I'm thinking he was smirking condescendingly.
MY REFUTE LIST:
1. The only thing that won our independence in 1776 was the fact that all of the farmers across the countryside owned their own firearm to forage for wild game and to protect their land. France has strict gun laws and few own guns. Isn’t it interesting that they are on their FIFTH republic. It isn’t an accident that the United States is the oldest constitutional democracy in the world.
2. No one has published Obama’s original birth certificate and until it is published and verified as the original long form, your use of it as ‘proof’ is pure conjecture.
3. The birth announcement says that both the father and mother live at the address of the grandparent’s apartment. They both did not so the birth announcement is verifiably inaccurate.
4. No one has ever said that these inaccuracies were made in an attempt to make Obama president 48 years later. The author is using the line as a red herring, a decoy to delegitimize the counter thesis in order to not have to defend his position on true facts and merits.
5. The Anti-Christ stuff was thrown into the article for more smoke screen. The author’s technique here is to couple legitimate questions with fringe speculation in order to bring down all objection and questions legitimate or not and dismiss them as ‘crazy’. I would expect that from a tabloid but doesn’t The Economist diminish it’s reputation as a thoughtful forum by allowing such sophomoric structuring?
6. The use of Barry Goldwater and extreme right is the employment of polemics that are also used to dismiss alternative views as fringe and radical. A true intellectual entertains the alternative view on the merits rather than demonizing the opposition (which ironically is what he hates most about the opposition yet ends up using the very technique he rails against.)
7. Conspiracy theories evolve from a kernel of truth. The author scoffs at these conspiracies but there are some kernels of truth. It is true that a group plotted and killed Lincoln. It is true that Hitler had a secret pact with Stalin. It is true that Hitler and his henchmen met with occultists. There is evidence that some men at other locations in Dealey Plaza went unaccounted for. There is evidence that Roosevelt did receive intelligence reports regarding Imperial Japanese Naval movements and vulnerability at US forward bases in the Pacific. There is evidence that someone (some accounts say the First Lady), did go through Mr. Foster’s office within 24 hours of the ‘suicide’. Conspiracy theories grow out of the fact that Americans and humans in general have a keen nose for the truth. When they are not being told the truth, they dig for answers. What is true is that in the past, when Americans and the World hasn’t been told the entire truth, a conspiracy theory grows out of their distrust. The current environment and the fact that president Obama has not released vital documents and answered important questions has created the right conditions for conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories are not sprung from the head of Zeus. They are the unintended cultivars of the acts of the deceptive.
8. The author is childish if he believes that this government and others throughout the world cannot keep secrets. New secrets are revealed everyday. Just the other night I heard about a concerted effort by the US Government to secretly use American POWs in German camps as spies during WWII. That secret was kept from 1944 until 1994 (50 years). As a boy, I can remember Japanese soldiers being discovered in the early 70’s on remote islands in the Pacific, still maintaining their posts...largely lost in time but still living in secret. Nazi’s were also being found in South America 30 years after the war. A friend tells me he has heard the audio tape of the Challenger Disaster which last several minutes. Secrets exist and some are very big. It’s just juvenielle to think they don’t.
9. Calm, rational debate is always tricky when one side is disingenuous and the other side calls them on it only to be met with a hyperbolic string of denials. Shakespeare understood this when he penned the line, “Me thinks thou protesteth too much.” Human nature hasn’t changed in 500 years.
10. The author is right in that all this demonizing by both sides keeps all of us from debating what it is we want and expect from healthcare in America (I wrote a list of things I wanted on Saturday and it was posted here...precisely because I thought we all have a responsibility to intelligently communicate our hopes and expectations). This is the only part of this article that should be salvaged.
11. The author needs to listen to Mark Levine’s discourse on who assassinates whom. Levine points out that NAZI’s were National Socialists (leftists), Oswald was a Socialist, Booth was an Anarchist, Garfield’s assassin, Truman’s would be assassin, Ford’s would be assassin...all anarchists and socialists. In fact, McVeigh is probably the closest to a conservative you could find...oh and by the way, McVeigh was proven to be involved in a conspiracy.
12. Paul Revere was a member of a militia. Sam Adams was a member of a militia. They mustered with their firearms on town commons. Protesters in New York openly called for the death of George III. In fact, the same thing happened in France under Louis XVI, Germany under Hitler until they were extinguished, and China at Tienemen Square until the Communists put them down. Every time people are having their inalienable rights whittled away or outright stolen from them, a funny thing happens...they protest, they arm themselves, they meet and form groups to oppose. That is the human condition. Instead of calling it counter-productive or dangerous as the author infers, perhaps the author should take these signs as a harbinger of the dangerous course we have been set upon by the current government. These signs should tell the government to put on the brakes lest people lose their rights. Instead the author infers that we should all sit down and be quiet so as not to rock the boat even as our rights are stolen from us.
13. Politicians should tone down their rhetoric. Hmmm. So, “Give me Liberty or Give me Death” would be considered over the top? How about “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” is that too inflamatory? How about the slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” is that too incendiary? Once politicians are muzzled, who will speak for us? Protestors should read some history? How about the author going back to school? The broad story of Barack Obama is so similar to the rise from nowhere beer hall politician who set Europe aflame that it’s down right eerie. If we only knew the story of Hitler through 1933...his creative background, his community organizing, his autobiography early in his life before even doing anything, his rallying a party out of power on promises of hope and change, his taking advantage of an economic crisis and disenchantment from a war, his background in socialism and his eminent use of a flashpoint crisis to seal the deal makes their paths nearly parallel. That is precisely why people are on their feet and making signs. They understand that stopping a socialist in 1933 is a lot less costly than waiting until 1944. And people who understand this are not ‘paranoid nitwits’.
14. Jefferson himself wrote that when the government does not listen, the spirit of 1776 was exactly that: THE PEOPLE SHOULD FIGHT BACK.