Day: November 24, 2007

One candidate stands up to Giuliani in the Republican debates and says the US's destructive policies abroad led to 9/11--it's not because "the terrorists hate us for our freedoms," the official loony story line. Millions appreciated his candor and have given him money as the sole conservative candidate not on defense industry payroll. Yes, we're talking about Ron Paul. Now considerable effort on both the right and the centrist left is going to marginalize Paul as a "nut." Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com examines the anti-Ron Paul movement, particularly posts by center-left blogger David Neiwert, who seems not to understand that the US has bigger problems than Ron Paul's candidacy. I would also add the ultra-verbose Open Left blogger Paul Rosenberg, who I believe tacitly supports a permanent U.S security state and endless military adventurism abroad with his Herculean efforts to prove that the "paleo" conservatives are a greater danger to us than Rudy and probably ultimately Hillary. Rosenberg says the paleos are isolationists who want to return us to a time that never existed, but so what? Being the world's cop clearly isn't working out--that part of the critique rings true. Rosenberg's effort to discredit the already discredited paleos seems like cloud cuckoo cerebration in the face of the rise of Thug No. 1--the neocon 9/11 profiteer who has promised to continue Bush's policies of preemptive, undeclared wars and the resulting curtailment of civil liberties here at home.

Neiwert at one point singled out this 1999 Raimondo column as an example of the paranoia of the paleos. Raimondo was talking about the Y2K madness and how it was prepping us for an Afghanistan attack--incredibly prescient, it seems to me.