Right Wing Nut House

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, I welcome Dan Riehl of Riehl World View, Vodkapundit Stephen Green, American Thinker’s Larrey Anderson, and Scott Elliott, The Blogging Caesar. We’ll look at the hot political stories making news today.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.

Alright - everybody has made their points…

SEVERAL DOZEN FREAKING TIMES!

How many ways can you call the right intolerant and bigoted? Or refer to the left as Islamofascist sympathizers? Or moan about the degeneration of religious liberty in America? Or warn about creeping Sharia law?

Build it. Don’t build it. Move it. Bah! Everyone has an opinion. That opinion has been expressed ad infinitum. No nuance has been neglected. No angle uncovered. No stupid, silly insult or smear has been left under the mossy rocks from which they sprang.

And yes - it’s time for a few quotes from the “Dead Parrot Sketch” (with apologies for altering the text):

Mr. Praline: “VOOM”?!? Mate, this mosque argument wouldn’t “voom” if you put four million volts through it! It’s bleedin’ demised!

Owner: No no! It’s pining!

Mr. Praline: it’s not pinin’! It’s passed on! This mosque argument is no more! It has ceased to be! It’s expired and gone to meet its maker! It’s a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed it to every blog, every newspaper, every TV broadcast, every magazine, every column by pundits both serious and unserious, it would be pushing up the daisies! It’s metabolic processes are now ‘istory! It’s off the twig! It’s kicked the bucket, it’s shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-MOSQUE ARGUMENT!!

This has not been “Recovery Summer.” It has been “The Summer of the Silly Mosque Imbroglio.” We have all weighed in on the subject several times. The debate was interesting for about 72 hours. But after that - after every conceivable argument both for and against had been made - shouldn’t we have dropped the subject and come back to reality?

That reality is certainly interesting enough without the fake wailing on both sides about loss of the “tradition” of American “tolerance” for other religions, or the threat to the “sanctified” site of Ground Zero (within eyeshot of stripper clubs).

As for the latter, the extraordinary tone deafness of the mosque builders has been exposed and the public has rendered its verdict. For the former, surely people are joking when talking about tolerance for other religions in America, right?

This would come as news to the millions of Catholics, Jews, Mormons and now Muslims who have been murdered, burned, violently attacked, and generally discriminated against in the most vicious, nauseatingly open manner throughout much of American history. I would say to my friends on the left that there is a far more colorful history of religious bigotry leading to violence in America than there is of any kind of “tolerance” for faiths other than the dominant Christian sects.

Do you think that this is something that only happened in the dim, forgettable past? In his book Making of the President 1960 - just 50 years ago - Theodore H. White relates a story about some good liberals who had gathered in an upper west side apartment in New York to discuss who they would be supporting for president. Stevenson supporters all in 1952 and 1956, these good, conscientious liberals could see that their hero was just not going to make it to the White House and they were discussing the pros and cons of backing John Kennedy.

There was a serious discussion among these Enlightened Ones about whether a Kennedy presidency would mean that the Vatican would be running the country if JFK were elected - whether a US Catholic president would have “divided loyalties.” To even ask the question is bigoted and intolerant, demonstrating a towering ignorance of the Catholicism in America (A little further removed, try reading something about the campaigns of 1924 and 1928 featuring Catholic Al Smith).

Massacres of Mormons, murdering Jews, burning witches - this pious nonsense about mosque opponents going against American “traditions” of religious tolerance is absurd. Equally nutty is the idea that the mosque represents the advance of sharia law in America, or of giving in to extremists. One conservative group has called for not only canceling this mosque project, but actually getting the government to pass a law forbidding the construction of any mosque, anywhere in the US.

One assumes they would be “tolerant” enough to allow existing mosques to remain standing.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate is still jacked, business is as close to being at a standstill as possible without us falling back into recession, millions of gallons of oil is still floating around in the Gulf, Americans are livid at both parties, Iran continues to defy the world and toddle toward having the capability to build a bomb, Hezballah is threatening war with Israel, there are unprecedented, catastrophic floods in Pakistan, the heat is killing dozens in big cities, Afghanistan continues to bleed…

And - OMIGOD - the Mooslims are trying to build a mosque while the fascist right opposes the brave, tolerant, saintly left in their efforts to stand up for religious liberty, or something.

I’m not asking for people to get along. I’m demanding we get serious about what’s really happening in this country. We have a president who has taken 5 vacations this summer, leading a party that is trying to desperately hide its failures, who are opposed by another party that hasn’t had an original idea about the economy since Ronald Reagan was president. Kafka wouldn’t dare touch this fairy tale. Picasso might come up with something suitably ugly and misshapen to reflect the tragedy of this situation, but even he would be at a loss in trying to capture the utter helplessness most Americans feel right now as they watch this idiotic exercise in futility grind on and on.

As long as this story is flogged on the internet, the mainstream media will feel compelled to cover it, comment on it, and continue to whip up a frenzy about it - at the expense of highlighting the actual news of this summer of our discontent. Perhaps because of the complete collapse of the president’s policies, and the dearth of solutions offered by Republicans, partisans from both parties would prefer this idiocy to continue.

But at some point, we have to come back to earth and deal with a genuine economic crisis that is causing people to lose faith in government, faith in themselves, and faith in America.

And the building of a mosque is more important than this?

When Barack Obama became president, he promised to try and change the relationship dynamic between Islam and the west. His goal was to build bridges, lessen hostility, create trust, and generally lower the decibel level of conversation between the two cultures.

There can be little argument regarding the president’s goals. The great struggle in which we are engaged against Islamism can only be won if we bring the hundreds of millions of peaceful Muslims who only want to be left alone to practice their faith and live their lives by their own lights to our side. Muslim distrust of America - a distrust that predated by many years the administration of George Bush - is an impediment to making progress against those who think no more of beheading a Christian as they would stepping on an ant on an anthill.

So let us grant the president his good intentions. That doesn’t excuse his shocking myopia, his crippling naivete, or his ludicrous, almost childish trust in the intentions of characters like Ahmadinejad, Abbas, or even his old friend, the Arafat apologist Rashid Khalidi. At some level, the president either believes in the infallibility of his own judgment or in the power of his sincerity overcoming the fanaticism of our enemies.

It doesn’t really matter because his approach has been proved wrong by events. The Iranians are still building the bomb while laughing in the president’s face; Abbas is playing him for a fool, using the president to pressure the Israelis into concessions - only to renege and get the US to go back and pressure the Israelis some more; and if anything, all the president’s efforts to show tolerance and forbearance toward Muslims hasn’t budged the needle of hostility directed against the United States and our policies, although Obama himself is more popular personally among Muslims than his country.

Where the president’s outreach policy has met with success is here at home. One in five Americans now believe he is a Muslim, compared to about 12% two years ago. This is a fantastic achievement to nearly double the number of Americans who aren’t sure if the idiotic stories they hear about Obama being a closet Muslim are true or not. And to think Obama wasn’t even trying. Just imagine what he could do if he really put his mind to it.

In truth, there are two forces at work that have conspired to advance this fantastical notion that Obama is a Muslim. The first has to do with the tight negative feedback loop that passes for the dissemination of information among many conservatives.

Call it ‘epistemic closure’ or an echo chamber, the result is that when you get all your information filtered through the same sources - sources that are constrained from questioning the efficacy of the dominant narrative being pushed due to fear of being cast out of the circle - an alternate reality is created where Obama’s Muslim religion, his disloyalty to the United States, even the notion that he is a communist lovechild are accepted as fact or seen as being possible.

These ridiculous facts are fed indirectly by the demonization of the president via mainstream talk radio and the conservative press. “If he’s capable of ‘X’, then it is certainly possible he can be ‘y’” is what passes for reason and logic among the faithful. If Obama is deliberately trying to destroy the economy in order to enslave Americans and make them wholly dependent on the federal government for survival, as Rush Limbaugh has suggested, why is it impossible that he’s a Koran loving Muslim to boot?

The second force at work is related to the first but lies in the perception - even among independents - that the president does not share their values. This is wholly the president’s fault as his fine, moderate rhetoric has given way to radicalism in fomenting an agenda that, by his own admission, seeks to alter the American experiment. In short, there is a disconnect between Obama’s personae as a “moderate” and his actions as a far left liberal.

Despite the belief by the president and his left wing allies that the American people are stupid louts who need to be led to water by the snout, the people’s unease with the president has little to do with what religion he follows, or the color of his skin, and more to do with the idea that Obama’s basic beliefs are at odds with a majority of his fellow citizen’s.

He says he believes in self-reliance, but his actions belie that notion. He says he believes in the grand tradition of American liberty, and yet supports measures that reduce it. He says he believes that America is an exceptional country while letting the world know that we are no different than any other nation. Do we detect a pattern here? There is a titanic disconnect between the president’s rhetoric and his actions. This not only breeds a basic mistrust that is showing up in opinion polls, but also feeds the unreasonable paranoia of those with less charitable attitudes toward Obama.

When nearly a third of conservatives buy into this “Obama is a Moooslim” narrative, my fellow righties should stop wondering why I refer to these specimens as “knuckledraggers” and “loons.” About the same percentage also think that Obama has issues with being constitutionally eligible for office - another jaw dropping notion that proves the existence of a mindless echo chamber on the right that subsumes objective reality in favor of an over-the-rainbow worldview. Fear and loathing are powerful emotions, and as the Obama administration stumbles and bumbles its way forward, the liklihood is that at least among the rabid conservative base (as well as other wayward intellects who are incapable of thinking for themselves), horns and a tail will continue to grow on the president and the perception that he is alien in some way will continue to resonate.

I suppose it was inevitable that the litmus test conservatives would begin purging those who don’t measure up to their very narrow, very limiting agenda. But it’s still something of a surprise to see World Net Daily - the rabid right wing online publication that has become famous for promoting the birther issue - canceling an appearance by the Queen of the Conservative Punditocracy Ann Coulter for what WND refers to as a “homoconflict.”

Conservative superstar Ann Coulter today was dropped as a keynote speaker for WND’s “Taking America Back National Conference” next month because of her plan to address an event titled “HOMOCON” sponsored by the homosexual Republican group GOProud that promotes same-sex marriage and military service for open homosexuals.

Joseph Farah, editor and chief executive officer of WND, said the decision was a gut-wrenching one for his team because of their fondness for Coulter as both a person and writer-speaker.

“Ultimately, as a matter of principle, it would not make sense for us to have Ann speak to a conference about ‘taking America back’ when she clearly does not recognize that the ideals to be espoused there simply do not include the radical and very ‘unconservative’ agenda represented by GOProud,” said Farah. “The drift of the conservative movement to a brand of materialistic libertarianism is one of the main reasons we planned this conference from the beginning.”

Can’t have any of that “materialistic libertarianism” - perhaps better described as “tolerance for other people and other points of view” - gumming up the works of the conservative media juggernaut. I happened to stop by the GOProud booth at CPAC a couple of years ago and discovered that these guys are - with the exceptions mentioned above by Farah - about as mainstream conservative as you can get.

From their website:

GOProud represents gay conservatives and their allies. GOProud is committed to a traditional conservative agenda that emphasizes limited government, individual liberty, free markets and a confident foreign policy. GOProud promotes our traditional conservative agenda by influencing politics and policy at the federal level.

In fact, if Farah knew anything of the history of conservatism, he would recognize that GOProud’s “traditional conservative agenda” used to define conservatism. It is only recently that bigots like Farah have added gay marriage and - omigod - “sodomy as an alternative lifestyle” to the ever growing number of no-nos the culturecons have foisted on the conservative movement.

Coulter seems a little bemused by the insult. She’s just interested in the cash:

Farah then asked: “Do you not understand you are legitimizing a group that is fighting for same-sex marriage and open homosexuality in the military – not to mention the idea that sodomy is just an alternate lifestyle?”

Coulter responded: “That’s silly, I speak to a lot of groups and do not endorse them. I speak at Harvard and I certainly don’t endorse their views. I’ve spoken to Democratic groups and liberal Republican groups that loooove abortion. The main thing I do is speak on college campuses, which is about the equivalent of speaking at an al-Qaida conference. I’m sure I agree with GOProud more than I do with at least half of my college audiences. But in any event, giving a speech is not an endorsement of every position held by the people I’m speaking to. I was going to speak for you guys, I think you’re nuts on the birther thing (though I like you otherwise!).”

Coulter’s own intolerance has been well documented. But at least she has a notion of what conservatism is all about.

I have stopped referring to people like Farah as conservatives for the simple reason their views are not reflective of any conservative philosophy of which I am familiar. Radicalism is the antithesis of conservatism as anyone who has ever read Edmund Burke’s wrenching critique of the French Revolution can attest. Their idea of “limited government” is radically limited. Their notion of “free markets” is an economic Darwinian nightmare. And their agitation to bomb just about anyone who threatens US interests reveals an imprudence that is most unconservative.

What has driven me and other conservatives to try and marginalize people like Farah is their radicalism may not be the mainstream of conservatism, but it influences the Republican party and the conservative movement much to their detriment. They are not “fringe” actors by any stretch of the imagination, but neither are they close to a majority. They are loud, and they vote, and that makes them important to politicians.

Rejecting those who agree with your agenda 90% of the time is stupid politics. Hence, despite GOProud’s embrace of traditional conservative issues, their sin of supporting gay marriage and the elimination of “Don’t ask don’t tell” in the military trumps their support for conservative economic and foreign policy issues.

Indeed, the Executive Director of GOProud Jimmy LaSalvia gave a very reasonable, conservative answer to why they support gay marriage:

As long as the government is in the marriage business it should treat gay couples as equal to their straight counter-parts. Accordingly, we are pleased with the outcome of the Prop 8 case.

A no brainer, really - which describes Mr. Farah to a “T.”

Radical right wingers like Farah are in the business of reducing the size of the Republican party until it is a distillation of pure right wing wackery. These folks are beyond “epistemic closure” and are in a full blown epistemological meltdown. The don’t create a reality as much as it oozes up from the muck and detritus of their broken and wildly inconsistent worldview - the result of unreasoning hatred for those who are in any way “different” and an illogical ideology that cannot brook any opposition lest it collapse in a disordered heap.

And Ann Coulter isn’t conservative enough for these guys? Something wrong with that picture.

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, I welcome Ed Morrissey, Monica Showalter, and Jazz Shaw for a discussion of the political ramifications of the mosque controversy for the president and for both parties.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.

Last weekend when President Obama played good cop/bad cop in trying to articulate his position on the Ground Zero mosque, one was left with the distinct impression that the president didn’t know quite where he stood on the issue.

After a fine, brave defense of Muslims to build there, the president “clarified” his position a few hours later by basically saying “no they don’t.” Obama realized too late he had touched the newest third rail in American politics and gotten electrocuted for his troubles.

What the president apparently didn’t realize is that any defense of the mosque was tantamount to supporting the idea of it being built at Ground Zero. Later, as he tried to cleave his statement on constitutional rights by attempting to separate the abstract notion of rights from the real world idea that Muslims were attempting to construct an icon to their religion at the site of the worst terrorist attack in American history - carried out by Muslims - Obama came off wishy washy. The perception by both mosque proponents and opponents was that he took sides in the controversy and then tried to weasel out of his position.

But Obama and the Democrats aren’t the only ones who have discovered that touching the Islam issue can be hazardous to one’s political health. While 70% of Americans oppose building the mosque at Ground Zero, most of those Americans agree with the president that Muslims have the same rights as any other religion to practice their faith whenever and wherever they see fit. The GOP tried gamely to separate their opposition to the mosque from the crazies in their base who are rightly perceived as bigots in their view of Muslims - all Muslims - as “the enemy” in the War on Terror. Protestations to the contrary, the notion that “the only good Muslim, is a dead Muslim” is not unknown among the knuckledraggers.

In truth, much of the GOP base is not in favor of killing all Muslims. They just want to deny them equal standing in American society with Christianity. There are probably less than 3 million Muslims in America and yet, every accommodation by schools, cities, towns, and municipalities to Muslim traditions and religious practices brings forth the most wildly hysterical accusations of the “dhimmification” of America. A proposed foot bath at the University of Michigan brought an over the top response from noted self promoting, anti-Muslim blogger Debbie Schlussel. The idea of making the Eid a school holiday in New York brought this blogger to a state of near apoplexy.

The idea that so few Muslims could force the rest of us to accept Sharia law or forcibly convert us is, of course, idiotic. So there have also been proposals to limit or eliminate immigration from Muslims countries, which gives some in the base a twofer; anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim bigotry to boot.

This is part of the baggage being carried by Republican critics of the mosque who must avoid any appearance of intolerance lest they be tied to the rabid bigotry of the base. Yes, there is rabid bigotry and it is more widespread than most on the right would care to admit. All one need do is visit the comment section of any medium sized or large blog and scan responses to posts about the mosque. Islam is a “cult,” or “evil.” To many, there is no such thing as a “moderate” Muslim. If they are not outwardly supportive of the terrorists, they harbor a secret desire to enslave us. There is no accommodation with Islam, only conflict.

If you know a little history about Catholics in America, you will recognize that they were saying much the same thing 160 years ago with the first great influx of Irish immigrants. The myth that America is tolerant of other religions is belied by the historical treatment of Catholics and Jews in this country. While lip service is paid to constitutional protections, as late as 50 years ago, there were serious conversations carried out by serious people about whether electing a Catholic president would doom us to rule from Rome.

With one side getting scorched for agreeing with Muslims about building a mosque at Ground Zero, and the other being skewered for perceived intolerance, one can begin to see why most smart politicians kept their mouths shut about the mosque. There was real danger of making a misstep and falling off a cliff into controversy - something devoutly to be avoided 70 days before the election.

One can argue that opposing the mosque being built at Ground Zero is hardly tantamount to expressing bigotry toward Muslims, but the perception can successfully be shaped by the opposition that lumps opponents in with the crazies. If you’re in a close race with many persuadable voters, the last thing you want is to be tarred as a bigot. Similarly, you can parse your words and speak in glowing abstracts about the constitution and freedom of religion while having your words twisted into support for Islam’s “triumph” over the infidel. There really isn’t any upside to taking a public position on whether to build the mosque.

This won’t be the last controversy about Muslims in America, which sets up an interesting dynamic. As these political fights become more and more toxic, it is likely that most politicians will become more reluctant to take a stand. When coming down on one side or the other loses you votes, you tend to split the difference.

Better to be called wishy washy than a Muslim lover or a bigot.

What a remarkable turn of events we’ve seen over the last 72 hours. The president of the United States, in what I considered at the time an act of true political courage, bucked 70% of his countrymen who oppose the construction of a mosque and Islamic center overlooking Ground Zero by making a strong statement in support of the constitutional rights of the Muslims who want to build it.

But let me be clear: as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are. The writ of our Founders must endure.

Less than 24 hours later, the firestorm of criticism had become so intense that the president felt it necessary to issue a “clarification.”

So much for political courage:

“I was not commenting, and I will not comment, on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there,” Mr. Obama said. “I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about.”

Too late, Mr. President. Your friends on the left eagerly took up your words and pinned your tail to the Islamic donkey by using your stirring speech about the rights of all Americans to worship as they please as ammunition in their war with the mosque’s detractors.

One need only glance at the slew of headlines in the immediate aftermath of the president’s Ramadan remarks to see what a monumental political miscalculation the president and his advisors made. From the New York Times (”Obama Strongly Backs Islam Center Near 9/11 Site) to the Associated Press (”Obama Comes Out in Favor of Allowing Mosque Near Ground Zero”) to the Los Angeles Times (”Obama supports plan for mosque near ground zero”), Obama allies eagerly followed what appeared to be the president’s lead in supporting Imam Rauf, the Cordoba Initiative, and the Muslim moneybags who are financing this $100 million project.

It seems that what I thought was political courage, was actually political tone deafness. The president’s furious backtracking on the issue pulled the rug from underneath his left wing supporters, while once again demonstrating an inconstancy that is driving everyone batty. You would think that 20 months into his tenure in the Big Chair that President Obama would have understood that every syllable he utters is scrutinized, evaluated, re-analyzed and then filtered through different prisms of understanding so that if given the opportunity, people hear what they want to hear from him. The rhetoric of the campaign trail must give way to the rhetoric of governance where what the president declares must be unmistakably clear and open to as little interpretation as possible.

Apparently, this was not the case when President Obama made his remarks about the mosque at Ground Zero. However he meant what he said, it was interpreted by both camps as him taking sides on the issue. As both a matter of law and tradition, the president chose correctly. But while doing so, he virtually ignored the sensibilities of those who either have serious reservations about the stated intent of the builders of the mosque, or simply feel that it is inappropriate for a symbol of the religion that the terrorists - and their Islamist supporters around the world - fanatically believed they were fighting for overlook the site of their monstrous act of war.

There is more to this issue than black and white constitutional considerations. If there weren’t, it would be no problem I suppose, for a group made up of al-Qaeda sympathizing Muslims to attempt to build a mosque where the Cordoba group is planning construction. After all, if freedom of religion means anything, it’s that the political outlook of adherents should be ignored, concentrating instead on the spiritual or theological. The president artfully defended the concept - until he didn’t.

If anything, the president has muddied the waters even further.

I don’t agree with it. I think it myopic in that it ignores Imam Rauf’s questionable associations and even more questionable statements. And the idea that the mosque is being built to foster dialogue and understanding is only believed by liberals and little children.

But it took the courage of one’s convictions to take such a hugely unpopular stance, putting the constitutional argument fairly well while reminding us the cost of following that document sometimes.

But let me be clear: as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are. The writ of our Founders must endure.

We must never forget those who we lost so tragically on 9/11, and we must always honor those who have led our response to that attack – from the firefighters who charged up smoke-filled staircases, to our troops who are serving in Afghanistan today. And let us always remember who we are fighting against, and what we are fighting for. Our enemies respect no freedom of religion. Al Qaeda’s cause is not Islam – it is a gross distortion of Islam. These are not religious leaders – these are terrorists who murder innocent men, women and children. In fact, al Qaeda has killed more Muslims than people of any other religion – and that list of victims includes innocent Muslims who were killed on 9/11.

“The writ of the Founders must endure” is an excellent statement. I only wish the president could see his way clear to honoring that statement in other areas of the constitution.

In the abstract, I don’t think al-Qaeda supporting Muslims would receive quite the support from the left if they were the ones trying to build a mosque overlooking Ground Zero. But the more I read about this fellow Rauf makes me ask my liberal friends if they know who they are getting in bed with when they so viciously attack those who are opposed to building the mosque. I don’t trust people who say one thing in one language, and another thing in another language as Imam Rauf has done repeatedly. He has also been silent in the face of extraordinary statements by his colleagues in Malaysia about suicide bombings, Hamas, and hatred of the US. He has blamed the US for 9/11, defended Palestinian terrorism, refused to disavow Hamas’s goal of eliminating the state of Israel, and attended at least one conference with known terrorist sympathizers.

This guy is about as moderate a Muslim as Rush Limbaugh is a moderate conservative.

Regardless, I like our presidents to stand up for what they believe even when it isn’t popular. That’s why I despised Clinton so and cut George W a little slack. It is such a rare commodity these days in America - this kind of Profile in Courage - that it should be acknowledged and praised when it shows up.

Obama will be hammered for it - also part of American politics. Some of it will be sincere, some of the criticism will be calculated to draw political blood. Any way you look at it, Obama surely knew what to expect which makes his statement all the more praiseworthy.

Well, perhaps not all 43 of this list of conservative bloggers that John Hawkins polled to get “The Top 25 Worst Americans.” After all, we don’t know who voted Barack Obama on to that list over, say, Jeffrey Dahmer. The serial killing cannibal was not on the list of 25 worst Americans which either means he didn’t get enough votes or most conservative bloggers enjoy “liva and faaaaahva beans with a nice keyanti.”

Out of all the gangsters, serial killers, mass murderers, incompetent & crooked politicians, spies, traitors, and ultra left-wing kooks in all of American history — have you ever wondered who the worst of the worst was? Well, we here at RWN wondered about that, too, and that’s why we decided to email more than a hundred bloggers to get their opinions. Representatives from the following 43 blogs responded…

101 Dead Armadillos, Argghhhh!, Basil’s Blog, Cold Fury, Conservative Compendium, The Dana Show, DANEgerus Weblog, Dodgeblogium, Cara Ellison, Exurban League, Fausta’s Blog, Freeman Hunt, GraniteGrok, House of Eratosthenes, Infidels Are Cool, IMAO, Jordan Woodward, Moe Lane, Mean Ol’ Meany, The Liberal Heretics, Midnight Blue, Pirate’s Cove, Nice Deb, Pundit Boy, Professor Bainbridge, Pursuing Holiness.com, Liz Mair, Moonbattery, mountaineer musings, No Oil For Pacifists, No Runny Eggs, Right View from the Left Coast, Russ. Just Russ, Say Anything, Don Singleton, The TrogloPundit, The Underground Conservative, This Ain’t Hell, The Virtuous Republic, Vox Popoli, WILLisms, Wintery knight, YidwithLid

And what did all that 10 Watt brainpower come up with? (Number of votes in parenth)

23) Saul Alinsky (7)
23) Bill Clinton (7)
23) Hillary Clinton (7)
19) Michael Moore (7)
19) George Soros (8)
19) Alger Hiss (8)
19) Al Sharpton (8)
13) Al Gore (9)
13) Noam Chomsky (9)
13) Richard Nixon (9)
13) Jane Fonda (9)
13) Harry Reid (9)
13) Nancy Pelosi (9)
11) John Wilkes Booth (10)
11) Margaret Sanger (10)
9) Aldrich Ames (11)
9) Timothy McVeigh (11)
7) Ted Kennedy (14)
7) Lyndon Johnson (14)
5) Benedict Arnold (17)
5) Woodrow Wilson (17)
4) The Rosenbergs (19)
3) Franklin Delano Roosevelt (21)
2) Barack Obama (23)
1) Jimmy Carter (25)

Absolutely astonishing. One mass murderer (McVeigh) and one assassin (Booth) made the list. No gangsters. No old west gunmen. Both Woodrow Wilson and FDR in the top 5 worst? If you’re going to penalize presidents so severely for having wrongheaded ideas about economic policy, why not include George Bush? Or the modern Republican party who never met a deficit they didn’t embrace as long is it was caused by tax cuts.

Frankly, this is embarrassing. Putting the Clintons, Pelosi, Reid, Gore, Sharpton, and other contemporary Democrats ahead of someone like Nathan Bedford Forest who was at least partly responsible for creating the KKK after the Civil War and spent his spare nights riding around the countryside whipping, lynching, and burning at the stake innocent African Americans demonstrates an extraordinary ignorance of American history.

No Aaron Burr? His descendant, Gore Vidal, might have made honorable mention on the list, but Burr was a genuine bad guy. He not only murdered Alexander Hamilton in a duel, Burr hatched a plot to take over large swaths of land in the west, set himself up as king, and secede from the US.

I guess making idiotic, dishonest documentaries about America (Michael Moore) is a bigger crime than killing one of the Founders and anointing oneself a monarch.

Here’s my list of “The Top 5 Worst Americans Missed by Idiotic Conservative Bloggers:

5. Ted Bundy. Might have killed more than 50 women.

4. William Randolph Hearst - the inventor of modern liberal journalism who singlehandedly whipped up war fever against Spain in his 30 newspapers while dominating the media - to the detriment of democracy - like no one before or since.

3. John C. Calhoun - his constant threats to take South Carolina out of the Union if the institution of slavery was touched were bad enough. But his embrace of the doctrine of nullification and his being an inspiration to the secessionists was a direct cause of the Civil War.

2. William Walker - one of the most unlovely Americans who ever lived. His attempts on behalf of the south to bring parts of Mexico and central America into an “Empire of Slavery” - setting up colonies that would then be annexed by the US - was not only a cockamamie scheme but thousands died because of it.

1. Bloody Bill Anderson - speaking of thousands being killed, how about the terrorist Bill Anderson? Not only did he ride through Missouri and Kanas during the Civil War, killing wantonly and with great glee, (200 massacred in Lawrence Kanas in 1863) some of his men ended up carrying on the “fight” for years afterward, including the James brothers and the Younger boys.

James Joyner:

As Steve Bainbridge and Jim Geraghty have already noted, this is just bizarre. Bainbridge rightly observes that the list “reflects the partisan passions of the moment, not anything resembling a serious verdict of history.” Instead, he prefers traitors, terrorists, and racists as his Worst Americans. Geraghty says these are merely “the top figures who bug conservative bloggers” and thinks more mobsters and serial killers should have made the list.

I sometimes participate in John’s polls but this one is actually too much work. It’s pretty easy to come up with a list of Greatest Americans – Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Edison, etc. But Worst Figures? That’s pretty hard.

To me, such a list should be reserved for people who had a large impact and who intentionally did evil, not simply those who acted according to the widespread beliefs of the day that are now viewed as repugnant.

James goes a little off the rails himself when he tries to question the inclusion of Benedict Arnold on the list:

Not only did his plot fail but, as a technical matter, he was in fact a British subject.

Arnold not only “intentionally did evil” as James points out should be part of the criteria for making such a list, but he also did it almost exclusively for money and position. James’ “technicality” regarding Arnold’s citizenship doesn’t wash. He was easily as much an American citizen as British subject.

Nice try James. A scholar’s argument to be sure.

This is one poll John Hawkins should have quietly filed in the trash can.

I can’t recommend this Jeff Goldberg article in The Atlantic highly enough. After several years of interviews with leaders and policy makers from Israel, Iran, America, and other Arab countries, as well as talks with military experts, Goldberg comes to this reluctant conclusion:

I have asked a simple question: what is the percentage chance that Israel will attack the Iranian nuclear program in the near future? Not everyone would answer this question, but a consensus emerged that there is a better than 50 percent chance that Israel will launch a strike by next July. (Of course, it is in the Israeli interest to let it be known that the country is considering military action, if for no other reason than to concentrate the attention of the Obama administration. But I tested the consensus by speaking to multiple sources both in and out of government, and of different political parties. Citing the extraordinary sensitivity of the subject, most spoke only reluctantly, and on condition of anonymity. They were not part of some public-relations campaign.) The reasoning offered by Israeli decision makers was uncomplicated: Iran is, at most, one to three years away from having a breakout nuclear capability (often understood to be the capacity to assemble more than one missile-ready nuclear device within about three months of deciding to do so). The Iranian regime, by its own statements and actions, has made itself Israel’s most zealous foe; and the most crucial component of Israeli national-security doctrine, a tenet that dates back to the 1960s, when Israel developed its own nuclear capability as a response to the Jewish experience during the Holocaust, is that no regional adversary should be allowed to achieve nuclear parity with the reborn and still-besieged Jewish state.

Goldberg brilliantly lays out most of the dire consequences of such a strike:

When the Israelis begin to bomb the uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz, the formerly secret enrichment site at Qom, the nuclear-research center at Esfahan, and possibly even the Bushehr reactor, along with the other main sites of the Iranian nuclear program, a short while after they depart en masse from their bases across Israel-regardless of whether they succeed in destroying Iran’s centrifuges and warhead and missile plants, or whether they fail miserably to even make a dent in Iran’s nuclear program-they stand a good chance of changing the Middle East forever; of sparking lethal reprisals, and even a full-blown regional war that could lead to the deaths of thousands of Israelis and Iranians, and possibly Arabs and Americans as well; of creating a crisis for Barack Obama that will dwarf Afghanistan in significance and complexity; of rupturing relations between Jerusalem and Washington, which is Israel’s only meaningful ally; of inadvertently solidifying the somewhat tenuous rule of the mullahs in Tehran; of causing the price of oil to spike to cataclysmic highs, launching the world economy into a period of turbulence not experienced since the autumn of 2008, or possibly since the oil shock of 1973; of placing communities across the Jewish diaspora in mortal danger, by making them targets of Iranian-sponsored terror attacks, as they have been in the past, in a limited though already lethal way; and of accelerating Israel’s conversion from a once-admired refuge for a persecuted people into a leper among nations.

Goldberg notes that with success, the Israelis will buy time (probably putting the Iranian program back 3-5 years), earn the secret thanks of most of the moderate Arab regimes in the Middle East, and will have stopped potential proliferation to terrorist groups in its tracks.

Is that worth initiating a strike that could lead to World War III?

What will the Russians do if the Israeli’s hit Bushehr? It is likely they will kill Russian technicians in such a strike since they are building the facility under contract with Tehran. Will Vladmir Putin take the death of Russian scientists and technicians lying down? What if he retaliates against Israel? What would be the American response to that?

August, 1914?

Unleashing Hezb’allah against the western world, stirring up trouble in Iraq by ordering the Shia militias into the streets, not to mention a missile campaign against Israel that could kill thousands (at which point Israel may decide that to save its people, it must expand its own bombing campaign, escalating the conflict to the next level) - this alone could ratchet up tensions causing the world to start choosing up sides.

And no America with the will or the self-confidence to step in and assist the world in standing down.

Obama’s foreign policy is not anti-American, unpatriotic, or designed to favor Muslims. It’s just weak. The president has made the conscious decision that the US is too powerful and needs to defer to supra-national organizations like the UN, or regional line ups like NATO or the Arab League when conflict is threatened. “First among equals” is not rhetoric to Obama. He means it. He has been thoroughly indoctrinated with the idea that most of the world’s troubles have been caused by a too-powerful United States and hence, only deliberately eschewing the promotion of American interests can redress this sin.

This will be the first world crisis since the end of World War II where American power and prestige will not be used to intervene in order to prevent catastrophe. Obama is betting the farm that his worldview will be more conducive to defusing a crisis than the more realpolitik and pragmatic point of view that has dominated American foreign policy for 65 years.

We are shortly going to find out whether good intentions really matter in international affairs.

This blog post originally appeared on The American Thinker.
UPDATE

I’ve received  a few emails from some of my more liberal friends informing me that I misunderstand Obama’s world view and that the president’s foreign policy is as good for US interests as any other presidents

I would say that Steve Hynd captures the president’s foreign policy views accurately:

Way back in 2005, a young Adam Weinstein wrote a paper on Just War Theory that’s well worth a read, but from which two key phrases jump out at me - “the bleak fact that justice is what states make of it.” and “expanding the ‘we’”. I’d characterise those two phrases as encapsulating what I call the “Crooked Cop” problem: America needs to become the world’s “good” cop instead of a “bad” (i.e. short-termist, self-interested) cop.

Only the bad guys object to an honest, impartial and hard-working policeman for whom “protect and serve” is more than just a slogan. A good cop is an asset to his community and puts everyone else’s interests before his own, which ends up serving his own interests - respect, affection, and a mostly peaceable community to live in. But no-one likes a cop who has his own interests at heart first and foremost - who’s usually looking for a “take”, is never there when you need him and applies the law only when it suits him while looking the other way when his pals commit crimes. A bad cop should get out of the law enforcement business because he only makes his neighborhood worse.

What pisses me off about the hawks of both left and right is that their policy prescriptions too often begin as their own short-termist conception of American national interest informed by hearty helpings of militarism and American exceptionalism which are then overlain with a thin veneer of pablum about humanitarian considerations, freedom, democracy and “we’re the world’s policeman” BS to sugar-coat their origins with something more palatable to US voters. No-one in the rest of the world buys it for a second.

My own longer term conception of US national interest is that it would, indeed, be better off as a truly impartial, self-sacrificing but respected cop rather than one pretending to do the job while feathering its own nest. Acting as an honest broker pays much bigger dividends than couching self-interest in hyperbole about freedom and democracy. Like a huge number of non-Americans, I’ve no objection to America being the world’s policeman if America will be an honest cop, a “protect and serve” cop. No-one else is big enough for the job at present (although in future the US and others should look to reform the UN for the job). But better no cop at all than a cop on the take. To be a good cop, America must realize that its national interest lies exactly in not aggressively pursuing its national interest.

“America must realize that its national interest lies exactly in not aggressively pursuing its national interest….” perfectly captures the confusion, the stupidity, the utter nonsensical treacle that passes for deep thought about foreign affairs on the left.  What makes Obama extraordinarily dangerous is that he actually believes this looniness and is trying it out on the international stage. What has been the response from Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Syria, and other problem states? Barely concealed laughter (in the case of Iran and Syria, not even concealed).

I prefer hard headedness - on both sides. Real American interest lies in promoting democracy in a non-lethal manner - efforts that will, as it did in Eastern Europe - bear fruit over decades. Those who believe they can change the world in 4 or 8 years should be prevented from having anything to do with foreign policy.

In the meantime, yes we do have short term interests and we serve those at the expense of the interest of Iran, Russia, Syria, and other bad actors because not doing so harms the US. It is laughable, extraordinarily naive to pretend that long term interests of the US are served by eschewing our own interests and placing other nation’s interests ahead of ours. No one would be stupid enough to run a campaign based on that notion because, quite rightly, the American people don’t want to vote for someone who will subsume American interests to the interests of other nations. That’s utter nonsense. It depends on the supposed good will of other nations to recognize the US sacrifice and reward us with cooperation. It also presupposes a measure of rationality from our enemies that many of them have yet to demonstrate.

Mr. Hynd may not like “strategic ambiguity” and other repugnant gambits and he is right that in this case, it  won’t work. In order for strategic ambiguity to be effective - as it was when Clinton and Bush were president - there must be the tiniest sliver of doubt among our adversaries that we may end up attacking after all. When Obama says “all options are on the table” with regards to Iran, no one believes him in the slightest. In order to bomb Iran, Obama would have to abandon his entire world view. It won’t happen, everyone is aware of it, and Iran is acting accordingly.

The bullies, the psychopaths, and the despots sleep better at night with Obama as president as they never have previously. That’s the reality we live in - the result of Obama putting his worldview into practice. I’ve written previously that the hard left has been waiting 40 years to prove to the rest of us that their way in foreign policy is safer, and better for America. Now that they have someone in the White House putting their ideas into practice, let us hope that they were right and that such a Pollyannish outlook toward our potential enemies does not blow up the world in their faces.