Right Wing Nut House

Getting a lot of love in the comments from my post yesterday about Palin, the Democrats, and everyone else demagoguing the health care reform issue to death.

To wit:

1. It’s not enough that I think the bill is horrible, bad, a catastrophe, and a threat to individual liberty. I must also get hysterical about it. I must go over the edge of sanity and reason because if I don’t, it’s obvious I am a liberal and an Obama lover. I must extrapolate the most dire, sinister outcomes assumed in the debate with no evidence whatsoever that anything being proposed will lead to “death panels,” or denial of critical care. I agree, and have written previously, there are slippery slopes aplenty in what is being proposed. But the kind of over the top, exaggerated, hysterically fearful claptrap being thrown around by some conservatives is illogical, and in the end, only makes our side look like losers

(Note: Emanuel’s brother is not writing the bill, nor is Holdren going to have anything to do with running any state controlled health care system. For the reasons so many of you outlined, it is extremely doubtful that senate confirmation would be forthcoming for either gentleman if Obama was dumb enough to try and appoint them to any position of influence in his Brave New State Run Health Care Agency.)

2. Saying anything negative about Sarah Palin brings out the creepiest conservatives on the web. The parallels between Obamabots and Palin zombies is disheartening, and makes me wonder what would happen if she did indeed run in 2012. Both are blinded by the notion that their white knight can do no wrong, and say no evil. Both Obamabots and Palin zombies see qualities in their heroes that don’t exist. Both believe their saviors are rescuing them from evil. Both are pathetic manifestations of the times in which we live and reflect the depths to which the American character has sunk. When so many on both sides of the great political divide imbue a politician with almost superhuman qualities, I fear for the future of the republic.

3. People who bring my family into any criticism of me are cretinous louts.

4. I am the last, sane person in America.

Isaac Asimov’s brilliant, and influential short story Nightfall comes to mind as a metaphor for this debate. The sci-fi classic is about a planet that is bathed in continual sunlight due to the fact that it revolves around 6 suns. It is a world that knows no darkness, no sundown, and no stars.

Every 2000 years or so, all six suns go into eclipse and for a brief period, there is night. A cult that predicted this catastrophe, and scientists who studied the remnants of past civilizations on the planet, concluded that when the darkness descends, everyone goes stark raving mad because the night is so frightening, they destroy their own civilization by setting fire to anything that burns in order to bring back the light.

(The final scene is one of the most haunting in all of sci-fi literature. After the darkness has descended, the scientists, who are trying to measure the phenomenon - including getting pictures of the mythical “stars” that they don’t really believe exist - are in for a surprise. The protagonist goes to a window:

Through it shone the Stars!

Not Earth’s feeble thirty-six hundred Stars visible to the eye; Lagash was in the center of a giant cluster. Thirty thousand mighty suns shone down in a soul-searing splendor that was more frighteningly cold in its awful indifference than the bitter wind that shivered across the cold, horribly bleak world.

Theremon staggered to his feet, his throat, constricting him to breathlessness, all the muscles of his body writhing in an intensity of terror and sheer fear beyond bearing. He was going mad and knew it, and somewhere deep inside a bit of sanity was screaming, struggling to fight off the hopeless flood of black terror. It was very horrible to go mad and know that you were going mad — to know that in a little minute you would be here physically and yet all the real essence would be dead and drowned in the black madness. For this was the Dark — the Dark and the Cold and the Doom. The bright walls of the universe were shattered and their awful black fragments were falling down to crush and squeeze and obliterate him.

In America, the darkness is descending and torches are being lit. Fear stalks the land - fear of the unknown, fear of our fellow citizens, fear of our political leaders, fear of the future. This fear is being stoked on both sides by people who are well aware of the consequences of what they are doing, but continue to fan the flames of dread because it gives them power and influence, or furthers their political designs. Reason has left the building. It has been replaced by a raw emotionalism that feeds upon itself, spiraling out of control, threatening violence and disorder while making any rational debate about health care reform impossible.

President Obama may get his statist, ruinously expensive, ridiculously complicated health care reform. But it will be a Pyrrhic victory. For in pulling out all the stops to garner a political triumph, and becoming the number one enabler of demagoguery and fear mongering, he will have so riven the citizenry of this republic as to make any future efforts to solve our problems in a bi-partisan manner an impossibility.

I am one of those who would have supported reasonable reforms in health insurance and realistic means to bring down health care costs. The Democrats are proposing neither, and are ginning up fear and outrage - as are Republicans in opposition - to ram down the throats of the American people, without legitimate debate or discussion reforms that are antithetical to the American character and the American way of doing things. The proposals make a mockery of our First Principles, and threaten not to “remake” America” but to fundamentally alter the compact between citizens and the government.

Without congressional hearings, or any input from opponents; in secrecy, and using complexity as a beard to hide an agenda that they know full well would be rejected by the overwhelming majority of citizens, the Democrats are in full on attack mode. They are not defending what they want to accomplish with reform. They are simply going after those who oppose them, using the most vile and despicable tactics to delegitimize the opposition.

Judging by the polls, it’s not working. And if health care reform fails, it won’t be because of the hysterical fear mongering by Republicans and conservatives, but because they didn’t believe in reform enough to trust the legislative process and the give and take of democratic debate.

I wholeheartedly agree that this statement by Sarah Palin on her Facebook page is unconscionable, outrageous, and either a deliberate lie, or proof that she really is an airhead:

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

You’re absolutely right, governor. That kind of a system would indeed be “downright evil.”

Except, there is nothing in any proposal by any Democrat, Republican, Greenie, Communist, New Nazi, or a Flat Earther on health care that even hints about a “death panel.” You’re just making stuff up.

In fact, it’s hard to know just what the hell you’re referring to. Are you talking about the now dead proposal for a Medicare commission to decide treatment options for diseases (not people)?

Most of the White House session focused on slowing the rapid growth in health care costs, lawmakers said afterward. That discussion centered on a White House proposal to empower an outside body, like the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, to make binding recommendations for cost cuts in government-run health care programs. Waxman and others previously opposed the idea, but the chairman made a verbal agreement to work with the seven Blue Dogs on his committee to break through an impasse that has stalled consideration of the enormous bill.

Sorry, but you’re a little out of the loop up there in Mooseland. The proposal was rejected within hours of the agreement.

Other than that, I can’t for the life of me, think of what you are talking about. Now it may be that you’ve seen something in one of the proposals making the rounds in Washington - a proposal that actually does have a “death panel” in it - or something that will do the same thing. If so, please share it with us. I would like to know who wants to turn America into ancient Sparta where the elders would examine all newborns and, if the child was found to be weak or otherwise flawed in their eyes, they would toss the screaming infant over a cliff.

I’m just wondering why you chose to spread this nonsensical information about health care reform. The damn bill is plenty bad enough without lying about it. Jesus Christ! Your loyal subjects, who don’t think you can do any wrong, are smart enough to figure that out without you having to demagogue the issue like a Democrat, for God’s sake!

We have entered a phase in the “debate” over health care where the two sides can’t lie enough about the other’s motives, intentions, and ancestry. One would think that resurrecting Winston Churchill was in order, there are so many Nazis to fight. Both sides have been flinging the “N” word (”Nazi”) around like a monkey in a zoo tossing his feces at the gawkers. Pelosi, the DNC, a few tea partiers, and even a stray GOP lawmaker or two have used the word “Nazi” to describe their political opponents lately.

Just curious, but don’t my friends on the left tire of such out of control exaggeration? Calling protestors against a massive expansion of government - the biggest in American history - “racists” and “Nazis” must get awfully tiring as you try and stretch, and stretch, and stretch your justification for doing so beyond the bounds of reason, of logic, and of reality.

Dan Boaz on the “racist” protestors meme picked up by Paul Krugman and others who believe opposition to statism is a sign of racism:

The classical liberal ideas of individualism, individual rights, property rights, “negative liberties,” and limited government date back hundreds, even thousands, of years. They find their roots in the Greek and Hebrew conceptions of the higher law, the Scholastic thinkers, the Levellers’ ideas of self-ownership and natural rights, the political theory of John Locke, the economic analysis of Adam Smith, and the political institutions of the American Founding. To suggest that the case for freedom and limited government — or the application of that theory to contemporary proposals for the expansion of government — must be attributable to racism is uncharitable, ahistorical, thoughtless, and indeed contemptible.

It cannot be the case that every parody of a president who happens to be black is racist. And it is not good for democracy to try to counter every opposing argument with such a blood libel. The good news for advocates of limited government is that our opponents are displaying a striking lack of confidence in the actual arguments for their proposals. If they thought they could win a debate on nationalizing health care, or running trillion-dollar deficits, they wouldn’t need to reach for such smears.

Sorry, people have tuned that sort of nonsense out or don’t believe it any more. There’s such a thing as going to the well once to often with a political ploy and the Democrats with their “racism” and “Nazi” charges against the GOP and the protestors are discovering that now. This issue is too vital to use cheap political tricks like that.

I might say in a similar fashion, that some conservatives - talk radio, anti-health care lobbyists, and others who should know better - are spreading idiotic bull like Palin’s “death panels” all over the place.

As I said before, this monstrosity of a bill is bad enough. Why exaggerate? Why put out false information? It scares the bejeebies out of me and I’m not even listening to you. Surely we can have a debate on this without calling each other Nazis or racists, or trying to scare the old folks with talks of euthanasia, or “death panels.”

In fact, I would say that this is the primary reason that everyone has gone stark, raving mad over health care reform. There is no debate. There is no back and forth. There have been few hearings, less input from opponents, and absolutely no leadership from Obama on this issue.

And what “leadership” we have seen from this pretend president, has been his refusal to consider the fact that there are indeed, alternatives to what he is proposing, that there are other ideas out there that would accomplish as much or more of what he is proposing, and that telling the opposition to shut up is about the absolute, most incompetent, unthinking, radical, idiotic thing I have ever heard a president say in the midst of a political war.

Just a little comparison:

“I think the president welcomes the fact that we are a democracy and people in the United States, unlike Iraq, are free to protest and to make their case known.” (White House statement on anti-war protestors, 2002).

“I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess.” (Obama on health care protestors, yesterday).

My views on Bush are known to any who have read this site for a while, but I ask you; who’s the statesman and who’s the political putz?

Demagogues to the left, demagogues to the right, demagogues in the White House, The Hill, and all the way out in Alaska.

The republic appears to gone off the deep end. Pity we have the wrong man in the White House to fix it.

Action and reaction.

Obama comes up with ruinously expensive, statist, enormously complex, and ultimately ridiculous health care reform ideas - a bill that will change people’s lives in the most intimate way imaginable - and some people react to both the bill itself and the misinformation being spread by opponents by fearfully shouting down proponents of the measure and even threatening to get physical.

The Democrats react by bussing in labor thugs for “protection” while the White House encourages Democrats to hit back “twice as hard.”

Gee - and we’re surprised that violence breaks out?

In an age when reasonableness in politics is seen as weakness, or insufficient passion for “the cause,” coming to blows over health care was predictable Someone or many someones are going to get killed over this if it keeps up and the finger of blame will have a hard time finding a permanent place to rest.

I would dearly love to point the finger at President Obama and the Democrats as they have ratcheted up the potential for violence by bringing in supporters who have a 100 year history of goonishness when dealing with opponents. I’m talking about labor unions, of course, and the kinds of “activists” who will be showing up at these town halls. These are men who play for keeps and pull no punches when they feel their interests are on the line.

You might have had some sympathy for these tactics 70 or 80 years ago when employers routinely hired their own goons (and had the police on their side) to beat and kill organizers. But those days are long gone, even though the goons remain.

I have second hand familiarity with labor thugs, having worked in the early 80’s for an open shop construction trade association where our members who refused to use union labor were routinely beaten, harassed, their homes firebombed, and their jobsites vandalized. Of course, there are dozens of contemporary examples of workers who choose to cross a picket line being beaten - and worse. The heroes in the labor movement are all dead and long gone. Today’s unions are little better than extortion rackets, designed to milk both workers and employers for every nickle they can get out of them.

Labor officials then take that money and buy political power with it to maintain their lofty position (and lavish lifestyles) by getting their friends in Congress to protect them from audits, and as will be the case with card check, make it easier to get even more members to buy them more political power.

I don’t know for sure if labor bullies were responsible for beating up a couple of conservatives in St. Louis yesterday but I have my suspicions. I’ve seen it too often not to believe that it not only is possible, but likely as well.

But let’s return to the culprits who are also responsible for the violence last night and will be equally responsible as well for any future violence. The behavior of some conservative activists has been despicable. I am sick to death of hearing that shouting down opponents or physically threatening people who disagree with you is “understandable” because, after all, health care reform is so bad, you can’t blame people for being angry.

You bet your ass I blame people for shouting down and trying to intimidate their political opponents. We were given a brain at birth capable of reason and logic. We are not beasts who are unable to control our emotions. We were born in a country where only by civil debate and reasoned discourse have we been able to maintain our unity in the face of towering obstacles. Citizens coming from a hundred different backgrounds as well as representing every race, every creed, every ethnic group in the world do not naturally mix and form a society. We have to work at it. And that means governing our passions so that all may participate in the democratic process equally.

When we don’t - when we give in to these beastly impulses - we get 600,000 dead and one part of the country in ruins. Ultimately, the Civil War was as much about our failure to believe in the good intentions of our political opponents as it was about the union, or slavery. War is never “inevitable.” Losing faith in each other was what led to the explosion.

To give in to the desire to express anger while preventing others from making their views known demonstrates an adolescent level of emotional maturity. It is rude, selfish, and ultimately self defeating (as I wrote about here several days ago).

Look at Rasmussen’s latest poll that show a significant bump in the president’s numbers from people who “strongly approve” of him, from 28% to 34% in less than a week. A reasonable explanation is that those fence sitters who were becoming lukewarm about Obama have been energized by conservative misbehavior at town halls. That 6 point bump cannot be explained by a glitch in the numbers. It is statistically significant enough that it had to have been driven by what’s been in the news.

Those who can’t control themselves should stay home. It’s that simple. If you are unable to allow your fellow citizens the same rights given to you and refrain from shouting them down, I suggest you attend a professional wrestling match where you can shout down people who disagree with you without doing any harm. By showing up at town halls and claiming that you are so angry that, like a 15 year old boy, you can’t control your emotions, you only make passage of health care reform more likely.

It is the Democrats and liberals who have taken this to the next level, however, by urging their supporters to “hit back twice as hard” and by bringing in professional union agitators. And Democratic congressmen aren’t helping matters either by trying to prevent protestors from attending the town halls. Now conservatives feel they have to top what the Democrats have just done, and the cycle is likely to escalate out of control.

Action and reaction. In the end, no one remembers who started it.

You can find some wonderful symmetry between the Birther conspiracists and those on the left who have become so paranoid about opposition to Obama that they have invented a “Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory” on health care reform demonstrations.

Both are rooted in denial of facts, refusal to believe evidence right in front of their eyes, the exaggerated build up of the opposition, manufactured (or misinterpreted) evidence, and the unshakable belief that they are right.

The big difference is, on the Democratic side, the conspiracy nuts include:

The President
The Speaker of the House
The Majority Leader of the Senate
The entire DNC
Every major liberal blog

That’s quite a lineup, huh? On the Birther side, you have few nutty congressmen and a whole bunch of fringe kooks who would deny the sun rising in the east and setting in the west if someone presented evidence to the contrary.

So what is the bogus conspiracy theory being pushed by Democrats and the left?

Let’s let the President of the United States - or, perhaps we should start referring to him as the “Kook in Chief” - explain it:

There’s been a lot of media coverage about organized mobs intimidating lawmakers, disrupting town halls, and silencing real discussion about the need for real health insurance reform.

The truth is, it’s a sham. These “grassroots protests” are being organized and largely paid for by Washington special interests and insurance companies who are desperate to block reform. They’re trying to use lies and fear to break the President and his agenda for change.

“Organized mobs?” “Paid for by Washington special interests and insurance companies?” First of all, referring to fellow countrymen who disagree with you as a “mob” is beneath the dignity of the office - not that Obama has necessarily demonstrated that he cares a whit about that kind of thing in the first place - and bespeaks a paranoid outlook regarding your political opposition.

And I don’t know about you, but I sure would like to know specifically which insurance companies and “special interests” - specific lobbying groups and companies - are organizing and paying for these demonstrations? After all, if you’re going to smear the thousands and thousands of people who are opposed to a public policy initiative like health care reform and show up at these congressional town halls, it should be snap to identify those companies who are paying for these protestors to come out and demonstrate, right?

What are their names, Mr. President? How are they paying people to turn out? Are they paying gas money to the demonstrators so that they can drive the few blocks to where these town halls are taking place? Maybe they’re giving a stipend - sort of like strike pay that unions give to members who walk a picket line? (Now that’s grass roots action for ya!)? Just how is all this organized? How deep does this conspiracy go?

ABC News went to one of these town halls where protestors turned out by the hundreds:

There were no lobbyist-funded buses in the parking lot of Mardela Middle and High School on Tuesday evening, and the hundreds of Eastern Maryland residents who packed the school’s auditorium loudly refuted the notion that their anger over the Democrats’ health care reform plans is “manufactured.”

“I went to school in this school,” a man named Bob told me. “I don’t see anyone in this room that isn’t from Mardela Springs right now.”

“We’ve been quiet too long,” said a woman named Joan.

They came to yell at their congressman, freshman Democratic Rep. Frank Kratovil, and they were surprised to hear that the “Congress in Your Corner” event to which they had been invited — by a robocall from Kratovil himself — was not to be a public airing of grievances, but instead an opportunity for private, one-on-one sessions with the freshman Democrat.

As the crowd grew, and began venting frustration over the fact they would only be meeting with the congressman behind closed doors, Kratovil’s aides suggested he switch to a town hall format

Obviously, ABC wasn’t looking hard enough for signs of the conspiracy. Our corporate media is covering for the insurance companies, I’m sure.

Or - these really are demonstrations organized at the grass roots and while I abhor the behavior of some (and admire Kratovil for standing up and taking his licks), the fact remains that the only sign of some kind of conspiracy involving big business was that, according to Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, the demonstrators were too well dressed to be “genuine.”

Ed Morrissey:

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) appeared on Hardball last night in support of the Left’s attempt to discredit the people showing up to townhalls in protest of ObamaCare. Boxer says she can tell that they’re fakes, because they’re too well dressed. How does she know that this is a problem? Because well-dressed people apparently told her to get the hell out of Florida in the Bush-Gore recount, too.

If that’s not paranoia, I don’t know what is. Note the forced and bogus connection made between two completely different situations. Birthers do the same thing all the time. And they’re kooks and Boxer is sane?

Then you have liberal blogs and the DNC pushing the theory that a group called Freedom Works is in cahoots with the insurance companies and are directing the demonstrators and orchestrating chaos:

Above-the-fold headlines of the disruptive protests caused the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to accuse Republicans of fueling the anti-Democratic healthcare activists in an attempt to institute “mob rule.”

But Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele denied on Wednesday that the GOP somehow coordinated the protests.

“To sit back and say this is some sort of Republican cabal is some baloney,” Steele said on a conference call with reporters. “And you can substitute [baloney] with something else if you want.”

And Steele argued the protesters have raised questions that the Obama administration deems beneath it to answer.

“This administration has the arrogance to look down their nose” at the protesters, Steele said.

The authenticity of the town hall protests, and whether or not they represent real dissatisfaction with Democrats’ healthcare reform proposals, has become a key element of the early August battle.

The White House questioned the authenticity of the rabble-rousers earlier this week.

“I hope people will take a jaundiced eye to what is clearly the AstroTurf nature of so-called grassroots lobbying,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

Gibbs and the DNC have taken aim at groups like FreedomWorks, the activist group founded by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), for allegedly facilitating the protests at the behest of corporate interests.

FreedomWorks spokesman Max Pappas said in an interview with CBS that his group simply provides talking points to town hall attendees to engage in “civil” dialogues with lawmakers.

Those talking points from Freedom Works are one of about a thousand such efforts on the web. American Thinker had a series of 7 posts on “What to ask your Congressman” at these town halls while Hot Air just published their own suggestions.

If all these sites are getting paid to publish suggested talking points by evil insurance companies, maybe I should get in on the act. Who do I contact to spread the lies?

Of course, the revelations by Mary Katherine Ham yesterday about the “smoking gun” memo that Think Progress and TPM Muckraker were touting as “proof” of a conspiracy to disrupt town hall meetings, made most of the left look loonier than Orly Taitz:

When the “manufactured” outrage the Left is trying to demonize lines up so inconveniently with public polling, it’s sometimes necessary to create evidence for the “manufactured” storyline.

Enter Think Progress, which unearthed this shocking, secret memo from the leader of a small grassroots conservative organization in Connecticut, which allegedly instructs members on “infiltrating town halls and harassing Democratic members of Congress.”

Right Principles PAC was formed by Bob MacGuffie and four friends in 2008, and has taken in a whopping $5,017 and disbursed $1,777, according to its FEC filing.

“We’re just trying to shake this state up and make a difference up here,” MacGuffie told me during a telephone interview. He’s surprised at his elevation to national rabble-rouser by the Left.

Right Principles has a Facebook group with 23 members and a Twitter account with five followers. MacGuffie describes himself as an “opponent of leftist thinking in America,” and told me he’s “never pulled a lever” for a Republican or Democrat on a federal level. Yet this Connecticut libertarian’s influence over a national, orchestrated Republican health-care push-back is strong, indeed, if you listen to liberal pundits and the Democratic National Committee, who have crafted a nefarious web out of refutable evidence.

Think Progress highlighted his memo’s directives to “‘Yell,’ ‘Stand Up And Shout Out,’ ‘Rattle Him’,” calling it a “right-wing harassment strategy against Dems.” The blog falsely connected MacGuffie to the national conservative group FreedomWorks through the most tenuous of threads. The Think Progress link that purports to establish MacGuffie as a FreedomWorks “volunteer” leads to his one blog posting on a Tea Party website (on the free social networking site, ning.com). Think Progress calls Tea Party Patriots a “FreedomWorks website.”

The problem is it’s not a FreedomWorks site, according to FreedomWorks spokesman Adam Brandon. FreedomWorks is a “coalition partner” of TeaPartyPatriots.org, but does not fund the site in any way.

“There is no formal structural connection,” Brandon told me. “Never has been. Never will be. We’re just fellow travelers in the movement.”

My pet cat Aramas has more influence with tea party protestors than these bushers. And yet, they are the source of the tactics used by opponents of health care reform?

Exaggerating evidence of conspiracy is right out of the Birther handbook. And yet they’re the screwballs and liberal bloggers are members of a “reality based community?” Maybe on the planet Mongol, not here.

From the president on down, Democrats and liberals have become unhinged about opposition to Obama’s agenda. Somehow, it just seems more evil if big business, right wing fanatics, shady Republican operatives, and robot-like conservatives are all involved in this conspiracy to defeat the health care reform monstrosity that no one in Congress has read yet because it hasn’t been written. And citizens are supposed to require lobbyists and political pros to get ginned up about that?

When 71% of the American people believe that Obama is adding to the deficit unnecessarily, do liberals believe that a few thousands of those souls won’t take it upon themselves - with a little encouragement from tea party groups who have been organizing for more than 6 months - to show up and register their unhappiness?

Completely rational, and reasonable explanations for this outpouring of anger and activism are rejected by the left in favor of the elitist idea that ordinary citizens cannot think for themselves and must be told by lobbyists and corporate flaks to go out and demonstrate. And to carry this elitist lunacy even farther, it is intimated that these same ordinary citizens are actually paid for their efforts.

Birthers and lefty conspiracists - peas of a pod, birds of a feather, and partners in kooky lunacy.

This is one of the most dishonest, despicable things I’ve ever seen in politics. TPM and Think Progress published a purported “smoking gun” memo from an anti-health reform group that they were pushing as a blueprint for action that protestors at town hall meetings were following to disrupt the proceedings.

There’s only one problem: The group that is responsible for writing the memo are a bunch of bush leaguers with no more influence than my pet cat Aramas on demonstrators protesting anything:

When the “manufactured” outrage the Left is trying to demonize lines up so inconveniently with public polling, it’s sometimes necessary to create evidence for the “manufactured” storyline.

Enter Think Progress, which unearthed this shocking, secret memo from the leader of a small grassroots conservative organization in Connecticut, which allegedly instructs members on “infiltrating town halls and harassing Democratic members of Congress.”

Right Principles PAC was formed by Bob MacGuffie and four friends in 2008, and has taken in a whopping $5,017 and disbursed $1,777, according to its FEC filing.

“We’re just trying to shake this state up and make a difference up here,” MacGuffie told me during a telephone interview. He’s surprised at his elevation to national rabble-rouser by the Left.

Right Principles has a Facebook group with 23 members and a Twitter account with five followers. MacGuffie describes himself as an “opponent of leftist thinking in America,” and told me he’s “never pulled a lever” for a Republican or Democrat on a federal level. Yet this Connecticut libertarian’s influence over a national, orchestrated Republican health-care push-back is strong, indeed, if you listen to liberal pundits and the Democratic National Committee, who have crafted a nefarious web out of refutable evidence.

Think Progress highlighted his memo’s directives to “‘Yell,’ ‘Stand Up And Shout Out,’ ‘Rattle Him’,” calling it a “right-wing harassment strategy against Dems.” The blog falsely connected MacGuffie to the national conservative group FreedomWorks through the most tenuous of threads. The Think Progress link that purports to establish MacGuffie as a FreedomWorks “volunteer” leads to his one blog posting on a Tea Party website (on the free social networking site, ning.com). Think Progress calls Tea Party Patriots a “FreedomWorks website.”

The problem is it’s not a FreedomWorks site, according to FreedomWorks spokesman Adam Brandon. FreedomWorks is a “coalition partner” of TeaPartyPatriots.org, but does not fund the site in any way.

“There is no formal structural connection,” Brandon told me. “Never has been. Never will be. We’re just fellow travelers in the movement.”

There is no “memo” that tells protestors what to do. If anyone else besides this guys mother, grandmother, and maiden aunt saw this “blueprint” I would be enormously surprised. It was a wholly manufactured piece of “evidence” - along with the ridiculously tenuous connections - by TPM.

Josh Marshall bragged to high heaven about the George Polk Award for journalism he received. I am going to write the award committee and ask them to rescind it. This isn’t even yellow journalism. It is propaganda, as Marshall and the rest of the left (who are, in fact, the ones who receive instructions on a daily basis about how to frame issues through their exclusive email list) can’t be bothered with the facts, can’t be bothered with the truth, and are only concerned about demonstrating their rank partisanship and shocking demagoguery.

Of course, it is impossible for the truth to catch up to the lies at this point. We will see the left pointing to this ridiculous memo for the duration of the health care reform debate as “evidence” that the outrage is “manufactured” and not genuine. Nor will the media take the time or make the effort to differentiate between the vast majority of demonstrators who are locally organized and the few agitators who have come in from out of town. Ignorance of the nature of the protests and who is taking part extends to the White House, as this email I got proves:

There’s been a lot of media coverage about organized mobs intimidating lawmakers, disrupting town halls, and silencing real discussion about the need for real health insurance reform.

The truth is, it’s a sham. These “grassroots protests” are being organized and largely paid for by Washington special interests and insurance companies who are desperate to block reform. They’re trying to use lies and fear to break the President and his agenda for change.

“Largely paid for?” Who is paying what to whom and why? If this is true, how come we never hear any names of these evil companies or individuals? So far, all we’ve got is a memo from a guy running a PAC out of his basement. Specifically, which companies are paying the protestors? Which lobbying groups are giving people money to disrupt the town halls? If you don’t have any names, it’s a base political smear, nothing more.

Are big insurance companies paying people gas money to drive the few blocks to where the town hall meeting is being held? Isn’t the White House aware that the tea party groups have been organizing since February and have email lists of hundreds of volunteers in the area? Why do they need help from lobbyists to send out a couple of hundred emails?

The facts are a little less dramatic. And while Marshall and his cohort of lock-step liberals in the media drum on about “astroturfing” and “mobs,” the protests go on. Not always with the decorum and reasonableness that such a weighty subject demands. But as I said yesterday, that kind of disruptive action hurts much more than any fakery the liberals can come up with to delegitimize the protests.

Is it ever the right thing to do to shout down the political opposition at an open meeting?

I realize people are angry. I know that conservatives feel a sense of powerlessness as Republicans in congress fumble and stumble around and the Democrats seem to have it all going their way. I accept the fact that this health care bill is a fearful monstrosity and that extraordinary measures should be taken to defeat it.

But is screaming in impotent rage at your congressmen the way to go about doing it?

The left has been doing it for 40 years. Poor Hubert Humphrey was hardly ever able to make himself heard during his 1968 election appearances because anti-war protestors dogged his steps, shouting him down at every opportunity. Back in those days, they didn’t remove troublemakers as they do today - at least I don’t recall that they did. Sometimes there were several hundred people chanting and screaming so removing them all would have been a problem.

Nixon was also often shouted down during that contest. It was a typical display of bad manners by the left that only served to help elect Richard Nixon and set back their cause of ending the war immeasurably.

Here are some examples of what’s been going on:

Angry protestors in Philadelphia shouted down both Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Sen. Arlen Specter.

On Saturday in Texas, demonstrators against what they called government-run health care surrounded Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett and followed him out to his car, shouting “just say no.”

The crowds are partly the result of conservative Web sites asking for turn out at town hall meetings - including three tonight in Virginia, Mississippi and South Carolina. Hundreds of events by both Democrats and Republicans are being targeted in every state.

But the turnouts also reflect the real fear over the increased taxes and government controls that are part of the health bills being considered in Congress.

“They know that that means somebody’s taxes are eventually be used to pay for this - and they are worried that that’s their taxes,” said Max Pappas of the conservative Web site Freedom Works.

As an aside, it is obvious that CBS reporters read liberal websites:

Is this just some less-than-polite heckling or political maneuvering? CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports.

Funny…Brian Beutler doesn’t wonder - he knows:

On Friday, July 24, a representative of Conservatives for Patients Rights–the anti-health care reform group run by Swift Boat message man Rick Scott–sent an email to a list serve (called the Tea Party Patriots Health Care Reform Committee) containing a spreadsheet that lists over one hundred congressional town halls from late July into September.

The email from CPR to tea baggers suggests that, though conservatives portray the tea bagger disruptions as symptoms of a populist rebellion roiling unprompted through key districts around the country, they have to a great extent been orchestrated by anti-health care reform groups financed by industry. (CPR did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

That email predates by about a week a recent flurry of events at which Democratic members of Congress have been accosted and harassed by anti-health care reform tea party protesters. But beyond putting those spectacles, now receiving wide play on cable news, into a fresh light, it also provides a window into the tea party protesters’ organizing infrastructure, which, like so much political organizing today, occurs in private email list serves.

Omigod - don’t tell me. The horror of it! Citizens actually organizing to protest! Oh, the humanity. (If Beutler or anyone else has a link to a tea party website that makes the claim these demonstrations are “spontaneous” I would appreciate it. In fact, if there is a link to any site on the web that makes this claim, I would like to see it. This is a strawman argument, nothing more.)

Of course, tea partiers have made absolutely no secret that they are organizing to protest at these town halls. The fact that an organization sent out a list of scheduled town hall meetings in key districts does not mean anything except liberals are worried that the right - usually moribund when it comes to protesting anything - is aping their long cherished tactics. I guess when Moveon sent out a million emails to people telling them to protest the war, that was…what? “Real” grass roots action? Puhleez.

Regardless, it’s how opponents of health care reform act at these meetings that concern me. Boorish behavior like this is inappropriate and serves no purpose other than to make the screamers feel good. That’s pretty selfish if you ask me.

Every single poll shows that the more people know about this bill, the more they detest it. Logic and reason would go a helluva lot farther in showing people how bad this bill is than giving into emotionalism for the sake of a little theatrics and releasing pent up anger. You are not doing the cause one iota of good by demonstrating poor manners and stifling free speech.

Those citizens who are on the fence on this issue (the ones who will probably decide the fate of health care reform in the end), and who are trying to learn more about it, only see a bunch of angry, irrational people, incoherently ranting when they want to hear both sides of the argument. The question is, do we give them a chance to find out how bad this bill is or do we drive them into the arms of those supporting the measure by coming across as a bunch of bozos?

What the left never understood - and still doesn’t get, judging by the way they tried to shout down Bush every opportunity they got - is that presenting your case in a reasonable manner always goes a lot farther with those who are undecided than simply trying to stifle your political opponent’s right of free speech. That tactic breeds resentment from those who are more thoughtful about politics or who are trying to learn about an issue. You lose far, far more than you gain when acting boorishly.

Again, I know people are angry. But giving in to the emotionalism of the moment hurts the cause. I realize the left has used these tactics for generations - and that may be the silliest reason of all for conservatives to mimic them. Do you really want to imitate the absolute worst tactic of your opponent? Where’s the logic in that?

This is not a zero sum game. There is much more to be gained by demonstrating reasonably and respectfully than going off half cocked and disrupting what is, after all, part of the democratic process. There is a real chance that the entire idea of health care reform can be defeated for this congressional term.

But it won’t happen if conservatives continue to make it impossible for the majority of voters to see their side of the argument because they are preventing everyone from hearing both sides.

My latest AIP article is up, albeit with a different title: “CFPA Gone Elitist?” I like the title I gave my piece so there.

But really, if there was ever a case that revealed liberal elitism, snobbery, and their unshakable belief that they know what is best for everybody else because, at bottom, we’re just a bunch of goober chewing, gun toting, Jesus loving, inbred ignoramuses who can’t take care of ourselves, the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency is it:

The point is, Obama’s CFPA will play the role of National Papa by forcing financial services institutions - banks, mortgage companies, brokerage firms - to limit the sale of complicated financial products only to those customers who can grasp their complexity and hence, manage the risk.

This elitist idea is the result of the belief by some liberals that too many consumers were snookered by unscrupulous loan companies and bought mortgages that they should never have purchased. These sub-prime loans had balloon provisions that would kick in after a few years, dramatically increasing their interest rate and with it, their monthly payments.

No doubt some loan sharks did indeed either fail to follow the law and fully disclose all the risks associated with such a loan or simply lied. Laws are already on the books to deal with these criminals who prey on those who are less sophisticated in financial matters than others. Full disclosure laws have been a part of the financial industry for many years and there are clear guidelines regarding the disclosure of all risks and obligations of the consumer.

But that’s just not good enough, say the Daddy Staters. We’re too stupid to know what’s in our best interest and even if we read all the disclosure information, we’re too unsophisticated to understand it.

Enter the CFPA who will sit us down in the government family room not to help us make our own choices in financial matters, but to lay down the law and back it up with a shaving strop.

One of the recommendations to financial institutions who will segregate their products into easy to understand, “vanilla” offerings and more complex instruments, is to give consumers a test to weigh their knowledge of financial matters in order to determine whether they are capable of getting a home loan or purchase some other financial instrument.

Neat, huh?

The problem is that if a financial company sells a more complex offering to a consumer and it goes south, the customer can go running to the CFPA with a complaint or sue. In other words, if you like medical malpractice, you will love the new CFPA.

I would be unable to pass even a beginner’s test on financial matters. And devising a test to measure if a consumer has the knowledge to “understand” the risks involved in buying a product will be an interesting exercise. If they make it too easy, they leave themselves open to trouble. If they make it too hard, they lose a lot of business.

There are other problems with the new agency as well. Read my whole piece.

It is a titanic battle of the witless, a struggle to determine which paranoid, idiotic, nonsensical, and just plain loony tunes conspiracy nutcases take the booby prize for being the biggest threat to rationality and common sense in our politics.

In truth, I wouldn’t want to live off the difference. The fact is, a sizable segment of both the left and right have allowed their hatred for a president to so cloud their judgment and befuddle their minds that they have descended into a pit of irrational idiocy, and are drowning in their own bilious delusions.

There is no need to look very far for explanations. Driven by the internet, which is tailor made for attracting and gathering like minded twits into communities of conspiracy nuts who feed off each other’s flights of ever more spectacular illogical fancies, the Truther-Birther nexus can be found in how our information society has so splintered and fractured our national polity, that offshoots like these are inevitable.

Previous to the widespread use of the internet to get the bulk of one’s news about what’s happening in the world, information was a linear proposition; a straight line could be drawn directly from a small number of newspapers, magazines, and TV stations to the consumer of news. Alternative publications and viewpoints were out there but one had to expend an effort to find them.

While this may have led to a conformity that put enormous power into the hands of a few, unelected editors and publishers, it also prevented the nutcases from getting their hands on the means to widely disseminate their deranged theories and attract the dullards, the less educated, and those who lacked the critical thinking skills to differentiate between logic and logical fallacies.

Today - as was true in the past with Bush and a lesser extent (only because the internet was in its infancy) Clinton, hatred and fear are the driving force behind these irrational notions. Is it ideological or something deeper? Do blogs and talk radio contribute to the fact of their existence or do those media simply fan the flames of an already out of control conflaguration of stupidity?

I don’t like pat answers to those questions as both left and right pretend to have figured out what’s wrong with the other side. “It’s racism and Glenn Beck” screams the left! “It’s Bush hatred” screams the right. While I have no doubt all of that plays a role in what apparently drives perfectly normal (otherwise) people to believe demonstrably stupid things, I believe that at bottom, it has more to do with the times in which we live rather than any specific reason you can point to in order to explain the aberrant thinking.

Some Americans are afraid. They are afraid of crime, of their neighbors, of neighborhoods that are changing to reflect a more diverse society, of a world where globalization is making the future uncertain, and they are afraid of change. Most of us deal with these fears rationally. We buy good locks for our doors. We don’t walk alone at night. We accept the growing diversity of American society as part of our growth as a nation. We put the prospect of losing our job someday out of our minds.

For some, President Obama’s election represents all of those fears rolled up into one big bundle of trouble. He is their fears made flesh and his radical notions of change have some trying desperately to find a way to stop him. Couple that with the relative powerlessness that conservatives feel at this moment in history and the Birther Movement seems inevitable.

For the Truthers, September 11 knocked us off our comfortable moorings that we were a safe port in a sea of violence while the enormity of the attacks carried out by a handful of crazy terrorists didn’t quite balance out the books. Here you have this enormous world-historical event and it was perpetrated by people to which we have little more than feelings of utter contempt. “Towel heads” or “Ragheads” who blew themselves up, believing crazy stuff about going right to heaven for killing us could not possibly have carried off such an enormous attack.

For Democrats - 35% of whom believed in 2007 that George Bush had advance knowledge of the attacks - it was an acceptable way to express their bigotry against Arabs and hatred of Bush by rejecting the notion that he - or any other president ever elected - would have acted swiftly if foreknowledge of such a devastating attack would have presented itself. (Note: Please don’t bring up Roosevelt’s supposed foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor - nonsense that has been royally debunked by a wide variety of historians.)

To acknowledge that President Bush would have tried and prevent the attack rather than allow it to happen (or, in the extreme Truther-created world, actively plan and assist it), would be granting the object of their deranged hatred the benefit of good intentions - an impossibility if you actually believe that Bush was the second coming of Hitler.

Both Birthers and Truthers are trapped by their own fears, unable to break free and see the light of reason because they are in a comfort zone of having contact with like minded conspiracy floggers any time they wish. Alternative explanations - even when that information is compelling enough to satisfy the vast majority - are ignored because the Birther-Truther believes they are privy to the “real facts” and any challenge to their orthodoxy is a result of plots by the enemy (government, the press).

Should it surprise us that so many Republicans believe that Obama wasn’t born here or that so many Democrats believe Bush was evil enough to allow terrorists to attack us despite knowing in advance? Not when believing these theories allows one to see themselves as possessing knowledge that no one else is given the ability to understand. Interpreting the “facts” correctly - being able to connect the dots, no matter how scattered and fanciful they might be - is a way for the conspiracists to feel superior to the rest of us.

And they cloak this air of superiority in what they convince themselves is stellar research and hidden facts, with only those possessing superior insight able to discern the truth.

Richard Hofstadter:

A final characteristic of the paranoid style is related to the quality of its pedantry. One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is the contrast between its fantasied conclusions and the almost touching concern with factuality it invariably shows. It produces heroic strivings for evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed. Of course, there are highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow paranoids, as there are likely to be in any political tendency. But respectable paranoid literature not only starts from certain moral commitments that can indeed be justified but also carefully and all but obsessively accumulates “evidence.” The difference between this “evidence” and that commonly employed by others is that it seems less a means of entering into normal political controversy than a means of warding off the profane intrusion of the secular political world. The paranoid seems to have little expectation of actually convincing a hostile world, but he can accumulate evidence in order to protect his cherished convictions from it.

As I have written before, this becomes a self-reinforcing feed back loop where the denizens of these conspiracy cultures try and outdo each other in positing ever more fantastic theories about what “really happened,” leaving reason and rationality even further behind.

Birthers who either fake or are taken in by a fake birth certificate of Obama’s
want to believe so badly, that the obvious becomes obscure. Truthers who want to believe in a government plot for 9/11 (or that Bush knew of the attacks), take similar “evidence” as gospel despite scientific findings that contradict it or the bulk of testimony that debunks it. The binds that tie these pathetic people together is their simple inability to accept the facts as the rest of us know them to be. This says more about humanity than it does either conservative or liberal ideology.

Talk radio on the right has pretty much rejected the Birther’s arguments. But they are not guiltless. Their out of control, exaggerated, hyperbolic criticisms of Obama have created a climate where one can believe anything bad about the president. The atmosphere of fear that they are deliberately ginning up to get ratings and audience is contributing in no small way to the Birther phenomenon.

Perhaps some strong statements against the Birther movement by Limbaugh, Hannity, and a few of the bigger names in the business might bring that 28% number down, just as strongly worded criticisms of by the Democratic leadership against Truthers would help dispel at least some of the paranoia on the left about Bush.

But as long as Democratic congressmen give credence to theTruthers while Republican congressmen refuse to categorically come out and say that Obama was born here and is an American citizen, the Birther-Truther problem will be with us to bedevil our politics.

This is highly speculative but you’ve probably heard by now that a couple of Alaska liberal bloggers “broke” the story about Sarah Palin’s supposed impending divorce from her husband.

It sure sounded solid coming from Alaska Report News:

AlaskaReport has learned today that Todd Palin and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin are to divorce. Multiple sources in Wasilla and Anchorage (including a former Palin staffer) have confirmed the split.

A National Enquirer story exposing previous affairs on both sides led to a deterioration of their marriage and the stress from that led to Palin’s resignation as governor of Alaska last week.

The Palins were noticeably not speaking to each other for most of last Sunday’s resignation speech in Fairbanks. Sarah ditched Todd (MSNBC) right after the speech and left without him. Sarah removed her wedding ring a couple of weeks ago.

Sarah has recently purchased land in Montana and is considering moving the family there. Sarah Palin is originally from Idaho.

Very interesting. But not true, according to Stacy McCain who evidently talked directly to Palin or someone who was authorized to speak on her behalf:

“Divorce Todd? Have you seen Todd? I may be just a renegade hockey mom, but I’m not blind!”
– SARAH PALIN

Yes, that is her OFFICIAL reponse, which I got via phone at 5:35 this afternoon. Take that to the bank.

I might add that Alaska Report has a about as good a record as Gawker in breaking news - which is better than some MSM outlets but far from perfect. And Gryphen, who apparently started the whole divorce rumor, is even worse.

Nevertheless, once both those sites hit the internet with the story, the blog feeding frenzy on the left began, with a couple of MSM outlets joining in.

As someone who doesn’t consider himself a journalist but who has been around newsrooms for many years, let me just say that if this had come across my desk, I would have smelled a set up. It’s too pat, the pieces fit too nicely together (an “explanation” for why she resigned) not to raise alarms with real journalists. So I think there is at least the possibility, that either someone in the Palin camp with an ax to grind with the media - or, less likely, Palin herself - whispered a few words to a birdie they were sure would get the word to people who would publish it.

The definition of “pwn” is “1. An act of dominating an opponent, and 2. Great, ingenious; applied to methods and objects.” If this was a set up by the Palin camp, it worked magnificently. Now, most of the lefty blogosphere has egg on their face.

Several Alaska bloggers  hounded the former Alaskan governor with bogus ethics complaints while she was in office - Alaska Report being one of them. Could a little payback be at play here?

Stranger things have happened.

Michael Moynihan has a post up at Reason’s Hit and Run that identifies at least one conservative “leader” who isn’t a talk radio host, or some other pop conservative polemicist.

After excoriating Republicans for spending like Dutch social democrats (and elevating halfwits to important leadership positions), I was asked recently by a radio host to name a Republican qualified to be “leader of the party.” The pickings are slim, but there are a few exceptionally bright, market-oriented contenders out there. So I plugged, with appropriate obsequiousness, the always impressive Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan. When I sat down with Ryan last month to discuss Obama’s education policy, he quoted Hayek, talked at length about handing out Rand books to staffers, and discussed his previous life as an economic analyst. Such conversations should be de rigueur with members of the House Budget Committee, but I suspect Ryan is the only one that could name an Austrian economist.

Further proof that the Republican Party needs more Paul Ryans: Yesterday, he beat up on MSNBC host Carlos Watson and The Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel regarding the “public option” and why Congress shouldn’t pass bills it hasn’t read. Imagine such a performance from, say, Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann:

Indeed, Ryan dispatches vanden Heuval with the greatest of ease:

Prior to hearing the Wisconsin congressman at CPAC, I didn’t know much about the guy. Michael Barone notes in The Almanac of American Politics that Ryan is pretty much a mainstream Republican, although more of a foreign policy centrist. He is a reliable conservative on fiscal matters and toes a pretty conservative line on social issues.

But this fellow is a thinker - a rarity among all politicians and especially among many legislators who call themselves conservatives today.

An example from his CPAC speech:

Our greatest leaders - from Lincoln to Reagan - succeeded because they anchored conservative thinking and policies in the founding principles of our nation. They did so not because of mere “history” or “tradition” - but because they understood the need to revitalize the unchanging truths that inspired the birth of America.

Let those truths inspire us again! Let them re-ignite the sparks of hope for a new generation of Americans who love freedom!

Without enduring principles we get “change” but no direction.

Guided by the founding principles we can direct “change” toward the ends that have made America the envy of the world: Individual freedom … growing prosperity … and equal rights secured by constitutional self-government.

America’s Founders did not discover ideas no one ever heard of. Their great achievement was to build a constitution of equality and liberty upon a foundation of self-evident truths as old as the beginning of mankind and as new as tomorrow.

What are those truths?

First is that the “laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” are the only sure touchstone of right and wrong … for individuals as well as societies.

A second is that all human beings are created with equal natural rights - the rights to live … to be free … to acquire property - and other means to fulfill our God-given potential for happiness.

Third, and most important for conservatives: The great purpose of government is to secure these natural rights: protecting every person’s life, liberty, and freedom to pursue happiness is the great and only mission of a government true to our founding.

There are very few congressmen who speak so eloquently of First Principles. Now, he frames those principles in a quasi-religious context, which is acceptable to me as long as it goes to fundamental truths espoused by the Founders who, like all natural rights supporters at the time, believed man was created by God and that these rights were simply self-evident manifestations of God’s desires.

His CPAC speech was necessarily more political than philosphical. But read this speech he gave at a Hudson Institute symposium on “Making Conservatism Credible Again:”

“Conservatism” at its best, defends the standards and qualities which define “people of character.” The original source for these standards is the Western tradition of civilization, rooted in reason and faith, stretching back thousands of years. The tradition as a whole affirms the high dignity, rights, and obligations of the individual human person. One of the glories of Western civilization was to break out of the mythological past which saw only groups and classes, ranked and organized by collectivist governments. Before the Western tradition began in ancient Israel and classical Greece, the individual person as a subject of rights was simply unknown.

Nowhere was the Western tradition epitomized more memorably than in our Declaration of Independence. By “the laws of nature and of nature’s God,” all human beings are created equal, not in height, or skills, or knowledge, or color, or other nonessentials, but equal in certain inalienable rights – to live, to be free, and to fulfill their best individual potential, including the right to the “material” such as property needed to do this. Each individual is unique and possesses rights and dignity. There are no group or collective rights in the Declaration. Nor does basic human equality imply “equal result.” It means “equal opportunity”: every person has a right not to be prevented from pursuing happiness, from developing his or her potential. The results should differ from one to another because “justice” or “fairness” is giving each individual what each has earned or merited. That’s what fairness is.

The great conservative purpose of government is to secure these natural rights under popular consent. Protecting every person’s life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness should be the great and only mission of legitimate government.

After a stirring defense of the Adam Smith “invisible hand,” Ryan make a thoughtful attempt to unite libertarian and social conservatives by pointing to common ground:

A “libertarian” who wants limited government should embrace the means to his freedom: thriving mediating institutions that create the moral preconditions for economic markets and choice. A “social issues” conservative with a zeal for righteousness should insist on a free market economy to supply the material needs for families, schools, and churches that inspire moral and spiritual life. In a nutshell, the notion of separating the social from the economic issues is a false choice. They stem from the same root.

Take that Huckabee and all of you “crunchy cons.”

I tried to think of some other elected conservative who is making this kind of honest attempt to bring the factions back together and came up empty. Nor can I think of too many conservative legislators who quote Hayek, Mises, and Adam Smith, while speaking the language of social conservatives and espousing a decidedly libertarian economic viewpoint.

But he voted for TARP I which makes him poison to many in the base of the Republican party. I was disappointed so many conservatives voted for the execrable legislation except we have to understand the context. Everyone was being told that if this money didn’t get to the banks right away, there would be a financial meltdown that could lead to a panic which would plunge us into a worldwide, catastrophic depression. They were being told this by a president and Treasury secretary of their own party. They had no clue that the money would be used for everything but buying up those bad assets that were weighing down the balance sheets of the big banks. In my book, they were acting as responsible lawmakers.

For that reason, I am inclined to cut Ryan and others some slack for their vote on TARP I. And his subsequent statements and actions have shown Ryan to be an innovative and creative legislator. His alternative budget would have cut taxes to stimulate the economy the right way and done it in a revenue neutral manner. Just think where we’d be today if his plan had been followed.

I’m not the first to proclaim Ryan a future conservative leader. But I think he needs more exposure than what he’s been getting from conservatives on the internet as well as the pop-conservatives on talk radio. Elevating his stature would seem to be a smart thing to do given the man’s base intelligence and good ideas on a variety of public concerns. His criticisms of Obama have been reasonable, fact based, and without the hyperbole associated with more rabid conservatives in Congress. That too, is a plus in my book.

At age 39, he will be on the national stage for a long time to come. He may or may not run for higher office some day. But he will be an important voice for conservatives regardless of where his political career takes him.