's and Goldberg's occupy space along shelves that once held books by Burnham and Kirk is indeed enough to send one to the nearest saloon.
As for the swipe at PJB, it of course all comes down to his principled outrage at our Middle East forays and his lack of cheerleading for more of them. The neo-cons will miss no opportunity to disparage Pat no matter how irrelevant to the topic at hand. The drum-beat for action in Iran is now beating faster so it's time for more pre-emptive attacks on Pat in advance of these machinations.
Kudos to Tom Piatak for this and all of his other insightful commentary.
"To think that commode-worthy books like Beck’s and Goldberg’s occupy space along shelves that once held books by Burnham and Kirk.."
I think you are disparaging of the old Sear's catalogue which faithfully served conservatives for years in both the family room for Christmas and the outback for months.
I'm still waiting for Goldberg, who's 40, Rich Lowry, who's 41, and the other youngsters at National Socialist Review to join the U.S. Army to fight in Afghanistan. They can join up to age 42, trading in their six-figure incomes for a private's pay, three squares and a cot.
But why lead by example when character assassination, calumny and lies work just as well?
Mr. Seiler, weaklings aren't allowed in the military unless they are women. Then again...
Beck, whatever his faults, is trending our way. I think this trend should be encouraged. He is much better than Limbaugh or Hannity, for example. Beck also (like Palin and Huckabee) drives the right people crazy (RINOs, liberals, and elitist snobs) even if he isn't completely on our side yet. It is fine to criticize Beck where criticism is due, but I also think it is important to make clear that that criticism is coming from the right so it is not confused with criticism from the center and left.
You can see Beck moving our way. Note how Beck was dismissive of Ron Paul in the primary but now is the only FOX or other MSM personality who routinely has Paul circle commentators (Napolitano, Woods, etc.) on his program. If this is all an act then he deserves an Emmy for it. I think he is genuine, but is limited in how far he can go by the mainstream conservative audience he is appealing to and by the old conservative movement intellectual baggage he still caries around.
It makes more sense to me to encourage these high profile people who are trending our way rather than berate them for not being all the way over yet. People do not change overnight. Our friend Jack Hunter, the Southern Avenger, has repeatedly made this point as well.
It's an amazing fact. There is more genuine wit(acerbic but civil) in the comments on this thread than National Review has managed to muster for years, and Commentary magazine for decades. I like to think this is foxhole humor and not gallows humor. And I expect mainstream conservatism to implode in due course for the sin of thinking it is not part of the herd of independent minds.
"I like to think this is foxhole humor and not gallows humor."
Yes, at least for me that is the intent. Digging in was always a chore for everyone during my Marine Corps days but it went along better as did the long nights when someone else was "sharing the pain." Your second point about "I expect mainstream conservatism to implode in due course for the sin of thinking it is not part of the herd of independent minds." is a very important one. Scaring people into submission with hate crime or night sticking your opponent into never daring to utter an honest question such as "where were the weapons of Mass destruction or the rose petal welcome in Iraq" is the long road to tyranny not freedom. The question is not whether, but how and when the card house comes down.
Mr. Phillips,
You are always the pragmatist and a good one at that. No honest paleo expects perfection in this world but on the other hand two wrongs don't always make a "right." Compared to even the mediocre old timers of the paleo past, even you must admit that Glen Beck and Sarah Palin would be considered light weights in the leadership division. But as you remind us, hope and not despair is the more human and appropriate reaction to great odds.
I got my first exposure to Marine Corps foxhole humor via "Fields of Fire," which I read (VERY absorbed) just last week. A truly fine book by the new Senator of Virginia.
For all those interested, a fellow by the name of Reihan Salam adds his spin to the Frum-Brooks-Goldberg spin on the Washington Post website in a Question & Answer forum. Although much of what the neo-conservatives say is both infuriating in its blockheadedness and almost laughable in its arrogance, I find their obtuseness over the Iraqi debacle and its deleterious effects on the Republican Party a sign of either a massive blind spot or just plain dishonesty.
Beautifully expressed, Mr. Piatak. Thank you for this. It is good to see cyphers such as Beck and Goldberg given their proper due.
I am inclined to think that "the mainstream conservative movement"
exploded (or rather imploded) in the early 1980s. All that is left is Republican demagoguery. Mainstream people are attracted to the latter because that is all they ever hear.
Dr. Wilson,
"the mainstream conservative movement”
exploded (or rather imploded) in the early 1980s."
Leave it to our in-house historian to provide perspective... and a true perspective at that. (During the 1860's old age approached from the North, 1960's the death rattle set in through out the organism, 1980 - 2000 the patient was pronounced dead on arrival by kids who had not visited their elders in years.
And now the corpse is begun to putrefying.
Never mind my grammar above. I was educated in a government school, so it's close enough for government work. The fact that books like 'Liberal Faschism' pass for serious books - I would not use the word 'scholarship' - is proof that many other people are alumni of Gov't H.S. or Gov't U., too.
Thanks for the missive Tom, but who's Jonah Goldberg? And who's Glenn Beck? Some empty head with a show on AM morning radio? I can read and listen to way more interesting stuff elsewhere on medium wave. Even Mexican pop music and incessant sports are more intelligent than Beck -- and I barely understand Spanish. GoldWhatever's prose on the OpEd remains unread in my newspaper as I aim for the comics, puzzles and weather.
That aside I get more information from Russia Today which is Novosti. Despite their varied English accents (probably KGB taught), not only do they use better syntax and grammar, but they also ask more fascinating questions than their New York/Hollywood counterparts - especially when covering the USA. Ironic!
Robert thanks. I'm not sure I'm all that optimistic, I just think you catch more flies with honey. If I were a movement con (I once was as were, I suspect, most of the people who read Chronicles) and was beginning to see the light, but as I started to express my new found ideas some purist who had already made the trek chastised me for my tardiness or for not having yet accepted or understood the whole program in its entirety, I think I would be tempted to return to the friendly confines of movement con group think.
I don't understand how some people think converts are made. Beck has been critical of the Republicans and is not a pure party hack like Hannity. This is a good thing. He has raised constitutional and 10th Amendment issues. When was the last time Hannity did that? He has started to come around that Iraq was a mistake? Again, this is a good thing. No he isn't yet an orthodox non-interventionist, and that is a problem, but good grief. Let's give credit where credit is due.
Seriously, someone explain the scenario for me where we make headway that includes the brilliant strategy of biting the head off of every half-convert who is trending our way. Are they all supposed to have a camp meeting style conversion and be right thinking overnight? Is that how converts are usually made? Y'all explain it to me because I don't get it.
Beck makes twenty million dollars a year! Why would he risk that? He may give glimpses of actually being a paleocon. Yet, he will never risk his status to pursue such unprofitable things.
"In the course of his piece, Goldberg takes a swipe at Pat Buchanan for not being a Republican"
That's typical of the accuracy of Jonah Goldberg's observations. True conservatives criticize Buchanan for his loyalty to the GOP. Goldberg's worldview is skewed because of his position, under his mother's skirts.
Actually, what little Jonah has to say is irrelevant to any conservative. He and Beck can read each other's books and snipe at the grownups from cover as they have always done. Nobody who matters pays any attention to them at all.
I have to go with Red Phillips on Beck. He is better on the issues and is not a GOP hack like Hannity,Limbaugh and the nasal toned shrew's Mark Levin and Laura Ingraham. He at times does slouch toward self worship as his radio piers. He loses me when he preaches we should be like the deities Ghandi, and Martin (Luther) King. He is not that insightful if he has not seen through their myths. Another negative would be the addition of his buddy Pat Gray to his radio show. Gray,a failed Houston radio talk show host whose beliefs in American history equate to grade school propoganda.
All the right wing radio talking heads, Beck included do not have the formal education, training,or experience on the issues they harp. But, Bill O'Reilly dislikes Beck, therfore I have to give him the benefit of the doubt.
I don't get around much. Who the hell is Jonah Goldberg?
Red Phillips @18
I always read your posts at Chronicles and believe you always bring light to the threads and subjects in which you participate. For a realistic glimpse into the future of "paleo- coversation" I suggest you take a look over at Taki Mag and look at Tom Piatak, Mark Haggard, Chis Lyons and Richard Spencer's discussion on Paganism, Europe, Christianity and what has become known as "A Sense of the Sacred." The commentary isn't very good but their subject is big and obscure and the men participating are serious fellows. If nothing else it demonstrates the fact that authentic respect, which is a form of charity, can endure even under the most miniscule of human conditions. All it needs is a few men with honest wills and the youthful ability to wonder like a child. This is my hope for paleos of the future not the conversion of some vetted television commentator who has thirty seconds to hype his audience with audacious shouts.
Piatak: "A movement with Goldberg as its leading thinker, and Beck as its most visible mouthpiece, deserves the obscurity to which it is heading."
Yea, Goldberg the Wise and Beck the Great are to conservatism what a couple lame mules would be to the Kentucky Derby. The sad joke is that people are betting on them.
There is no hope for anyone on the so-called right unless they escape the clutches of talk radio and talk tv. It does not matter whose side Glen Beck is on, because he should be permanently gagged. I hate to say this, but as the years go by, each populist demagogue is worse than the last. I thought no one could go lower than Limbaugh, but Limbaugh is sometimes funny and actually reads articles in newspapers. Then came Sean “You’re a great American, You’re a great American too for thinking I’m a great American” Hannity. Obviously the human race had reached a sort of nadir with Hannity, but, heck, this is America, and our motto is, “Anything you can say, I can say dumber, and, voila, Glen Beck was born.
On a not completely unrelated note, there is a discussion that has been going on in various places on the relative merits of Christianity and paganism. It is an important subject, even if most of the discussion so far has generated more smoke than fire. As someone accused even by my colleagues of having a soft spot for ancient paganism, perhaps I might broker a more fact-based alternative discussion in which polite and serious Christians and neopagans could have their say. I don't know what to call it. Contra Gentiles rather loads the dice. What about Athens (though we shall also take up Roman, German, and Celtic paganism) and Jerusalem?
The last useful talk radio that I ever listened to was Pat Buchanan's show on old WRC in Washington. He actually had to debate liberals, some of whom were intelligent, and took calls from callers not exactly enamored with his point-of-view. It was a far cry from the obsequient worship of dittoheads that radio provides today. But validation, rather than debate, is on the minds of most conservatives today, a sign that they not only are braindead but cowardly as well.
"As someone accused even by my colleagues of having a soft spot for ancient paganism, perhaps I might broker a more fact-based alternative discussion in which polite and serious Christians and neopagans could have their say."
Dr. Fleming,
I can't think of anything or anyone better, given the times. I would be hard pressed to pick my favorite pagan, but I think we should begin there, then move on to our jealous God and his Law, and finally to the Word made flesh. But since you are the teacher, I think you should do whatever the heck you think is best, remembering that whatever is accomplished in this regard will be "infinitely" better than total darkness.
Dear Dr. Fleming,
I kindly suggest that the Christian-pagan discussion have the "Post a Response" feature disabled. Many of those who post to this site have intelligent contributions to make but the discussion is sure to attract a lot of ignorant and mean spirited people.
Best regards,
Harry
Harry, you make a good point. What I may do is 1) leave it open for a time, 2) delete ASAP stupid and nasty and irrelevant comments, 3) turn off the responses for a cooling off period, then 4) turn it back on when new material is posted. My idea is to proceed with a series of basic questions, such as: Was early Christianity a religion of pacifism and non-resistance? Does Christianity entail a rejection of pagan contributions to civilization? Is it necessarily a point against Christian traditions that they incorporated pagan elements? Is it right to hold up semi-Christianized Germans as exemplars? What are the limits on assimilation of pagan elements? Did Christianity cause the fall of the Roman Empire?
"I hate to say this, but as the years go by, each populist demagogue is worse than the last. I thought no one could go lower than Limbaugh, but Limbaugh is sometimes funny and actually reads articles in newspapers."
Every once in awhile, Limbaugh might have an interesting news tidbit or fun little jingle. He is still good at exposing the groupthink of the 'state controlled media' (ie - his montages of the same phrases repeated on various networks).
But at the end of the day, he's a slick party hack. I remember after the Tea Parties, he scolded the protesters for daring to suggest forming a new party or fresh movement. No, El Rushbo tells us, 'we' need to 'recapture' the GOP.
Dr. Fleming, that sounds like an interesting forum, and clear-cut division of the issues at hand. Although I'm not a neopagan, I think that certain intelligent criticisms of Christianity by neopagans (such as de Benoist) can only strengthen Christianity in that they should compel Christians to pursue a more rooted and particularist, less universalist, Christianity.
@29 and 31
I dont see the discussion being civil for very long. I am noticing a growing number of the WNs and even a few Old Rightists abandoning Christianity, and they will be out in full force if such a discussion allowed comments. Some of them are even recycling Nietzscheian arguments.
Dr. Fleming,
While it would be hard for me to think of any discussion I would not be interested in joining if you were leading it, or brokering it, if you prefer, I must protest I'm feeling a bit left at the altar over the moribund Machiavelli discussion. I know paganism dances better and while scantily clad, too, compared to old Hatchevil, but there was still such a wealth of material left unlit by your participation! Come back!
I fully intend to resume the discussion of Old Nick. In fact, I am going to build my talk at the Randolph Club around Machiavellian insights into the nature of republics, and as I start getting ready, I shall be adding new chapters to the discussion.
@28 Harry
The ignorant can get as good as they give on this site. Let the vitriol fly! Bad e-mailers can be blocked easily enough. Quite honestly I think electoral politics is neither mean eanough nor soon enough.
Dr. Fleming,
Thanks for the reply and the good news of more chapters to come. Ordinarily, the pleasure of reading M. would be reward enough, but once I'd had the benefit of reading a text with your insight as an accompaniment, I was spoiled.
I hate to go all Byzantine again (one can always predict that I will do so) but since the discussion is going to be about Athens and Jerusalem, would it be too far off the subject to include a brief consideration of how the Byzantines supposedly found a balance, or even a synthesis, of the two?
I ask this because the failure of we Westerns (we filthy, barbaric Latins) to achieve such a balanced synthesis is supposed to have been one reason for the existence of modern secularism, liberalism, & neo-paganism. Going further afield (never a good idea) it may have implications for the relationship between church and state, another big issue of the last fifteen hundred years.
@25, Dr. Fleming: "a more fact-based alternative discussion in which polite and serious Christians and neopagans could have their say."
I'm looking forward to it. My paternal ancestors were Transylvanian Saxons (actually, only some were "Saxons," although the name stuck; the rest were other Rheinland Germans, Belgians, Dutch, and Northeastern French). In the 12th Century King Geza II of Hungary invited them to Transylvania to help their fellow Christians fend off the Turks. Most Saxons were ethnically cleansed after World War II, but some remain and their fortress-churches still stand.
If the Saxons had still been pagans, they would not have gone. Europe might have become Muslim, and the West would have been finished 800 years ago.
I have posted my first installment on the Athens and Jerusalem forum. We shall most definitely include discussions of the Byzantine Empire as a splendid example of a Christian polity. Indeed, I point out in the first post how the runty Byzantine army defeated a larger body of Goths and drove them from Italy.
"I don’t get around much. Who the hell is Jonah Goldberg?"
Jonah is Trixie's little boy, a red diaper baby who was elevated to the position of "conservative pundit" by the neocons once their little jug-eared idol became the sock puppet of their movement as president of the US.
That tells you more than anyone actually needs to know about the insignificant little momser.
"The clearest evidence that Beck and Limbaugh and indeed the tea parties pose no real threat to the governing elite is Goldberg’s praise for them"
I am not sure what this statement is supposed to mean. Goldberg, Neocons are the same as Obama? Or Goldberg, Neocons are the same as Limbaugh and Beck. In defense of Beck, at the very least, he has taken Van Jones out and that is a service to everyone.
I know the disdain that Paleos have for talk radio. But talk radio is to the right of Republican party and to the right of the Neocons. It is also the only way that an average person hears the arguments against the ongoing Obama's Marxist project and the only way that they hear some type of a conservative message. An average person does not get to hear the Paleo point of view. Perhaps Paleos will do a better job of spreading their message in the future, but for now, all there is is a few websites like Chronicles which an average person won't be able to find.
"He is better on the issues and is not a GOP hack like Hannity,Limbaugh and the nasal toned shrew’s Mark Levin". Wrong. This is a common misconstruction. Republican party hardly ever listens to them, otherwise for example, there would have been no McCain candidacy. Also as radio goes, none is better than Mark Levin, never a Republican hack, that's ridiculous. Actually it is the closest thing to a Paleo voice on the radio. It is worth noting that Jonah Goldberg and the Neocons are definitely not friends of Mark Levin and neither is Frum. All of them are in fact ridiculed on his program all the time. Paleos should give Levin some credit. Levin explains the constitution, he takes his time to vocalize the language of the right, of conservatism, and to educate. He teaches how to answer the incredible idiocy that is today's Liberalism and Neoconservatism. Perhaps Paleos cannot find the common ground on the foreign policy with Levin, but for the cultural and domestic stuff he is as dead on as Buchanan or some other Paleos. Those commenters here, that are belittling Levin, I doubt that you have listened to his program.
In Texas last year I listened to Levin and have heard him locally a few times. It is part of my job to wallow, however briefly, in the mire. His voice and delivery are nauseating, his affected passion laughable--unless he is mentally disturbed. He is simply another echo chamber for the disaffected and someone who can be a release valve for the pent up emotions of military widows. None of these people does much harm, because they have no power to do harm. Like the neoconservatives, who simply echo the Left and put a conservative gloss on their their imitations, talk radio tells disgruntled populist Americans what they already believe. It is, as I said, harmless except for the time it wastes and for the delusion that it inculcates, the delusion that by talk talk talking, something can actually be done. If talk radio listeners spent more time getting a handle on their own lives, rather than worrying about Obama, they would be a great deal better off. I was, by the way, delighted by the recent Nobel Peace Prize Award. I was beginning to fear that in selecting Gore, the ridiculous Scandinavians had reached the nadir of stupidity and inconsequence. They goodness they made this breakthrough. Gore, at least, pretended to have done something about the mythical problem of global warming, albeit the connection of climate control to peace is something of a stretch, but Obama is actually in nominal charge of two wars in which people are being killed every day, and he is even now considering plans to increase the war effort in Afghanistan. I hope they give the next Noble Peace Prize to someone like Osama bin Laden or Robert Mugabe.
This article is indeed spot on. Beck and Limbaugh are just part of the facade that you have a choice or there is an oppostion group or party to the ongoing slide toward Marxism out in DC. Limbaugh is great at playing is Dem soundbytes and showing their hypocrisy/stupidity, but offers no real ideas to counter their agenda. Look at Beck and Fox's exposure of ACORN. Yeah they nailed them, but what good was doing an expose on ACORN in August '09? They could have nailed them in '08 before the election, helping out McCain. Beck has bragged about his nailing ACORN on his FOX program like he has done such a great thing for conservatism and the American poeple, whil in reality it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Do you hear Rush or Sean ever engaged in real intellectual discussions on issues or offer any ideas that would be better than the legislation Obama and the Dems are proposing like with regards health care? Thing is the GOP has no counter ideas to offer. Tlak radio is just that, talk, in a time where action and real ideas are needed. Rush, Sean, and Beck are just there to keep the people delusional til it is too late for them to do anything to counter this drive to socialism.
Dr. Fleming, I'm not sure that talk radio hosts tell populists Americans what they already believe or what they want to hear. If so, it is because the minds of populist people have already been shaped by them. I think they lead opinion. They set the agenda which the listening masses then repeat. Would populist Middle Americans really be fretting about nuclear Iran or the supposed resurging Russian Bear if they weren't told to be afraid by the conservative media? Or would they babble about being a proposition nation of immigrants if they hadn't been told that believing otherwise is evil? I think this is a top down problem more than a bottom up one, although I’m not vouching for the bottom who have been so easily mislead either.
From the excerpts I have read of Levin’s book, it is much more measured and sensible than is his ranting on air personality, which is why I am almost certain he didn’t write it. Any guesses as to who did? In the book he speaks respectfully of paleoconservatives. I believe he even uses the word. On air he gives absolutely no indication he can even conceive of a criticism of war and intervention from the right. He reserves some of his harshest rants for the anti-war right. Which gets back to the original point of why Beck is better than the rest of them.
Dr. Red, please tell me the innovations in political agenda offered by talk show hosts. Half of what they say comes from GOP talking points memos or the vacuous political rhetoric of the Wall Street Journal, National Review 20 years ago. In listening to all of them, I have never been confronted with a notion I had not read hundreds of times in the past. If is an endless feedback loop. Foolish women pick up some opinion fourth hand and call into Limbaugh or Levin or Beck, and they call each other brilliant and patriotic. There is no "public opinion" in America except what is manufactured in the factories of the phony left and phony right. The dimwits can be trapped into caring about Russia or Iran because that agenda was shaped over several generations. Naturally, to gain an audience, each new radio on air celebrity has to be a little less responsible than the his predecessors. That is why it will always be a race to the bottom. On the left, it is very easy to see the progression from radical intellectuals to college professors to the New Republic to the New York Times to CNN and SNL. Al Franken is not any more independent-minded than Sean Hannity. Who really matters, then? The people who create, or modify, or destroy the paradigm. Rousseau and Marx, for example. On the right, perhaps no one in the 20th century, at least not anyone who developed a mass following, though there are eccentrics who at least changed the minds of some people. Chesterton and Belloc, Eliot and Pound, Davidson and Lytle. But in these shouting matches between children, the only winners are the powerful special interest groups that benefit and fund them, on both sides. The late Paul Weyrich, in desire to lead the masses, used to create new programs and movements every year, but all he and the conservative movement were doing was to get out in front of the goose-stepping parade and pretend to lead it, and it is a long way down from Weyrich to Beck and Levin. There is no "better" only different stinks of excrement.
I don't disagree. I think lead was probably an ill chosen word. I didn't mean to suggest that the talk show hosts were innovative thinkers. They parrot the rhetoric of the official movement and the GOP. My point was that it is not natural for populists thousands of miles and an ocean away to care about some country with a defense budget 1% of our own (Iran) or to sit around flagellating themselves for entirely natural prejudices and affinities. They have to be taught to concern themselves with these things. Hence they are telling them what they already believe and want to hear only because their minds have already been corrupted. But yes it does all go back many years. Reflexive conservative foreign policy bellicosity is a left over of the Cold War.
Red Phillips -
Excellent commentary on the predisposition of the "base", as Rove disparaged them, to actually believe that they are threatened by a soft-spoken bogeyman living in a cave or Mahmoud "7th reincarnation of Hitler" Ahmadinejad.
The "conservative media" truly does manipulate the "base" but its not through selling war alone. It's a packaged deal. The Republicans package all the war and the shilling for big business together with so-called social conservatism. It's bizarre that the average value voter hasn't figured out the strategem yet,since they get absolutely nothing in return for their piety to the GOP.
Mr. Bailey. I have listened to Levin and went even further than wasting my time to wasting money on his book "Men in Black". If he is expert on the Constitution then why does he chant alleged quotes and worship at the altar of a despotic President who shredded the Constitution and framed the house of oppression we now live? He also chants the GOP myth of righteous conception to battle evil and preserve the Soviet, oops I mean perfect Union,although by force we should be thankful for it. It would be worth the money and time to hear Levin and the other talk radio blofiators debate the likes of Thomas Woods,Clyde Wilson and Mr.Fleming. They could not shout over them and mute their audio so they could rant. Unfortunately the talk show hosts are not totally harmless, their are some rubes they have influence over. By the way John McCain was nominated in open primaries in the Midwest and the upper corner of the forced Union. Paleo, Paleo Conservative,I've never heard of this one. Is this a new label to denigrate the non shrews. Hey Jack just one more question, are you really Mark Levin?