Crouching Patriot, Hidden Bircher

Most people have heard about the book, The 5,000 Year Leap.  It's billed as a book which explains about how  representative democracy, which began in the US, propelled humanity forward the same distance in 200 years as it had taken 5,000 to previously transverse.  In terms of freeing up markets and granting people civil rights, America became a place where it was better to have a great idea than to be born into an aristocratic family.  This allowed America to progress at a greater rate than nations who still answered to a monarch or where social status was the sole determinant.  

Having only heard about the book in passing but agreeing with the thesis in general, I decided to purchase a copy for my new Kindle. The sample section talked about federalism, the Articles of Confederation, The Constitution, Jamestown, socialism, and capitalism.  After purchasing the book, however, I learned that the real message had to do with the supposed 28 principles for good government and that is when I started to notice a trend.    

Principles 1-5 are directly related to God or morality, Principle 9 refers to divine law.  The remaining principles are all derived from a narrow view of religion and seem to only have a thin veneer of political thought.  As a religious book, it's passable if not quite inspiring. As a political book, it's garbage.    


After suffering through fifty pages, I decided to look up the author.  From the introduction, he described himself only as a constitutional historian but I guessed there was more to that story.  The author, Cleon Skousen, turned out to be a Mormon evangelizer and an associate of the John Birch society.  His other works covered topics such as New World Order conspiracies, end of the world prophecies, and parenting (I have not read the parenting books by him, but I can't quite recommend them either!).  

For those not familiar with the John Birch Society, it takes what should be a good foundation of anti-communism and succeeds into making it a bizarre belief system.  Birchers, as they are often called, believe President Eisenhower was a communist.  They also believe that adding fluoride to the drinking water (which occurred way back in 1945) was  a communist plot.  As Ayn Rand said of them, "What is wrong with them is that they don't seem to have any specific, clearly defined political philosophy.  I consider the Birch Society futile, because they are not for capitalism, but merely against communism. I gather they believe that the disastrous state of today's world is caused by a communist conspiracy. This is childishly naive and superficial. No country can be destroyed by a mere conspiracy, it can be destroyed only by ideas. The Birchers seem to be either nonintellectual or anti-intellectual. They do not attach importance to ideas. They do not realize that the great battle in the world today is a philosophical, ideological conflict."

After reading up on Skousen, I contacted Amazon and told them I had bought the book in error.  It was removed from my Kindle and I was issued a full refund.  I suppose many people would have let their experience with the book pass without comment or simply would have stopped reading the book without undertaking the level of research I did.  My reason for needing to warn others about the author is as much motivated by personal reasons as political ones.  Over the years I have read thousands of books.  While other kids played, I read.  In 26 years, I have only ever not finished three books after starting them.  The first was an uninteresting and over-technical book by Piers Anthony in the Mode series which was a fantasy series based around the geometric pattern of the Mandelbrot set.  The second was Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.  Zinn was at best a deluded moron or at worst a pathological liar, there is enough there to start another post so I'll simply direct anyone interested in Zinn to Reason.com's latest post on him.  The third will be the 5,000 Year Leap. 

Are You A Good Witch Or A Bad Witch?

Christine O'Donnell upset the GOP establishment candidate for the Delaware primary in the Senate race last week.  The establishment candidate, Mike Castle, was a nine term member of the House who supported abortion, gun control, cap and trade, and did not support repealing Obamacare.  A virtual unknown in the race several weeks ago, Sarah Palin's endorsement rocketed her past Mike Castle with six points to spare.  Unfortunately, that's when the trouble started. 

Mike Castle ran negative campaign ads against O'Donnell but it is when she won the primary that the national media starting repeating the same set of talking points.  One Mike Castle ad that has found new life in syndication claims that O'Donnell "owes $11,744 in back taxes and penalties," and "was sued by Fairleigh Dickenson University for unpaid expenses." The ad goes on to say O'Donnell, "defaulted on her mortgage," "ran up huge campaign debt and left vendors and staff unpaid," and "used campaign donations to pay her rent."

Back in 1999 while on Bill Maher's "Politically Incorrect", O' Donnell said, "I dabbled into witchcraft. I never joined a coven."  She continued, "I hung around people who were doing these things. I'm not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do.  One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn't know it. I mean, there's little blood there and stuff like that. We went to a movie and then had a little midnight picnic on a satanic altar." 

To overcome this perception, O' Donnell should be going on every interview she can while being prepped for the tough questions she will inevitably get.   Unfortunately she seems to be passing up early chances to change the tone and her campaign is suffering.

Unlike Sharron Angle or Rand Paul, this "Tea Party" candidate looks almost completely unelectable.  Whether religious people take offense to the witchcraft statement or the nonreligious just find her too kooky, she has an almost impossible uphill battle.  Although many in Obama's cabinet also have large unpaid tax bills, it is a bigger deal for someone who is pushing fiscal restraint.

I disagree with her opponent, Coons, on more substantive issues and her win could be the 51st Senate seat so I must say that despite all this I will likely vote for her.  If it was anything short of that level of importance, I would likely vote 3rd party.

Although the Tea Party can do great things, we must remember the rule given to us by the great William F. Buckley, "Support the most conservative candidate who is electable."  The Tea Party must not assume its own enthusiasm is enough to elect candidates, especially in the Northeast. 

Don't Believe Obama's Deathbed Conversion On Tax Cuts

After borrowing money, printing money and raising taxes (or "fees" if you believe the text of the Obamacare legislation), Obama now says he wants to give Americans a tax cut.  Some speculated that even Obama realizes his stimulus programs didn't work and is now pursuing solutions within the Austrian school of economics.  This view was shattered when Obama took to the road touting the necessity of a second stimulus.  Although he hypes the tax cut portion of it, there is also 50 billion dollars for infrastructure repair (didn't we already designate a 767 billion dollar stimulus for "mostly" infrastructure repair?  Those roads must be in terrible shape!). 

And even when it comes to tax cuts, Obama has decided to extend them only to the middle class regardless of the fact that filers in the top 3 percent are responsible for generating 50 percent of small business income.  While this would still help the poor and middle class by reducing their tax bill, it would do nothing to improve the economy which would them exponentially more than a tax cut alone.  In fact, since Obama's tax cut is really only a middle class only extension of the currently active Bush tax cut, high earners actually face a tax hike.

Senior citizens might be some of the hardest hit by the new tax structure, according to Heritage.  While the Medicare Advantage supplemental program will be done away with in part to move $500 billion out of Medicare and into Obamacare, subsidies to similar plans will be cut forcing premiums up.    Ninety-one percent of all Medicare beneficiaries have some kind of supplemental coverage.  While seniors costs will go up, their income may decline due to the dividend tax rate rising (as referenced previously in End The Recession By Taxing The Rich).  The taxes are projected to drop the value of stock prices by 211 billion dollars.  Seniors hold the most stock of any demographic group and are most likely to hold high dividend stocks which are perceived as lower-risk. 

Regardless of his motivation, Obama deserves at least a little credit for proposing the extension of tax cuts but when the alternative is raising taxes in the midst of a recession the amount of credit is small indeed.    Although more an idealist than a pragmatist, even Obama saw the political repercussions of not extending the tax cuts.  Let's just hope a Republican House can hold his feet to the fire after November and force him permanently into a pragmatic mindset.

Vacation Post

Happy Labor Day to everyone.  I'll be taking a working vacation this weekend trying to clean up the house and hit as many barbecues as possible.  This week's update is a riff off of Bud Light's Real Men of Genius ads.  This week we salute Vice President Joe Biden.



On my computer, the video seems to be a little out of frame so you can click on the video area itself to go to the Youtube source link if you have the same issue.