It seems that this -- embodied in the tea party movement, the reigning conception of "conservatism," and those at the helm of the Republican Party today -- is America's "Ayn Rand moment."
And it is not a conservative meme being embraced by "God-fearing" conservatives all across the land, one that's absolutely pervasive across the country's Bible Belt. Instead, it is an absolutely radical one.
It is a movement devoted to turning traditional morality on its head, taking Darwinism out of the biology books and inserting it into the heart of civil society and relegating Father, Son and Holy Ghost to the ash heap of history . . . and the Sermon on the Mount with them.
It's deeply ironic, this embrace of a societal "fifth column" by all manner of folk most concerned about a fifth columnist in the White House. I'm sure Rand would have appreciated the irony, but I can't decide whether she would be horrified by the irrational embrace of objectivism by those she surely would deride as mediocrities and "second handers" or welcome the slack-jawed assistance.
It's rather like Homo sapiens taking a PAC donation from Neanderthals for Natural Selection.
You can't be a Christian and buy into Ayn Rand, too. Christianity and objectivism are mutually exclusive. This circle cannot be squared -- if you set out on a mission to "pick and choose" useful, non-contradictory parts of objectivism and the gospel of Jesus Christ to fashion into a blueprint for society, you wouldn't have enough of either to even rise to the level of incoherence.
And at long last, some folks (above) are calling Republicans and tea partiers on their sins against both God and reason. You not only can't be a Christian and a Randian, but you can't even be a conservative while making like Atlas and shrugging.
DON'T TRUST ME, listen to what Ayn Rand herself had to say about faith and society. She never wanted to "conserve" anything about society as Americans understood it; she wanted to blow it up and replace it with one of her own conception.
Take particular note of what Rand says starting at 4:15 in this 1959 Mike Wallace interview.
WALLACE: You put this philosophy to work in your novel Atlas Shrugged. . .
RAND: That's right.
WALLACE: . . . you demonstrate it in human terms in your novel Atlas Shrugged. And let me start by quoting from a review of this novel, Atlas Shrugged, that appeared in Newsweek. It said that you are out to destroy almost every edifice in the contemporary American way of life, our Judeo-Christian religion, our modified, government-regulated capitalism, our rule by the majority will. Other reviews have said that you scorn churches and the concept of God. Are these accurate criticisms?
RAND: Uh, yes. I agree with the facts but not the estimate of these criticisms. Namely, if I am challenging the base of all these institutions, I am challenging the moral call of altruism -- the precept that man's moral duty is to live for others. That man must sacrifice himself to others, which is the present-day morality.
WALLACE: What do you mean by sacrifice himself for others? This is now where we're getting to the point. . . .
RAND: One moment. Since I am challenging the base, I necessarily would challenge the institutions you name, which are a result of that morality. And now what is self-sacrifice?
WALLACE: Yes, what is self-sacrifice? You say you do not like the altruism by which we live. You like a kind of Ayn Randist selfishness. . . .
RAND: I would say that don't like is too weak a word. I consider (it) evil, and self-sacrifice is the precept that man needs to serve others in order to justify his existence, that his moral duty is to serve others. That is what most people believe today.
WALLACE: Well, yes. We're taught to feel concern for our fellow man, to feel responsible for his welfare, to feel that we are, as religious people might put it, children under God and responsible one for the other. Now why do you rebel? What's wrong with this philosophy?
RAND: But that is what in fact makes man a sacrificial animal. That man must work for others, concern himself with others or be responsible for them. That is the role of a sacrificial object. I say that man is entitled to his own happiness, and that he must achieve it himself, but that he cannot demand that others give up their lives to make him happy. Nor should he wish to sacrifice himself for the happiness of others. I hold that man should have self-esteem.
WALLACE: And cannot man have self-esteem if he loves his fellow man? What's wrong with loving your fellow man? Christ -- every important moral leader in man's history -- has taught us that we should love one another. Why then is this kind of love, in your mind, immoral?
RAND: It is immoral if it is a love placed above oneself. It is more than immoral, it is impossible. Because when you are asked to love everybody indiscriminately, that is to love people without any standard, to love them regardless of the fact of whether they have and value or virture, you are asked to love nobody.
IF THIS IS WHAT conservatives are buying into nowadays, is there nothing they wish to actually conserve? Is there nothing under heaven or on earth they don't wish to commodify?
What's next? Don't answer that.
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, the father of modern conservatism -- when "conservatism" actually was "conservative"and not an ongoing, collective spasm of wild-eyed radicalism -- certainly knew the score.
He paints a picture of a woman who, come to think of it, may just be the personification of Tea Party America . . . Ebeneezer Scrooge with a penchant for grand pronouncements and purplish prose.
Listen, I can understand one having an Ayn Rand moment. As a young man, I had one myself.
But then you grow up. You realize that you're not half as exceptional as you once thought. You realize that you are not a self-contained, self-sustaining entity. You fall in love. You realize there may well be a God, and you are not Him.
And you realize that choices must be made. That the Randian circle cannot be squared -- not with God, not with your fellow man.
Finally, it comes to you with full clarity. You come to know this one thing:
If you're smitten with the works of Ayn Rand in your 20s, you're normal. If you're not over it by 30, you may be a monster.
I just spent a lot of time contemplating this 1976 Pulitzer Prize-winning news photo at a Newseum-sponsored exhibition at Omaha's Durham Museum.
I suggest members of today's half-witted, mean-spirited "patriotic" lynch mob at Louisiana State University spend some time as well with this image by Boston Herald American photographer Stanley Forman. It didn't win the 1977 Pulitzer for spot-news photography for nothing.
The context differs between Boston 1976 and LSU 2011. The animating spirit, however, remains the same.
I hate it when my alma mater keeps living down to the 1974 Randy Newman song that so memorably references it.
My first reaction to what happened to a hapless Louisiana State grad student by the name of Benjamin Haas was that someone who was dumb -- or naive -- enough to do what he did, where he did it, pretty much asked for whatever he got.
Which, in Haas' case, was plenty.
What Haas did was threaten to burn an American flag on the LSU parade ground in protest of the treatment of another student -- one arrested and charged with pulling down the Stars and Stripes from a war-memorial flagpole and then burning it. Haas wanted to stand up for "freedom of speech."
That's fine and good, but the problem here wasn't any usurpation of the First Amendment -- the LSU flag burner wasn't arrested for that. The charges involved destruction of public property, arson and theft.
Holier-than-thou "progressive" do-gooders bug me. (And don't get me started on angry, right-wing cranks.) In this case, my annoyance blinded me.
WHENThe Daily Reveille'sstory on the protest finally went online today, along with an accompanying video, it became pretty clear that the "hippie" was the least of the problems on the Baton Rouge campus this day. The real problem was a "patriotic" mob purporting to stand up for God, country and "freedom" by doing what mobs do.
Think Little Rock Central High School, 1957.
A jeering crowd swarmed after communication studies graduate student Benjamin Haas on the Parade Ground this afternoon after he outraged many students and community members with an announcement that he planned to burn an American flag.
Though Haas didn't burn the flag as he originally announced yesterday on Facebook, the mob of people tore after Haas until he slipped into a police car and was escorted off campus by police.
Haas did not have the needed permit to burn a flag, which is why an actual flag burning did not take place, according to LSU Media Relations.
After chasing Haas off campus, the group of more than 1,000 straddled Highland Road, shouting a back-and-forth banter of "GO AMERICA" and "GO TIGERS."
"I initially began this flag burning protest to define due process for students and suspected terrorists alike, to call on LSU and universities across the country to defend basic human rights and avoid putting students into the criminal justice system when it can be taken care of internally," the pre-written text of Haas's speech read. "In the name of peace, there will be no flag burning today. This country and the flag that flies over it stands for freedom, democracy, love, peace and the ability to question our government."
Haas attempted to recite his speech a few times, but the crowd cut him off, chanting "U-S-A" as horse-mounted police worked their way through the maze of people, pushing them back and eventually escorting Haas off campus in a police cruiser.
(snip)
Rebecca Favre Lipe, vice president of the Baton Rouge Tea Party, said she was "amazed" at the demonstration of patriotism from attendees.
"We have First Amendment rights, but there's also respect," Lipe said.
People began to gather in Free Speech Plaza around 11 a.m., where Sarah Kirksey and Hunter Hall, communications studies seniors, distributed 134 American flags they bought. As an incensed crowd snaked through Free Speech Plaza, a line of on-lookers watched from the terrace of the Union.
Two women who asked to remain unnamed brought signs reading "Benjamin Haas is a terrorist" and "You hate my flag but love my freedom."
One of the women said she labeled Haas as a terrorist because "anybody that hates America is a terrorist."
IT TAKES ONE to know one. You know?
I still think defending the original flag burner's "free speech" is a poor hill to die upon, but what we saw at LSU today was a shameful, redneck mob more about getting "the hippies" than any genuine display of patriotism.
There were "terrorist" wannabes afoot, but Benjamin Haas, as it turns out, wasn't one of them. Menacing Mobs for Freedom is a circle that cannot be squared.
I may not know much, but I know intimidating unpopular minorities through angry displays and the implicit threat of violence not only isn't "freedom" but actually is the antithesis of it.
If this is how Louisiana's "best and brightest" behave, God help those they will someday lead.
I know, I know . . . this is 2011, and Americans are all about partisanship and smears and yelling; we're all about the heat and not the light, not to mention grabbing whatever you got and beating The Other about the head with it.
The Rachel Maddows of the world can do this just as well as the Glenn Becks, though somewhat less creepily, in my humble opinion. There's some of that in the editing and presentation of the MSNBC host's report here.
Life is all about the editing, you know, and editing can make your case -- and break the other guy's. It's all about what you show folks . . . and what you don't.
Editing can make a couple of Tejas wingnuts look like the reincarnation of Sam Houston,just a lot more anti-American and a lot less sane. Hell, give me an audio file of a Barack Obama speech and a computer, and I can make the man sound like George Wallace -- I'm good at what I do.
EDITING ALSO involves, in this case, not mentioning one of your favored positions -- near fanatical support of abortion rights -- because some folks might figure that in a big, big way, you're no more committed to human dignity (or human rights) than was Jefferson Davis and the whole Confederate aristocracy.
Still . . . still. . . . Maddow's on to something here. Or, more exactly, her guest Tuesday, Princeton professor Melissa Harris-Perry, is on to something big. Basically, Americans are letting their crazy Confederate uncles out of the metaphorical attic. Letting the big shots work against their interests, and cheering them on while they do it to fatal effect.
The last time we embarked on such foolishness, 2 percent of the American population had been killed by the time the last shot was fired -- more than 618,000 on both sides. Today, that 2 percent would work out to 6,068,212 dead Americans.
Just something to chew on when next you're all outraged at the gummint and rarin' to refresh the tree of liberty "with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
If ever you were tempted to think of Tea Party America as anything but a carbuncle on the collective arse of democracy, consider this your "come to Jesus" moment.
Two words: Donald Trump. Fully 20 percent of the "Taxed Enough Already" crowd would like the eccentric billionaire and host of The Apprentice to be our next president.
Really?
REALLY?
And there's more! Another 29 percent of NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll respondents -- for a grand total of 49 percent -- are in the camps of other assorted ignoramuses and whack jobs. And here I'm speaking of Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann.
Americans always have been an interesting lot, but never so beer-hall putsch scary as this in our modern history -- excepting (notably) just about everything that went on in the Deep South from the end of Reconstruction through the Civil Rights movement, including Strom Thurmond's third-party run for president in 1948.
IT'S ALMOST as if, during the depths of the Great Depression, your alternative to Franklin Roosevelt were either Father Charles Coughlin, Sen. Huey Long or Charles Lindbergh running as the "Nazis? Hitler makes the trains run on time!" America First candidate.
Come to think of it, the nation's various strains of tea-party politics have just about as much useful to say to us as did your average White Citizens Council somewhere in the segregated bowels of Mississippi back in the day.
There's only one thing one can say to people who've nothing better to do than throw such paranoid political hissy fits.
Remember when Nebraska cut off prenatal care to pregnant illegals and some other poor women?
Now the results are starting to come in some eight months later, and I think I've figured out the philosophy of "pro-life" Gov. Dave Heineman and all the other Republican defenders o' the border. It's as ingenious as it is simple.
But before I tell you what it is, why don't you get yourself up to speed with what the Omaha World-Herald is reporting today? Basically, it's that doctors are reporting levels of stillbirths they haven't seen in years and years and years among poor women:
Health-care providers for the poor have seen five stillbirths in Columbus and Omaha since March 1, when the state decided to end prenatal services for illegal immigrants, they said Friday.
The providers said they could not definitively link the stillbirths to the policy shift by Gov. Dave Heineman's administration.
But they said it was clear women had forgone or delayed the preventive care, which has been proven to head off expensive and complicated deliveries and higher long-term expenses for birth defects and special education services.
As little as $800 worth of prenatal visits, they said, can head off $5,000-a-day stays in intensive-care units for children who automatically become U.S. citizens at birth.
"It's shocking that the State of Nebraska has chosen to disregard the huge weight of medical evidence about preventative (prenatal) care," said Dr. Paul Welch, an obstetrics/gynecology physician from Columbus.
THIS IS Tea Party America. I frankly am shocked that the doctor is shocked. It's going to get worse.
Anyway, back to the story.
Advocates for prenatal care said they are already seeing some of the higher costs and poor medical outcomes associated with a lack of such care.
Rebecca Rayman of the Good Neighbor Community Health Center in Columbus said her clinic has seen four unborn babies die since March after having no stillbirths in the previous six years.
“Only God knows” whether those deaths were directly attributable to the lack of prenatal care, Rayman said. She had evidence at least one was directly linked to lack of care.
Two emergency births took place at a South Omaha clinic because women are afraid of the costs of going to a hospital.
One infant, delivered at 20 weeks of gestation, died, said Andrea Skolkin of OneWorld Community Health Centers. The infant's mother had received no prenatal care.
Skolkin joined former U.S. Rep. John Cavanaugh, who now heads an effort to improve education for the poor in the Omaha area, in asking legislators to restore the prenatal services.
“This is a domino of destruction that will follow (these children) and us,” Cavanaugh said, in terms of higher costs for special education and poorer academic performance.
“There is not one word of testimony about the positive impact of this change,” he said.
NOW THAT you've been filled in, here's Heineman's brilliant strategy -- in the sense, of course, that Lex Luthor comes up with brilliant strategies for thwarting the Man of Steel. Like I said before, its brilliance lies in its very simplicity.
There's only one sure way to keep the Mexicans, and other impoverished opportunity-seekers, from flooding across our besieged borders and overwhelming the Greatest Nation on Earth (TM). And that, children, is to make America into Not the Greatest Nation on Earth.
You stop Mexicans, etc., and so on, from "flooding the zone" by taking away any advantage we have over places like Mexico. If Mexico sucks and we suck, too, there's no percentage in risking life, limb and la Migra by sneaking across the border, now, is there?
Accomplishing this while also making sure Mexican mommas deliver more dead "anchor babies" -- and doing it all while you proclaim your "pro-life" bona fides -- is just a bit of panache that borders on showing off.
His men stop a car seen leaving a house they were searching. Found some garden-variety weapons in the house, find nothing in the car or on the driver and passenger.
Marines search the car again, search the occupants again. Still nothing.
The would-be congressman smashes up the car. He sends the rest of his men off, has the unarmed Iraqi civilians search their own vehicle again. For some reason, he empties two clips of M-16 ammo into their backs at close range. They slump into the car.
The one which contained no weapons.
Afterward, the lieutenant slashes the tires on a car full of Iraqi house painters. After that, he places a handmade sign on the car with the two bodies inside: "No better friend, no worse enemy."
MONTHS LATER, the Marines investigate. Prosecutors charge him with murder, which could have meant the death penalty. A hearing determines there's not enough evidence to court-martial him.
The presiding officer, however, recommended a non-judicial punishment for "extremely poor judgment." He said the lieutenant, by desecrating the Iraqis' corpses with the sign, had disgraced the Marine Corps.
Then he sheds his uniform, finds Jesus, paints himself as a red-white-and-blue hero of the Iraq War, writes a book to that effect . . . then puts himself forth as a Republican candidate for Congress in North Carolina.
And that, friends, is how Ilario Pantano became a Tea Party darling and got 46 percent of the vote against a conservative, pro-life Democrat who voted against ObamaCare.
That's how he went from staring a murder rap and the death penalty in the face . . . to almost getting elected to Congress. With the backing of a whole, big bunch of Republicans, including Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani.
That such a character as Pantano has gotten so far in politics is no testimony to the civic heath of North Carolina. You have to wonder what the hell is wrong with those people, frankly.
In Pantano's native New York, however, old friends and acquaintances wonder what's become of the man they once knew. These deep misgivings about the would-be congressman reverberate through the pages of New York magazine:
But to some of his old New York friends, the new Pantano is not the one they thought they knew. “Is this obviously a new and different phase in Ilario’s life? Yes. Has he made major changes in his life? Yes. Is this the guy I’ve known before? No,” said Noah Shachtman, a contributing editor to Wired magazine and a non-resident fellow of the Brookings Institution. He met Pantano at Horace Mann. “As a politico turned musician turned reporter,” Schactman added, ”I don’t begrudge anyone the right to reinvent themselves.”
Though Pantano moved to North Carolina about ten years ago, Schactman, like other New York friends who’ve kept in touch, believed Pantano a New Yorker through and through. His mother was a New York literary agent, though she now raises horses in North Carolina; his wife was a Jewish New Yorker and onetime model who posed for photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Pantano never did drugs, but he loved to dance and loved the hot nightclubs of the nineties. “He went to Mars, the Palladium, Disco 2000. “He couldn’t have gone there and possibly have had any issue with gay people,” said Alex Roy, who runs Europe by Car, a family business, and who held a fund-raiser for Pantano when he was accused of murder. “He’s changed a lot. I am pretty surprised to hear that he’s against gay marriage, considering that we have gay friends in common. He’s 180 degrees away from the person I grew up with. Maybe it’s a function of where he lives, or having served in the military. If you’re running for office it sure pays to agree with people in your district.”
Vlad Edelman, who was Pantano’s partner in a digital media business for half a dozen years, called Pantano after his New York speech against the proposed mosque. “What’s going on with your politics? I don’t recognize them,” Edelman asked. Shachtman also worried about Pantano’s fearmongering — the candidate fears a Chinese attack via Cuba, as he told Schachtman in an interview for Wired.
THERE YOU GO. Being against gay marriage is a big, big concern. Alleged war crimes? Not so much.
Likewise, giving a speech against the "Ground Zero mosque" is some kind of major faux pas, but gunning down actual Iraqi Muslims in cold blood . . . not so much.
"What's going on with your politics?" As if there were no red flags in 2004, in some God-forsaken corner of Iraq?
Screw it. You want to know what America stands for today? Nothing. Not a damn thing apart from self-righteousness, nada apart from talking a good -- albeit hypocritical -- game. That's who we are, what we're all about.
Left or right, Bohemian or Bubba, there's only one unforgivable sin in contemporary American society today -- being politically incorrect. I guess what they say is true . . . you are what you invade.
I think this is what Pat Cadell, an old liberal warhorse from the Carter White House, and a former Clinton Administration pollster, Douglas E. Schoen, are trying to tell President Obama and the nation:
People? See this here? This is the abyss.
Take another step, and you just might fall into it. That would be bad.
Basically, your -- all of your -- intransigence, venom, hatred of people unlike yourselves and willingness to do anything -- anything -- to make sure that you win and, more importantly, your "enemies" lose is pushing us toward that abyss. You are on a path that leads over the edge and into nothingness.
Nothingness as a people.
Nothingness as a coherent political entity.
And certainly nothing in the way of a decent life for your children or future generations of Americans. Some of you have forgotten the meaning of commonweal -- you think it's a dirty word, some radical notion cooked up by Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels.
Others of you believe in commonweal, only you think it's an excuse for some of you to wield the power of the state as a bludgeon against people you hate . . . ironically because you contend they are "hateful." Of course, hateful nowadays is a moving target, unaffected by objective standards of judging such.
One side or another of you may prevail -- that's certainly doable. It will be your funeral.
WHAT IS IT that Cadell and Schoen have written that I feel the need to boil down for you?
Oh, nothing much. Just an op-ed piece in The Washington Post calling on Obama to forgo running for re-election in 2012.
They want him to throw politics out the window, try to stop the division of America into warring camps and to, in effect, form a bipartisan national-unity government for the remainder of his term.
They think that either he does that, or there will be hell to pay. For all of us.
This is a critical moment for the country. From the faltering economy to the burdensome deficit to our foreign policy struggles, America is suffering a widespread sense of crisis and anxiety about the future. Under these circumstances, Obama has the opportunity to seize the high ground and the imagination of the nation once again, and to galvanize the public for the hard decisions that must be made. The only way he can do so, though, is by putting national interests ahead of personal or political ones.
To that end, we believe Obama should announce immediately that he will not be a candidate for reelection in 2012.
If the president goes down the reelection road, we are guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it. But by explicitly saying he will be a one-term president, Obama can deliver on his central campaign promise of 2008, draining the poison from our culture of polarization and ending the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity and common purpose.
We do not come to this conclusion lightly. But it is clear, we believe, that the president has largely lost the consent of the governed. The midterm elections were effectively a referendum on the Obama presidency. And even if it was not an endorsement of a Republican vision for America, the drubbing the Democrats took was certainly a vote of no confidence in Obama and his party. The president has almost no credibility left with Republicans and little with independents.
IT'S A reasonable suggestion. I'd call it "taking the high road," only radically so.
I also can't imagine any American politician actually doing it. I hope I'm wrong, because I think I might -- tentatively, at least -- associate myself with their remarks. Read on.
If the president adopts our suggestion, both sides will be forced to compromise. The alternative, we fear, will put the nation at greater risk. While we believe that Obama can be reelected, to do so he will have to embark on a scorched-earth campaign of the type that President George W. Bush ran in the 2002 midterms and the 2004 presidential election, which divided Americans in ways that still plague us.
Obama owes his election in large measure to the fact that he rejected this approach during his historic campaign. Indeed, we were among those millions of Democrats, Republicans and independents who were genuinely moved by his rhetoric and purpose. Now, the only way he can make real progress is to return to those values and to say that for the good of the country, he will not be a candidate in 2012.
Should the president do that, he - and the country - would face virtually no bad outcomes. The worst-case scenario for Obama? In January 2013, he walks away from the White House having been transformative in two ways: as the first black president, yes, but also as a man who governed in a manner unmatched by any modern leader. He will have reconciled the nation, continued the economic recovery, gained a measure of control over the fiscal problems that threaten our future, and forged critical solutions to our international challenges. He will, at last, be the figure globally he has sought to be, and will almost certainly leave a better regarded president than he is today. History will look upon him kindly - and so will the public.
Angry because Barack HUSSEIN Obama and Democrats in Congress want to hike tax rates on what hedge funds pay their partners.
Republicans are the beneficiaries of the money.
Handing -- by anti-"oligarhy" voters, no less -- of House control to "oligarhs" who just want to co-opt "pro-liberty" voters in order preserve their ability to profit by gaming the political system.
A tightly coordinated effort by outside Republican groups, spearheaded by Karl Rove and fueled by tens of millions of dollars in contributions from Wall Street hedge fund moguls and other wealthy donors, helped secure big GOP midterm victories Tuesday, according to campaign spending figures and Republican fundraising insiders.
Leading the GOP spending pack was a pair of groups — American Crossroads and its affiliate, Crossroads GPS — both of which were co-founded by two former aides in the George W. Bush White House: Rove, and Ed Gillespie.
Together, the groups — which are not formally part of the Republican Party — spent more than $38 million on attack ads and campaign mailings against Democrats, according to figures compiled by the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign spending in congressional races.
A substantial portion of Crossroads GPS’ money came from a small circle of extremely wealthy Wall Street hedge fund and private equity moguls, according to GOP fundraising sources who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity. These donors have been bitterly opposed to a proposal by congressional Democrats — and endorsed by the Obama administration — to increase the tax rates on compensation that hedge funds pay their partners, the sources said.
A scorecard compiled by NBC News shows the ad barrage appeared to mostly pay off: Republican candidates won nine of the 12 Senate races and 14 of 22 House races where American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS spent money.
That had the groups’ leaders gloating Wednesday about what they described as their pivotal role in the election results.
SUCKERS. There's one born every minute, and there's a world of "oligarhs" out there ready, able and bankrolled enough to pull the wool over the eyes of every last one of them.
If you care to look at what kind of political climate we're facing these days, look no further than Rep. Steve King, western Iowa's crazy-uncle congressman.
In 2008, King -- a three-term representative for whom the description "incendiary" may well be an understatement -- won with 60 percent of the vote. Tuesday, he won with 68 percent.
In February, he was being glib about the guy who flew his plane into the IRS offices in Austin, Texas. Two years before, it was this:
King is a staunch conservative known for eyebrow-raising comments. He expects the GOP takeover of the House of Representatives to lead to his becoming chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law. He is the senior Republican on the subcommittee.
He said Tuesday he wants to introduce legislation reducing and eventually ending federal aid to so-called “sanctuary cities” if they did not change their policies.
“We have a number of cities in our country that, essentially, forbid their law enforcement officers from gathering information on illegals,” he said. “We need to put an end to it.”
Cities — including Seattle, Los Angeles, Houston and San Francisco — have adopted ordinances banning city employees and police from asking residents about their immigration status. King described Des Moines as a “de-facto” sanctuary city where the practice is in place without an ordinance.
He also called for ending automatic citizenship for what he called “anchor babies,” children born in the United States to illegal-immigrant parents. Doing that would likely require changing the U.S. Constitution.
WHAT DEMOCRATS have to deal with isn't that King is a nut and attracts like addle-minded zealots. What Democrats have to deal with is that lots of normal people in the country's breadbasket keep electing a bomb-thrower like the congressman from Iowa's 5th Congressional District.
That they regard him as "normal" enough to represent them, and see Democrats as unfit.
What Democrats have to ask themselves is why they are so alienated from normal Midwestern folk -- angry, fearful, marginally knee-jerk and increasingly deluded folk, to be sure, but not particularly lunatic ones. Dismissing folks like Steve King's Iowa voters, deriding them as bigots and nuts, may be satisfying for the Democratic base, but it still amounts to pissing in the wind.
The difficult question that some Democrats need to ask themselves, but won't, isn't "Why is everybody but us so crazy?" The pertinent question, instead, is "Why do people find us significantly more frightening than somebody like Steve King?"
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars . . ." etc., and so on.
To be scrupulously fair, it ain't just the teabaggers behaving very badly.
Above, in a St. Louis incident quickly picked up by Fox News Channel a year ago and capitalized on by tea partiers as an example of Barack Obama's "goon squads," we are shown an incident that put the "thugs" in the term "union thugs."
And, a year later, that Missouri "town hall beatdown" is being dragged out as an example that the mainstream media is playing up the Rand Paul incident while ignoring liberal violence. Guess who's saying "Well . . . they do it, too!"
You get three guesses. The first two don't count.
WHILE I'M at it, here's another video of what seems to be an SEIU organizer attacking a supporter of a rival union at a California hospital last February:
WHY IS IT the more everyone bleats about "tolerance," the more intolerance we get of . . . well, everything.
Somehow, someway Americans will learn to live up to what we like to tell foreigners about the United States, or we are going to make Bosnia in the mid-'90s look like a walk in the park.
The volunteer with Rand Paul's Republican U.S. Senate campaign who stepped on the head of a liberal activist and pinned her face to the concrete said Tuesday the scuffle was not as bad as it looked on video and blamed police for not intervening.
"I'm sorry that it came to that, and I apologize if it appeared overly forceful, but I was concerned about Rand's safety," Tim Profitt told The Associated Press.
A judge will decide whether Profitt should face criminal charges.
YOU HEARD the Rand Paul militia. Everybody move along; nothing to see here.
In a universe where Nancy Pelosi is the Antichrist in heels, in a political construct where President Obama is a communist Islamic Nazi witch doctor from Kenya who's going to take over health care and force doctors to pull out your fingernails one by one until you retroactively abort your firstborn son and offer his remains to Ted Kennedy . . . it is in this strange, strange world that North Carolinians just might elect to the U.S. House -- with GOP and tea-party blessing (and cash) -- one Ilario Pantano.
Ilario Pantano, who used to be a Goldman Sachs energy trader, ended up rejoining the Marines after 9/11, then went on to pump some 60 rounds from an M-16 into the backs of two unarmed Iraqi detainees.
Ilario Pantano, whom the Marines charged with murder months later but didn't have enough evidence to court martial.
Ilario Pantano, the subject nevertheless of a Marine leadership-manual scenario aimed at teaching unit leaders how not to act on the battlefield, whose actions were described by a lance corporal who reported him as "war crimes."
ILARIO PANTANO, whose actions at Mahmudiyah, Iraq, prompted the following discussion questions at the end of "his" leadership-manual chapter:
* How should the Marine Corps investigate and adjudicate incidents such as those that occurred at Mahumadiyah may have occurred?
* Does the Marine Corps have an equal obligation to protect the reputation of a Marine accused of a crime or dishonorable behavior, someone possessing the presumption of innocence, and the reputations of those who have honorably brought forward questions about that Marine’s behavior?
* Can an action be lawful but dishonorable?
* What do we use as measures of honorable behavior and conduct if the Uniform Code of Military Justice is inadequate or unsuited to the task?
And it doesn't matter to anyone. Most notably, the candidate himself.
One might assume that someone who'd gunned down a couple of unarmed prisoners at almost point-blank range might be circumspect about his wartime actions. Especially actions that could have landed him in prison for the rest of his life.
One might think that someone in such a position -- who had been branded by more than one of his own Marines as a war criminal -- might come back home haunted and penitent, and aware that he dodged some bullets that two Iraqi men couldn't.
You know what they say about what happens when you assume.
NO . . . if an alleged war criminal has the nerve to run for Congress, an alleged war criminal has the nerve to have a fund-raiser Sunday at a gun range. And offer campaign-donation refunds to anyone who can outshoot him, reports The StarNews in Wilmington, N.C.:
Republican congressional candidate Ilario Pantano will hold a pistol match Sunday afternoon at the Ant Hill Range in Brunswick County to raise money for his campaign against incumbent U.S. Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-Lumberton.
For $25, “any patriot” who thinks he can outshoot Pantano is invited to show off his marksmanship in a timed target-shooting challenge, according to ads for the event.
Shoot fast and straight enough to beat the former Marine and trained sniper and get your money back.
“Pantano needs your help to fix Washington, so come on out to this fundraiser social for an afternoon of fun, food and guns!” according to an advertisement for the event.
Pantano is advertising the event as a way to protect the Second Amendment and “clear all the anti-gun liberals out of Congress.”
Registration starts at 11 a.m., with the shooting starting shortly after noon. Shooters can sign up at the event and must bring their own gun and ammunition.
ADVENTURESOME "patriots" had better bring their "A" game. The Marines' account(go to Page 49) of Pantano's Iraq adventures indicate he's absolutely deadly at 5 feet:
At this point, the occupants of the white sedan were described as cooperative; no weapons had been found on either their persons or in the vehicle. The women at the target house corroborated their story. The only finds worth mentioning were the coffee cans of nuts and bolts found in the trunk of the car.
The platoon commander directed the corpsman to take charge of the detainees. The corpsman moved them to the rear of the vehicle, separated them and placed them on their stomachs. He stood security on the detainees while the platoon commander and radio operator went to the target house. It could not be determined whether the platoon commander was informed that the residents had confirmed the two detainees’ story. It was determined, however, that the residents had not been held hostage in their homes by insurgents. The platoon commander and radio operator returned from the house. Upon his return, the platoon commander directed the radio operator to get the Iraqis up from the ground and remove the flex cuffs; the radio operator did so using his medical shears. The platoon commander then told the corpsman he wanted the detainees to search the vehicle a second time. The corpsman moved the detainees to the left or west side of the vehicle, placing the older of the two Iraqis in the driver’s door and the younger in the passenger door. The Iraqis had to be told several times to stop talking. The platoon commander directed the radio operator and corpsman to take up security positions, leaving him alone with the two Iraqis. The corpsman testified that he heard the platoon commander say “stop” in Arabic and then again in English. He then heard shots being fired. The platoon commander fired two thirty round M-16 magazines into the two Iraqis using burst fire. The corpsman has testified that the platoon commander fired from a distance of four to five feet.
The corpsman turned during the firing and observed the platoon commander’s rounds striking the Iraqis in their backs. He saw the Iraqis slump into the vehicle. The radio operator immediately faced about and saw the platoon commander firing into the vehicle. After the platoon commander ceased firing, the corpsman checked the Iraqis’ vital signs and informed the platoon commander that they were dead.
Prior to this firing, the only other shots that had been fired were the warning shots to stop the white sedan. The corpsman testified that throughout this entire action, the platoon had not received any fire. Elements of 3rd Platoon were established to the east, west, and north of the scene of the incident and others were at the target house.
The corpsman went to the rear of the vehicle. “Don’t worry about it,” he said to the radio operator, “the blood is not on your hands, it’s on the lieutenant’s.”
The corpsman testified that after shooting the two Iraqis, the platoon commander used his K-bar and rifle to break windows and lights of the white sedan and to flatten its tires. The radio operator also testified that the platoon commander did this, although he testified that it happened before the shootings.
The platoon commander later said that “I didn’t wait to see if there was a grenade. I didn’t wait to see if there was a knife. And unfortunately, there are a lot of dead soldiers and Marines who have waited too long. And my men weren’t going to be one of those dead soldiers or Marines and neither was I.” The Intel Bn Marine testified that he heard the shots and went back towards the location of the white sedan. During this time, a second vehicle approached the scene from the north. The platoon commander ordered that vehicle, a brown sedan with several Iraqi laborers, to stop just north of the white sedan.
The Intel Bn Marine and the interpreter jogged north past the white sedan to assist the platoon commander with the Iraqis in the brown sedan. The interpreter described the scene at the white sedan. “They looked like they were on their knees. They were shot in their backs. One was in the front of the vehicle, the other one was in the back of the vehicle, facing the vehicle.”
He later described the scene as “weird.” “The rounds, sir -- there were too many rounds shot into those detainees, sir.”
The interpreter testified that upon arriving at the brown sedan, he observed the platoon commander using his knife to flatten the tires of the vehicle. The platoon commander ordered Marines to move the new detainees to the north of their vehicle. (There were five or six Iraqi house painters in the vehicle. Painting equipment was found in their car and in the house where they had been working.) They were probably twenty feet from the two dead Iraqis. Here, the Intel Bn Marine and his interpreter questioned them. The interpreter testified that the platoon commander had him tell the painters that “if any of them want to join the insurgency that same thing was going to happen to them as those bodies” and then they were released. They drove away on flattened tires.
By this point, the platoon commander had placed a sign on the first vehicle, on the left side, the same side as the deceased Iraqis. It read “No better friend, no worse enemy.” The first vehicle was not searched again. No effort was made to recover the remains of the dead Iraqis.
PERHAPS THAT ought to be Pantano's campaign slogan: "No better friend, no worse enemy." Wink.
Lots of politicians will stab you in the back. The would-be congressman from North Carolina might be the first, though, to empty two clips into it.
How ironic that Ilario Pantano went off to war to -- What was the official reason at the time? -- "to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger." That was from President George W. Bush's televised address to the nation at the beginning of hostilities.
"To all the men and women of the United States armed forces now in the Middle East, the peace of a troubled world and the hopes of an oppressed people now depend on you. That trust is well placed.
"The enemies you confront will come to know your skill and bravery. The people you liberate will witness the honourable and decent spirit of the American military.
"In this conflict America faces an enemy that has no regard for conventions of war or rules of morality."
AS IT turns out, Saddam wasn't alone in that regard.
As it turns out, at least one Marine -- it was alleged -- decided he would employ some Saddam-style deterrence for anyone considering messing with Uncle Sam. What happened in Mahmudiyah was literally, it would seem, out of the Saddam Hussein Handbook for Keeping Troublemakers in Line. This pasaage from Saddam's obit in The Sunday Times, for example:
The society he grew up in was violent and well armed. Some accounts say Saddam was given his first firearm at the age of eight. Another has him, at the age of ten, threatening to kill a school teacher who wanted to expel him. But, much more than violence, tribal loyalty was the overwhelming characteristic of the society into which he was born. He was to rise to power not by becoming prominent in politics or the military, but by harnessing the ties of kinship. One of the rebel officers who led the 1963 Baathist coup was Ahmed al-Hassan al Bakr, a relative of Saddam's. Bakr became prime minister and it was under his leadership that Saddam's stealthy seizure of power began, beginning with the building of security and intelligence networks answerable - and loyal - not to the state but to Saddam in person. For five years after 1963, Saddam Hussein lived on the fringes of the new political establishment, frequently falling out of favour and ending up in jail. The breakthrough in his political fortunes came in 1968 when a second coup brought the Tikriti clan to power. Bakr became head of state with Saddam as vice-chairman of the Revolution Command Council. he systematic violence and intimidation that was to keep Saddam in power began. Possible opponents were assassinated.
The Kurdish political leader Mahmoud Osman got to know him well during this period. "He told us, 'You have to kill some people, even if they are innocent, in order to frighten others'."
In the 1970s, Saddam Hussein, as Vice President, became head of Iraq's nuclear energy programme. In 1975 he made one of his rare trips abroad - to Paris - to visit the plant that was to supply Iraq with its first nuclear power station. He was welcomed in person by the then French prime minister, Jacques Chirac. Iraq and France signed an agreement which bound Baghdad to the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty; the plant would be for the production of energy only, strictly non-military.
In 1979, Bakr, in poor health, announced his intention to step down and hand power to Saddam. Some members of the RCC objected and demanded a vote. They did not live long. Saddam accused his fellow Ba'athists of conspiring against him, and of plotting with foreign powers. A meeting of the RCC was filmed in which Saddam is shown denouncing the alleged conspirators and being persuaded by terrified acolytes not to be lenient. Between a quarter and half the members of the ruling body were executed. It was at this time, too, that another distinctive feature of the Saddam regime emerged - a willingness to punish not only direct opponents and potential opponents, but members of their families as well.
"NO BETTER friend, no worse enemy."
And now, a tangible symbol of the putridity oozing from an infection America picked up during an unnecessary war is on the cusp of election to Congress. Our Congress. The United States Congress . . . as opposed to its Iraqi counterpart.
Or the old Communist central committee of Soviet times.
Not so many, according to a Salon piece, have a problem with this:
But one of the remarkable things about the campaign in North Carolina this year is that the murder charges are not only not an issue, but have barely even been talked about.
David McLennan, a political scientist at North Carolina's Peace College, told Salon that the issue could backfire for McIntyre, the Democratic incumbent, particularly in a district with a large ex-military population.
"There are some people in the district who consider Pantano to be a hero. For McIntyre to raise that issue is just way too delicate," McLennan says.
Some of the only criticism of Pantano's past has ironically come from the man he beat in the GOP primary, fellow Iraq war vet Will Breazeale. He told the Daily Beast after his primary loss that he considers Pantano "dangerous," adding: "I’ve taken prisoners in Iraq and there’s no excuse for what he did."
Asked by Salon if he is surprised that his critics have largely ignored the Iraq incident, Pantano was defiant. "If they want to question my war effort -- if they think that's prudent, they can go ahead ... I've served my country proudly in two wars."
IT WILL be America's great shame if he serves one second in Congress.
It is a movement devoted to turning traditional morality on its head, taking Darwinism out of the biology books and inserting it into the heart of civil society and relegating Father, Son and Holy Ghost to the ash heap of history . . . and the Sermon on the Mount with them.
