Michael Medved - Flushing Out Fear Mongers from Their Fever Swamps (FR Mentioned)

Town Hall ^ | 1-4-2006 | Michael Medved

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Micheal might want to know that the preferred cliche is "fetid swamp", "fevered swamp" is considered a "misconstruance" (nice word) of the canonical cliche.

WWYBS? (What would Yogi Berra Say?)

[dennisw]

Clearly John Hawkins was over-matched in Round 3. He really didn't recognize substance when it smacked him up against the schnoz.

Hawkins gives brief replies that are mostly putdowns and exaggerations of Corsi's position
While Corsi gives long answers with references. 
It's clear to me who knows the subject
Hawkins and Medved are emotionally reacting to Corsi's material. It's too foreign to their world view. It upsets them

[presidio9]

Everytime someone mentions Free Republic, they always have such nice things to say...

Jim does it too himself by allowing dirtbags like Jerome Corsi to stay.

[dennisw]

"the fever swamps"

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2006-44,GGLG:en&q=%22the+fever+swamps%22

[dennisw]

Jim does it too himself by allowing dirtbags like Jerome Corsi to stay.

Jerry Corsi co wrote the Swift Boat Vet's book with John O Neill. He helped sink John Kerry

[Paul Ross]

I went through the Human Events comments to the debate between Hawkins and Corsi, and found this one response was particularly apt, and well-written:

I wonder where Jerome Corsi ever mentioned black helicopters ... Or if those making such pointless remarks have studied any of the relevant history.

The CFR--publishers of the document Corsi cites (Building a North American Community)--has been pushing internationalism on the country since 1921, the year it was founded.

Zbigniew Brzezinski published BETWEEN TWO AGES in 1970. This is essentially a booklength attack on the concept of national sovereignty ("nationalism") and defense of a "global human conscience." This idea became the basis for the Trilateral Commission (TC) which he, David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger organized a year or so later. In the final chapter of BTA is the germ of the strategy that evolved into the NAFTA/CAFTA/FTAA axis.

Perhaps those who believe the CFR and the TC to be mere "think tanks" can explain why the majority of the cabinets of every Presidency back through Roosevelt is filled with members of the former and why every Presidency back through Carter is filled with members of the TC as well as the CFR. And why members of both organizations are sprinkled liberally through the upper echelons of multinational corporations, media corporations, administrations of major universities, and big foundations such as Ford and Rockefeller.

Perhaps, too, the best explanation for the huge protests by illegal aliens on & around May 1 is their having been bankrolled, along with "underground" Hispanic organizations like La Raza, by the CFR-controlled Ford Foundation. Somewhere in here, too, is to be found the explanation why the Bush Administration (like all its predecessors topheavy with CFR members) has done almost nothing to protect our borders.

Corsi has the best explanation: there is a scheme in the works to end the United States of America and replace it, Mexico and Canada with a North American Union (whether it will be *called* that or not is, of course, neither here nor there).

There is no "conspiracy theory" here, whether about black helicopters or anything else. The evidence that supports the idea of a strategy aimed at ending U.S. sovereignty by creating a borderless world is in print, often by the authors of its own longstanding advocates, for those who can read plain English. Screaming "conspiracy theory" is nothing more than commiting a strawman (an informal fallacy of basic logic).

Qualification (1): obviously you will not find exact words calling for ending U.S. sovereignty. Our "new world order" (let's not be afraid to use that phrase, since Bush I used it quite openly) strategists are not stupid, after all. What you will find in documents like Building a North American Community and on the SPP website is the setting forth of arrangements that, once fulfilled, will make our borders increasingly lines on maps, like the lines between Illinois and Indiana.

Qualification (2): Of course, too, you won't see this on the 6 p.m. news. Again, they're not stupid. What the strategists of the "new world order" are counting on is the ostrichlike, head-in-the-sand attitude of nearly all mainstream commentators combined with the fact that most of the American public is far more interested in ball scores or the next episode of AMERICAN IDOL.

Qualification (3): It won't happen tomorrow, and the hornet's nest Corsi stirred up might force the strategy to slow to a crawl for the time being, so that it can't happen by 2010, the CFR's target year. Again, this doesn't mean there wasn't/isn't a strategy, or that those of us who claim to have isolated its main features are delusional.

[presidio9]

That story was great, but he destroys his own credibility and the credibility of the rest of what gets posted here when he starts ranting like a right-wing nutjob. And there is way too much tolerance for classless comments about the Pope and Catholicism in general on this website.

[jmc813]

Jim does it too himself by allowing dirtbags like Jerome Corsi to stay.

If it weren't for that "dirtbag", Theresa Heinz would now be our First Lady.

[Paul Ross]

Bump!

Nice regurgitation of Medved's 25 disinformation rules.

Have you had a chance to chart how many of those techniques he may have used here?

[presidio9]

Great. He's outlived his usefulness. I'm sure there are a lot of liberals who wish Cindy Sheehan would go away too.

[jmc813]

That story was great, but he destroys his own credibility and the credibility of the rest of what gets posted here when he starts ranting like a right-wing nutjob.

All oof the columns I've read from Corsi possess a very calm tone. I would consider Medved and Hawkins' bitchy screeds to be considered "ranting" moreso than Corsi's.

[presidio9]

Protectionists who call themselves conservatives are irrational.

[Paul Ross]

If it weren't for that "dirtbag", Theresa Heinz would now be our First Lady.

No kidding!

I have been noticing more and more lately the absolutely insufferable nonsense being spun out there by nobodies...against those who are doing something productive with their time on the planet.

I have to share the reaction that T.R. once had:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

"Citizenship in a Republic,"
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

[Paul Ross]

Protectionists who call themselves conservatives are irrational.

So what are you protecting? LOL!

Anyways, you are historically wrong.

As noted in Time Magazine:

[T]he faces on Mount Rushmore are those of... protectionists...

George Washington was a Buy American booster who boasted that he drank only U.S.-brewed ale, and Thomas Jefferson came over to that side as President. Both Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt assailed free trade. T.R.'s view: "Pernicious indulgence in the doctrine of free trade seems inevitably to produce fatty degeneration of the moral fiber."

Reviewing this background, historian Alfred E. Eckes Jr. in his 1995 book, Opening America's Market, concludes that the protectionist U.S. grew much faster than free-trade Britain between 1871 and 1913, and that the post-World War II competitive position of the American economy weakened greatly after the 1968-72 period, when a U.S.-led round of sharp tariff cuts went into effect.

Eckes, Prof. History at Ohio University, served as Chairman of Ronald Reagan's International Trade Commission in the 1980s and has an insider's knowledge of American trade politics

[SJackson]

When you talk about the character of a source being important, it is only important when discussing facts provided by that source. The merits of an opinion stand or fall on their own. So Corsi's out of context posts from years ago are really irrelevant. It's simply an excuse.

We disagree on that point. It's probably worth noting that Corsi did apologize for comments of that nature.

[Petronski]

"Boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn’t reported by the liberal press." --Jerome Corsi, paranoid liar.

[presidio9]

I Thomas Jefferson were alive today, he would almost certainly be a liberal democrat. If you wanted to use historical precendent, and you were smart, you would have gone with Alexander Hamilton. That being said, the economics of 18th century America (or even TR's America) are not a template for the current global economy. Today, information, materials, products, and consumers all move in a fashion that would be unrecognizable to the earlier eras. And there was no income tax back then either.

[jmc813]

We've gone over his dumb quotes ad nauseum already. Comments on this piece or Corsi's response?

[Petronski]

If Medved has any balls (he doesn't) he'll invite Corsi on his show to duke it out.

Hmmm. Let's review the article.

If he wants to call in (with other members of the public) to make whatever points he chooses to make, he’s welcome to do so on the one national talk show that identifies itself as “Your Daily Dose of Debate” and we’ll move him to the front of the caller line. The phone number, Mr. Corsi (toll free, by the way) is 1-800-955-1776.