Noam Chomsky on Christian evangelical support of Israel

Let's start with what's called conservative support [of] Israel.  At first I think some kind of semantic hygiene is useful.  There's really no conservative in the United States.  The people who are called conservatives are radical statists for the most part.  And there are few genuine conservatives - which means something like classical liberals - but not many.

If you take a look at the Republican Party today, which is the strongest extreme support for Israeli policies, they have a popular base.  A large part of the popular base is Christian evangelicals.  They are passionate supporters of Israeli policies and they're also extreme anti-Semites.  They don't say it, but take a look at the doctrines like the dispensationalist doctrines.  They're looking forward to a battle and Armageddon where everybody gets murdered and the saved souls rise to heaven.  What happens to the Jews?  Well, according to some of these versions, 160,000 of them find Christ in time and they're saved.  The rest are condemned to eternal damnation.  How can you be any more antisemitic than that?

Their support for Israel is because partly interpretation of the Bible, interpretation of the Book of Revelation and son on and so forth, which leads them to strongly support Israeli crimes.  Israel welcomes the support, but it also tries to control them.  Like when they try to blow up the Temple Mount, Israel doesn't think that's a good idea so they block them.

~ Noam Chomsky, "Noam Chomsky: Why America Holds Israel as a Sacred Cow?," Free Will, 0:40 mark, October 26, 2023

Mitch McConnell on the need for CARES Act, round 2

The Senate goes back in session next Monday.  Hopefully the partisan passions that prevented us from doing another rescue package will subside with the election.  I think we need to do it and we need to do it before the end of the year.

~ Mitch McConnell, Republican Senate Majority Leader, "Fiscal stimulus chances may be rising despite dashed Democrat hopes for U.S. Senate control," MarketWatch.com, November 4, 2020

(McConnell expressed some openness about including aid for struggling state and local governments in a new package, calling it “a possibility.” Senate Republicans had previously balked at more aid on top of $150 billion in March’s CARES Act, while House Democrats wanted more than $400 billion in new money.)

Vasko Kohlmayer on the role of Democrats and Republicans in the 2020 riots

Perhaps more than anything, the riots revealed the dysfunctional state of our political system. One of our two major political parties openly encouraged and actively abetted the mayhem. Difficult as it may be to believe, the Democrats on all levels defended and excused the perpetrators from the very outset.

[...]

While the Democrats were busy plying their agitprop and sanctioning the vandalization of our country, the Republicans responded by doing exactly nothing. Rather than standing up for law and order in the face of violence and brazen lies, they meekly went along and silently conceded to most of the looters’ and democrats’ demands. Spineless and morally hollowed out, the Republicans completely ceded the moral ground to the criminal mobs and their abettors in the Democratic Party. Unwilling to defend the truth, justice, law enforcement and law-obeying citizens, they let the Left rule the day.

~ Vasko Kohlmayer, "America in Crisis: The Predicament," LewRockwell.com, June 25, 2020

Christopher Manion on the foreign policy split in the Republican Party

Foreign policy is the San Andreas Fault of the GOP, because there is huge money in war, and the bloody trough is bipartisan.

~ Christopher Manion, "A Specter is Haunting the Pentagon," LewRockwell.com Blog, October 4, 2010

Doug Casey on the difference between Democrats and Republicans

Doug: As you know, I've always distinguished them this way: the Democrats definitely don't believe in economic freedom, but they say they believe in social freedom, while the Republicans definitely don't believe in social freedom, but they say they believe in economic freedom. Neither believes in both – that would make them libertarians.

Q: [Chuckles] So, it's what they lie about that really distinguishes them. Or, more to the point, it's not what they believe, or say they believe, that drives them, but what they don't believe. Not what they value, but what they fear. It's not love but hate that is the guiding principle of American politics.

Doug: Exactly. Like most of what we see in politics, it's completely perverse. The only good thing about the Democratic party is that they're at least consistent: they are collectivists and statists through and through. They are collectivists in what they say, and they are collectivists in what they do. That gives them the appearance of being more honest than the Republicans.

Q: They may be crypto-communists draped in red, white, and blue, but at least they're consistent?

Doug: Yes, but not the Republicans. They say they value freedom and the individual, but their actions lie to those claims, and they give freedom a bad name. It makes you reluctant to use words like "free market," when you have the likes of the hostile and mildly demented McCain, and the bent and clinically stupid Bush claiming those principles for what they do.

Q: Makes me mad. It adds insult to injury that Ronald Reagan got elected on essentially libertarian rhetoric – smaller government, lower taxes, getting the state off the little guy's back, etc., and then signed appropriations bills that saw government grow by huge, then-unprecedented amounts. Many people today think the Reagan years prove that less government is a bad idea!

Doug: Remember what the Reagan team used to say, "If not us, who? And if not now, when?" As it turned out, it wasn't them and it wasn't then. The worst enemies of individual liberty are knaves that claim they're for it but utterly betray it. And incompetents and ineffectual fools who say they're trying to save freedom by increasing the size of the state.

~ Doug Casey, Doug Casey on the Tea Party Movement, Interviewed by Louis James, Editor, International Speculator, LewRockwell.com, October 1, 2010

Sen. Judd Gregg on the Fed/Bernanke to the rescue

Gregg: If you're going to start blaming people, you should also credit people for the things they did right. Now, we were on the verge of a cataclysmic event in late 19-... er, 2008, and it didn't look good for us as a country as we were heading towards what looked like a massive financial meltdown of all our institutions. And it would've had a HUGE impact on Main Street. Yes, we've been through a very serious recession. But you're talking about something that could've been on a depression-type of level, and it didn't happen.

Why didn't it happen?

It didn't happen because the chairman of the Fed, along with the Treasury secretaries, both Paulson and Geithner, stepped in and did some really original things. And sure, they pushed the envelope, but if they hadn't pushed the envelope the disaster which would've occured would've been cataclysmic for us as an economy, and for Main Street specifically.

The way I describe it is this: it's like you're driving over a bridge and the bridge is about to collapse, and there's no way it's not going to collapse, except that a guy comes along and fixes it before you drive over it. You keep going, you don't even know the bridge got fixed. That's what happened here. Ben Bernanke came in, with the Fed, put significant resources into the economy and basically the financial structure, and stabilized the bridge so that the economy continued on.

Granted, we've still had a recession, but I think you have to give him a lot of credit for doing a very great job in really an extraordinarily difficult time.

CNBC: Well, I know you've heard the metaphor, 'The arsonist puts out the fire...'

Gregg: Well, he's not the arsonist.

~ Sen. Judd Gregg, Banking Committee Member, CNBC.com Video, "Late Rally for Bernanke", Mon. Jan 25th, 2009, 7:43AM ET

Kevin Duffy on Townhall.com's boast that "A Republican wave is building -- let's be ready to ride it to victory!"

You can’t be serious. Under Bush II you spent like drunken sailors, doubled the public debt, bailed out reckless speculators with undue government influence (Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, BofA, et al.), and invaded and bombed a country who never invaded us (or had anything to do with 911) into oblivion, tarnishing the American brand of liberty and neutrality. Further, you paved the way for Obama and his radical socialist and authoritarian agenda. This is the vaunted Republican platform of limited government and free enterprise??? On top of that, the only true limited government, freedom loving Republican – Ron Paul – you treated like a pariah. Quite frankly, you and your party disgust me.

~ Kevin Duffy, Bearing Asset Management, May 28, 2009

The New York Times on voters rejecting Republican principles of limited government

Unhappily, there are many Republicans who have not learned the lesson of this last campaign — that Americans rejected their arguments that government is the enemy and tax cuts answer all economic questions.

It would be highly irresponsible for Congress to accept the Republicans’ wrongheaded calls to cut back on the stimulus portions of the economic package, and shortchange longer-term spending on health care, schools and infrastructure. We applauded Mr. Obama when he said, “The time for action is now because we know that if we do not act, a bad situation will become dramatically worse. Crisis could turn into catastrophe.”

The president must explain to Americans that a strong economic stimulus is essential for their economic recovery. If Senate Republicans still want to filibuster, Mr. Reid should call them on it. No filibuster on this urgent a bill could withstand the certain public outrage.

~ The New York Times, "Getting Tough in Washington," February 5, 2009, by NYT editors (op-ed)

Laurence Vance on the Republican Party and limited government

It wouldn’t normally matter whom the Republican Party nominated. Bigger government and less liberty have always been the result. And if you think Reagan was an exception then you are sadly mistaken. This time, however, the Republicans had a chance to nominate the only candidate who embodies everything good that the Republican Party has ever claimed to stand for. Ron Paul is undoubtedly the most pro-life, pro-family, pro-property, pro-liberty, pro-Constitution candidate in history. The Republican Party and its apologists that write for the red-state fascist blogs and magazines and host the reich-wing nationalist TV and radio talk shows did everything they could to persuade people from voting for Dr. Paul in the Republican primaries. The nomination of John McCain over Ron Paul means that the Republican Party should never again be taken seriously when it comes to even the slightest pretense of being a friend of liberty, free markets, and limited government. 

~ Laurence M. Vance, "Ichabod!," LewRockwell.com, September 5, 2008

Lew Rockwell on how the anti-communist movement undermined the limited government plank of the Republican Party

Murray Rothbard used to tell the story of speaking to conservative and Republican audiences in the late 1950s and early 1960s. There would be large groups gathered for various talks on economics and politics. He would give a lecture on the problem of price controls, or protectionism, or high taxes. People really liked what he had to say. They would clap, and learn from his lecture.

Then he would sit down. At some point in the course of the conference, the appointed anti-communist speaker would rise to the podium. He would decry the evil of Russia and its atheistic system of government. He would call for beefing up nuclear weapons and hint darkly of the necessity of war. He would end with an apocalyptic statement about the need for everyone to completely dedicate themselves to eradicating the communists by any means necessary. No talk of limiting or cutting government; quite the opposite.

So how would these people, who clapped for Murray, respond to the warmonger? Insanely, wildly, uncontrollably. They would stand and scream and yell and cheer, getting up on their chairs and putting their hands together high in the air. The applause would go on for five minutes and more, and the speaker would be later mauled for autographs. His books would sell wildly.

Meanwhile, poor Murray would stand there in alarm. How could these same people cheer both a call for liberty and a call for empire, and, most notably, give their hearts over to the maniacal nationalist while being merely polite to a call for the same liberty that had led this party to oppose FDR's domestic and foreign-policy? It was experiences like these that led him to write the most important dissection of the Republican party ever to appear: The Betrayal of the American Right. It is here that Murray engages in a deep, soul-searching look at his own role in red-baiting in the 1950s. He had hoped to use the anti-communist movement to educate people about the need for freedom.

"It is clear that libertarians and Old Rightists, including myself, had made a great mistake in endorsing domestic red-baiting, a red-baiting that proved to be the major entering wedge for the complete transformation of the original right wing," writes Murray. Instead of supporting freedom, the anti-communist movement ended up acculturating Republicans to the imperial mindset. The moral priority of crushing a foreign government trumped every other issue.

At the same time, the libertarianism of the GOP's domestic agenda was supplanted by a belief that "big government and domestic statism were perfectly acceptable, provided that they were steeped in some sort of Burkean tradition and enjoyed a Christian framework." Fiery individualism and radicalism were replaced by a longing for a static, controlling elite of the European sort. Liberty was washed away.

~ Lew Rockwell, "Triumph of the Red-State Fascists," LewRockwell.com, February 26, 2008

Republican Party on the war economy and currency debasement (1952)

They claim prosperity but the appearance of economic health is created by war expenditures, waste and extravagance, planned emergencies, and war crises. They have debauched our money by cutting in half the purchasing power of our dollar.

We shall always measure our foreign commitments so that they can be borne without endangering the economic health or sound finances of the United States. Stalin said that 'the moment for the decisive blow' would be when the free nations were isolated and were in a state of 'practical bankruptcy.' We shall not allow ourselves to be isolated and economically strangled, and we shall not let ourselves go bankrupt.

~ From the Republican platform of 1952.

Joe Murray: Of course Ron Paul can win

If you look at the history of Republican, or for a better term, traditionalist philosophy, it is Ron Paul who makes the perfect fit. The Texas congressman is committed to the Constitution, would remove America from the mess in Iraq, return fiscal order to Washington and balance social issues as to respect individual liberty.

But Dr. Paul cannot win, so the argument goes. To support such a contention, politicos have pointed to campaigns of Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan and Alan Keyes. The dynamic of the 2008 election, however, is different from 1988, 1996 and 2000, for there is no clear front-runner leading the GOP pack.

In 1988, George H.W. Bush was candidate of choice for the ivory tower. That meant he received the money, endorsements and the full support of the RNC. The same was true of Bob Dole in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2000. This time around, the establishment has been unable to crown its nominee.

Then you add the money factor. Unlike his dark-horse counterparts, Dr. Paul has raised over $9 million this quarter with more on the way. He displaced Mr. Romney as the candidate who raised the most money in a single day, and his supporters are organizing yet another fundraising blitz. Finally, Dr. Paul has the message. The electorate is as volatile as it has been in years. Frustrated by illegal immigration, tired of fighting a war it did not want and disgusted with the establishments of both parties, Dr. Paul's day has come.

The revolution is real, and those in the ivory tower had better start digging a bigger moat.

~ Joe Murray, "How Real Is Ron Paul's Revolution?," The Bulletin, November 30, 2007