Conor Friedersdorf: An Almost Irrelevant Man

(Almost all supporting text and links, are done through footnotes, so a reader might quickly see the title of the article, as well as immediate supporting information, without having to hover or click on a link.)

A post prompted for a simple practical reason: over the next few months there will be a number of significant fights, the most important over gun regulation, and it will be valuable to perhaps give context to some intellectual partisans. I settle on Conor Friedersdorf first, because he is often perceived as someone outside of the traditional partisanship of left and right, a man devoted entirely to reason and honest discourse, and his opinions are often presented and re-circulated in this context, perhaps the most notable, “Why I Refuse To Vote For Barack Obama”, where his argument that his objection to the president’s abuse of executive power prevented him from further supporting the president, and why he was voting for Gary Johnson. He was perhaps the most high profile dissenter, that I know of, of voting for either major party this past election. No doubt, if he makes any pronouncements on any legislation on guns, or actions taken against the NRA, he’ll have equally lofty pronouncements, and they may well carry equivalent weight. For this post, I did my best to read everything written by him in The Atlantic from the past year and a half, with the purpose to both honestly inform, to provide a solid background of his work, as well as bluntly tactical: I do think providing such past context will demonstrate that Mr. Friedersdorf is clearly an ideological writer, cleaving first and foremost to libertarian priorities then the facts of any problem, and this will destroy some of the moral weight of his pronouncements. Further: I think the prominence of Friedersdorf as perhaps the only ideological radical in any centrist, mainstream publication, by which I mean a man who looks at every problem almost solely through the perspective of ideology, demonstrates something of the larger media context now, of what views are allowed to be radical, and what radical views a magazine might point to as a demonstration that it has a diversity of views.

I hesitated with writing this piece, as I am too often consumed with animus, and I do not think the world needs any more of it. The position of reader and a professional writer such as Mr. Friedersdorf, at this present time is one almost designed to generate this mutual feeling. The writer must produce endless content to satisfy the demand of perpetual, unending appetites. He is assailed in comments for reasons of ideology and technical flaws, which further distances the writer from the reader – rather than being able to imagine an ideal reader, they very clearly meet the unideal reader. The best, most convenient format for mass content is the authoritative think piece, an analysis or opinion on some current subject, and the attitude of such pieces, as opposed to journalism or fiction, ends up being a variation of “I will tell you what is the proper attitude according to my expert analysis”, and this itself creates an alienation between reader and writer, a teacher lecturing pupils. The reader expresses anger at the writer in the comments, and this further distances writer from reader, intensifies the feeling of isolation between the two, and reinforces the lecture posture, a well-behaved instructor telling the huddled masses what’s what. That one is lectured to on political issues only intensifies one sense of powerlessness – political institutions will not respond, and now you will be told how you are to blame, how your dissent is wrong, how you should all do with less by a writer who has a great deal more. I have been guilty of this as much as many, never issuing violent threats, but often replying angrily to the writer, out of the indignity of being lectured to, of being treated as a moral inferior, a less knowing creature – all these things. My most recent angry replies were to Mr. Friedersdorf’s blog post where he eulogized Ron Paul’s departure from Congress, and to one of his posts on the Newtown massacre. If I had greater strength of character, I would make some attempt at apology, but I lack it. I am to some degree a broken man: were I a landscape, I would be a frozen lake on which a broken rainbow casts its light, this prismatic line almost entirely an intense, bloody red, the other colors almost entirely greyed out. I wish simply to win certain fights, most notably on gun control – not for the purpose of humiliating anyone on the other side, including Mr. Friedersdorf, but for the material and social benefits of such fights. My post title is partly malign and partly not: I believe Mr. Friedersdorf to have relevance, but on a much more restricted, more partisan spectrum than assumed.

I will be very critical of Mr. Friedersdorf, so I will first praise him: as a journalist, he often conveys the attitude of a respectful and diligent listener. He did not observe #OWS from afar and cast judgement, but actively engaged with them¹. When the legislative council handed down its points, he quoted them in full, gave each individual dissent, and did not just summarize them dismissively². He spoke with equal respect to RNC delegates, treating them not as primal creatures who might be the source for quick caricatures, but simple folk, and by simple, I do not mean uncomplicated, but not as political ideas clothed in human skin³. He gave a thorough, diligent description of police brutality incidents that took place at #OWS, possibly the only thing of its kind in a centrist publication⁴. He gave equal attention to such incidents that took place at UC Davis⁵. His description of torture practices during the Bush administration and the effects of drone warfare are uncompromising and consistent, again one of the more radical, on-going critiques to appear in such a publication⁶ – Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, of course, writes on this subject as well, but less frequently, and more focused on journalism centered on specific instances, with Friedersdorf’s only equivalent in this regard Glenn Greenwald, formerly of Salon, now of The Guardian.

He describes as a libertarian, with his writing not devoted to any specific ideology⁷, but his concerns almost entirely map onto libertarian ones with regard to the coercive power and size of the state: an end to the drug war, gay marriage, the intrusive power of the NSA, the war on whistleblowers, the president not consulting congress for the libyan war, an end to federal subsidies for agriculture, greater sovereignty for individual states, the unconstitutionality of health care reform, entitlement reform and the debt burdens of greedy public sector unions.

At no point is an issue brought up that might not involve the libertarian concern for a smaller, less intrusive state. For instance, I would argue the most pressing issue of the last four years has been the level of unemployment and the amount of people who have dropped out of the workforce out of despair, and the poverty accompanying this lack of work. I think it is possible to write about this, raising the issues of why there is work lacking in that area, easily, in a manner that the impetus for writing on the problem is not a state or free market solution, but the urgency of the problem itself. One focuses on the issue not because there is a solution that your partisans could provide, there may be neither, but because the problem demands to be looked at. What is striking in Mr. Friedersdorf’s work, is that despite this long-term crisis, there is barely any mention of such poverty or unemployment, unless as it relates to size of the state issues. There are two pieces on how mandatory licensing keeps the unemployed from selling goods and services⁸, there is a post on how the drug war most directly affects the poor⁹, and a post on the possibility of financial compensation for organ donors¹⁰. There’s also a piece calling for an austerity budget, despite Paul Krugman calling such a move a disaster, and despite the horrific effects it would have on unemployment and the poor, for the simple reason that such budget cutting should not be put off¹¹.

Were you to ask me in this past year the most pressing issues an american family would encounter over the next fifty years that overlap with state involvement (though this does not preclude private market involvement), I would put down energy projects and carbon taxes to deal with global warming; gun control; campaign finance regulation and reform; banking regulation and reform; runaway state legislatures passing xenophobic bills on self-deportation, gays, and muslims; runaway state legislatures passing bills restricting abortion and contraception; infrastructure repair and high speed rail; increased or more effectively targeted federal education subsidies; student debt relief; a rise in my state’s pollution and cutback in its services because of industry deregulation, a refusal to raise income taxes, along with low taxes and giveaways for any company that moved to the state. When Mr. Friederdorf gives an imaginary anecdotal list, they include your father being killed by a drone strike, getting beaten down by a cop, being deported after the NSA listens in on a phonecall, poor language skills due to low quality public sector teachers, and OSHA over-regulation of halal meat¹².

There is, in fact, a hostile attitude towards relief of any kind in these difficult times, other than calling for an end to the war on drugs. Mr. Friedersdorf, a man who describes growing up in an upper-middle class Orange County neighbourhood, travelling to Europe and around the world, attending undergrad and grad school, does not quite speak from having known a life of need. He appears to mistake his life and those close to him for everyone else’s, writing of the possibility in “large parts of america” of being able, on a pure whim, to quit one’s job, borrow $100,000, and spend a year studying journalism¹³. His description of a typical grad student is someone who supports themselves at the Kennedy school of government by being a summertime yoga instructor¹⁴. The possibility of student debt relief is dismissed in his only post on the subject, “Pandering to a Privileged Class”: with the example of the Obamas cited as the only example. Here were two people at the top of their class, from excellent schools, who ended up at choice law firms. Yes, they had some difficulty paying their student bills starting out, but why should such people in such choice circumstances get relief? Aren’t most students with outstanding student loans like them? Money available for possible student relief should instead be spent on full scholarships¹⁵. To hand out money for student debt relief, according to Mr. Friedersdorf, in “a country with impoverished immigrants and struggling high school dropouts and hard-pressed single mothers” is perverse. This group, those in such need, are never addressed again by Mr. Friedersdorf. One can only assume they will be helped by the end of the drug war and being able to sell food on the streets.

The constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act is brought up, and Mr. Friedersdorf explains why it’s reasonable for some to view it as unconstitutional¹⁶. He never otherwise brings up the issue of medical bills or what should be done about health costs. He states why he thinks women’s contraception should not be covered under the government plan: doing so would be unfair to those who don’t use such contraception, such as lesbians, or those who don’t use it as much as the sluttier sluts (yes, dear reader, those are my words, not his)¹⁷. He gives no mention of why women should be singled out for this exceptional treatment, nor of any of the wide variety of people who, through various lifestyle choices, may incur higher health care costs than others¹⁸. He is deeply critical of catholic institutions being coerced to purchase contraception against their values – though he writes of an obvious distinction between a catholic affiliated institution and others, he gives no basis for why such an institution should have a right not to distribute such contraception (even though its employees may want it), while a business run by a fervent catholic does not have such a right (“Federal Court Rules That Hobby Lobby Is Not Exempt From Obamacare’s Contraception Mandate”, by Amanda Peterson Beadle), or whether catholic hospitals with or without government funding, should be able to refuse to provide contraception to rape victims, as Linda McMahon advocated in her 2012 governor’s bid (“Linda McMahon: Catholic Hospitals Should Be Allowed To Deny Emergency Contraception To Rape Victims” by Aviva Shen)¹⁹. These points, that lesbians should have to pay for contraception, and that catholic institutions should have to buy it, are cited as examples of liberal intolerance for values different from their own, comparable to those who refuse to let gay couples get married²⁰. That these might be examples of something else, an intolerance of women exerting certain rights is not considered. There was no war on women, he re-assures us. There are simply some politicians who are pro-life, and some who had sound economic reasons for not subsidizing women’s contraception, and the democratic party exploited women’s fears over this²¹.

The growing income gap, the other major story of the past two years, gets only incidental mention. That there are different classes is conceded, but it is not, despite what Charles Murray says, defined by the beer they drink – “sometimes [it's] Charles Murrayesque elites who ought to step outside their self-imposed confines, other times it is the white working class that ought to do so”²². We are lectured on the folly that successful commerce builds on, or can be said to be dependent in any way with public projects, that, yes, an entrepreneur can claim to build something entirely apart from society, as the same public resources are available to everyone, the successful entrepreneur and everyone else²³. When Mitt Romney says that he doesn’t care about poor people, Friedersdorf assures us that very rarely do politicians care about poor people. This is bad, and it would be good if it were different, but meanwhile, we should give Romney credit for speaking so honestly – “shouldn’t we prefer a political discourse where forthrightness of that kind isn’t treated as a fault?”²⁴ The irrationality of the statements of the “47% tape” are addressed, but never how such callousness might influence Romney’s policies towards the poor and dependent²⁵. We are also assured, without evidence, that Obama says equally contemptible things about his supporters behind closed doors – in a rather sloppy and dishonest misreading, this tape is described as equal to Obama’s “clinging to guns and religion” speech²⁶. This rather astonishing moment when the class divide waas laid bare, does not bring about any discussion of the divide or any remedies. In his piece, “Why I Refuse To Vote For Mitt Romney, his lack of fiscal conservatism is brought up, but the man’s policies towards the middle class and the less well off go entirely unmentioned²⁷.

The only mention those in the working class and the service industry get is through pieces lamenting the expense and power of unions²⁸. They are blamed entirely for the bankruptcy of California – that effects of Proposition 13 are never brought up, nor the loss of tax revenue through the loss of federal defense work²⁹. I do not suggest that Proposition 13 would necessarily be the sole culprit, only that it is given no mention whatsoever. The difficulties of the middle class are never made the specific focus of a post either, though attempts to claw back revnues from the very wealthy, such as Eduardo Saverin, who give up their american citizenship to avoid paying taxes, are given two posts³⁰. A related middle class issue, such as debt collection practices against those who got credit cards and now make onerous payments at post-teaser rates, is never given notice.

I make this lengthy overview to make clear that Mr. Friedersdorf’s perspective is not entirely our own. He is like a man who sees certain spectra of light very well, and is entirely blind to others. He notes immediately, and is outraged, by drone killings and illegal wiretapping; the hunger, the poverty, the desperation in his own country do not appear to exist. That his reader might have had a very different life, with student debt, hospital bills, great difficulty finding work, seems to go unnoticed as well – the assumption is that you are of the same social class as he. Discussing one of Charle Murray’s ideas, he says “the conceit is that America’s ruling class, including journalists like me and cosmopolitan readers like you, exist in a cultural bubble.” As if having a curiousity to read, for ideas, for argument, that would cause you to read The Atlantic could necessarily be linked to one social and economic class.

This affects his approach to his work on drone warfare and executive overreach, which is good, though also limited, I think, by viewing it in the context only in ideological terms. It is extraordinarily repetitive, and I think unnecessarily so. The key points – that the libyan war was unauthourized by congress, the secret kill list, the war on whistleblowers, wiretapping – are reiterated over and over again, an example of the hubris of Obama in his seizure of such great executive power³¹. Despite his stating that he is a jaded man, Mr. Friedersdorf presents this as a manichean issue. Obama was good when he ran for president, then he acted badly when he took over the executive, the implication that executive power itself corrupts. Mr. Friedersdorf never gives us any hint or insight as to what may have happened – executive powers simply corrupt³². That Obama may have attempted the surge in Afghanistan because of the possibility of providing some secure protection for Afghans from the taliban after american forces leave is never brought up. That Obama may have wanted to stay in Iraq longer so that there would be time for certain native institutions to develop allowing for the Sunni and Kurd minorities to have some possibility of safety is never said. I am not saying those reasons are necessarily valid, or that they couldn’t be countered – I am saying that they go entirely unmentioned. Mr. Friedersdorf says that he is against absolutist thinking, but his thinking here is absolutist – Obama said he would begin the pull-out from Afghanistan at a certain date and he didn’t – this is a broken promise. He makes this same approach in another area which I find troublesome – he condemns Obama for not closing Guantanamo, though it is well-known that the president did make such an effort, and that the congress, especially the republicans, immediately reacted to this, often in the most reactionary and hysteric terms. There is nothing wrong with Mr. Friedersdorf arguing for closure despite this factor, but, as far as I can tell, he does not ever mention congress’s part in this, ever³³.

It is when Mr. Friedersdorf argues in favor of two political candidates, first Ron Paul, then Gary Johnson, in reaction to these policies that my ire rises. He considers Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and the entire republican primary field except for Jon Huntsman and Johnson to be unacceptable, for reasons of fiscal policy and the war state. He considers the policies of Barack Obama utterly amoral, quite likely illegal, and questions the moral calibre of any person who accepts Obama given his policies in this area³⁴. Leaving aside the racism of Ron Paul for the moment, an obvious, major obstacle that would keep many from supporting Ron Paul would be his utter destruction of the social safety net³⁵. Mr. Friedersdorf never brings up issues of unemployment relief or medical bills in any part of his blog, and he doesn’t bring them up here – they simply do not exist. Where for many of his readers this would be a difficult balance – however much they want the drone program to end, can they afford to have the floor for their wages threatened? what if things suddenly go very wrong for their chronicly ill sister? would there be any medical relief whatsoever under a Paul administration? – these are of no concern to Mr. Friedersdorf, and he does not appear to expect such issues to be raised. After all, we are all cosmopolitans, members of America’s ruling class. Those anxious voters have nothing to fear, argues Mr. Friedersdorf – Paul will successfully end the drug war and overseas commitments, while his more extreme ideas related to gold and the fed will be stopped by congress³⁶. Those who have seen how easily republicans eviscerate the social safety net, while affirming a strong defense and family values at home, may well believe that Mr. Friedersdorf has things very much the wrong way around. This one of the only times he touches on the extraordinary negative economic impact a Paul presidency might bring about – he usually prefers to repeat over and over the morality of Paul’s small state vision and the amorality of Obama’s security state. He has better things to think about than the evisceration of the safety net, and he does not expect his readers to think about it either.

A brief aside: this utter indifference to the social welfare of the most vulnerable of society is not exclusive to his enthusiasm for Ron Paul, but continues with his son, Rand Paul, as well. Rand is often celebrated in Mr. Friederdorf’s posts for his brave stands against the TSA, the surveillance state, and the war state³⁷. Though Friederdorf extols “reason” and “civilized discourse”, he does not seem to make mention of when Rand compared the U.S. government to Nazi germany, when he compared the upholding of Obamacare to Dred Scot, or when he repeated claims about the National Weather Bureau stockpiling ammunition³⁸. When Rand talks about how the Kentucky mining industry should be able to regulate itself, after he receives contributions from coal companies such as Murray Energy, which coerces its workers into donating to the company’s chosen candidates, and those same mines collapse and kill miners after numerous safety violations, don’t expect it to be mentioned³⁹. When Rand blocks disaster relief, blocks relief for disabled and elderly refugees, or, most egregiously, Rand stops passage of a jobs for veterans bill because he didn’t get something he wanted, it will not be noted by Mr. Friederdorf⁴⁰. A photo of a maimed veteran is useful as a show of anti-war piety, but when it comes to getting work for them, that has nothing to do with libertarianism, or the smaller state: they’re not cosmopolitans, they’re not part of america’s ruling class, and they can go fuck themselves.

We can now transition to the period where Paul’s racist newsletters were re-discovered, the public made well aware of their contents. Even if Paul was in some way responsible for the vile content of these newsletters, Mr. Friedersdorf argued, his desire to end the war on drugs, drone warfare, and other executive excesses made him the morally superior choice to Barack Obama. There was a small intellectual game being played here – any person who took over the executive while the drug war was on-going, while the war in Afghanistan was going, etc. became less moral than any man outside who sought the presidency and claimed they wished to end those policies, as the executive’s hands immediately became stained with the blood of the dead⁴¹. This rather cheap intellectual game might be played by anyone – a member of the KKK, a rapist, a pedophile, Charles Manson – might all claim moral superiority to the president, according to this calculus, because they had not killed as many people with their bare hands as had died from drones or the Afghan war. It is a cheap game, and a simple-minded one. That such newsletters might indicate the pathology of a disturbed man, and such a figure should not be anywhere near the power of the presidency went unmentined – the machinery of government itself, its ability to inflict war and coerce, was seen as an unconscionable evil separate from those who might take charge. As before, the effect of Ron Paul’s policies on the safety net was never brought into the calculus.

After this debacle, Mr. Friedersdorf’s attention now shifted to the libertarian candidate in the general election, Gary Johnson. Again, the music was the same as before: those who supported Barack Obama were morally compromised because of his war state policies, as opposed to those who voted for Johnson, who, as Mr. Friedersdorf reiterated again and again, would end drone warfare, would close Guantanamo Bay, would finally stop the process of endless wars.

This is where we might look more in-depth at Gary Johnson, who is far less known to the general public than Ron Paul. Mr. Friedersdorf wrote an early profile of the man, “The Zen of Gary Johnson”, and I excerpt its essence here:

Gary Johnson, 58, served as governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003, ousting an incumbent by a 10 point margin, and handily winning reelection four years later. In his first months in office, he vetoed outright almost half of all bills brought to his desk in order to cut spending. He announced his support for legalizing marijuana in his second term, becoming the highest ranking politician in the US government to take that controversial position.

We’ve got differences, but he’s a successful two-term governor, a fiscal hawk, and almost alone in advocating an end to America’s unaffordable wars (drugs, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Libya). He seemed like a younger Ron Paul with executive experience and without the gold obsession or racist newsletter baggage.

“You’ll never go wrong by telling the truth. Never. I told my cabinet, it’s going to be the truth. If any of you get yourselves in a situation, that we’ve made a mistake or whatever, I don’t want us to ever make the statement that we can’t comment because of legal restraint. We all need to comment. We all need to tell the truth all the time. And we’ll let the lawyers catch up with the truth.”

“Letting the lawyers catch up with the truth” may be the most radical anti-establishment position in contemporary American politics. Would a president who actually always told the truth be a fantastic success? A dangerous failure? Personally, it’s a gamble I’d like to take.

I don’t think this deviates from the overall tone of the full piece. No further details of his governorship of New Mexico are given. I should note here that several times Mr. Friedersdorf chastises others for the sycophantic or sentimental attitudes towards the current president⁴².

This, however, is not the only profile of Johnson that was written. A far fuller, more complex, more disturbing, and far, far better one was put together just before election day by Marc Ames, for the Not Safe For Work Corporation: “The Gary Johnson Swindle and the Degradation of Third Party Politics”. Mr. Ames, along with his erstwhile associate Matt Taibbi, and the bete noir of The Atlantic, Moe Tkacik⁴³, are to my mind, far truer radicals than Mr. Friedersdorf, critical of the president’s security state policies, as well as the disgusting abandonment of the worst off in society. They are of a very different sensibility than my own, but I greatly appreciate them for the same reason Lincoln praised Grant: they fight.

“Swindle” gives Johnson’s background fuller detail^*: he cut taxes, cut social program spending, took a very hardline attitude towards crime, including drug related crimes, and promised to veto any bills that involved new spending for drug treatment centers. The major achievements cited by Johnson during his presidential run (none of the following are mentioned in the Friedersdorf profile) include cutting welfare spending by 30%, privatizing half the state prisons, and allowing non-union labor to be used in public construction. A notable public project was the widening of a New Mexico highway which ended up costing the state over $350 million dollars, requiring the governor to borrow the money through a federal bond. This project, again, goes entirely unmentioned in both “The Zen of Gary Johnson” or any subsequent writing by Mr. Friedersdorf on the man. The only specific legislative point mentioned is that, yes, in his second term, Johnson decided to legalize marijuana, though, again, unmentioned in Mr. Friedersdorf’s profile – he refused to give blanket pardons to anyone serving drug convictions in New Mexico jails.

More interesting than Johnson himself are the campaign associates this profile brings up. They include Maureen Otis, the woman heading “Our American Initiative”, the nonprofit backing Johnson, a figure with close ties to the hard-right anti-immigrant Minutemen movement, and who ran a company, “American Caging”, involved in minority vote suppression. Another associate, Jim Lacy, was involved in dirty tricks in California elections, sending mailers featuring pictures of liberal icons such as Robert Kennedy mixed in with conservative names so as to confuse democrats into voting republican. Lacy also backed minutemen groups, produced birther propaganda, and was involved in lawsuits to get Obama to release his birth certificate. There’s also Joe Hunter, a spokesman for anti-immigrant group “Utahns For Official English”, which managed to make english the only official language of the state. Rouding out the group behind Johnson was Roger Stone, a dirty trickster who started out with Nixon, and has helped various republican presidential candidates in the murkier, dirtier parts of a campaign. One achievement was his organization in 2000, of the Brooks brother riot, which disrupted the presidential vote count in Miami⁴⁴.

More significantly, in 1980, he was involved in getting Roger Anderson, that year’s third party candidate on the ballot in New York, thereby splitting the democrat vote between Anderson and Carter, handing the state’s electoral votes to Carter. A similar strategy may have been planned in 2012 as well, with the democratic vote split between Obama and the pot-friendly Johnson, handing vital state votes to Romney. Though this story is well-sourced, none of this is mentioned, even simply to refute it, in Mr. Friedersdorf’s writing on Johnson.

This leads to other relevant details that I found through this excellent piece by Mr. Ames, none of which get mention by Mr. Friedersdorf in his writing on Johnson. Remember: he stresses again and again that the reason he can vote for a clean conscience for the libertarian candidate Gary Johnson is for his record on drones, closing Guantanamo, and an end to belligerence overseas. He cites the use of drones in Pakistan as his top dealbreaker in “Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama”.

I quote his endorsement of Johnson from that piece:

There is a candidate on the ballot in at least 47 states, and probably in all 50, who regularly speaks out against that post-9/11 trend, and all the individual policies that compose it. His name is Gary Johnson, and he won’t win. [the link goes to a short profile of Johnson by The Atlantic's Molly Ball - it also contains none of the details of the Ames piece] I am supporting him because he ought to. Liberals and progressives care so little about having critiques of the aforementioned policies aired that vanishingly few will even urge that he be included in the upcoming presidential debates.

The following clips that I use here were all available, on the web, easily available for everyone to examine and make mention of.

Here is Johnson in an interview on Fox News with Andrew Napolitano. It deals with Guantanamo Bay.

NAPOLITANO: Governor, should we close Guantanamo Bay? Should they be either tried in federal district courts, or returned to their countries, or should we keep it open, and leave them uncharged for the rest of their lives?

JOHNSON: Well, when president Obama didn’t close Guantanamo Bay, and that was one of his promises, I really looked into the issue, and I had a lot of prominent libertarians tell me, if it weren’t for Guantanamo that we would have to create that situation somewhere else. So, I’ve kinda been sold on the notion that this is something we have to have whether it’s…if it’s not Guantanamo, it’s going to be somewhere else…that these are enemy combatants, and not U.S. citizens, I’ve been wooed over to the side that there’s a reason for keeping it open.

Now, Johnson in an interview with Jamie Weinstein of the Daily Caller,“Gary Johnson’s strange foreign policy”, on Afghanistan policy, drone strikes, and some very confused thinking on Iran:

Libertarian Party presidential contender Gary Johnson has been portrayed as an anti-war candidate, but that isn’t quite so clear.

Johnson sat down with reporters and editors from The Daily Caller last week, generously providing his time to answer any and all questions, no matter how difficult or ludicrous.

But when pressed on foreign policy topics throughout the interview, Johnson gave answers that didn’t always seem to add up and were often, at best, unorthodox positions for a man who has been painted as a non-interventionist.

Johnson said that while he wants to end the war in Afghanistan, that doesn’t mean he would necessarily stop drone attacks against terrorists in Pakistan or Yemen, even though he believes they create more enemies than they kill.

“I would want leave all options on the table,” Johnson said.

But if Johnson plans on leaving Afghanistan, how does he plan to leave the option of a drone campaign against al-Qaida elements in Pakistan on the table?

“So now you have the U.S. bases that exist in those areas, do we shut down those military bases? Perhaps not,” he suggested, taking an odd position for a supposed anti-war candidate.

“I would completely withdraw our military presence,” he further expounded. “Does withdrawing our military presence from Afghanistan mean that we would still have a base open in Afghanistan if they allowed us to keep a base open? Perhaps.”

On Iran, Johnson said that if “Iran launches a nuclear warhead they can be assured that they will no longer exist.”

“None of their country will be left to stand and that will be from Israel,” he said, confident that the threat of nuclear retaliation would prevent the Islamic Republic from using any nuclear weapon it obtained.

Johnson went on to say that he doesn’t think Iran has seriously been engaged diplomatically. So what would Johnson say that hasn’t been said to get Iran to reconsider developing a nuclear weapon?

“Look, ‘Don’t develop a nuclear weapon,’” he proffered.

You don’t think that’s been said, TheDC asked?

“’So if we open up trade with you all, we’d like to be a trading partner,’” he added.

Seriously, you don’t think that has been put on the table in negotiations, TheDC asked?

Johnson then pivoted and suggested that there wasn’t any evidence that Iran was developing, or ever wanted, a nuclear weapon.

“Am I not correct in saying that Iran has never voiced that they are developing a nuclear weapon, nor do they have any intention of using a nuclear weapon against the United States?” he asked.

“That’s never actually been voiced. I don’t know where that has come from, but it hasn’t been from Iran.”

So if he doesn’t believe Iran is developing a nuclear weapon or has any intention of developing a nuclear weapon, why is he even suggesting negotiations? Shouldn’t we just open up trade with Iran without asking for anything in return in that case?

“I would be in that camp,” he conceded.

Finally, with regard to ending wars overseas, here is Johnson on a Fox News panel shows, outflanking Obama on the right, arguing for a strike team to go into Uganda to kill Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army. He argues this is different from Libya, because Kony is committing genocide. Like Charles Krauthammer, a guest on the panel, I am unable to understand the distinction between the Libyan rebels being wiped out and what’s taking place in Uganda. I should emphasize that these are simple interviews, and that Mr. Friedersdorf felt that Paul Ryan made clear that he was not qualified to be president based on his performance at a VP debate: “The VP Debate Cinches It: Paul Ryan Is Unqualified to Step In as POTUS”. Ask yourself while reading this, in terms of coherence and focus, how different this is from anything Herman Cain has ever said:

FOX NEWS GAL: So the president’s said that he’s sending a hundred troops to Central Africa, to combat the LRA, Joseph Kony. Would you support this if you were president? Is this something you would do?

JOHNSON: You know, in thinking about this, he signed legislation…Congress authorized that this is what needed to take place…he signed that legislation as president. If I were president, and I signed that legislation, I would have had an action plan ready to go immediately. From all appearances, this really does seem to be genocide. I mean, this really seems to be…these are really bad actors, a finite number of fighters…whatever that number is, I don’t know if I’d be sending advisers there, as immediately as after signing the legislation, sent a strike force to wipe them out.

KRAUTHAMMER: That’s very non-libertarian of you.

JOHNSON: Well, I’ve always said that genocide is something that none of us want to stand by and watch happen. From everything I can ascertain from this situaiton, this does qualify for genocide.

KRAUTHAMMER: What about the Qaddafi threat, when he was winning the war against the rebels at the beginning…to wipe out the people, his opponents in Benghazi. Would you have sent the army to go and prevent that?

JOHNSON: No, I would not have. I did not see a military threat from Libya. That’s another issue here with the Lord’s Resistance Army, is that this is their nation. We’re talking about a foreign dictator here. I don’t think there’s anything in the constitution that says because we don’t like a foreign leader we should go in and topple that foreign leader.

KRAUTHAMMER: But I’m not sure if I understand. Clearly the Liberation Army in Uganda is not a threat, to the United States. Yet you would say you would send a strike force. You can argue equally, whether Qaddafi is the leader of a country or not, he was a threat to the people of Benghazi, and you would not. I’m not sure I understand the logic.

JOHNSON: Well, uh, these are the questions that I…another thing I would do as president of the United States, I would be really transparent. Look, I’m signing this legislation authourizing wiping out the Lord’s Resistance Army, authourizing that legislation, on the other hand, going into Libya, I heard the transparency…I just didn’t see the military threat. And I did not see a military threat from the Lord’s Resistance Army. I do not see that as a threat to national security at all.

FOX NEWS GUY: There’s a lot of nuance.

JOHNSON: There’s a lot of nuance as president of the United States.

So, whereas those of us who vote for Obama vote for a man who was unable to close Guantanamo, engages in drone warfare, and has waged war overseas, Mr. Friedersdorf has cleaner hands, because he votes for Gary Johnson, the candidate who wants to keep Guantanamo open, has no problem with drone warfare, has no problem with Iran being wiped off the map if they develop a nuclear weapon, though he’s uncertain if they’ve even started working on one (hint: yes), and is willing to commit a Tom Clancy type strike team to Africa, where they’ll destroy an army of children, in a conflict that does not threaten in any way the United States. There are times when I would read Mr. Friedersdorf’s work and I would ask myself the question, and I ask it openly now: is there a hidden genius to this, is this writer plain ignorant, or is he a hypocritical opportunist? Here is a man has been steadily arguing that people should not vote for Obama because of his amoral, criminal policies, and who encourages them to instead vote for a candidate backed by noxious racists and con-men, whose policies violate the same principles which Mr. Friedersdorf ostentatiously waves like a proud flag.

I mentioned before that Mr. Friedersdorf’s perspective on politics is very manichean, with a bad Bush, a bad Obama, a good Johnson. His perspective on the country’s recent history is prelapsarian. He makes no criticism of any foreign policy after the Viet Nam war other than drug policy, after which the government was plunged into darkness by the two wars, indefinite detention, and the unwarranted surveillance of the Bush years, with the worst of such executive privileges continuing on under Obama.

He makes no criticsm of Reagan, who he cites as one of the only moments, other than Goldwater, that a movement conservative achieved success⁴⁵. Reagan, of course, worked as an undercover agent while in Hollywood, reporting on communist activity to the FBI; then while president, placed troops in harm’s way in the Lebanese civil war; fought a war in Grenada; ran bombing raids without congressional authorization over Libya, killing one of Qadaffi’s infant children; mined the harbors of Nicaragua without congressional authorization or even notification; trained militias in Honduras and backed a government in El Salvador which certainly committed war crimes as well as mass murder⁴⁶; and traded arms for hostages with Iran, violating congressional statutes, and which could well have led to his impeachment were it not for the grievous hurt such an action would inflict on the country fifteen years after Nixon’s dismissal. His successor, George H.W. Bush, who won via one of the most disgusting race-baiting ads in the age of TV election advertising, who Friedersdorf would have voted for if this man from 1988 had run in 2012⁴⁷, knew of the arms for hostages deal, and launched a war without congressional authorization in Panama.

So, let’s again re-iterate this case: Mr. Friedersdorf finds it unconscionable to vote for a man who wages drone warface and failed to close Guantanamo, instead voting for a candidate who has no problem with drone warfare, keeping Guantanamo open, and waging war in whatever random part of the earth he feels evil is done; furthermore, though he has deep, moral issues with Obama waging war without congressional authorization, he has no problem with Reagan engaging in several such wars without authorization, backing militias that engaged in war crimes, or selling weapons to enemies of the United States without congressional approval, nor does he have an issue with George H.W. Bush participating in such actions, or waging war without authorization himself – he, in fact, really really wishes such a man was running this year so he could vote for him. Again: genius, ignoramus, or opportunist?

As I’ve said before, I think Mr. Friedersdorf is of small relevance, rather than of no relevance, to a small spectrum of ideology. He has no appeal to republians right now, as they are entirely animated by tribal feeling, with a strong military remaining a sacred relic, a mark of america’s greatness. He has no appeal to the left, for they can find more in-depth investigations into the war state’s excesses in Jane Mayer, Seymour Hersh, countless marquee and fringe writers. His moral calls are utterly empty of appeal to any liberal who sees that his candidates are either a callous white supremacist or some right-wing loon who has no idea if Iran is building a bomb and wants to continue, or go further on many of the same policies that he calls “dealbreakers” – no progressive of some knowledge will concede to this pathetic bullying. There is only one group that might find some appeal in Friederdorf’s writing, and in this, he is the ideal radical of our time. In an era of a massive growing income gap, where the bonds of society are disappearing, Mr. Friedersdorf’s writing serves as useful affirmation to those libertarians at the top that not only is their credo more intellectual than those animals on the right, but they are more moral than those on the left, because they are for candidates who are against the surveillance and war state. That the candidates which Mr. Friedersdorf supports, Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Gary Johnson, are men who would do such damage to the safety net that only the wealthy could safely vote for such men with impunity, is not a liability but a virtue; Mr. Friedersdorf makes those in the top tier the most moral of men and women: because they are rich they can vote for those who tear apart the system for everyone but the rich, but because they are against the security state, they are the only moral ones who opt for the most virtuous choice. In this, Mr. Friedersdorf is the perfect radical of our dystopian culture, now, and his writing a helpful compass for an anthropologist of the future.

I near the end of this piece in the place where, a few days ago, something Mr. Friedersdorf wrote incited my anger. When he writes of the dead killed by a drone strike, they are an issue of moral outrage. When they are the dead of a mass shooting, and we are outraged, we are lectured that those angry over this constitute an elite, disconnected from the ordinary unrepresented gun owner (though I’ve heard of a gun lobby that does have some media connections), and those who are upset are the persecutors⁴⁸:

There isn’t anything wrong with gun-control advocates lamenting what, by their lights, is a public that’s reaching wrongheaded conclusions on the subject and is trending in the wrong direction.

But too many pieces I’ve read make a mockery of robust debate in a pluralistic society by ignoring the fact that current policy is largely (though not entirely) a reflection of the U.S. public disagreeing with gun reformers. The average American is far more likely than the average journalist or academic to identify with gun culture, to insist that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to bear arms, to exercise that right, and to support various state concealed-carry laws. Perhaps persuasion can move the citizenry to favor a different status quo. That’s always a hurdle to clear in a democracy. Yet the ability to engage and persuade fellow citizens is undermined when public discourse obscures rather than confronts the relevant disagreements.

Opponents of gun control have been widely vilified in the past week. Very few attempts have been made to understand what motivates them — and given that they’re a subset of Americans with little representation in the national media, attempts at understanding would likely do a lot to inform the rest of the American public. For the most part, these people aren’t in fact motivated by selfishness, as so many critics have stated or implied in the last few days, and almost without exception, gun-control opponents are as horrified by the events in Newtown as anyone calling for a new assault-weapons ban or better background checks or a ban on ammunition.

The point isn’t whether they’re being treated fairly or not. It’s that a gun debate can only be productive in a country as pro-gun as this one when the folks on either side at least understand the deeply held disagreements at issue. So far, too many newly vocal reformers are operating under the conceit that if only America “finally” had a conversation about gun violence, everyone would immediately see the wisdom of the position reformers have advocated all along. One need only to reflect on the state of public opinion after decades of debating the issue to conclude that the conversational outcome many reformers presume isn’t at all certain.

If death and suffering is caused through state actions, it is an issue of public urgency. If it is the result of state neglect, there is sudden caution that we not do anything too drastic. A veteran in miserable condition is noteworthy as a reminder of the war state, and his condition should be given loud voice. That same veteran in utter misery because Rand Paul killed a veterans jobs bill is an inconvenience. We must be very careful, said Mr. Friedersdorf, that we do not infringe on the rights of gun-owners. Yes, just as the freedom of lesbians is curbed when heterosexual women are able to get contraception as part of their health plan, the freedom of people shooting an AK-47 everywhere they want is curbed when public space is set aside in which children shouldn’t be killed. I do not doubt that gun-owners have some rights to some weapons and their use; I do note that this is one of the only times that those affected by a political policy are brought up, whereas the needs of the poor, vulnerable, and elderly are never mentioned when discussing austerity or a candidate junking the social safety net.

Though Mr. Friedersdorf never brings up the context of a terrorist threat when discussing drone strikes, he brings up a bogeyman when there is a massacre: yes, there may well be the possibility that some legislation should pass, but he’s not sure he can trust gun legislation in the hands of Obama, a man who had such a penchant for uncontrolled executive power⁴⁹:

Interpreted narrowly, I have no problem with Obama marshaling his power “to engage” his fellow citizens. I’d only add that this is a president whose general notion of presidential power extends beyond engagement to indefinite detention and secretly assassinating American citizens without due process. So if Obama ever tweaks his formulation slightly and promises to use “whatever power” his office has “to stop gun violence,” you’ll understand why I’ll shudder. I’ve seen what it means for American presidents to do “everything” in their power to stop U.S. children from dying in terrorist attacks: It has meant torture, dead innocents abroad, and attacks on due process. I’ve also seen presidents do “everything” in their power to keep drugs away from our children. What I wouldn’t give for a politician who promised to do “only the prudent things, and no more.”

Yes, it’s too bad Gary Johnson, a man who has no problem with drone strikes and who gets his foreign policy from a rejected Expendables screenplay isn’t in charge. So there is the inconvenience that these deaths were caused by state neglect, rather than state weapons, and there was an inconvenience that several members of the dreaded public services union had died valiantly trying to save children. This last also made me think of a post by an Atlantic colleague of Mr. Friedersdorf, Jordan Weismann, a man of our time as much as Mr. Friedersdorf, who wrote a recent post about “A Very Mean (but Maybe Brilliant) Way to Pay Teachers: A Freakonomics author and a ‘Genius Grant’ winner suggest that giving teachers bonuses, then threatening to yank them away, might be the key to classroom success.” Mr. Weissman, I can only those teachers of last Friday performed up to your standards. It’s too damn bad you weren’t able to make them do any better with any dirty tricks to play on them.

This piece ends here: a while back, Mr. Friedersdorf shifted his focus to the gunwalking scandal of “Fast and Furious”. He pointed to this issue as evidence of another of Obama’s duplicities, another example of his managerial incompetence⁵⁰. He egged on the committee headed by Darryl Issa that was to go after Eric Holder, despite the partisan opportunism is always there, shrugged Mr. Friedersdorf⁵¹. Of course, Fortune magazine pointed out that there was no gunwalking scandal, that it had all been set off by some disgruntled employees⁵². Mr. Friedersdorf later compared the attention focused on the “Furious” scandal to the casualties of the mexican drug war, bemoaning the lack of leadership that would end this folly, and put an end to the violence⁵³. In the Fortune piece, it is made clear the incredible ease with which you could buy a gun, and that drug gangs were buying them in Arizona, then transporting them easily over to Mexico, with the death rate in Mexico fueled just as much by the easy access to guns north of the border as it is by the demand for drugs⁵⁴. It seems rather simple that all Mr. Friedersdorf needs to do to care as much about whether a pile of death is to be indifferent to whether it is the result of the drug war or gun sale deregulation. He often mentions how disappointed he is that president Obama didn’t take on the big lobbies that control Washington. Well, the president will soon be taking on a very big lobby in a few months over some dead children in a school. Perhaps, somehow, Mr. Friedersdorf can find some way to support, if not the president, that cause in the fight. This man likes to damn progressives in all sorts of ways, and so I return the favor in kind: if he cannot do even this because his ideology restrains him, then I think it’s quite clear he’s an utterly callous partisan hack. That is an incivility, but what does it matter? Those words cannot have been written, this piece cannot have been written, because it was written by someone from outside the cosmopolitans, outside the american ruling class, part of a group of people that do not exist to Mr. Friedersdorf, and therefore, they do not exist, and so this piece was never written, it was never written by a nothing man, by no one.

^* I first heard of this story from a reddit link, “More evidence Gary Johnson was a scam” which focused on whether his ad spending indicated there was something ersatz about his candidacy; I did not focus on this and was uncertain of whether this claim was substantial enough. Many in the thread dismiss it, and they also argue about the “sketchiness” of the source publication in which the “Swindle” story originally appeared. However, all the claims made in the story appear to be solidly backed by linked material from other publications: an analysis of Johnson’s filing document, and the document themselves, listing Maureen Otis as the filer can be found at “Gary Johnson’s documents reveal puzzling trail” by Peter St. Cyr; his hardline stance on crime, and refusal to grant amnesty to those arrested on drug charges was first published in the Albequerque Journal; that Johnson brought private prison firms to New Mexico and received campaign funds from them is written about in the Santa Fe New Mexican, “Prison firms donate thousands to Richardson” by Steve Terrell; the expensive widening of U.S. 550, which had none of the intended impact on reducing accidents, is described in the Claims Journal, “Widening of U.S. 550 in New Mexico Didn’t Improve Safety, Economy”; some of James Lacy’s unsavory work is described in “Slate Nailer: Conservative James Lacy plays turncoat to sway elections” by Nick Schou, in the Orange County Weekly; the process of vote caging is described in “Vote Caging: What is Vote Caging and Why Should We Care?” by Dahlia Lithwick in Slate; Roger Stone’s account of getting Anderson on the ballot in New York state is given by Stone himself in “Roger Stone, Political Animal” by Matt Labash; the history of nasty tricks Stone has been involved in are described in the profile, “The Dirty Trickster”, by Jeffry Toobin, Rick Perlstein’s essential Nixonland and the definitive Roger Stone chronicler, Wayne Barrett, in such articles as “Sleeping With the GOP”, “Carl Paladino: The Dirty Details in His Campaign Filings”, and “The (Roger) Stone Around Carl Paladino’s Neck”;Johnson’s achievements, including the movement of state medicare cases to managed care, were on his old, now expired site, Johnson for America 2012 – they can still be found in his listing at the State Policy Network, a consortium of free market / libertarian think tanks. A supplemental note, Maureen Otis’s Twitter account (motislaw) lists her as treasurer of Restore America’s Voice PAC, listed at the Sunlight Foundation as having spent over a million and a half in expenditures opposing Barack Obama in the 2012 election. This PAC spent its money exclusively in opposition to Obama, and shows no expenditures in favor of Johnson.

(Following its initial posting, two major edits were made: a change was made to address catholic institutions as employers, rather than catholic hospitals accepting federal funds, regarding contraception and the universal mandate; the source links for the NSFW Corporation’s story on Johnson were added. These changes were made christmas day 2012.)

FOOTNOTES

¹ “How Occupy Wall Street Is Like the Internet”

² “8 Well-Intentioned Ideas That Occupy Wall Street Should Reject”

³ “Republican Delegates: Good People, Failed by Their Party”

⁴ “14 Specific Allegations of NYPD Brutality During Occupy Wall Street”

⁵ “What George Orwell Can Teach Us About OWS and Police Brutality”, “Reports Reveal Two New Scandals in the Pepper-Spraying at UC Davis”, and “The Pepper-Spraying Cop’s Long, Lucrative Goodbye”.

⁶ There are too many to mention all here. They include “The U.S. Constitution Is Worthless When John Yoo Interprets It”, “My Debate With John Yoo, Who Misunderstands the Constitution”, “The Terrifying Background of the Man Who Ran a CIA Assassination Unit”, “How Team Obama Justifies the Killing of a 16-Year-Old American”, and “Expanding CIA Drone Strikes Will Likely Mean More Dead Innocents”, “We’re Killing Alleged Militants Too Quickly to Reliably Determine Guilt”, “CNN’s Bogus Drone-Deaths Graphic”, “The Pentagon’s Vision: Drones Everywhere”, etc.

⁷ “Pragmatically Toward Libertarianism”:

In concurrence with the creed of The Atlantic, I consider myself to be “of no party or clique,” and the best insight I can offer into my work is its premise: that a writer’s job is to strive for the truth, and to remember that he’ll sometimes be wrong. As a result, I am reticent to characterize myself politically on occasions when I’m really being asked, “Whose side are you on?” The answer to that question should never be “the liberal side” or “the conservative side,” unless the person being questioned is naive enough to think that one ideology or the other has a monopoly on truth.

⁸ “Americans Should Be Able to Sell Stuff Without a Permit” and “The Triumph of Reality-Based Politics”.

⁹ “Marijuana Laws Enforced, Poor Hit Hardest”

¹⁰ “Apathy Causes Kidney Patients to Die Needlessly”

¹¹ “The Case for Deficit Reduction, Even in a Recession”

¹² “Forget Julia, It’s The Life of Ahmed That Demands Attention”

¹³ “Why Breitbart Started Hating The Left”

In some ways, this childhood sounds a lot like my own. My parents are decent, hardworking people who tend to vote Republican. Raised in an upper-middle-class neighborhood – far less ritzy than Brentwood, but no less safe or comfortable – I always had everything that I needed.

“Pointless Shame: The English-Speaking World’s Issue With Women’s Breasts”

When I was twenty I spent a summer studying in Paris. I’d somehow persuaded Florida State University to let me tag along on their summer abroad program. I ate little but baguettes and pasta so that I could afford a weekend trip down to Nice and Monte Carlo with some classmates.

“Is There an Education Bubble?”

Think of it this way. In large parts of America, a college graduate can inform his parents or peers or a woman he meets via Ok Cupid that he is about to quit his job in public relations, borrow $100,000, and spend it on a year studying journalism at Columbia University before returning home. Few people are likely to tell him that this is irresponsible.

¹⁴ “Is There an Education Bubble?”

For guilty young people intent on pleasing a certain kind of parent, grad school is one of the only socially permissible vehicles for work-life balance or opting out of the high status economy. Parents who’d be horrified by a child who was a yoga instructor think its romantic so long as it’s done during a summer between years at the Kennedy School of Government.

¹⁵ Pandering to a Privileged Class

“If we think it more important to spend this dough on education,” says Will Wilkinson, “then we should hand out the $6 billion in the form of scholarships to deserving prospective collegians of modest means, to help them earn their degrees without having to take out any loans at all.”

Obama earned degrees from Columbia University and Harvard Law, where he was editor of the Harvard Law Review. His wife, Michelle, graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law School. Once you’ve done that it doesn’t matter how much you’ve borrowed. You’re in the one percent. The Obamas ought to have been writing those checks every month, because to subsidize couples with four graduate degrees from Ivy League schools between them — in a country with impoverished immigrants and struggling high school dropouts and hard-pressed single mothers — is perverse. That Obama offered up his own story in that way is a testament to our collective loss of perspective on this.

Of course, most people with student loan debt don’t have Ivy League degrees. They’re still generally better off than people without diplomas. And while decreasing the cost of college for those who’ve yet to attend ought to be a public policy goal, especially since educational subsidies have been structured in a way that helped to drive up costs to begin with, there is no good reason to subsidize not just hard up folks with student debt, but folks with student debt generally.

¹⁶ “Is Voting to Strike Down Obamacare Illegitimate?” and “Movement Liberals Cannot Credibly Demand Judicial Restraint”. It’s very likely both pieces can be refuted, but I’ll leave that to another time.

¹⁷ “The Sex-Friendly Case Against Free Birth Control”

Including birth control (as distinct from contraceptives used for other purposes) in universally mandated health-care coverage has its own unique redistributive effect, one that seems more problematic in a pluralistic society than funneling resources from the healthy to the sick or malfunctioning. Mandating participation in an insurance risk pool that covers birth control redistributes resources based partly on lifestyle choices, values, and conceptions of what is fulfilling. For example, gays and lesbians have no use for birth control, but are being made to participate in risk pools that cover it, effectively leaving them with fewer resources as a result of their status as a cultural minority group, rather than a part of the majority that desires birth control.

Once birth control for the poor is covered, I wonder why so many on the left either don’t recognize or don’t object to the redistributive consequences of pooling contraceptive costs among everyone else, even people who could afford them on their own. Compared to a system that just took care of the poor (or even to a system that included only the cheapest kind of birth control), here is a more detailed but by no means complete look at the winners and losers:

- Those who are sexually active, especially over long periods, benefit at the expense of those who aren’t, whether by choice or for lack of opportunity. This sure seems non-materially regressive.

- Straight people, who benefit at the expense of gays and lesbians, who have no use for birth control.

¹⁸ “The Sex-Friendly Case Against Free Birth Control”

But this series of legislative, judicial, and bureaucratic decisions, many of them defensible or even desirable on narrow grounds, add up to a health-care system that is unjust, for it needlessly privileges cultural majorities at the expense of cultural minorities, and obscures redistributive consequences that are sometimes regressive, especially compared to the alternative I suggest: subsidizing contraception only for the poor who can’t afford it. Individuals ought to decide what they find fun or meaningful enough to spend their money on. As progressives argue with social conservatives, whose positions on sex and contraception I too find wrongheaded, the progressives are unwittingly saying that subsidized birth control is desirable even when it involves forcing into the same insurance risk pools people who want little or no contraception with people who want a lot of it. Some claim that’s the only way our health-care system can avoid discriminating against women.

¹⁹ “A Real Commitment to Minority Rights Needs a Real Commitment to Freedom”

Originally, the footnoted sentence dealt exclusively with catholic hospitals distributing contraception – “while never mentioning the possiiblity that such institutions might do what they want by refusing federal funds”, and that such hospitals without federal funds would have greater leeway. The edited sentence deals with the broader issue of an institution refusing contraception for its employees.

There is no bright-line test for what is “reasonable,” or how burdensome an accommodation must be before government should no longer be bound to make it. But this contraception example seems easy. There are very few institutions in America with longstanding, obviously credible moral objections to contraception. Permitting these institutions to purchase health insurance for employees that doesn’t include contraception isn’t going to meaningfully interfere with the government’s ability to shape a functional health-care system. There are, additionally, the consequences for actual employees of institutions like the Catholic Church. Many share the position of their faith: they’re morally uncomfortable paying into a health-insurance system that doles out contraception.

²⁰ “A Real Commitment to Minority Rights Needs a Real Commitment to Freedom”

This is but one example of my general discomfort with the attitude that both conservatives and progressives take toward minority groups and diversity. Both groups sometimes seek to impose their notions of what society ought to be like on everyone, and cite majority norms or expediency when doing so.

What I’d encourage is constant awareness that people have different values, morals, priorities, preferences, and approaches to pursuing happiness — an attitude that leads folks to happily accommodate diversity when possible, and to be regretful and limit the magnitude of coercion when it is necessary.

“The Contraception Controversy Was Never a Civil Rights Issue”

A straightforward bill to subsidize birth control for the poor might not pass Congress (even though I would support it). In order to avoid taking their chances on legislation of that kind, the Obama Administration pursued the path of least resistance: order employers to add this to their plans, even if doing so violates their conscience. This approach permitted them to hide the cost of providing birth control by bundling it into insurance premiums, mask the nature of who is being subsidized by whom, and build political support by offering a universal subsidy rather than one targeted at the poor.

What today’s compromise showed is that it there was never a need to choose between religious and contraceptive freedom. What was actually at odds was religious freedom and the ability of progressives to advance contraceptive freedom through the means they found most expedient. There were always lots of different approaches that would achieve the same ends. If the Obama Administration and its progressive allies were less casual about coercing people, they’d have discovered the current compromise — which they deserve credit for adopting — a lot sooner.

²¹ “The Bipartisan Interest in Making Women Feel Bad”

It’s perfectly legitimate to criticize the Blunt-Rubio bill and to set forth reasons why its passage would be bad for women. What’s objectionable is 1) the implication that the Republicans who voted for this bill are motivated by antagonism toward women and engaged in an aggressive campaign to war on them (the truthful motivation is some mix of concern for protecting religious liberty and pandering to religious conservatives and opponents of sweeping health-care mandates). 2) The sly invocation of the phrase “access to contraception,” as if what’s at issue here is the ability to buy condoms or birth control as opposed to a debate about who covers their cost.

As stated, the politically savvy see through the hyperbole and subtly inaccurate language. The true victims aren’t GOP political operatives, who engage in distortions of their own, but the class of women who don’t pay close attention to politics, hear these talking points, and erroneously conclude that if the GOP candidate wins the election birth control may disappear from commerce.

“In Defense of Stay-at-Home Moms”

The so-called “war on women,” which largely concerns abortion policy, isn’t an area of politics that is particularly driven by political donations. It is a wedge issue that appeals to Republicans because a large part of its socially conservative base feels very strongly that abortion is murder.

²² “What Charles Murray Gets Wrong: Bud Drinkers Live in a Bubble”

²³ “Focus on the Ill-Gotten Gains of the Rich Instead of Their Tax Rates”

Do rich entrepreneurs owe their success to their own efforts or the commonweal? James Joyner has a good answer. “Of course nobody got rich totally on their own,” he writes. “Of course the fabled ‘job creators’ rely on the infrastructure we built collectively, whether it be roads and bridges, an educated workforce, relative safety from crime, a reasonably functional judicial system and what have you. But those building blocks were in place for those who didn’t get rich, too, so of course those who did deserve the lion’s share of the credit for the fruits of their labor.”

That sounds more sensible to me than what President Obama said, and I’m presuming the charitable interpretation of his remarks. Consider an enterprise like this one.

²⁴ “Mitt Romney Isn’t Alone: Politicians Rarely Prioritize the Very Poor”

It should perhaps make us uncomfortable that our government is mostly focused on relatively privileged citizens, and that we think little about the very poor aside from providing a safety net. But it’s true of every viable presidential candidate from both major political parties, and the vast majority of pundits too. All Romney can be faulted for in this instance is saying he’ll behave as everyone else does without acknowledging it openly.

Shouldn’t we prefer a political discourse where forthrightness of that kind isn’t treated as a fault? Romney’s statement may hurt him with voters. But it shouldn’t.

²⁵ “The Conservative Wonk Who Tried to Avert the ’47%’ Disaster”

²⁶ “Mitt Romney’s ‘Clinging to Guns or Religion’ Moment”

It is truly amazing what a different view of politics the donor class gets. Obama plays to rooms like this too. This cycle, he’s managed to keep his words from leaking (or perhaps, after his experience in the last cycle, he’s more careful about what he says). As such, expect the Obama campaign to start using footage from the hidden video to start attacking Romney any day now. And know that if you could hear what Team Obama says when they think no one is listening, it would likely be every bit as off-putting (if substantively different).

Josh Barro predicts that this will cost Mitt Romney the election. It certainly plays into the criticism that he doesn’t care about poor people and will govern on behalf of wealthier Americans.

But it also reminds me of Barack Obama’s infamous statement during the 2008 election that rural voters “get bitter, they cling to their guns or religion.” Those words were also said to donors at a private event, and broadcast only when a secret recording was made public. Rural voters aren’t 47 percent of the electorate, but folks who like guns or religion are a rather large demographic.

These sorts of remarks do double damage.

They needlessly insult some people whose votes the candidate would like to win. And beyond the particulars of what is said, they remind voters that candidate’s public persona is phony and affected.

Four years ago a lot of people felt they got a glimpse of “the real Obama.” They certainly saw a side of him that he hid when speaking to general audiences, as opposed to urban liberal supporters.

William Saletan, who I often disagree with, gives a precise explanation for why this analysis is wrong in “Half-Hearted Mitt: Romney says he’s ignoring 47 percent of America. Obama said rural voters cling to guns and religion. Which is worse?”.

In April 2008, Obama spoke at a fundraiser in San Francisco. Here’s what he said, according to an audio recording published by the Huffington Post:

“Here’s what it is: In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, they feel so betrayed by government, that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, there’s a part of them that just doesn’t buy it. And when it’s delivered by—it is true that when it’s delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism. (Audience laughs.)

“But—so the questions you’re most likely to get are going to be: ‘Well, you know, what’s this guy going to do for me? What’s the concrete thing?’ And what they want to hear is—you know, so we’ll give you talking points about what we’re proposing: to close tax loopholes and roll back, you know, the top—the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama’s going to give tax breaks to middle-class folks, and we’re going to provide health care for every American. You know, we’ll have a series of talking points.

“But the truth is that our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s no evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, Ohio—like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years, and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration and the Bush administration. And each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate. And they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, and they cling to guns or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or, you know, anti-trade sentiment [as] a way to explain their frustrations.

“Now, these are in some communities. You know, I think what you’ll find is that people of every background—there are going to be a mix of people. You can go in the toughest neighborhood, you know, working-class lunch-pail folks, and you’ll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you’d think that I’d be very strong, and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you’re doing what you’re doing.”

Conservatives find Obama’s line about guns, religion, and immigration patronizing. They’re right. The recording exposes Obama’s assumption that blue-collar conservatism on these issues should be taken not at face value but as a psychological symptom or rationalization.

But notice what else the recording shows. Obama tells his audience not to write off any group. He recommends humility and openness. Even in the most unlikely neighborhoods, among “people of every background,” he tells his volunteers they’ll find supporters.

He also advises the volunteers not to write off every voter who seems unreceptive. The tough reception, he suggests, might be just a “layer of skepticism,” a “part of them that just doesn’t buy it.” Beneath that layer, the whole voter is more complicated.

In particular, Obama rejects the caricature of hostile white voters as racists. Instead of assuming that they just ”don’t want to vote for the black guy,” he asks his volunteers to focus on these voters’ economic concerns. He counsels empathy. “They feel so betrayed,” he says.

The whole thrust of Obama’s answer is persuasion. He calls guns-and-religion precincts “the places where we are going to have to do the most work.” He says “our challenge is to get people persuaded” in those neighborhoods. “The important thing,” he concludes, “is that you show up” and make the case, based on tax and health care policy.

²⁷ “Why I Refuse to Vote for Mitt Romney”

The centerpiece of Romney’s campaign?

A domestic agenda that he obviously cannot enact. As Romney tells it, he’ll cut tax rates 20 percent, repeal the estate tax, refrain from raising taxes on the middle class, refrain from cuts to Medicare, spend more on the military, possibly wage a war against Iran, and reduce the deficit. Doing all he’s promised is mathematically impossible. And the conservative wonks who say otherwise could be forgiven for their flawed analysis if it weren’t for the fact that every last one knows damned well that Romney is never in a million years going to keep all of those promises. If elected, he’ll most likely succeed in cutting taxes and fail at addressing the federal deficit. But it’s impossible to know for sure which promises he’ll break, only that it’ll be some of them.

²⁸ “$204,000 Per Year: Is This Retired Cop’s Pension Too High?”, “The Problem With Public Sector Unions—and How to Fix It”, and “The Biggest Reason Why California Is Bankrupt”.

²⁹ The original story by Michael Lewis on Vallejo is “California and Bust”; a critical response is “Our Town: A Literary History” by James Thomas Snyder.

³⁰ “Why The Ex-Patriot Act is a Creepy Law and “Letter to the Editor: A Defense of the Ultra-Rich Who Give Up Their Citizenship for Tax Reasons”.

³¹ There are many, many examples, for the moment, “The Hubris of Barack W. Obama”, is good enough.

³² “How Barack Obama Vindicated ‘The Cult of the Presidency’”

³³ Perhaps the best single article on congressional opposition to the closure of Guantanamo Bay is “Guantanamo Bay: Why Obama hasn’t fulfilled his promise to close the facility” by Peter Finn and Anne E. Kornblut.

³⁴ Again, there are many examples, including “The Hubris of Barack W. Obama”, “Okay, Progressives, What’s Your Alternative to Ron Paul?”, “Obama vs. Romney: Choose Your Own Disaster”, “Liberals Need to Start Holding Obama Responsible for His Policies”, “What the Obamaphile Press Omitted From Its Endorsements”, Why I Refuse To Vote For Barack Obama”, and “The Responses to ‘Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama’”.

³⁵ From the Washington Post Wonkblog, “Ron Paul’s economic plan”:

Ever wonder what Ron Paul’s America would look like? Then read the budget outline that Paul released as part of his 2012 presidential bid. It promises to cut $1 trillion during his first year in office, balance the budget by 2015, withdraw us from all foreign wars and eliminate five Cabinet-level agencies in the process. Economists across the political spectrum say the impact of such drastic government spending cuts would be majorly disruptive and harmful to the economy in the short term.

By reducing the deficit from more than $1 trillion to $300 billion in just a year, Paul’s plan would upend the economy at a time when it’s already fragile, says Gus Faucher, director of macroeconomics for Moody’s Analytics. “That much deficit reduction in one year is going to be a huge drag on the economy . . . the reduction in spending is much greater than cuts in taxes,” says Faucher. “We’re seeing that impact in Europe right now, where severe fiscal austerity has caused big problems for the European economy.” While long-term deficit reduction is important, legislators need to make sure that the economy is strong before major cuts take effect, he adds, calling Paul’s plan “much more ambitious” than other Republican proposals to date. By comparison, the Congressional supercommittee is required to cut $1.5 trillion over a ten-year period—a feat Paul wants to accomplish in a little more than one year.

Liberal economists were even more dire in their assessments of the Paul budget. “This is almost having the economy fall off a cliff,” says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, estimating that cutting $1 trillion in 2013 would prompt the unemployment rate to jump by 3 percentage points. Even if the $1 trillion in cuts were done over two or three years’ time, there would still be double-digit employment, Baker concludes. “This will make it extremely hard to balance the budget, since if the unemployment rate goes to 11 or 12 percent, then the budget picture will look much worse. If his response is still more cuts, then who knows how high he can get the unemployment rate.”

Michael Ettlinger, vice president for economic policy at the Center for American Progress, said Paul’s cuts would destroy the social safety net, as the plan would turn Medicaid and other low-income entitlement programs into block-granted programs that would depend on discretionary appropriations. “Your kids would be out of school, working or begging,” he concludes.

The program would also turn Social Security, veterans’ benefits and Medicare into voluntary programs that would allow younger workers to opt out of the entitlements, while fulfilling promises to present-day seniors and veterans. Both liberals and conservatives such as Baker say such changes could destabilize Social Security. “We will likely see a substantial number of young people take that option, especially if he scares them enough that it won’t be there,” says Baker. What’s more, “you will have high-income earners who opt out, and the people you have left are going to be low-income, which could cause problems” in terms of financing, explains Faucher, of Moody’s. All this could complicate Social Security’s long-term fiscal health, as it could end up losing a lot of revenue.

An opt-out option for Medicare would present similar problems, AEI’s Hassett says. He agrees that Medicare reform is critical to achieving long-term deficit reduction but thinks that an opt-out would destabilize the program. “The system taxes young people to pay for benefits for old people. If young people opt out, who will pay for the benefits?” Hassett says.

³⁶ “Why Does Ron Paul Scare You?”

What’s the worst that Ron Paul could do? Try to get America back on the gold standard, only to find that he doesn’t have the votes in Congress to do it? I am not just being funny. Though Paul has some radical domestic policy ideas, I just don’t see any of them getting passed into law. And in foreign policy and national security matters, the areas where he would exercise the most unchecked discretion, he is the candidate you’d least expect to unwisely provoke or launch a war.

The piece “The Progressive Critique of Ron Paul: He Isn’t Libertarian Enough” makes no mention of the impact of Paul’s policies on the social safety net.

³⁷ Again, there are many, but some are: “America’s Most Important Anti-War Politician Is a Senate Republican”, “Rand Paul Launches a Preemptive Strike Against Domestic Drone Use”, and “Rand Paul Plays It Safe in His RNC Speech”.

³⁸ “Rand Paul Compares U.S. Government To ‘Nazi Germany’” by Ian Millhiser:

In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity this week, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) compared the federal government’s decision to reclaim some of its own property to Nazi Germany’s confiscations of Jewish-owned art.

A Rand Paul editorial, quoted in “Sen. Rand Paul Compares SCOTUS Decision Upholding Obamacare To Pro-Slavery Dred Scott Decision” by Ian Millhiser:

In the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision, can you still argue that the Constitution does not support ObamaCare? The liberal blogosphere apparently thinks the constitutional debate is over. I wonder whether they would have had that opinion the day after the Dred Scott decision.

Think of how our country would look now had the Supreme Court not changed its view of what is constitutional. Think of 1857, when the court handed down the outrageous Dred Scott decision, which said African Americans were not citizens. Think of the “separate but equal” doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson, which the court later repudiated in Brown v. Board of Education.

“Senator Rand Paul Touts False Claim From ’9/11 Truth’ Conspiracy Site” by Zack Beauchamp, reports that Rand Paul relayed that the National Weather Service was stockpiling ammunition.

³⁹ The definitve story on Murrary Energy is “Coal Miner’s Donor” by Alec MacGillis. “Coal Workers Say Murray Energy ‘Coerces’ Them To Make GOP Donations: ‘If You Don’t Contribute, Your Job’s At Stake’” lists Rand Paul as a recipient of the co-erced funds. “Latest Disaster In A Dangerous Mine Kills Two Kentucky Miners After 15 Safety Violations Since 2010″ reports on the collapse of an Armstrong coal mine which killed two people, and gives a quote of Rand Paul’s speech:

“The bottom line is: I’m not an expert, so don’t give me the power in Washington to be making rules,” Paul said at a recent campaign stop in response to questions about April’s deadly mining explosion in West Virginia…“You live here, and you have to work in the mines. You’d try to make good rules to protect your people here. If you don’t, I’m thinking that no one will apply for those jobs.”

⁴⁰ From Senate Resoundingly Defeats Rand Paul Plan, Passes Disaster Relief Package on ThinkProgress:

In a surprising show of bipartisanship, 78 Senators voted against Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) plan to offset disaster aid relief and FEMA funding with cuts to foreign aid. Only 20 senators voted for it. The stand-alone funding bill will provide $6.9 billion in emergency relief funds for fiscal year 2012. Paul demanded that the Senate use funds “from the coffers of our numerous nation-building programs overseas” rather than by “borrowing on the backs of our children and grandchildren.” The Senate proceeded to pass the relief package 62 to 37.

From “Sen. Rand Paul Blocks $36 Million For Disabled And Elderly Refugees, Including Those Who Aided American Troops” by Marie Diamond:

Politico is reporting that Paul is single-handedly holding up $36 million in benefits for elderly and disabled refugees.

Funding for the refugees ran out on Friday, but Paul refuses to lift his hold out of a professed concern that the money could be used to aid terrorists:

In a statement to POLITICO on Tuesday, Paul confirmed he was blocking the bill over concerns the money could be used to aid domestic terrorists. Two alleged terrorists, who came to the U.S. through a refugee program and were receiving welfare benefits, were arrested this year in Paul’s hometown of Bowling Green, Ky.

“This incident alone raises serious questions about the system through which they came to the United States, and I am insisting on a full investigation on our practice of providing welfare to refugees,” Paul said. [...]

The bill would extend funding for one year for about 5,600 elderly and disabled refugees from war-torn regions of the world, including Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan. Some are victims of human-trafficking or torture.

From “Senate Republicans Kill Veterans’ Jobs Bill” by Ben Armbruster:

Senate Republicans prevented a veterans’ jobs bill from coming to a vote today by forcing a budget point of order vote. Democrats came up 2 votes short of the 60 needed to defeat the GOP’s budget measure.

The Veterans Jobs Corps bill — which is part of President Obama’s push to secure jobs for veterans — would have provided $1 billion over five years to hire 20,000 young veterans for public lands jobs and prioritize vets for first responder jobs such as police, firefighter, or EMT. The measure would have also provided young vets access to the infrastructure with which to assist in job searches, such as access to computers, internet and career services advisers.

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a vets group that supported the legislation, called the GOP move “a huge disappointment,” adding, “Today, politics won over helping vets.”

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) said on the Senate floor today that “this bill is fully paid for and does not violate pay-go rules.” (The New York Times said Murray’s aides say “say the program will be paid for by recovering more money from tax-delinquent Medicare providers and forcing big tax deadbeats to pay up before receiving passports.”)

Murray even tried to include most of the provisions of a competing Republican bill but Democrats still ran into opposition. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he would block the measure until the Pakistani doctor that aided the CIA in looking for Osama bin Laden was freed.

⁴¹ “Grappling With Ron Paul’s Racist Newsletters”

⁴² Among others, “Dear Andrew Sullivan: Why Focus on Obama’s Dumbest Critics?” and “What the Obamaphile Press Omitted From its Endorsements

⁴³ Omniscient Gentlemen of The Atlantic by Tkacik.

⁴⁴ The Wikipedia entry on the riot.

⁴⁵ “5 Reasons Why the GOP Can’t Nominate a Reliable Conservative”

⁴⁶ Perhaps the best starting point for those curious about this bloody part of history would be Stephen Kinzer’s profile of U.S. ambassador to Honduras, John Negroponte. An indicator of the continuum running from Reagan foreign policy to George W. Bush policy is the appointment by Bush of Negroponte, after a long period of diplomatic exile, as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. A piece connecting the death squads of El Salvador with early investors in Bain Capital is “Mitt Romney Started Bain Capital With Money From Families Tied To Death Squads “.

⁴⁷ From “Why I Refuse to Vote for Mitt Romney”:

On the eve of the Republican primary, before the field of candidates was established, I found myself hoping that the eventual nominee would be someone whose bid for higher office I could support. President Obama’s transgressions against civil liberties and expansion of executive power were dealbreakers. I wouldn’t back him as I had in 2008. Nor would I vote for a Fox News Republican like Sarah Palin, Herman Cain, or Michele Bachmann. But a deficit hawk with a steady hand on foreign policy, like George H.W. Bush?

⁴⁸ “The U.S. Already Had a Conversation About Guns—and the Pro Side Won”

⁴⁹ “Why ‘If We Can Just Save One Child …’ Is a Bad Argument”

⁵⁰ “The Coming Attack on President Obama’s Management Skills”

The Obama Administration’s efforts to create “green jobs” have fallen far short of what was promised, as Reuters reports in a detailed analysis that casts Solyndra as just one instance of failure. The Fast and the Furious scandal is surely going to come up in the course of the general election.

⁵¹ “Of Course ‘Fast and Furious’ Investigators Are Opportunists”

My thirst for answers is even more powerful than my aversion to partisan politics. I’d suggest anyone who feels otherwise is not in fact “a believer in sunshine and disclosure,” because there has never been a Congressional investigation in which the participants weren’t angling to score political points in one way or another. That’s just how the system works.

⁵² “The truth about the Fast and Furious scandal” by Katherine Eban. A select quote:

Quite simply, there’s a fundamental misconception at the heart of the Fast and Furious scandal. Nobody disputes that suspected straw purchasers under surveillance by the ATF repeatedly bought guns that eventually fell into criminal hands. [Darryl "Arson"] Issa and others charge that the ATF intentionally allowed guns to walk as an operational tactic. But five law-enforcement agents directly involved in Fast and Furious tell Fortune that the ATF had no such tactic. They insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite: They say they seized weapons whenever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws, which stymied them at every turn.

Indeed, a six-month Fortune investigation reveals that the public case alleging that [Dave] Voth [head of an ATF group charged with stopping the smuggling of guns] and his colleagues walked guns is replete with distortions, errors, partial truths, and even some outright lies. Fortune reviewed more than 2,000 pages of confidential ATF documents and interviewed 39 people, including seven law-enforcement agents with direct knowledge of the case. Several, including Voth, are speaking out for the first time.

How Fast and Furious reached the headlines is a strange and unsettling saga, one that reveals a lot about politics and media today.

⁵³ “The Policy That Killed 100 Times as Many Mexicans as Fast and Furious”:

Said Texas Governor Rick Perry, “We’ve had over 300 Mexican nationals killed directly attributable to this Fast and Furious operation, where they brought those guns into Mexico. A former Marine and a Border Patrol agent by the name of Brian Terry lost his life. With Watergate you had a second-rate burglary.”

There has been enough commentary of that kind that political satirists are starting to notice. Said Bill Maher on his HBO show, “First of all, let me just say, Republicans don’t care about dead Mexicans.” His comments spurred outraged posts in the conservative blogosphere. But the problem isn’t that he was wrong, so much as that his biting remark ought to have been broader. Democrats don’t care about dead Mexicans either assuming a reasonable definition of “care.”

Abstractly, do they regret it when foreigners die?

Sure. So do Republicans.

Does either party put forth any effort to change the American policy that results in more dead Mexicans than any other?

Nope.

They talk about how tragic it is that 300 Mexican nationals were killed by Fast and Furious. But they keep right on supporting the war on drugs.

⁵⁴ “The truth about the Fast and Furious scandal” by Katherine Eban.

Some call it the “parade of ants”; others the “river of iron.” The Mexican government has estimated that 2,000 weapons are smuggled daily from the U.S. into Mexico. The ATF is hobbled in its effort to stop this flow. No federal statute outlaws firearms trafficking within the U.S., so agents must build cases using a patchwork of often toothless laws. For six years, due to Beltway politics, the bureau has gone without permanent leadership, neutered in its fight for funding and authority. The National Rifle Association has so successfully opposed a comprehensive electronic database of gun sales that the ATF’s congressional appropriation explicitly prohibits establishing one.

[Dave] Voth’s [head of an ATF unit set up to stop gun smuggling in the southwest] mandate was to stop gun traffickers in Arizona, the state ranked by the gun-control advocacy group Legal Community Against Violence as having the nation’s “weakest gun violence prevention laws.” Just 200 miles from Mexico, which prohibits gun sales, the Phoenix area is home to 853 federally licensed firearms dealers. Billboards advertise volume discounts for multiple purchases.

Customers can legally buy as many weapons as they want in Arizona as long as they’re 18 or older and pass a criminal background check. There are no waiting periods and no need for permits, and buyers are allowed to resell the guns. “In Arizona,” says Voth, “someone buying three guns is like someone buying a sandwich.”

By 2009 the Sinaloa drug cartel had made Phoenix its gun supermarket and recruited young Americans as its designated shoppers or straw purchasers. Voth and his agents began investigating a group of buyers, some not even old enough to buy beer, whose members were plunking down as much as $20,000 in cash to purchase up to 20 semiautomatics at a time, and then delivering the weapons to others.

Julian Sanchez, Mike Daisey, Trayvon Martin, Ron Paul

“The Anatomy of Media Bias” by Julian Sanchez is an attempt at analysis of two separate tragedies, that of the deplorable conditions of workers at Foxconn, and that of the senseless death of Trayvon Martin. I believe there is a link, though not the one that Mr. Sanchez has found. For Mr. Sanchez, the lying of Mike Daisey in his story on a Foxconn plant and the lack of coverage Fox News gave to the killing of Martin represent an example of disproportionality. The Daisey story ultimately involved a smaller number of affected workers than Daisey misled listeners to believe. Fox News did not give proper coverage to the Martin killing because of their sense that it was an isolated event. I believe Mr. Sanchez misidentifies in both cases the proper crux of both stories, a simple question of what sells and what does not, as well as who is invisible, and who is not, in the United States, and the world.

Let us consider first the story Mike Daisey told of conditions at a Foxconn plant in Shenzhen. Mr. Daisey’s account has been properly exposed as so many layers of deception (PDF transcript). Beyond simple lies of what he saw and did not see, Mr. Daisey took factual incidents reported by various sources and placed them all in a narrative about this one factory. That Mr. Daisey has been shown to be a liar is not enough for Mr. Sanchez: the incidents inserted into his story have somehow been demolished as well. “While most commentary on the story has rightly rejected Daisey’s invocation of “‘artistic license’” writes Mr. Sanchez, a misrepresentation is perpetuated, with the idea that Daisey’s version “of labor practices at Chinese suppliers like Foxconn, is true”. Sanchez buttresses this argument with two pieces, “Attacking the Press” by Erica Greider, and “Mike Daisey Was Wrong About Apple in China” by Daniel Engber.

The piece by Ms. Greider, unless I have misunderstood it, does not quite support the point Mr. Sanchez makes for it. Ms. Greider points to the miserable conditions of chinese factories, in a sentence that Mr. Sanchez appears to have missed: “We know that most of the things [Mike Daisey] describes happening at the Foxconn factory actually have happened, if not at the factory in question” (my bolded emphasis). Ms. Greider’s thesis, is that when Mr. Daisey places all these incidents in one factory, for himself to heroically discover, he may make points about chinese labor and media blindness, he does so not for the principle of story-telling economy, but for Mr. Daisey’s own self-aggrandizement. The horrors of these factories could be found, if only the media had been as willing to look as Mr. Daisey. An amateur in a hawaiian shirt discovered the truth, because he had a curiosity and righteousness the mainstream press lacked. This same mainstream media, of course, had already done substantial in-depth reporting on factories manufacturing products for Apple and other companies, in such articles as “In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad”, “Workers Sickened at Apple Supplier in China”, and “Explosion at Apple Supplier Caused by Dust, China Says”. Let us be clear, however, once again: Ms. Greider does not question that the details of horrific labor conditions are very much the case.

“Mike Daisey Was Wrong About Apple in China” by Mr. Engber serves as the main buttress for Mr. Sanchez’s point, then, and it is more problematic. “I’m told again and again,” writes Engber, “that it’s a tragedy Daisey misrepresented the little stuff because his main argument is so important and true.” It is wrong, according to Mr. Engber, for “This American Life” host to claim that basic story was true, on the details reported on such details that “Foxconn employees are overworked and underaged; Chinese workers are in fact poisoned by something called n-hexane; living conditions are crowded; attempts to unionize are busted; et cetera.” Any claims Mr. Daisey’s story makes about these, according to Mr. Engber, are “substantially false.” Mr. Engber then focuses entirely on the number of underage workers at Foxconn; Mr. Daisey gives us a rate of five percent underage workers when the actual number is 0.05. Were Mr. Daisey’s report a scientific paper, according to Mr. Engber, it would be considered fraudulent, for this very manipulation of data, whatever the soundness of the conclusion. Mr. Engber does not provide a source for his counter figures, as one would in a scientific paper, but I’ll take his word for it. The gap in underage workers in verified reports and Mr. Daisey’s monologue is employed as the sole point of refutation of any other claims.

Mr. Engber’s focus on the figure of underage workers to the exclusion of all other details of factory working conditions is a little strange, since the difficulties of chinese factories involved in ipad production have been thoroughly and reliably documented. The most chilling detail of Mr. Daisey’s piece, the nets outside of Foxconn factories to deal with the problem of suicides, is very much the case, and can be found in the story “1 Million Workers. 90 Million iPhones. 17 Suicides. Who’s to Blame?” by Joel Johnson in Wired. That many workers suffered long-term damage at the Suzhou Wintek factory which designs the ipad screens is well documented in “Workers Sickened at Apple Supplier in China” by David Barboza. An example is given of Jia Jingchuan, whose nerve damage was so severe he now must wear down-insulated clothes indoors. This came from handling what Mr. Engber calls “something called n-hexane”. After they suffered this damage, many were pressured to leave without compensation, their pleas to Apple for relief ignored. Improper ventilation in the Pegatron factory in Shanghai and the Foxconn factory in Chengdu resulted in explosions, causing severe burns and death in both locations. Accounts of both fires are ably documented respectively in “iPad Workers: Plant Inspected Hours Before Blast” and “Explosion at Apple Supplier Caused by Dust, China Says”. The overcrowding and strain of Foxconn factories, with employees forced to work overtime and workers’ legs swelling from standing ten hours a day, with barely edible food, and marginal living facilities, are all documented in “In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad”, by Charles Duhigg and David Barboza, as well as the report “Foxconn and Apple Fail to Fulfill Promises: Predicaments of Workers after the Suicides” by the heroic Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM).

Mr. Engber argues for the falseness of the claims of Mr. Glass that the details of the labour conditions has been corroborated by other sources. I have just linked to those accounts which I believe give such substantial backing to Mr. Glass. By stating that the details of factory work, including the toxic effects of n-hexane and overcrowding are “substantially false”, he indicts not Mr. Daisey, but the appropriated research of Johnson, Duhigg, Barboza, and SACOM. So, I make a similar challenge to Mr. Engber and his counterclaims. Demonstrate that the points on Foxconn overcrowding and improper ventilation, on the poisoning by “something called n-hexane” are substantially false, as he claims. If he cannot, then either he or Slate should retract their assertions. If they do not, then they abide by standards lower than that of most scientific journals, but “This American Life” as well.

That Mr. Daisey’s examination of chinese labour conditions was so extraordinarily popular, the most downloaded program in the history of “This American Life”, lies not just, I believe, with Mr. Daisey’s ability at storytelling but the very quality that Ms. Greider identifies, the placing of Mr. Daisey at the heroic center of these wretched factories, against the monoliths of corporate indifference. Where the superb accounts of Mr. Duhigg and Mr. Barboza place the reader in a passive role, a guilty party who consumes these products whose construction others investigate, Mr. Daisey gives the listener a heroic proxy, someone like himself, an ordinary schmoe who wants to do good, an enthusiastic well-meaning amateur much like the listener, or how the listener sees himself, surrounded by the treacherous and callous, including, I suppose, the employer of Messrs. Duhigg and Barboza.

So, Mr. Daisey’s program has given the audience what they wanted. In their own way, Apple has given their audience what they’ve wanted as well, a magical gadget at a very low price. Perhaps Messrs. Engber and Sanchez have given this same audience something as well, brushing aside all thought of labor conditions because of one man’s lies. This dovetails with Mr. Sanchez’s other point about the lack of coverage Fox News gave to the death of Trayvon Martin. The starting point is the now infamous graph detailing the miserly amount of coverage that Fox News gave to the shooting, as featured in this Think Progress post “All Major News Outlets Cover Trayvon Martin Tragedy, Except Fox News”:

Though the amount of coverage, according to Mr. Sanchez, may be inherently defensible, the contrast in coverage with other media may also lie with “whether one thinks institutional racism remains a serious problem in the United States”, whether this killing is a lone occurrence or part of a larger context of prejudice, with Fox News taking, obviously, the former position. I will offer a simple alternative, without righteousness, which is that, given its audience, this was the financially smart position for Fox News to take. That the positions of the network are not the result of the brainstorming of various solons, as Mr. Sanchez appears to think, but a simple, crude calculation of the appetites of its viewers. Ultimately, I think this means heavy coverage of the alien, the foreign, invading the abode of the decent, domestic american, and I think it is easily understood that american is euphemism for a certain skin color and religion. This is why the network gives uncritical emphasis to the possibility that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a fake. This is why so much stamping and gnashing is given to the prospect of a Ground Zero mosque. Ultimately, a story about a man killing an unarmed black teenager goes entirely against this narrative, puts it entirely on its head, makes the alien a decent, law abiding innocent, and the gun wielding authority into something else.

The objection might be raised that there is nothing in the heart of the Fox viewer that is anything as rancid as this. That the choice made is similar to the rational calculation which Mr. Sanchez describes. I offer as possible refutation, two sets of statements, both collected courtesy of Little Green Footballs, which I learned via the invaluable Eric Boehlert.

I note that these statements appear to have been made with the comfort that the writer is among brethren, like minded men and women, so they may say these things without shame, compunction, or expectation of censure.

The first set of statements are comments made at the Fox News site, posted to the story reporting Whitney Houston’s death. The language is offensive. This is a partial listing, with the full set to be found at Little Green Footballs.

A tragedy is when someones passes away from a terminal disease or something else that no one saw coming.Whitney is just an inferior lo w life ni gg er that needed to go,no tragedy,no loss.

Any death is a tragedy you heartless bástard.

not nignogs their death is a plus

SHe couldn’t even sell issues of “the national enquirer” anymore. Everyone was tired of the TNB. Niqqer flaps her lips and screeches, niqqer becomes rich. Niqqer ends up nearly broke after spending all of her money. Niqqer in constant fights and drug binges. Niqqer ODs when she learns she’s nearly broke and she is so wasted physically she can’t make another album. Niqqer hit the end of the road, niqqer thinking and niqqer behavior led her to where she had nothing. She couldn’t face life without the “bling bling”, she knew she would never have any more “kaching kaching”

I am now patiently waiting for the grand messiah Obama to have a blk fundraiser in honor of Whitley with Kevin Costner as guest of honor with all the Hollywood elites invited along with Alan Colmes, Al Sharpton, Jeremia Wright, Charles Rangel, etc. with a menu featuring blk eyed peas, grits, Imported Kobe steak, Dom Perignon, sweet potato pie and a mus lll im scarf as a momento of this great occasion.

Of course the door prize will be an all expense paid trip to Kenya to visit the Obama tribe and birthplace of his ancestors while the American people still look for this imposter’s birth certificate in Hawaii !!!

This is typical of the blk gene pool; it happens all the time. They cannot handle fame and fortune whether it’s derived from music, acting, sports or just plain entertainment. Too much fame and too much money at one time will ki ll ll you.

How many blk people have died from drugs including alcohol that have been in the sports and the entertainment industry or screwed up their married lives like Tiger Woods or worse, OJ Simpson !!!

This is the same disease that got Obama voted into the White House.

i don’t even consider them to be included in the human race let alone on a pedistal. the people that do are a bunch of loosers.

Story goes Obama sh0ved to much cr@ck up the wh0res @zz when he was going to sniiff it…

Obvious the use of to much hair strengthener did her in.That s__t will peel paint!

unfortunately like most nignog crack hoes she was able to apply her trade on “da streets”

Another nignog off the public social rolls

BIack females are the fattest segment of the population. BIack males are the most murderousss segment of the population. Africans have the lowest IQ of all people.

Like most of her species, she suffered from chronic stupidity.

tough break niqqer.

Nothing wrong with Coors, what is good about it most_n i g g e r s_ don’t like it

oh niqqa please,nigga please.

one of the only b l a c k chics i would have ever banged…..once you go c r ack er…..you dont do cr a c k

Woo Hoo One less obama voter

Whitney who?!? some /\/iggress music artist that had a couple of hits in the early 90’s. She’s since been forgotten and now she’s dead.. Who cares..

Africans love their drugs.

Here is a second set of comments, again posted to the Fox News site, in reaction to the story of the Trayvon Martin shooting. Again, the language is offensive. Again, this is a partial listing, with the full set to be found at Little Green Footballs.

What a shame—a tragedy, really— because the dead lil’ gangsta could’ve used “‘A-FIRM-TIV AK-SHUN” to go to kollige an play footballz and make lotsa cash munny!”

Fast and Furious didn’t work to pass new gun control so now Eric Holder will try the race card.

No matter how crime figures are massaged by those who want to acknowledge or dispute the existence of a Dirty War, there is nothing ambiguous about what the official statistics portray: for the past 45 years a large segment of bIack America has waged a war of v i o l e n t retribution against white America.

Zimmerman was attacked by the man and defended himself with a gun. Zimmerman’s wounds were verified by police.

17 = child. LOL!!!!!!

Let the LIB word games begin.

Yet the “justice department” refuses to prosecute any voter intimidation that involves a blac k as the intimidator.

Why should anyone care about this kid? Because he is of color? People don’t value kids period. They are property. BTW, I am a conservative that cares a great deal about kids. We follow hundreds of cases each year, many white babies and children, none of them get attention. But he does??

Zimmerman felt threatened by Martin’s gang’s actions…this could have possibly lead to these terrible circumstances. Gang violence MUST BE STOPPED OBAMA!

Blacks can do no wrong, period! That is the DOJ’s excuse for becoming involved. 50+ years of being told they are special and entitled and the gov’t’s only focus is to make it so!!

In any event, it appears to be a case of one sc u m bag Cuban-type (Zimmerman) offing some scummy b l a ck kid (Trayyy-Vonnnn)…in some trash neighborhood….

but now, because the dead kid’s a kneegrow, we have:

the BIG BAD FBI on this “important” case…and

the usual BLACK-RADICAL-PROTESTERS who can’t mind their own business!

Gated communities exist because people are afraid….& negros thrive on crime…Look at our prisons.

Need that too….But Negr0s only have their welfare checks….and in any event can’t follow rules

What time do the riots start? Gotta get my popcorn and munchies ready for the “hood” burning!

Funny you never see them rally against the drug dealing murderers that control their neighborhoods. LOL!!!

How does anyone know what this 17 yr old said, Most likely he threw the race card out ” you stop me because I*M B L ACK” and then became threatning. The media alway plants the seed of doubt when when a B l ac k is sh ot by a caucasian

maybe his gang brothers incited violence too?

I close with this observation: there are things that are very profitable whose profitability makes us very uncomfortable. Such things include pornography and drugs. They also include hatred of our fellow man. Many years ago, a presidential candidate oversaw the publication of directions on how to deal with black men in your neighborhood, and I find it very prescient in foreshadowing details of the Martin killing.

If you live in a major city, you’ve probably already heard about the newest threat to your life and limb, and your family: carjacking.

It is the hip-hop thing to do among the urban youth who play unsuspecting whites like pianos. The youth simply walk up to a car they like, pull a gun, tell the family to get out, steal their jewelry and wallets, and take the car to wreck. Such actions have ballooned in the recent months.

In the old days, average people could avoid such youth by staying out of bad neighborhoods. Empowered by media, police, and political complicity, however, the youth now roam everywhere looking for cars to steal and people to rob.

What can you do? More and more Americans are carrying a gun in the car. An ex-cop I know advises that if you have to use a gun on a youth, you should leave the scene immediately, disposing of the wiped off gun as soon as possible. Such a gun cannot, of course, be registered to you, but one bought privately (through the classifieds, for example).

I frankly don’t know what to make of such advice, but even in my little town of Lake Jackson, Texas, I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming.

This story, of course, was published in a newsletter by Ron Paul, a newsletter whose active oversight by Paul was confirmed in “Paul pursued strategy of publishing controversial newsletters”, by Jerry Markon and Alice Crites, of the Washington Post. It was, not incidentally, first investigated by Mr. Sanchez himself, along with Dave Weigel in very good work, “Who Wrote Ron Paul’s Newsletters?”. I consider Paul to be a man of mediocre intellect, who, however, now holds one distinction few writers can claim: what he wrote two decades ago is still very much relevant today. This newsletter was a very successful commercial venture, making Paul a multi-millionaire, successful not despite its targeting of black men and women, but because of it. This shrewd business calculation is, I believe, the same one Fox News makes now. The only question is whether we are willing to see it clearly as such, state it clearly as such, and ask for a world where our fellows are something more than paving stones to misanthropic wealth and worker ants for the building of our toys.

(This piece was edited for style with corrections made for grammar and spelling subsequent to its initial posting. I also negligently did not give a proper link for the Think Progress story featuring their graph on Fox News coverage of the Martin killing, nor did I give proper mention to Mr. Sanchez for his past work on the Paul newsletters.)

The Non-Vindication of Ron Paul on MLK’s Birthday

This is a short follow-up to posts by Messrs. Ta-Nehisi Coates and Andrew Sullivan on Paul’s votes for a federal holiday.

Mr. Coates excellent detective work is here, MLK Day Fact Check, making clear that Paul’s votes for both the 1979 and 1983 bill were nays.

I think Mr. Coates work here is thorough and without need of addendum; there is only one loose thread left dangling which I wish to sew up.

From the linked post:

Paul’s supporters link to his Yea vote on this 1979 bill as evidence that he supported an MLK Holiday:

TO AMEND H.R. 5461, MARTIN LUTHER KING HOLIDAY, BY DESIGNATING THE THIRD MONDAY IN JANUARY RATHER THAN JANUARY 15 AS THE LEGAL HOLIDAY.

But this actually isn’t the bill for the holiday. The text doesn’t even claim that. More importantly, the date is wrong. This vote was taken on December 5, 1979. The vote for the King holiday was actually taken on November 13, 1979:

The bill was called up in the House on Tuesday, November 13, 1979…When the final vote was taken, 252 Members voted for the bill and 133 against–five votes short of the two-thirds needed for passage.

Andrew Sullivan follows up this post with Ron Paul, Chuck Todd, And Fact Checking, bringing up the HR 5461 amendment:

There’s this piece of evidence that seems to vindicate Paul. But it’s merely about when to recognize the holiday, not whether to, so far as I can tell.

I cannot emphasize this more strongly: Ron Paul’s vote does not indicate his support for the holiday, or ambivalence about the holiday but his passionate opposition to it.

The amendment was not simply to change the date of the holiday, but to make sure that the national holiday was always, NO MATTER WHAT THE DATE, held on Sunday. It’s this amendment that defeats the MLK birthday measure.

Here are two newspapers on the event at the time. From The Pitsburgh Post-Gazette December 6 1979:

House Rejects King Holiday
New York Times News Service

WASHINGTON – As Martin Luther King’s widow watched glumly from the galleries, the House of Representatives yesterday gutted a bill to make King’s birthday a national holiday.

The bill, which only two weeks ago had come close to receiving a two-thirds vote in the House, was then withdrawn from further consideration, at the behest of the congressional black caucus.

Republicans and Southerners joined forces to support a key amendment that provided that the slain civil rights leader’s birthday be celebrated on a Sunday.

The amendment was approved 207-191. With few exceptions, the 3-hour debate focused on the economics of creating an additional holiday.

The article at the Connecticut Morning Record and Journal, “Blacks Blame Carter For King Holiday Failure”, repeats the same news. An appropriate excerpt:

Instead of a national holiday honoring King, the House passed an amendment to make the holiday always fall on Sunday.

Sponsors considered that unacceptable and withdrew the bill.

I think this should end Paul’s supposed vindication over this.

Matt Stoller Writes Wrongly Of Many Things

(since initially posting this, I have made a few style edits and added some text addressing the Federal Reserve, sourced from William Greider’s Secrets of the Temple

An analysis of Matt Stoller’s “Why Ron Paul Challenges Liberals”. I will point out that Mr. Stoller’s core thesis, “that the anger [Paul] inspires comes not from his positions, but from the tensions that modern American liberals bear within their own worldview” is very obviously flawed. The anger that Paul inspires in progressives can be directly linked to works – the newsletters which deeply violate progressive norms and the ideas espoused in Freedom Under Siege.

Of the newsletter articles, which include those that engage in racial slurs about the laziness of black people, talk about killing a black man and getting away with it, encourage paranoia over a race war, encourage nativism about the descent of the white race, encourage nativism over immigrants with AIDS, advocate the segregation of those with AIDS, Paul, either, at best, simply profited from but did not write them, or, at worst, was directly involved in writing (a paragraph of authorial marks linking Paul to the newsletters is here, a mention of an obscure word used both by Paul in Freedom Under Siege and his newsletter is here). This, in addition to what is stated in Freedom Under Siege, a book written by him, advocating the end of sexual harassment protection, the end of legal protection of those with HIV, AIDS, or other disease from being terminated on the basis of their illness, the end of civil rights legislation in general. All this is in opposition with essential progressive ideals, not a convenient re-interpretation or over-generalization of progressive ideals, but the very core of progressive ideals regarding the dignity and rights of a fellow citizen. It can be taken for granted, then, that the anger felt towards someone who is in such opposition to their ideals may well be over the ideals themselves, whatever the other traits of the opponent.

If individual A is indicted and convicted of deliberate murder, we might state that wealth, poverty, or political inconvenience play a part in the conviction if the evidence is non-existent or spare; on the other hand, if the evidence is strong, untampered, with eyewitnesses, then it can be stated that the conviction is sound, lies with the crime at hand, and whatever the other traits of the individual, the conviction lies with the crime itself, with the individual’s traits irrelevant. Mr. Stoller, showing either arrogance or an absence of intellectual rigor, concedes the crime, but somehow insists that the indictment and conviction takes place because of individual A’s traits.

I will go through Mr. Stoller’s piece in some depth, use well-known, mainstream, and reputable sources for my points. I will leave any commentary to the end, as I do not wish the analysis to be tainted with a pejorative tone.

The essay is structured around an examination of three presidents, Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR, their intertwined use of centralization of financial power, enlarged state power, and war-making.

Mr. Stoller:

What connects all three of these Presidents is one thing – big ass wars, and specifically, war financing.

American empire precedes the federal reserve, and war financing took place outside these presidents. The Revolutionary War involved huge debts and the payment of soldiers in scrip, due to the lack of hard currency. A list of those principally culpable for the formation of American empire would not contain these three.

The major elements of the foundation of american empire would include the overthrow and seizure of the Hawaii kingdom by William McKinley for the convenience of the island’s wealthy planter class and white minority; the Spanish-American War, again under McKinley, which gave the US virtual rule over Cuba through the Platt amendment, to the great benefit of sugar and coffee plantation owners, to the great adversity of their laborers; the acquisition of the Phillipines for strategic and commercial advantage. The case for seizure of the Phillipines was opposed on the basis that it was an imperialist power-grab; it was argued for on the grounds that Filipinos were too racially inferior to handle their own sovereignty. These ideas of the inherent inferiority of certain racial groups show up, of course, in Ron Paul’s publications.

Under another republican, Theodore Roosevelt, the Panama independence movement was backed through funding and gunboats. After, Roosevelt formulates his doctrine that gives the United States the right to intercede in any part of the hemisphere it sees fit. Nations in the hemisphere must show “reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations”, or they may face intervention. This happens under Taft, another republican, in Nicaragua, where the reformist president Jose Santos Zelaya was overthrown for the benefit of american mining interests. A similar coup took place under Honduras, again under Taft, again under the basis of the Roosevelt doctrine, this time for wealthy american landowners. I do not see Taft and Roosevelt in Stoller’s list of miscreants; Paul, in his newsletter, was disgusted at the return of the Panama Canal to its territory, blaming, as usual, the Trilateral Commission and David Rockefeller.

I make these points without citation because they are well-known; I consulted Stephen Kinzer’s Overthrow when writing this for the part on the foundation of american empire, and Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton for the few sentences on the Revolutionary War.

Moving on,

If you think today’s deficits are bad, well, Abraham Lincoln financed the Civil War pretty much entirely by money printing and debt creation, taking America off the gold standard.

He did not take America off the gold standard; paper money was issued, but gold coins remained in circulation, and gold was still used to pay interest on bonds and tariffs. You cannot take a nation off the gold standard, if gold and gold currency is still being used for payment. A table showing the various currencies in circulation – gold coin, gold certificate, paper currency – can be found in A Monetary History of the United States by Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz, page 43.

The argument made at the time was that paper currency was already in existence alongside metallic currency. From Battle Cry Of Freedom by James McPherson:

“Every intelligent man knows that coined money is not the currency of the country,” said Republican Representative Samuel Hooper of Massachusetts. State banknotes—many of them depreciated and irredeemable — were the principal medium of exchange. The issue before Congress was whether the notes of a sovereign government had “as much virtue…as the notes of banks which have suspended specie payments.”

Lincoln did not take such action, unilaterally, but with the support of business, banks, and a majority vote from Congress.

Continuing with Mr. Stoller:

The dollar then became the national currency, and Lincoln didn’t even back those dollars by gold (and gold is written into the Constitution).

Gold is not written into the constitution. The coinage of money is written into the constitution. The argument that currency must be metallic derives from a literal reading of this federal power:

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

The counterargument is that paper money, as stated by representative Hooper, in the previous quote, was already in use. Paper scrip had been used in payment during the revolutionary war. The insistence that “coin” must imply gold or silver is necessary to make the argument against paper currency, since any metallic currency, without rarer metals such as gold and silver, might be as plentiful as one of paper.

This financing of the Civil War was upheld in a series of cases over the Legal Tender Act of 1862.

I’m not sure what is meant by “upheld”, since the first of the cases over the Legal Tender Act, Hepburn v. Griswold, was heard in 1870, years after the war was over.

Prior to Lincoln, it was these United States. Afterwards, it was the United States.

No, prior to Lincoln it was the United States. After, it was the United States. The constitutional preamble:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

What changes is that prior to the Civil War, there is the implication that the United States are. From Christopher Hitchens’ Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, following the Louisiana Purchase:

When the treaty was signed, [diplomat and Jefferson friend] Robert Livingston probably spoke for a majority in saying, “From this day, the United States take their place among the powers of first rank.” (Pause to note the locution: it was not until after Gettysburg that Americans began to say “the United States is” rather than “the United States are.”)

The essay then moves on to Woodrow Wilson. I would like to take the time to point out a sentence in this section, not for its factual falsehood, but strange, sloppy thinking:

Like Lincoln, [Wilson] set up a tremendous war financing vehicle to centralize capital flows and therefore, political authority.

The sentence implies, perhaps inadvertently, a Confederate reading of Lincoln. War financing was set up in order to centralize capital flows and political authority. War financing is not set up for war itself, in this case, Confederate insurrection (or “insurrection”, in quotation marks, as Ron Paul writes in Freedom Under Siege), but for the purpose of centralizing capital flows and political authority. War is waged, not out of necessity, but for the selfish purpose that the president be able to make himself tyrant. That’s an extraordinary claim, and I hope that sentence is not making it.

There is also this sentence:

In many ways, Wilson set up the rudiments of America’s police state, and did so arguably to help a transatlantic Anglo-American banking elite.

It makes a claim that is extraordinarily large and dangerous, yet is entirely vague and contains no facts. It may or may not be refutable, since it only makes a claim without factual citation. It reminds me of nothing so much as the sentence, “The Trilateral Commission is no longer known only by those who are knowledgeable about international conspiracies, but is routinely mentioned in the daily news. Evidence of its influence on the Republican and Democratic administrations is all about us”, from the Ron Paul Freedom Report 1978.

Back to Mr. Stoller, who begins his critique of Wilson with the president’s establishment of the Federal Reserve:

On to Woodrow Wilson. Wilson signed the highly controversial Federal Reserve Act in 1913; originally, the Federal Reserve system was supposed to discount commercial and agricultural paper. Government bonds were not really considered part of the system’s mandate. But what happened the next year? Yes, World War I.

This link between the purchase of government bonds being driven by a war funding decision is, again, wrong. The initial decision to buy bonds came not from the Reserve, but from the Reserve Banks, and was taken not for the purpose of funding or regulation, but because government paper was a sound place for keeping funds. From the sane, skeptical, but non-conspiratorial (despite the title) look at the Federal Reserve, William Greider’s Secrets Of The Temple: How The Federal Reserve Runs The Country:

The twelve Reserve Banks formed their alliance against Washington around an issue that, at the time, seemed a peripheral question – the buying and selling of government securities. The original operations of the Federal Reserve did not use the open-market purchases of U.S. securities as the means to create new money or extinguish it. Money was created entirely through the Discount windows at the twelve Reserve Banks. Instead of buying or selling government notes and bonds, the Fed took in “real bills” of trade – the short-term debt notes that banks took when they lent to business and agriculture. When these notes were eventually paid off at the Fed, the money would automatically cease to exist. Creating money for real commercial transactions, it was assumed, would make the money supply self-regulating, growing and contracting always in step with the ebb and flow of private commerce and credit.

When individual Reserve Banks began buying government securities for their separate portfolios, it was not to regulate the money supply but to increase their own earnings. Treasury paper was a safe place to park idle funds and provided a modest return that would help pay for the banks’ operations. Most economists, inside and outside the Fed, did not grasp the larger implications – these random transactions were themselves expanding or shrinking the money in circulation. If Atlanta or Philadelphia bought $1 million in bonds, it was pumping high-powered money into the banking system – $1 million that would be multiplied by bank lending. If it sold bonds, the reverse occurred.

The wiser heads, including Benjamin Strong in New York, rather quickly recognized the connection. When Reserve Banks made open-market transactions, interest rates rose or fell, accordingly, in financial markets. On some occasions, there was plain confusion when one Reserve Bank would be buying bonds while another Reserve Bank was selling.

Strong persuaded the other Reserve Bank officials that the twelve Reserve Banks, at the very least, must coordinate their actions, a proposal that became the means for organizing the regional banks as a rival power center, independent of the Federal Reserve Board in Washington. The New York Fed, it was agreed, would handle all sales and purchases for the others managed in a way that did not disrupt markets. The twelve Reserve Banks formed their own Open Market Investment Committee to decide things. The Federal Reserve Board approved, apparently unaware that it was ceding control of a powerful monetary lever.

It should be emphasized that Strong’s action was not part of some conspiratorial attempt to go off the currency. Strong does not want to go off the gold standard, and fears this possibility.

Greider:

In 1913, Strong wrote to his friend Paul Warburg warning that if Federal Reserve Notes were made an obligation of the U.S government, they would inevitably constitute “greenbacks,” the fiat money that the Populists had sought. “If the United States government embarks once more upon the expedient or experiment of issuing fiat paper, although in this case supported by bank assets and percentage in gold reserve. the day will come when we will deeply regret it…”

Mr. Stoller writes of government bonds not being part of the original mandate; I am uncertain of where he gets this idea. The original mandate was extraordinarily vague, and certainly allowed for the purchase of government paper. Again, Greider:

The original instructions that Congress gave to the temple were vague (and not much improved over the years). The 1913 act said merely that the Reserve Banks should set Discount loan rates “with a view of accomodating commerce and business.” Credit should be provided to member banks with due regard to “the maintenance of sound credit conditions, and the accommodation of commerce, industry, and agriculture.”

From A Monetary History of the United States (my bolds):

Receipt of gold, rediscounting of “eligible” paper, discounting of foreign trade acceptances, and open market purchases of government securities, bankers’ acceptances, and bills of exchange were the means initially provided for creating Federal Reserve money, and the converse for retiring it.

Back to Mr. Stoller, and his discussion of the internal security measures of the Wilson administration.

Wilson also implemented a wide variety of highly repressive authoritarian measures, including the Palmer Raids, the Espionage Act of 1917, and the use of modern PR techniques by government agencies.

Here, one can argue that libertarians are wary of centralized financing and political authority for liberal reasons – the ACLU was founded after the Palmer raids.

The Palmer raids, initiated under Attorney General Mitchell Palmer, along with the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act, were almost entirely an attempt to destroy american organized labor, for the ostensible reason that they were part of a larger communist insurgency. The Palmer raids had nothing to do with centralized financing or authority; labor had been persecuted before and after the creation of the Federal Reserve.

The major target of the Espionage Act was the International Workers of the World group; it was government harassment done in concert with the vigilante group the American Protective League (APL), a private business supported organization, which placed operatives in bank and industry, who would root out any subversives, in this case, members of organized labor; nor would he have issue with the practices of private detectives and thugs in the pay of such business. It is a simple and obvious note that Paul would have no difficulty with the private persecution of employees, or the more loathsome business practices of the era which led to the formation of unions, that this is entirely consistent with his admitted writings on private property and contracts.

On to the Palmer raids: Mr. Stoller appears to give Wilson sole responsibility for the authority and supervision of these raids, which I find somewhat strange. The first Palmer raid takes place on November 7, 1919, not co-incidentally, an anniversary of the Russian revolution. On September 25, a month prior, Wilson has already suffered the stroke that destroys him entirely, making him president in name only. The Palmer raids were conducted entirely by Palmer himself, without any presidential oversight whatsoever.

Opposition to the Palmer raids came from within the Wilson government itself, with the Secretary of Labor, William Wilson, former coal miner, who now witnessed his fellow workingmen persecuted. Palmer made these raids in the fervent hope that they would help elect him president. His support at the democratic convention was derived from his strikebreaking and abandonment of anti-trust prosecutions, actions, again, which Ron Paul would heartily support. The opposition to Palmer lay not with any libertarian business owners, but entirely, again, with organized labor, who helped defeat him at this same convention.

Mr. Stoller takes what was fundamentally an anti-labour political action, of public and private powers acting in unison to deprive workers of their rights, not unkin to the anti-labour movement now, and somehow transforms it into something to do with the Federal Reserve.

The previous is sourced from the chapters “The Missing Years”, “‘Palmer – Do Not Let This Country See Red!’”, “The Soviet Ark”, “The Facts Are a Matter of Record” from J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and The Secrets, by Curt Gentry.

Now, FDR:

And finally, we come to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s Fed is a bit more complex, because he did centralize monetary authority using wartime emergency powers, but he did so in peacetime. FDR abrogated gold clause contracts, seized the domestic supply of gold, and devalued the currency.

FDR did not use “wartime” emergency powers for this. The initial executive action immediately following his election, without congressional approval, was to make a de facto bank holiday official, a bank holiday that many banks, national and state had already taken. From Traitor to his Class by H.W. Brands:

As various governors watched banks in their states succumb to “runs”—uncontrolled withdrawal demands by depositors, which frequently ended with the failure of the banks—several pondered the drastic step of declaring “bank holidays,” that is, simply closing the banks to business. The idea, or hope, was that the panic would pass: that if depositors were temporarily prevented from withdrawing their funds, they would calm down and decide they really didn’t need the money. In fact most neither needed nor really wanted the money. Bank deposits earned interest; cash in a can in the garden or in a shoe box under the bed did not. If the depositors could have been sure their money was safe in the banks, nearly all of them would have been happy to leave it there. With this in mind, the governor of Louisiana declared a state bank holiday in early February. Michigan did the same at midmonth, followed by Maryland, Indiana, Arkansas, and Ohio. At the beginning of March twenty other states closed the doors of their banks. By inauguration day, the American banking system was nearly at a standstill.

Congress would give retroactive approval to this holiday, along with the power to open and close banks, embargo gold, and issue notes that would circulate as currency. Brands, again:

The law retroactively granted Roosevelt authority to close the banks and embargo gold, thereby removing any taint of unconstitutionality from Roosevelt’s executive action. Looking forward, the bank bill authorized him to reopen the banks when he saw fit, under the supervision of the comptroller of the currency, and to direct the Federal Reserve to issue notes that would circulate as money, regardless of the strictures of the gold standard, which remained technically in effect.

The second major executive action that Roosevelt asked for, and Congress granted, was unilateral ability to cut the budget. This was done to the detriment of the poor, as it was chiefly used to cut pensions and veterans’ benefits, which Congress very much wanted to cut, but were unable to do given the power of the constituency.

I have a very specific sense in mind of “wartime powers”. They are powers exercised by the executive, without approval of other branches, on the basis of military threat, whether used for military or non-military purposes. It does not include executive powers voted and approved by congress on the basis of a national emergency.

The abandonment of the gold standard is a combination of the powers granted by congress, and later congressional action.

Brands:

Deflation was an economywide problem, but because of their chronic indebtedness it hit farmers the hardest. Roosevelt had long commiserated with farmers, and even before the success of the bank rescue was assured, he turned to the farm question. There were two ways of dealing with low prices. One was to expand the money supply. This strategy was what the Populists and silver Democrats led by William Jennings Bryan had advocated in the 1890s with their call for remonetizing silver. They lost their fight in the election of 1896, and the country had officially embraced the gold standard—after decades of observing a de facto version—in 1900. Some silver-state Westerners still agitated for silver, but the first step in any systematic expansion of the money supply would be the abandonment of the gold standard.

Curtailing production would tend to raise farm prices, but not as fast or surely as increasing the money supply. Diehard populists like Oklahoma Democrat Elmer Thomas contended that every other effort would be wasted unless the president did something about money. Roosevelt’s farm bill passed the House in mere days and by an overwhelming margin—315 to 98. But Thomas stalled its progress in the Senate by proposing an amendment authorizing the president to expand the money supply by remonetizing silver, redefining the relationship between the dollar and gold, or reissuing the kind of fiat currency—“greenbacks”—that had circulated during and after the Civil War.

Roosevelt had known that the money question would come up, but he had hoped to keep it separate from the farm issue. The Thomas amendment made this impossible—as Thomas knew it would. The Oklahoma senator felt an obligation not merely to farmers but to the people of America generally. “No permanent relief is possible until the masses have buying power,” he declared. The way to give them buying power was to put money in their hands.

Elmer Thomas’s maneuver compelled Roosevelt to take a position on money sooner than he had intended. Roosevelt accepted the Thomas amendment, noting, however, that it only authorized the president to devalue the dollar. It did not require him to do so. “Purely discretionary” was how Roosevelt, speaking at a press conference, characterized his prospective power to expand the money supply. The Thomas amendment provided various methods of achieving inflation. “I do not have to use any of them,” Roosevelt said.

He wasn’t opposed in principle to inflation. On April 5, before the Thomas amendment came to a vote in the Senate, Roosevelt employed his new authority under the banking act to order private possessors of gold to surrender their yellow metal for currency. “The chief purpose of the order,” he explained, “is to restore to the country’s reserves gold held for hoarding and the withholding of which under existing conditions does not promote the public interest.”

The administration’s “monetary goal and objective” proved to be a managed currency, one freed of the constraints of gold. The gold order of April 5 was the first step; Roosevelt’s acceptance of the Thomas amendment two weeks later was a second. “Congratulate me. We are off the gold standard,” he told his economic advisers. Some of them sighed with relief; others spluttered with indignation.

Roosevelt explained that his acceptance of the Thomas amendment was tactical. “He said that the reason for the amendment was that unless something of this sort was done immediately, Congress would take the matter in its own hands and legislate mandatory law instead of permissive,” James Warburg, an adviser to [Secretary of the Treasury Will] Woodin, recalled.

Roosevelt may have overstated the hazard of a congressional diktat, but the result of the Thomas amendment, which passed the Senate in slightly revised form, and the House shortly thereafter, was to augment the president’s power over the money supply. As an indication of what he would do with the added power, he issued an executive order on April 20 forbidding the export of gold without license from the Treasury. More permanently than anything till now, Roosevelt’s embargo cut the dollar adrift from gold.

I have no doubt that Roosevelt’s actions, then and now, are controversial. To have a thesis, however, which argues about the intertwining of finance and military under democratic presidents, then to label temporary powers voted by congress to the executive in a financial emergency without any mention of war as “war-time” in order to make one’s case, strikes me as a little dishonest.

Back to Mr. Stoller:

[FDR] constrained banks with aggressive regulation and seizures of insolvent banks, saving depositors with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. He also used the RFC to set up much of what we know today as the Federal government, including early versions of disaster relief, small business lending, massive bridge and railroad building, the FHA, Fannie Mae, and state and local aid.

The Reconstruction Finance Corporation was set up under Republican Herbert Hoover, with this very mandate, to provide funds for reconstruction and relief.

After this overview of the three presidents is the main part of Mr. Stoller’s thesis.

Modern liberalism is a mixture of two elements. One is a support of Federal power – what came out of the late 1930s, World War II, and the civil rights era where a social safety net and warfare were financed by Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and the RFC, and human rights were enforced by a Federal government, unions, and a cadre of corporate, journalistic and technocratic experts (and cheap oil made the whole system run.)

And two, it originates from the anti-war sentiment of the Vietnam era, with its distrust of centralized authority mobilizing national resources for what were perceived to be immoral priorities.

I wish to focus on one point: “a social safety net and warfare were financed by Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and the RFC”. It would seem that both a social safety net and warfare would be financed by a labourer’s taxes, that this is the nature, say, of social security, with a portion of one’s wages saved for later needs. It also formed a part of the opposition to war, including Viet Nam, beyond the awful objectives and wretched nature of war itself: that the wages from my labour could best be served in schools, medicine, and food for fellow citizens rather than killing those in a distant place. By making the labourer beholden for his benefits to Wall Street, Federal Reserve, and the RFC, Mr. Stoller removes all agency for the worker, making him entirely a dependent on these powers.

When you throw in the recent financial crisis, the corruption of big finance, the increasing militarization of society, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the collapse of the moral authority of the technocrats, you have a big problem. Liberalism doesn’t really exist much within the Democratic Party so much anymore, but it also has a profound challenge insofar as the rudiments of liberalism going back to the 1930s don’t work.

It would seem that if the social safety net, warfare, as well as (though Mr. Stoller strangely doesn’t mention this), tax breaks and subsidies for large corporations were all funded by the contributions of worker’s wages, then the worker is not beholden to finance, not beholden to the military, not beholden to any technocrat. But no: Mr. Stoller has removed this possibility. And because the labourer, according to Mr. Stoller, is beholden to these, he is unable to make his own critique of the existing morass. He must rely on a degenerate conspiracy minded racist who stands apart from all of them:

This is why Ron Paul can critique the Federal Reserve and American empire, and why liberals have essentially no answer to his ideas, arguing instead over Paul having character defects.

Again, as stated before, Mr. Stoller leaves out the simple fact of a worker’s wages freely earned, with his own sweat, a portion of which goes to taxes funding all these things, in order to remove an agency and participation that the worker has, not as supplicant, but as an engine of all this.

I will make no statements derived from this analysis, as I believe they would be a little too passionate, and a little too defamatory. That can be left for another time, until others, preferably with a stronger background than I in economics and history, can examine Mr. Stoller’s essay as fully, or more fully and in-depth, than I have, providing either confirmation or dissent of what is written here.

For the time being, I will only say this. Mr. Stoller’s essay been praised as “genuinely brilliant” by Mr. Glenn Greenwald, of Salon, in his piece, “Progressives and the Ron Paul Fallacies”. Given the flaws in Mr. Stoller’s work, Mr. Greenwald has either barely read this essay, his knowledge of the economic and political history of the United States is very limited, or his knowledge of the history of the United States is very different from mine. I am told by many that my blog is barely readable; should Mr. Greenwald ever decide to barely read it, and declare me an authentic genius, I would be grateful.

Messengers

I add this as a brief footnote to an excellent essay, “The Messenger” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I often lack the calm to write clearly and eloquently on Ron Paul, but in his writing, Mr. Coates appears never in want.

The title, but as well as much of the piece, made me recall a moment from The Losers by Michael Lewis.

Chapter Five is entitled “The Messenger”, focuses on christian activist Alan Keyes, with its title derived from the idea of Keyes as christian messenger, and Keyes as instrument of christian message. This quote from Alan Keyes serves as a concise embodiment:

[A campaign worker named John] didn’t come here because Alan Keyes asked him to. I just present the message. If they care about it they come forward. I don’t thank anybody. I don’t care what their name is, what their background is, who they think they are for helping this campaign. Because I think this campaign has to rely on the strength of the message and the power of God, and we will get where we’re supposed to get. If people feel that’s right they’ll come forward.

However, Mr. Coates’ piece reminded me of this moment most of all, from Chapter 10, “Blue Collar Blues”:

Within about thirty seconds of arriving at a gathering of Detroit autoworkers who support Pat Buchanan—Citizens for Better Government, they call themselves—I find myself at a restaurant table with the two men who run the show. They are the only two autoworkers who have turned up, at least for the moment. The first one, named Gordon, hands me a flyer headlined “UAW Rank and File behind Buchanan” that lists the names of the thirteen autoworkers who have “endorsed” Buchanan. The second one, Henry, turns out to be the real leader of this cryptic force. He’s a huge, pale man, maybe fifty-five years old, who sits across from me and glares as if I’m the enemy, which I slowly become.

“How many people are involved in this movement?” I ask him.

“We don’t discuss that,” he says.

“It’s national.”

“Well,” I say, “who is the head of it, nationally?”

“We don’t discuss that,” he says.“What trades do the members belong to?”

“We don’t discuss that.”

At that point I drop my grilled lamb hoagie onto the plate and say, “Well, look, what’s the point of organizing into a political movement if you won’t discuss it?” He blinks for a moment and then says, “We don’t discuss that either.”

The force of Henry’s view of the world as a conspiracy against him and his fellows is such that I have to close my eyes and remind myself that I’m not interviewing a militiaman.

“Does any of your movement favor Ross Perot?” I ask, on a hunch. “The true grassroots people abandoned Ross Perot,” says Henry, angrily emerging from his shell. “It’s the opportunists and the gullibles that stayed with him.”

An hour into the ceremony Buchanan arrives and shakes hands with his blue-collar following. He doesn’t give them much of a speech, maybe because there aren’t a whole lot of them to talk to; but he does offer up a version of the passage that he has worked into his routine to appeal to the politically self-conscious workingman. It is a curious thing to hear, coming as it does from the lips of a Republican:

Someone has got to stand up for the workingmen and-women of America who don’t have no representatives at these trade negotiations where they decide what industries are going to live and what are gonna die. It is wrong to negotiate trade deals for the benefit of transnational corporations that encourage them to shut down their plants in Toledo and Youngstown and to open up a plant in Singapore or China because that takes away jobs from American workers and hollows out our manufacturing base. Look, we won World War Two. You know why? We had great generals like MacArthur and Patton. And admirals like Nimitz. We had great soldiers, great American soldiers. But we also had this great industrial heartland of America. The productive capacity of this nation. And it is being gutted and hollowed out. We went up to Youngstown, Ohio. We went up along that river, the Mahoning Valley. Steel mills. Factories. Gone. Dead. Shut down for fifteen years. Take a look. Take a look at what we were and what we are. Those are the dying husks of what almost appears to be a dying civilization.

The bolds are my own, I make them given current events.

There is a quote apropros, most of all, which prefaces neither chapter, but applies to both, and what takes place now. There is the myth that any piece of information can be found instantly on the internet, but I am unable to find where this was originally written, since I very much would like to read the rest of it.

It is by Stanley Crouch: “In a democracy you never know who the messenger will be.”.

AIDS and GRID, A Non-Ron Paul Explanation

At various points in Ron Paul’s newsletters, there are references to “GRIDS”, and it being the original name for the syndrome that would eventually labeled AIDS. This post is an attempt to clarify the subject.

From the Ron Paul Political Report June 1990:

Note: AIDS was originally named GRIDS–the Gay Related Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Political pressure forced a name change to try to hide the origin of this plague.

From “Congressional Courage”:

AIDS was “originally known as GRIDS–gay related immune deficiency syndrome.” For political reasons it was changed to AIDS. “A whole political movement has been created and sustained on a single notion: homosexual sodomy.”

A few selected passages from And The Band Played On that cover the transition from GRID (not GRIDS) to AIDS, misstated in the newsletters.

It was at this dinner that [San Francisco gay activist, organizer of the Kaposi's Sarcoma Research and Education Program] first heard the technical jargon that would become the stuff of his nightmares in the years ahead – terms like geometric progression and exponential increases. Some scientist had come up with a new name for the syndrome: Gay-Related Immune Deficiency, or GRID. [Dermatolagist with the University of San Francisco Marcus Conant], however, wasn’t sure how gay-related this immune deficiency would stay. Viruses tended not to respect such artificial divisions among humans. Lymphocytes were lymphocytes, and clearly they were major taste treats for the new virus, whether they happened to live in gay bodies or straight.

By now, a dizzying array of acronyms was being bandied about as possible monikers for an epidemic that, though ten months old, remained unnamed. Besides GRID, some doctors liked ACIDS, for Acquired Community Immune Deficiency Syndrome, and then others favored CAIDS, for Community Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. The CDC hated GRID and preferred calling it “the epidemic of immune deficiency.” The “community” in other versions, of course, was a polite way of saying gay; the doctors couldn’t let go of the notion that one identified this disease by whom it hit rather than what it did.

If you don’t abide by scientific principles, chaos will ensue.

It was a fundamental tenet of [conductor of early studies of AIDS in hemophiliacs, Dr. Dale Lawrence] world. It was an idea that also recurred to him after he had flown up from Atlanta to join his boss, Dr. Bruce Evatt and [retrovirologist] Don Francis and a gathering of leaders of the blood industry, hemophiliac groups, gay community organizations, and assorted luminaries from the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration. The Centers for Disease Control had hoped the new evidence of blood transmission would incite the blood industry’s two major components, the voluntary blood banks and the for-profit manufacturers of blood products, to move quickly to stem the tide of blood contamination.

It is at this meeting that a name is decided upon. Note that no elected officials are present.

In the end, everybody agreed that they should do one thing: Wait and see what happens…The meeting, however, did accomplish one memorable achievement. It was more than one year since Michael Gottleib and Alvin Friedman-Klein had reported their cases of pneumonia and skin cancer, and the epidemic still did not have commonly agreed-upon name. Different scientists were using different acronyms in an alphabet soup that further confused the already befuddled story of a strange new disease of unknown origin. The staffers at the CDC despised the GRID acronym and refused to use it. With the advent of hemophiliac cases, Jim Curran argued that any references to “gay” or “community” should be dropped and something more neutral be adopted. Besides, Curran thought ACIDS was a little grotesque.

Somebody finally suggested the name that stuck: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. That gave the epidemic a snappy acronym, AIDS, and was sexually neutral. The word “acquired” separated the immune deficiency syndrome from congenital defects or chemically induced immune problems, indicating the syndrome was acquired from somewhere even though nobody knew from where.

The Ron Paul Newsletters / Ron Paul Paper Trail – Ron Paul Political Report June 1992

(The following contains language that may well be considered offensive. This post is an attempt to make clear what was written in past Ron Paul newsletters. More information can be found here)

Ron Paul
Political Report

June 15, 1992
Volume VI, Number 6

A Special Issue on Racial Terrorism

The Los Angeles and related riots mark a new era in American cultural, poltical, and economic life. We now know if we did not before, that we are under assault from thugs and revolutionaries who hate Euro-American civilization and everything it stands for: private property, material success for those who earn it, and Christian morality.

This is America, 1992

Ten thousand stores and other buildings looted and burned, thousands beaten and otherwise seriously injured, 52 people dead. That was the toll of the Los Angeles riots in which we saw white men pulled from their cars and trucks and shot or brutally beaten. (In every case, the mob was not too enraged to pick the victim’s pocket.)

We saw Korean and white stores targeted by the mob because they “exploited the community,” i.e., sold products people wanted at prices they were willing to pay.

Worst of all, we saw the total breakdown of law enforcement, as black and white liberal public officials had the cops and troops disarmed in the face of criminal anarchy.

In San Francisco and perhaps other cities, says my coin expert Burt Blumert, the rioting was led by red-flag carrying members of the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Workers World Party, both Trotskyite-Maoist. The police were allowed to intervene only when the rioters assaulted the famous Fairmont and Mark Hopkins hotels atop Nob Hill. A friend of Burt’s, a jewelry store owner, had his store on Union Square looted by blacks, and when the police arrived in response to his frantic calls, their orders were to protect his life, but not to interfere with the rioting.

Even though the riots were aimed at whites (and in L.A. at Koreans who had committed the crime of working hard and being successful, and at Cambodians in Long Beach), even though anti-white and anti-Asian epithets filled the air, this is not considered a series of hate crimes, nor a violation of the civil rights of whites or Asians.

(pages missing)

Many people tried to buy guns. But, whoops, California has a 14-day waiting period. And just to make sure honest Californians could not get ammunition for the firearms they already owned (poor rage filled youth might be shot), Mayor Tom Bradley ordered all gun and ammo shops closed, a great help to criminals who had stocked up earlier, or who could simply break in and loot.

Another group that had stocked up were Korean merchants, many of whom defended their places with guns, and later were arrested for illegal use of firearms. As one told the L.A. Times, “Two looters entered my store; one left.” These Korean immigrants were the only people to act like real Americans, mainly because they have not yet been assimilated into our rotten liberal culture, which admonishes whites faced by raging blacks to lie back and think of England.

White reporters and photographers who entered the riot zone were dragged from their cars and beaten. A freelance reporter for the Boston Globe was shot five times. The anti-white hate crimes accumulated.

In the midst of the rioting, Jesse Jackson and Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) spouted the pro-terrorist line that it was all justified because blacks “can’t get no justice.” The newsmen of the major networks interviewed them and lovingly bemoaned the “plight of the inner-city youth.” Liberal statist Jack Kemp weighed in with a victimological line similar to Jackson’s, saying we need more federal programs for the cities.

As the Establishment promised to spread more white taxpayers’ money around the inner city, the killers and looters spread their violence to Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Fairfax, and Westwood. A mall in Compton burned. But the violence wasn’t limited to the L.A. area. It extended to Long Beach, Cal. (where more than 500 Cambodian-owned businesses were torched); Seattle, Wash.; Eugene, Ore.; San Francisco, Cal.; San Jose, Cal.; Las Vegas, Nev. (where it still lingers as I write); Madison, Wis.; Birmingham, Ala.; and Atlanta, Ga. Terrorism swept America.

In Las Vegas, for example, a white man was pulled out of his car and severely beaten by blacks breaking up from an anti-white rally at 10:30 pm. The blacks shouted racial insults as the police carted him away to the hospital. The crowd then pelted SWAT teams in armored vehicles with rocks and bottles. Someone in the crowd of blacks shot a gun and the police responded with tear gas.

I’ve got a feeling that there were many more incidents of looting, fires, and violence that we haven’t heard about for the simple fact that the media doesn’t want us to know about them. Newsmen and editors are protecting us from the truth.

Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began. The “poor” lined up at the post office to get their handouts (since there were no deliveries) — and then complained about slow service.

What if the checks had never arrived? No doubt the blacks would have fully privatized the welfare state through continued looting. But they were paid off and the violence subsided.

Several days after the violence ended, we learned that there would have been blacks on the King jury–if the NAACP hadn’t engaged in jury tampering by telling potential black jurors that it was their racial duty to convict the cops. The blacks admitted this to defense lawyers, and were rightly excluded from jury. This is a serious crime, but the NAACP will not be prosecuted.

Imagine the irony. Blacks have whined endlessly that letting the cops off was “all white” (even though the jury included an Hispanic and an Asian). But it was the leading “civil rights” organization that is at fault for this.

What did Bush say about the riots? First he promised to have the Justice Department see if it could retry the cops for violating Rodney King’s “civil rights.” But what about the constitutional prohibition of double jeopardy? No one cares.

Then Bush promised an immediate payoff of $600 million to L.A. gangsters. When the liberals called this a “token”, he raised the amount to $1.2 billion. He has vacillated between pretending to be a tough guy and condemning the rioters, and taking up the Jack Kemp line that inner-city “despair” can be fixed through more federal programs.

But this is capitulation to terrorist demands. The advice some libertarians give–”don’t vote, it only encourages them”–applies here. We must not kowtow to the street hoodums and their santimonious leaders.

At a Washington, D.C., rally two weeks after the L.A. attempt at revolution, many poured out to lobby for more money to be given to the cities. The most commonly held sign was: “Justice for Rodney King. Free all the L.A. prisoners.”

Now, consider for a moment what this slogan implies. Were they upset by the murders, the burned buildings, and the $1 billion in property damage? Not at all, except to use it as an excuse to get more cash. They wanted the cops jailed and the murderers, arsonists, and thieves set free. This came not from the underclass, but middle-class blacks and black political activists, who hold opinions not markedly different from the Crips and the Bloods.

But the Crips and the Bloods, it turns out, have been misunderstood, according to Ted Koppel who interviewed two of these animals. After spending several hours with them, he decided he liked them. Unfortunately, they didn’t pull him out of his stretch limousine.

Regardless of what the media tells us, most white Americans are not going to believe that they are at fault for what blacks have done to citiies across America. The professional blacks may have cowed the elites, but good sense survives at the grass roots.

Many more are going to have difficultly [sic] avoiding the belief that our country is being destroyed by a group of actual

The original pdfs of this: (p.1) (p.6) (p. 7) of this newsletter can be found at The New Republic.

The Ron Paul Newsletters / Ron Paul Paper Trail – Ron Paul Political Report October 1990

(The following contains language that may well be considered offensive. This post is an attempt to make clear what was written in past Ron Paul newsletters. More information can be found here)

world…first by establishing socialist governments in the various nations and then consolidating them all through a ‘Great Merger,’ into an all-powerful world socialist super-state probably under the auspices of the United Nations.”

In 1986, in his last book before an early death, Gary urged us to Say No to the New World Order. He was a great man, and the prophet of our age. Gary, we miss you.

King City?

A mob of black demonstrators, led by the “Rev.” Al Sharpton, occupied and closed the Statue of Liberty recently, demanding that New York be renamed Martin Luther King City “to reclaim it for our people.”

Hmmm, I hate to agree with the Rev. Al, but maybe a name change is in order. Welfaria? Zooville? Rapetown? Dirtburg? Lazyopolis?

But Al, the Statue of Liberty? Next time, hold that demonstration at a food stamp bureau or a crack house.

Hate Crime?

Friends of big government, like HUD secretary Jack Kemp, can get away with things that would destroy an anti-establishment figure. Jim Watt described an affirmative-action committee as having “a Jew, two blacks, and a cripple.” and he wa–zoom–gone. But Kemp, pulling his car into a handicapped parking space in front of a Southern California newspaper, can say to an editor, “I’m handicapped–I work for the government” without being arrested by the Sensitivity Police.

Family Values on Pennsylvania Avenue

Doug Weed, assistant to the president for conservative liaison, was fired when he protested the White House invitation to gay leaders–the first in history–to watch the signing of the infamous Hate Crimes bill. Rumor has it that Weed also got in trouble for protesting, according to the Washington Times, an all-powerful “homosexual troika at the White House.”

Caring for the AIDS Patient

The government tells us that AIDS cannot be transmitted “casually.” The government also tells us that it should raise our taxes, and risk our sons for Saudi Arabia.

Recently, a non-government physician writing in Gene Antonio’s Healthwatch Report P.O. Box 90140-264, Arlington, TX

The original pdf of this newsletter can be found at The New Republic.

The Ron Paul Newsletters / Ron Paul Paper Trail – Ron Paul Political Report June 1990

(The following contains language that may well be considered offensive. This post is an attempt to make clear what was written in past Ron Paul newsletters. More information can be found here)

terrible act–President Bush invited the heads of homosexual lobbying groups to the White House for the ceremony. A Congressman Bill Dannemeyer (R-CA) noted, “It’s a tragic message that is being sent,” that normality and deviance are equal.

I miss the closet. Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities. They could also not be as promiscuous. Is it any coincidence that the AIDS epidemic developed after they came “out of the closet,” and started hyper-promiscuous sodomy? I don’t believe so, medically or morally.

Note: AIDS was originally named GRIDS–the Gay Related Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Political pressure forced a name change to try to hide the origin of this plague.

Further note: the largest blood bank in San Francisco succumbed to political pressure and holds blood drives in the gay Castro district; where the people give at three times the usual level. Either they are public spirited, or they are trying to poision the blood supply. There is a period of time after infection–perhaps as long as three years–when people can transmit AIDS, but their blood does not show the antibodies. And it is the antibodies that the blood screening tests use to detect AIDS.

As I have said before, DO NOT–unless your life literally depends on it–get a transfusion unless you have donated the blood in advance, or it comes from friends and family members you can trust.

Private Justice in New York

The criminal justice system in New York City is a joke. There are a zillion well-paid police, but they are of virtually no use. Not only are the streets terror zones, but home burglaries are not even investigated unless someone is hurt or more than $10,000 worth of property is taken! But the police and the prosecutors do tak eone form of crime seriously–competing with them. Defending yourself or others can get you in a lot of trouble, as young Kenny Mendoza found out.

Kenny, a 19 year old, heard screams from a woman in a neighboring slum apartment. Grabbing a gun and rushing up the fire escape, he found a 30-year-old pregnant woman held by a criminal with a knife against her throat. Kenny shot the man, who had a long criminal record, and as a result–instead of getting the medal he deserves–he is being indicted for murder and criminal possession of a weapon.

Several months agao, a gray-haired man was accosted on the subway by a gang of young pot-smoking, brandy-drinking animals. They started beating and kicking him after stealing his wallet and watch. When they pulled out a knife, he pulled out a gun, shot and killed one of the criminals, and calmly left the train.

The original pdf of this newsletter can be found at The New Republic.

A Thank You To Andrew Sullivan

For his brave retraction. I am on-line only a brief period each day, so I am late to this.

If Paul did not write these newsletters, then he has an obligation to say if he knew who did, or conduct an investigation. He has had years to do this, and hasn’t. And here’s what you’ve persuaded me of in the last few days: a person who has that kind of bigotry directly printed under his name without a clear empirical explanation of why he is innocent cannot be an honorable president of the United States. The hatred of groups of people in those letters – however gussied up by shards of legitimate arguments – is too deep and vile to be attached to a leader of the entire country. It is far too divisive. The appearance of things matters; and until Paul explains why this appears so horrible, he cannot shrug off the burden of proof.