The End of Conservatives (A bitter paleoconservative has-been jumps the shark)

Outlook [India] ^ | January 31, 2005 | Paul Craig Roberts

[quidnunc]

I remember when friends would excitedly telephone to report that Rush Limbaugh or G. Gordon Liddy had just read one of my syndicated columns over the air. That was before I became a critic of the US invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration, and the neoconservative ideologues who have seized control of the US government.

America has blundered into a needless and dangerous war, and fully half of the country's population is enthusiastic. Many Christians think that war in the Middle East signals "end times" and that they are about to be wafted up to heaven. Many patriots think that, finally, America is standing up for itself and demonstrating its righteous might. Conservatives are taking out their Vietnam frustrations on Iraqis. Karl Rove is wrapping Bush in the protective cloak of war leader. The military-industrial complex is drooling over the profits of war. And neoconservatives are laying the groundwork for Israeli territorial expansion.

The evening before Thanksgiving Rush Limbaugh was on C-Span TV explaining that these glorious developments would have been impossible if talk radio and the conservative movement had not combined to break the power of the liberal media.

In the Thanksgiving issue of National Review, editor Richard Lowry and former editor John O'Sullivan celebrate Bush's reelection triumph over "a hostile press corps." "Try as they might," crowed O'Sullivan, "they couldn't put Kerry over the top." There was a time when I could rant about the "liberal media" with the best of them. But in recent years I have puzzled over the precise location of the "liberal media."

-snip-

[Tax-chick]

Was he the currency-board monetary policy guy who used to write for "Forbes," or is that some other guy?

[quidnunc]

Tax-chick wrote: Was he the currency-board monetary policy guy who used to write for "Forbes," or is that some other guy?

I don't recall ever hearing that he wrote for Forbes and I can't find any evidence that he did via Google.

[BlackElk]

Random ponts:

They may pose as paleo-ostriches but they are going to be the only "liberal" talk radio for the foreseeable future. What a waste of bandwidth!

Paleos=Antisemitic peace creeps with stock portfolios to protect and who wish the GOP and conservative movements to exclude all whose ancestry here is less than two hundred years.

Paul Craig Roberts must be one of about three of the paleos who could get credentialled in the Reagan administration. The rest were too socially eccentric or too closely resembled the look of a vintage Trotskite (before he was purged) to be ready for prime time.

Reagan knew better than to associate with the paleos generally. In 1986, they figured it out and have been hydrochloric or sulphuric toward conservatism ever since.

Antisemitism is not the only problem. One of their columnists, Sam Francis, was fired by the Washington Times when he spoke to a convention of neo-Nazis but them he was hired to edit the newspaper of the "Conservative" Citizens' Councils, as that group has been known since moving from Mississippi to Missouri and changing the name from White Citizens' Councils (the blow-dried Klan).

[Tax-chick]

Thanks. I guess I'm thinking of someone totally different.

[BlackElk]

It was also worth noting the opinions of Kerry, McGovern, the Arkansas Antichrist, Mrs. Antichrist and others of their ilk to prevent their getting their slimy traitorous heads above water again. A good start in that direction would be to pay attention to Justine the AntiWar Queen (antiwar.com) before he/she/it ruins another public figure like he/she/it ruined Buchanan on foreign policy and defense. Justine sees a field of dead soldiers as so many lost social opportunities. Conservatives should know their enemies. Justine is one. Roberts is another.

[jonestown]

PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Address:http://www.townhall.com/columnists/BIOS/cbroberts.html


Paul Craig Roberts is the John M. Olin fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, research fellow at the Independent Institute and senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
A former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal, he writes a political commentary column for Creators Syndicate. He also writes a monthly economics column for Investors Business Daily . In 1992, he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism.
In 1993, he was ranked as one of the top seven journalists by the Forbes Media Guide .
He was distinguished fellow at the Cato Institute from 1993 to 1996. From 1982 through 1993, he held the William E. Simon chair in political economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. From 1981 to 1982, he served as assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy.
President Reagan and Treasury Secretary Regan credited him with a major role in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, and he was awarded the Treasury Department's Meritorious Service Award for "his outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy."

______________________________________



By your enemy shall you be known.

[highflight]

Anyone with three names is always suspect:

John Wilkes Booth
Hilary Rodham Clinton
John Walker Lynde
Teresa Heinz Kerry
John Forbes Kerry
Lyndon Baines Johnson

Paul Craig Roberts

See the pattern?

[Foxfire4]

I've never heard of such a "theology" from any Christian. Just like the left, Roberts takes a cheap shot to mock a wide swath of Evangelicals.

Thank you. I was just mentioning this to Moose4...I grew up going to a fundamentalist church with a noticeable "end times" obsession (twice-yearly "prophecy conferences" with 30-foot charts tacked up on the wall), and I can guarantee you that none of the Christians there would have reacted with glee to all-out war in the Middle East.

[churchillbuff]

Reagan knew better than to associate with the paleos generally."""

Reagan made Buchanan his second term director of communications.

[churchillbuff]

I've never heard of such a "theology" from any Christian. """

Have you ever read worldnetdaily.com ?

[FreedomSurge]

"I can never understand how come Jews in this country have been so strong in their support of dems."

Read up on reform Judism and its beliefs. I think the liberal support will become clearer.

[Flux Capacitor]

----neoconservative ideologues----

I'm finding more and more that paleoconservatism and anti-Semitism tend to go hand-in-hand.

-Dan

[Foxfire4]

Have you ever read worldnetdaily.com ?

Not to notice, no. But none of the many fundamentalists that I personally have known would go "Oh boy, it's the end of the world!" Not even the ones that I considered on the far edge of sanity. :-)

[lentulusgracchus]

I'm finding more and more that paleoconservatism and anti-Semitism tend to go hand-in-hand.

Really? By examination of whose thoughts?

Murray Rothbard's? Frank Meyer's? Wm. Rusher's? Wm. F. Buckley's?

Or are you just spreading around the "you sound like Joe Sobran" guilt-by-association again?

[BlackElk]

Buchanan was credentialled by Nixon (not really a conservative). Pat was formerly politically sane and still shows substantial flashes. When he fell under the foreign policy influence of Justin Raimondo, Pat self-destructed. I can accept that Pat is not an antiSemite but when he hangs long enough with Justine, he is given to remarkably intemperate language about Jews. Pat's father may have been ld enough to actually believe in isolationist claptrap. Pat has no excuse.

I think you will find that the likes of Tom Fleming, Sam Francis, Llewellyn Rockwell, Justine the Queen and others wallowing in antiwar poetry, overdoses of port wine, an inordinate weepy resentment over all things military, and "blood and soil" "conservatism" ("If you look like me and have ancestors like mine and ethnicity like mine, etc.,, then you are mine and to hell with everyone else") were seldom credentialed by Ronaldus Maximus. National Review ran a very informative piece on these eccentric loons in April of 2003. David Frum (seldom my favorite author but when he is right, he is right) was the author.

Also, so long as the subject steers away from Jews generally, Israel in particular, and the the American-Israeli Political Action Committee's alleged influence in Washington and Israel's "Amen Corner in the United States" and the notions that Zulus would make bad neighbors for Virginians, you CAN dress Pat up and take him out in public without embarassment. I voted for him several times but not very recently. I have never heard even his sister Bay Buchanan defend Pat's newfound isolationism. Also Pat retains the common sense to support wars once they are begun.

When Dan Quayle bailed out of an engagement to address the Daughters of the American Revolution on foreign policy at their annual convenion in 1992 (?), Pat pinch hit and did a wonderful job, one of the best foreign policy addresses I ever heard (it was on C-SPAN). Later, he apparently fell under the influence of Justine Raimondo and the paleopantywaists and left the foreign policy part of his mind in the gutter. It could have been worse. He might have listened to Justine on social issues.

America and Americans should thank God that isolationism is nothing but a bad memory of an unaffordable naivete and gross policy error.