Andrew McCarthy writes about the Department of Homeland Security’s report about “rightwing extremism.”
For eight years, we’ve been treated to hysterical rhetoric from Democrats, including Barack Obama, about the scourge of “domestic spying.†Now that the Obama administration is openly calling for domestic spying — the real thing, not the smear used against President Bush — they’re suddenly silent.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in coordination with the FBI, has issued an intelligence assessment on what it calls “Rightwing Extremism.†It is appalling. The nakedly political document announces itself as a “federal effort to influence domestic public opinion.†It proceeds, in what it acknowledges is the absence of any “specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence,†to speculate that “rightwing†political views might “drive†such violence — violence, it further surmises, that might be abetted by military veterans returning home after putting their lives on the line in Iraq and Afghanistan. And for good measure, in violation of both FBI guidelines and congressional statutes, the Obama administration promises scrutiny of ordinary Americans’ political views, speech, and assembly.
…
The insinuation: If you think the federal government has gotten too big, if you believe that the Tenth Amendment (“the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the peopleâ€) is still part of the Constitution, if you are concerned about unborn life, or if you want the immigration laws of the United States enforced, you are a terrorist waiting to happen. If you are resistant to immersion in the global community because of “the perceived threat to U.S. power and sovereignty by other foreign powers,†you are a potential subversive. If you are concerned that the government might interfere with your right to legally purchase and possess firearms, you are on the federal radar.
How fast are we losing our freedom in America? Consider this: within seven years of the founding of the Department of Homeland Security, which was supposed to protect America from the threat of foreign terrorism, a political party has used it to stigmatize its political opponents.
For all the shouting about Bush’s violations of civil liberties, the minute the Democrats got control of the DHS, they recognized it as a weapon to be used against their domestic opponents.
The DHS should not exist. There would be no terrorist threat if Bush had waged a serious war to wipe out all states that sponsor terrorism. But that would have been an assertion of our national self-interest, which Bush and the neocons, good altruists that they are, didn’t have the will to do. As John Lewis noted, the creation of the DHS signaled to the world that America will not try to wipe out militant Islam, but is willing to live with it. Instead of striking fear into the heart of the enemy, Bush preferred to keep the American people in a low-grade, permanent state of fear.
And now the Democrats are using the DHS to smear their political opponents by implying they are all potential Timothy McVeighs.
Events are moving fast… tension mounting… building to a climax. Someday, I fear, all hell is going to break loose. And that day is getting closer. As they say, it’s not the end of the world, but you can see it from here.
(HT: TIA Daily)
> “. . . if you are concerned about unborn life . . .”
Well, Mr. McCarthy, I am not concerned about “unborn life.” I am concerned about conservatives who want to force their scriptural fantasies on others, especially pregnant women.
Mr. McCarthy is a conservative and therefore, by definition, an enemy of capitalism. The highest values of conservatism — God, Tradition, Nation, and Family (including the “unborn”!) — are rejections of the foundations of capitalism, the political system dedicated solely to the protection of individual rights. Those foundations are: one, natural world; reason as an exclusive absolute; and rational egoism.
Should I be alert to the Obama administration increasing domestic spying? Yes. But that is no justification for giving any support to conservatives who have a terrible record of their own in attacking rights.
“Should I be alert to the Obama administration increasing domestic spying? Yes. But that is no justification for giving any support to conservatives who have a terrible record of their own in attacking rights.”
I am afraid that I do not understand what your point is. Who is “giving any support to conservatives”?
Whatever you or I might think of conservatives or anti-abortionists, they are NOT terrorists. The overwhelmingly vast majority are peaceful citizens who hold jobs, earn their own way in life, obey the laws of the land and seek to spread their views and implement their agenda through the legal and electoral system. To point this fact out and to be offended by this outrageous smear against them (along with plenty of others, including you and me) being put forth by wannabe Stalinists in our own government does NOT in any way imply sanction or support to their ideology or views. It no more supports their views than my defending a hippie’s right to fry his brain on drugs while listening to modern rock music somehow constitute a support for drug abuse or rock music on my part.
When it comes to the government smearing peaceful, law abiding citizens as “terrorists” because of their opinions and viewpoints, especially as a means of silencing dissent – well, in that context it is irrelevant what their views are how much you or I might disagree with them.
“Events are moving fast… tension mounting… building to a climax. Someday, I fear, all hell is going to break loose. And that day is getting closer. As they say, it’s not the end of the world, but you can see it from here.”
Yeah, Obama wants to give money to Hammas – but American housewives and their families are would-be terrorists who need to be watched.
As for all hell breaking loose, I guarantee you that if the Democrats somehow pull off the Mother Of All Power Grabs, effectively abolish all freedom of speech, implement policies that make it impossible to thrown them out of office – i.e., impose a dictatorship, there WILL be a violent pushback – i.e., a civil war. That is especially true in parts of the country such as Texas. People here aren’t inclined to just bow their heads and say “Heil Pelosi.” Perhaps that is what the Administration, privy to their own long-term agenda is anticipating in their DHS report and is trying to discredit in advance. But, of course, in that context, such behavior resisting a dictatorship would NOT be terrorism.
Putting on my tinfoil hat for a moment – Obama’s Appeasement & Apology Tour is practically INVITING some sort of massive attack on our country. Could it be that such an attack is being anticipated and plans are being made to use it as a pretext for drastic “emergency measures” which include significant curtailments on freedom of speech and perhaps even things such as a prohibition of non-licensed posting of content on the Internet on grounds that subversives could publish information useful to the enemy? It is not so bizarre when one considers that the same crowd that is in charge now accused Bush of knowing about 911 in advance and using it as a pretext for a power grab. These people have a pattern of making accusations about their enemies on the basis of PROJECTION and thus revealing for all to see their true souls.
Personally, I don’t think we are going to get to the point of such a dictatorship or civil war anytime soon. It is not because of any lack of desire on the part of Obama and his gang who look more and more like the Communist thugs in We The Living with each passing day. The problem for them is: who is going to enforce this dictatorship? Who is going to be rounding people up, making the 3:00 AM knocks on the the door and taking people in for interrogation from which they will either forever disappear or reappear permanently intimidated? Most people in our military DESPISE these people. Most of our troops will turn on our government before they will turn on the civilian population from which they came – which is one of the reasons the Leftists despise our military so much. The same, I suspect, is pretty much true with local police forces. To impose a dictatorship, there has to be a powerful enforcement agency that is loyal to the dictators. Presently, we do not have such an institution in place. My guess is something along the lines of this is what Obama has in mind with his proposed all-new domestic branch of the military that will purportedly do volunteer work and respond to hurricanes and such. But even if such an institution is allowed to be put in place, it will take time for it to be built up. Look how long it has taken Hugo Chavez to consolidate his power. Only in recent weeks has he been able to CLEARLY push Venezuela across the line into dictatorship – no doubt emboldened by what he sees going on in Washington. Meanwhile, as these tea parties demonstrate, people are starting to catch on to them and see that what they are REALLY after is raw, naked power.
I do agree we are on a collision course for SOME sort of climax. Obama’s 100 days “honeymoon” had not even passed before there were massive demonstrations in the streets in towns and cities all across the country. The Left has had demonstrations in the past and some of them have been probably larger than the largest Tea Parties. But they have NEVER had so many of them taking place all at once in places all across the country and on such a grass roots basis. We have started seeing this BEFORE Obama has even started pushing for most of his agenda. We are less than 100 days into this and the 2010 Congressional elections are still a long way out. And even if the Tea Parties result in a sea change in Congress, Obama will be in through 2012 and still have the power to unilaterally do a lot of deliberate damage in terms of the military and foreign policy. Something has to give – and when it does, we will definitely be watching, and perhaps even be active participants in, events that people will be reading about in history books for centuries to come.
“The Left has had demonstrations in the past and some of them have been probably larger than the largest Tea Parties. But they have NEVER had so many of them taking place all at once in places all across the country and on such a grass roots basis.”
Yes, and I think it helps to compare the two kinds of protests carefully. The left are practiced protesters. Where do protests on the left usually occur? They’re usually one-city events, and people are bussed in from all over. I remember this myself from my young days as a leftist. There would be a nationwide call for people to take the bus to D.C. or N.Y.C. for a protest. This is when you see large crowds at a leftist protest.
When the left tries to have *multi-city* protests across the country, they are usually sad affairs. A handful of people in front of Federal buildings or state capitols that not even the most supportive media can make look large.
People who are right of center have not been much inclined to have mass protests in the U.S. in modern times. Protest has taken other forms. Standing around with signs is not their thing. Suddenly, we have these truly grass-roots mass protests (professional Republican hijacking attempts notwithstanding). I was stunned to see that 10,000 were reported around the Alamo cenotaph in San Antonio. I saw the aerial photograph, and it was astonishing. And, of course, similar things were going on all over the country.
You are right, dismuke, this is something new and impressive in the early days of the Obama presidency, and you can expect the left not to like it one bit, and to try every dirty trick to stop it.
“Obama’s Appeasement & Apology Tour is practically INVITING some sort of massive attack on our country.”
It seems Iran and North Korea are boldening as we speak, with regard to their nuclear programs.
“Who is going to be rounding people up, making the 3:00 AM knocks on the the door and taking people in for interrogation from which they will either forever disappear or reappear permanently intimidated? Most people in our military DESPISE these people.”
I suspect the usual gradualism will be employed to attempt to deal with this. Each generation a little more willing to carry out the tasks of the new government.
> “I am afraid that I do not understand what your point is. Who is ‘giving any support to conservatives’?”
Mr. McCarthy is.
Mr. McCarthy is a conservative, writing in a conservative publication, to an audience of conservatives. That is giving support to conservatives. No matter how often or how loudly a conservative denounces his left-wing statist competitors, I will not answer his call.
Conservatism is an enemy of capitalism. Individual conservatives, like individual “liberals,” can be allies in ad hoc movements and organizations (such as an attempt to stop a proposed new sales tax or a law banning abortion). No other alliance is proper without a clear and repeated statement of underlying principles of one natural world, reason as an exclusive absolute, rational egoism, and capitalism, the political system devoted exclusively to the protection of individual rights from aggression and fraud.
How many of those principles does Mr. Carthy support?
“.No matter how often or how loudly a conservative denounces his left-wing statist competitors, I will not answer his call.”
Really? So context means nothing to you? You won’t answer his call even if he happens to be a victim of an injustice and his cry is valid? And you think, just because you have philosophical disagreements with him and consider him to be “enemy of capitalism,” that makes him so intrinsically rotten and corrupt that speaking up against an injustice committed against him somehow constitutes a sanction on your part of his philosophical errors?
I’m sorry, but I find that to be rather odd.
I don’t care if Mr. McCarthy speaks in tongues, has nightly conversations with Jesus, eats his own buggers, secretly dresses up as Janet Reno and tells people he is the reincarnation of Cleopatra. All of that is utterly irrelevant in the context of the fact that he (along with countless others including you and me) has been targeted and smeared as a potential terrorist by officials in his own government.
McCarthy has every right to cry out against this injustice and, regardless of what his philosophical errors might happen be, it is highly appropriate for him to speak out.
Here is a man who, along with other religious conservatives, is being targeted by and smeared by a law enforcement agency in his own government on the basis of his ideological views in an attempt to intimidate and silence those views . And you turn your face away in indifference and refuse to “answer his call” because the particular views the government is trying to intimidate and silence do not conform to you own personal opinions? Thus an attempt by government officials to silence dissent is, therefore, to be viewed and reacted to through the prism of whether or not the opinions being silenced are consistent with “a clear and repeated statement of underlying principles of one natural world, reason as an exclusive absolute, rational egoism, and capitalism, the political system devoted exclusively to the protection of individual rights from aggression and fraud.”?
I’m sorry, but if that is your actual view, then that is a greater sanction of evil and far more dangerous than anything some befuddled conservative is ever likely to commit. It is one thing to strongly disagree with religious conservatives and to regard them as ideological enemies. But to hate them so much that one “will not answer [their] call” when government officials are trying to intimidate and silence them is beyond ideological disagreement and crosses the line into bigotry.
My very strong hope is that is NOT your viewpoint and that what you wrote is just an innocent case of a highly rationalistic misapplication of perfectly valid principles. But if that IS your view and you are not willing to speak out at the top of your lungs against state sponsored intimidation designed to silence religious conservatives – well, you will have surrendered ANY moral right to expect anyone else to speak out on YOUR behalf when Obama’s thugs attempt to silence YOU.
L-C, please send an email to wagreeley@roadrunner.com.
Is that Dismuke holding the Atlas Will Shrug sign at this rally?
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/04/20/janeane-garafolo-meet-katrina-pierson/
“Who is going to be rounding people up, making the 3:00 AM knocks on the the door and taking people in for interrogation from which they will either forever disappear or reappear permanently intimidated?”
“Officers of the police or revenue easily adapt themselves to any form of government.”
(Edward Gibbon, “The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire”, Vol. I, ch. 3, footnote 20, p. 59)
This is true. It is evident throughout history, and there will be nothing different in the American experience.
“Is that Dismuke holding the Atlas Will Shrug sign at this rally?”
No, that is someone else. I was in the crowd behind the camera man, which is where the bulk of the crowd was. And my sign was somewhat pathetic in that it was just a plane white poster board with the words printed on them not so prettily with a black marker.
To Dismuke and others,
What do you think of Charles Johnson of LGF saying that the Right-Wing blogoshpere has overreacted to the DHS report? He points out that there are extremist groups that are Right Wing and that it is legitimate to profile them. He recently drew attention to one such Nazi group that was in the planning stages of a terrorist incident.
I’m not saying I agree, and I think it is debatable whether Nazi and White Pride groups should be classified as part of the Right. But Johnson has been good at calling out Conservatives that are making common cause with fascist groups (especially European ones). So I’m curious if people here think he is wrong on this issue.
I just want to point this out to anyone wondering who will be knocking on doors at 3am:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMB6L487LHM
I suspect that future brown shirts will not be formed from the military, but will be a cadre specially picked for their willingness to follow orders and do anything. Among those this cadre will be indoctrinated to hate will be “rightwing extremists.”
Madmax, the point of the report is to smear all “rightwing extremists” as potential Timothy McVeighs, so the report is bad even if there are
“rightwingers” out there who are dangerous. I disagree with Charles Johnson on this one.
As usual, Billy Beck hits the nail squarely on the head. I wish I had that cite from Gibbons when I wrote about
repurposed drug warriors.
Or even this one:
(Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, p. 459, 1973.)
“I’m not saying I agree, and I think it is debatable whether Nazi and White Pride groups should be classified as part of the Right. But Johnson has been good at calling out Conservatives that are making common cause with fascist groups (especially European ones). So I’m curious if people here think he is wrong on this issue.”
I think this is where we see the limitati0ns of terms like “right” and “left.” I started feeling this way strongly during the glasnost era in the Soviet Union, when the mainstream media started calling the communist hard-liners who opposed Gorbachev’s reforms “right-wing.”
Then during the Iraq war, we start seeing Patrick Buchanan’s (supposedly a right-winger) website referring readers to what we would think of as left-wing, anti-war websites with no reservations whatever.
In Europe, both the left and the right (for the most part) are anti-capitalist. “Neo-liberal” is the slur they use. We have anti-semitic, anti-capitalist, anti-globalist . . . what? Right-wingers? Left-wingers? Who can tell?
The problem with “right-wing” in the hands of the media in the U.S. context is this: they think it includes Timothy McVeigh, Patrick Buchanan, Sarah Palin, and how many times have you heard Ayn Rand called that too? I have, a lot. Every time this bullshit taxonomy is used, they must be called on it.
I am with Myrhaf regarding Charles Johnson. I read the LGF article last night, I think, after someone linked to it and was not impressed.
First off, the fact that the report was issued just as the Tea Parties were getting started was just too convenient. This is actually fully consistent with the template the Walter Duranty Media used to respond to the Tea Parties: smear all who attended as racists and kooks. It is very much the same approach that the Left tried to use in 1993 when it insinuated that Rush Limbaugh and “hate radio” (funny term considering that it is the Leftists who seethe with hate and that the Leftist Air America network that later came along featured hosts who openly called for Bush to be assassinated.) were somehow responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing.
I am all for profiling political groups who seek to advance their agenda through violence. But there are ways to word such reports with precision and differentiate such groups from those who engage in dissent peacefully and lawfully.
Imagine the uproar had the Bush DHS came out with a similar report that suggested people who shop at Whole Foods and buy recycled toilet paper are of the same ilk as the Unibomber and other environmentalist/animal rights terrorists?
And the NERVE of the Obama Administration pointing fingers regarding domestic terrorism when Obama himself is long time close friends with two actual domestic terrorists who bombed buildings, plotted to kill people and to this day stand by what they did. We have a president whose associations are such that he probably would NOT pass an routine FBI background check. Yet he is Commander In Chief because such security checks are not required if enough brain dead robots elect one to office. And, of course, this is the same president who has outlawed interrogation techniques used on one of the plotters of the 911 attacks and which subsequently helped save the tallest building in Los Angeles from coming under a similar attack. Apparently Obama does not have a problem with terrorists per se – only potential terrorists who might be would-be rivals.
Powerline Blog makes an interesting point today with regard to Obama’s suggestion that Justice Department lawyers for the Bush Administration might be brought up on criminal charges for supporting waterboarding:
“The idea of prosecuting a lawyer because a wrote a legal analysis with which the current Attorney General disagrees is so outrageous that I can’t believe it would be seriously considered. Still, President Obama and his party may achieve another objective by publicly making this kind of threat: deterring Republicans from serving in public life. For many Republicans considering whether to accept an appointment to government office, the prospect that they may be subjected to criminal prosecution if the next administration is Democratic could well tip the balance in favor of remaining in private life.”
I think might very well be the case. I think it is very likely that Obama’s approach of dealing with his political opposition is to smear them both as an end in itself and as a means of intimidating them into silence. The Power Line quote provides one example of attempting to intimidate non-Leftists from going into government. Smearing right wing opposition as would be terrorists via the DHS results in those who get their information from the Walter Duranty media equating Tea Party attendees with kooks AND it might make some reluctant to attend such a Tea Party out of fear that they might be called a kook. Also, recall how Obama’s people engaged in their little attempt to intimidate elected Republicans from opposing his agenda by suggesting that those who disagreed with Obama were “taking marching orders from Rush Limbaugh.” And, of course, elected Republicans have a long history of caving in to the Left out of fear that they will no longer get invited to the fun cocktail parties and might be looked down upon as backwoods bumpkins who drink the sort of coffee served in truck stops and gas stations.
I say the best response to the DHA smear was the one that was on display at the Tea Party I attended. Everybody was joking about how we are all now terrorists and extremists. Mark Davis, the talk show emcee commented that if the report had been issued just a few days later, someone could have made a FORTUNE printing up and selling tee shirts which read “Watch Out: I am a dangerous right wing extremist.”
I think Charles Johnson is bending over backwards to prove he’s a “sensible moderate.” Anyone who is not a “moderate,” he smears as an “extremist.” If he were apprised of our views, he would without question label us “extremists.”
He also goes out of his way to find reasons to praise Obama, and denounces those who say they want Obama to fail. I most assuredly want Obama to fail. He wants to ruin the greatest country that ever existed, and I should want him to succeed? Not on your life. Insofar as Obama succeeds, America loses.
dismuke: there was a similar response from conservatives after hillary Clinton’s famous “vast right-wing conspiracy” reference; for years after, conservatives proudly referred to themselves as members of that alleged “conspiracy”.
There was apparently a matching, earlier DHS report on leftist “extremists” as well.
I’ve not had time to look into this much, but none of this surprises me. The “left-right” spectrum is an obfuscatory, blinding device by design, so I would expect any action or planning that relies on it as if it actually meant anything to be quite crude and clumsy at best.
I believe Mises has written about how the left-right distinction is meaningless. In the modern world the fundamental distinction is those who are for laissez-faire capitalism and those who are not. Those who are not covers a lot of territory.
Chuck, I am with you all the way: I fervently hope that Obama fails, and fails miserably.
Dismuke:
Interrogation techniques based on Chinese models that have been proven to provide 99.9% junk data that is unverifiable and wastes resources are not, ever, justifiable in a context of individual rights. Torture does not work as a rule. There are odd exceptions to the rule, they do not, ever, justify the means. If that makes me a flower-pooping hippy, then so be it. Cue next segment:
To: Right vs. Left distinction
It was, once upon a time, in (French) fairytales (of the post Napoleanic era) a good model. In our current situation one must look at the set of ideas a group or an indiviudual holds and look at what their ideas identify them as. The problem of course is that that is a complex, cumbersome process in most cases. Labeling is easy, gives great moral satisfaction and creates satisfying us vs. them scenarios. Why do it the hard way?
“Interrogation techniques based on Chinese models that have been proven to provide 99.9% junk data that is unverifiable and wastes resources are not, ever, justifiable in a context of individual rights. Torture does not work as a rule.”
Perhaps you are correct about torture not being effective as a rule – that is something I have not studied and really have no opinion on. But Obama’s point is NOT merely that waterboarding is ineffective but rather that its use is CRIMINAL.
You say that such techniques are never justifiable in the context of individual rights. But we are not talking about a context in which individual rights are applicable. A terrorist is, by definition, someone who intentionally and violently violates individual rights – which means that he disregards individual rights and thus has NO moral basis WHATSOEVER to claim them for himself.
Now, it is true that CRIMINALS within the United States and even domestic terrorists DO have certain rights which must be protected – but the source of them is the rights of the accused which rest on a presumption of innocence until they have been properly convicted according to the rule of law. And even after criminals have been convicted they do have certain rights to the extent that justice requires that punishment be appropriate to the nature of the crime – i.e., it is not appropriate for someone who writes a $5 bad check be punished by the state on the same level as a mass murderer. But the fact remains that, to the degree that a person violates another’s individual rights, he forfeits any moral claim of those same rights for himself.
None of these protections for the accused are at all applicable in a wartime situation. In war, the objective is to destroy one’s enemies by whatever means one can. It HAS to be that way otherwise one WILL be destroyed by one’s enemies. Do you think that the IslamoNazis worry about things such as justice and innocence and individual rights? Did the Nazis? Did the Soviets? Of course not. They just exterminated anybody that stood in their way.
In World War II, we wiped out entire cities – Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and others. And we had no choice but to do so – the alternative was to surrender to the likes of Hitler and perish or, at the very least, sacrifice the lives of hundreds of thousands of additional American troops in order to win the war by less effective means. So we can drop a bomb on a city which will land on houses of people living in an enemy city who might be entirely moral individuals who resisted the evil regime to every degree that was open to them – but we cannot use a technique that is profoundly uncomfortable but physically harmless on a TERRORIST who is in on a plot to crash an airplane into the tallest skyscraper in Los Angeles?
Sure, acts of intentional sadism and behavior such as raping and looting the occupied population are inappropriate and should be dealt with by military officials. But that is not what we are talking about.
Obama’s objective with regard to this is multifold: He harbors a typical Leftist hatred for the United States and regards it as a country that is fundamentally evil and, in the words of his wife “hateful.” The Left has long resented and lusted after undermining American strength both militarily and economically. Obama appears to be no exception. Furthermore, he is using this issue as a means of taking cheap shots at his predecessors and pleasing his hard Left base.
Thanks to all who responded on Charles Johnson. I agree with Chuck that Johnson has revealed himself to be a “moderate” which means a watered down political liberal. And I also agree that Johnson would definitely label Objectivists as extremists.
Here is a piece on the Charles Johnson “civil war”:
http://washingtonindependent.com/39629/civil-war-raging-in-right-wing-blogosphere
I agree with Johnson that Creationism is wrong. I have not followed the Gates of Vienna/European fascists controversy closely enough to decide about it.
On the idea that Islam should be outlawed in America, I’m unsure. Islam is more than just a religion: it is a totalitarian political movement that is at war with us. Frankly, I think any Muslim in America should expect to have his rights curtailed in a time of war and most certainly should expect to be profiled. I can even see disallowing Muslims to immigrate to America unless they take an oath that they don’t believe their religion. Of course, none of this will ever happen in PC America.
The controversy regarding Charles Johnson is complicated. I have been reading his blog regularly for years.
On the one hand, you have the fact that he has made a lot of enemies by criticizing people who quite clearly have no place in a rational movement: racists, paleocons, and European nativists to name the obvious ones. He values classical liberal principles over maintaining “solidarity” at all costs. (In this sense, he seems to implicitly understand the same principle that Objectivists do when we reject alliances with groups such as the Libertarian Party.)
On the other hand, Johnson is framing the controversy in terms of rejecting “extremism” on the “right.” But the latter term is a category defined largely by historical accident; the former is an anti-concept (a smear term pretending to be a description) that most people unfortunately treat as legitimate.
Charles Johnson has basically painted himself into the “moderate” corner by default, by relying on the ready-made and sloppy ideological categories taken for granted in our culture. I hope that he is open to better principles.
Myrhaf,
Informative article, thanks. Here is my take.
Johnson over the years has been exposed to the likes of Larry Auster, Steve Salier, StormFront and other white nationalist racists/Christian fascists. I think he became alarmed and unnerved and now thinks that the Right is in danger of being overwhelmed by such ideas. Thus, he has moved to the left as a defensive response. While he is right about rejecting Creationism/Id, he is expressing sentiments too closely associated with the left. His blog will suffer if this continues.
Andrew,
Great comment about Johnson. You said it better than me.
Myrhaf,
Regarding your views on Islam. At my level of thinking on the subject, my thoughts mirror yours almost identically. But there is considerable disagreement over this subject (and immigration as well) amongst Objectivists. For example, Harry Binswanger has expressed the opinion that all religions should be treated the same and that restrictions on Islam would ultimately bring protections for Christianity. I can understand that argument but I am leaning heavily toward the conclusion that Islam, in today’s context, is a special type of religion. It is a warrior religion aimed at political conquest. I think it does needed to be treated differently even if that might embolden some Christian theocrats. But I readily concede that this is not an easy subject.
“I can even see disallowing Muslims to immigrate to America unless they take an oath that they don’t believe their religion.”
I just thought of something else with regard to this, there would be a 1st amendment problem. There would have to be some federal statute or Constitutional amendment that defines Islam as an enemy political ideology and not a religion. That opens up another can of worms. No easy solutions with Islam.
We don’t allow communists to immigrate. I assume there was a similar restriction against Nazis in WWII. If we had a clear understanding that we are at war with militant Islam, then the immigration restriction would follow. This is such a fantasy, given that both Bush and Obama went out of their way to declare that we are not at war with Islam, that it’s pretty much a waste of time fantasizing about it.
Besides, it would undermine our efforts to negotiate with and be more accommodating to the “moderate Taliban!”
dismuke,
I took rsm’s point about torture being unjustifiable in a context of individual rights to mean that because torture is inherently wasteful, it is a violation of the individual taxpayer’s rights to be forced to pay for the performance of something which does not work.
As he said, even though there are odd exceptions to the rule that torture does not work, for the military to utilize it on the rationale that this time might produce one of those those exceptions is profoundly irrational, and thus immoral, and thus a violation of individual (ie: property) rights.
“I took rsm’s point about torture being unjustifiable in a context of individual rights to mean that because torture is inherently wasteful, it is a violation of the individual taxpayer’s rights to be forced to pay for the performance of something which does not work”
I have no idea what it costs to have agents who are already getting a predetermined annual salary to interrogate a person the government is already paying to hold in custody – but in the grand scheme of things, especially in the realm of GOVERNMENT WASTE OF TAXPAYER MONEY, it doesn’t even rise to the level of being classified as chump change. To oppose the alleged “ineffectiveness” of certain interrogation technique on grounds that they WASTE MONEY – well, that would be like the executive management at Wal-mart’s headquarters getting all worked up because some teenager pocketed and stole a 10 cent Tootsie Roll from the candy counter at the Walmart Supercenter in Salina Kansas instead of spending that energy being concerned about a gang of foreign cyber-terrorists who have managed to hack into and drain a hundred million dollars from the company’s bank accounts.