THE
VOICE OF SMARM
A
man's tinny and somewhat smarmy voice greeted Michigan and
Virginia voters as they answered the phone's insistent ring:
"This
is a Catholic Voter Alert. Gov. George Bush has campaigned
against Sen. John McCain by seeking the support of southern
fundamentalists who have expressed anti-Catholic views. Gov.
Bush spoke at Bob Jones University in South Carolina. Bob
Jones has made strong anti-Catholic statements, including
calling the Pope the anti-Christ, the Catholic Church a satanic
cult! John McCain, a pro-life senator, has strongly criticized
this anti-Catholic bigotry, while Gov. Bush has stayed silent."
THE
CULTURE OF OBLIGATORY RUDENESS
This
is considered "factual" only in the age of Political
Correctness, where failure to denounce any and all manifestations
of "intolerance" are, well, simply intolerable. This is "factual"
in a world where facts are twisted to demonize and smear who
oppose the new order. Every Republican presidential candidate
within memory has stopped at Bob Jones University on the campaign
trail, and the list of those who have made the pilgrimage
also includes the chairman of the McCain campaign in South
Carolina (who has an honorary degree from the institution
he now demonizes) not to mention the Democratic governor of
the state. Ah yes, but that was then, this is now.
We are living in a the kind of culture in which a guest is
not only permitted to denounce and insult his host, but such
rudeness is obligatory if the host is suspected of
"bigotry."
SECULAR
PURITANISM RUN AMOK
The
secular Puritans who dominate the political class, including
and especially the media elite, see life as a perpetual bout
of sermonizing, in which the congregation is ceaselessly reminded
not only of its moral obligations but also of its inherently
sinful "fallen" state. In an election year in which the test
of political correctness is especially rigorous, Bill Bradley
perhaps won the prize with his invocation of "white skin privilege"
at the height (or is that low point) of Al Sharpton's Harlem
pander-fest. Now there is a phrase I haven't heard
outside of an academic context since the heyday of the New
Left, and it's appearance on the national political stage
– unchallenged – is ominous in the extreme. For
the idea of "white skin privilege" is that whites are inherently
racist because of the privileges bestowed on them by their
skin color. In the victimological alternate universe of American
political culture, circa 2000 Anno Domini, this is not bigotry,
but a simple "factual" statement. In such a crazy, upside-down
world, bigotry is defined, in the case of Bob Jones U, as
taking seriously the central idea of the Protestant Reformation
– the illegitimacy of the Papacy and the Roman Catholic
Church. This is the kind of moral certainty that our secular
elites reserve for themselves. The President of the United
States can give the order to drop bombs on one of the oldest
cities in Europe, while his concubines fellate him in the
Oval Office, and still be hailed as a great leader –
as long as he does it in the name of "diversity." But let
anyone anywhere show the least sign of resistance to the new
secular Puritanism, and that person will be crucified on cross
of his own making.
DUBYA'S
NOBLE MARTYRDOM
One
odd consequence of this low point in American politics is
that the McCain attack machine has somehow managed to turn
Dubya into a sympathetic and even noble figure. Faced
with this onslaught of McCaniac mudslinging, and a daily dose
of the Senator's increasingly hysterical proclamations, the
son has acquired some of the father's gravitas: he
is as grave and calm as anyone must be who aspires to the
Presidency, and the contrast to the perpetually apoplectic
McNutty couldn't be starker.
A
NEW STANDARD
The
Bob Jones U controversy has established a new standard in
American politics. From this moment forward, no candidate
for public office may address a group of voters without mentioning
and even emphasizing his differences with the audience. Instead
of talking about shared values and political positions, the
aspiring office seeker is now obligated to lecture his hosts
on their many shortcomings. It is going to be very interesting
to see how this new standard is going to be applied. Somehow
I don't think that anyone will be attacked for not mentioning
the plight of the Palestinians in addressing the American-Israel
Political Action Committee, or failing to condemn the excesses
of black nationalism when speaking before the NAACP. The really
deadly aspect of this particular weapon in the McCainiac arsenal
is its flexibility. For example, there was no public
outcry when John
McCain spoke on the same platform as Joe DioGuardi, the
leading American supporter of the racist Kosovo Liberation
Army – which is even now carrying out the ethnic cleansing
of the last Serbs from that tortured country.
JUST
ANOTHER ENDORSEMENT
Speaking
of the Kosovo Liberation Army, their
radical wing endorsed McCain the other day. I reproduce
an Albanian News dispatch, headlined "Albanian Republicans
Salute McCain," below:
"TIRANA-
Albania's Republican Party salutes American runner for US
President John McCain, a daily Republika reported on
Thursday. The results published up to now of the American
presidential campaign show that John McCain lies some 6 points
ahead of George W. Bush [?], pushing Albanian Republicans
to declare their sympathy to their American counterpart. Referring
to recent meetings between Albanian republican leader Mediu
and John McCain in Washington D.C, the party's daily underlined
that bilateral relations between the two parties have experienced
further strengthening and enrichment. Albania's Republican
Party hopes that such relations will create a positive impact
both for the party itself and its voters.
FROM
MICHIGAN TO MITROVICA
The
Albanian Republican Party – gee, I didn't know that McCain,
in his role
as head of the board of the International Republican Institute
(the Republican half of the National Endowment for Democracy)
managed to found a McCainite party in Albania. At least, not
until this dispatch – and the latest news from Mitrovica,
where Albanian fanatics are now marching on the last Serb
neighborhood in Kosovo, determined to ethnically "cleanse"
the city and achieve their longtime goal of a racially "pure"
Greater Albania. For the radical instigators of the Mitrovica
showdown, in which American troops were pelted with sticks
and stones and then fired on, turn out to be none other than
these Abanian McCainiacs, the cadres of the Albanian Republican
Party. The Guardian (UK) reported
the central role of McCain's Albanian fan club in the ongoing
Mitrovica crisis as early as October of last year:
"There
was a great hollering and whooping as the ethnic Albanian
youths, now packed in their thousands, tried to storm the
bridge crossing. Fear, like an electric current, passed through
the Serb crowd. Six Danish armoured vehicles from K-For rumbled
on to the bridge and fired their cannon into the air. Gendarmes
and carabinieri lumbered in to do medieval-style combat with
the rioters, dressed from head to toe in body armour. They
fired deafening stun grenades and canisters of choking tear
gas to stop the Albanians reaching the Serbs. The ethnic Albanians
retaliated with rocks, crates, bottles, anything that came
to hand.
"'We
have two French gendarmes wounded,' said Alain Léonard,
a French military nurse in a flak jacket. "The Albanians threw
a grenade and one of them was seriously hurt," he said. Four
police were wounded in total, according to the French military.
"Skender
Hoti, leader of the obscure Albanian Republican party which
called the march, said the ethnic Albanians were going to
mount 180 days of continued "peaceful and cultural protest."
ALBANIANS
FOR McCAIN
As
the Balkan Crisis News Daily reported,
these "Albanians for McCain" has been the most militant of
the intractable nationalist factions spoiling for a renewed
fight with the Serbs:
"'Unfortunately
since the entry of KFOR (NATO peacekeepers) into Kosovo the
Albanian freedom fighters have not hoisted their flag and
started normal life in the northern part of Kosovo, and more
specifically Mitrovica,' said Skender Hoti, president of the
Kosovo Albanian Republican Party."
WILL
THEY HAVE A FRIEND IN THE WHITE HOUSE?
And
they will raise that flag over Mitrovica no matter what the
cost. The Albanian Republican Party is a tiny, extremist minority
party that calls for the extension of "Greater Albania" to
include not only Kosovo, but also parts of Macedonia and Greece,
as well as Montenegro. In the last elections, these frothy-mouthed
agitators polled barely enough votes to garner a single representative
in the Albanian parliament, but the party seeks to increase
its vote total by recruiting Kosovo youth into violent street
gangs – waiting for the day when Albania and Kosovo are
one. If their friend John McCain should win the White House,
that day may not be far.
THAT'S
RICH
The
use of religious rivalry and resentments as a weapon in the
campaign is not limited to the smearing of Dubya as the puppet
of "anti-Catholic bigots." For no candidate for public office
can be designated politically incorrect in the fundamental
sense without being "proved" to be anti-Semitic, or at least
depicted as pandering to anti-Semitic sentiment. For that
job, the Smear Brigade has turned to the eminently qualified
Frank
Rich, who vomits up the same bile flung at Pat Buchanan.
Indeed, the similarity between the trumped-up charges in both
cases is positively eerie. . . .
THE
OLD TECHNIQUE
Remember
all the criticism Buchanan came under when he attacked the
War Party, and named national security expert Richard Perle,
and columnists Charles Krauthammer and William Safire as prominent
supporters of the Gulf War, which Buchanan opposed? Why, all
three happened to be Jewish – and the Smear Brigade immediately
pounced on this as "proof" that Pat is an "anti-Semite." Now,
the same technique is being used, with great effect, on supporters
of George Bush, namely one Marvin Olasky, editor of World
magazine and the architect of the "compassionate conservative"
paradigm. In response to the brouhaha raised by the militantly
secular Rich and others over Bush's declaration that Jesus
Christ has been the single greatest philosophical influence
on his life, Olasky accused his candidate's critics of having
"holes in their souls" for enforcing the banishment of all
religion from American life and politics. Citing a passage
from Tom Wolfe's recent novel, A
Man in Full,
Olasky depicted the militant secular humanists who dominate
the culture as neo-pagan acolytes of "the religion of Zeus."
To Rich, of course, this reference to classical Greek mythology
can mean only one thing: surely this is evidence of anti-Semitism!
If that does not seem to compute, then you don't live in the
alternate universe of the victimologists, for according to
Rich:
"The
only three journalists he cites by name happen by total coincidence
to be Jewish (Bill Kristol and David Brooks of The Weekly
Standard are the other two). I'm sure it's also a coincidence
that Mr. Olasky, a former Jew who converted to Christianity
over 20 years ago, has spun this theory at a moment when Pat
Robertson is targeting Mr. Rudman, the most visible Jew in
the McCain campaign. Mr. Olasky phoned me – but only after
his column prompted embarrassing national press calls to the
Bush campaign – to reassure me that of course he's not an
anti-Semite. Whew! He still hasn't told me whether the religion
of Zeus goes in for Bar Mitzvahs."
THE
INSUFFERABLE WARREN RUDMAN
Poor
naïve Olasky! Doesn't he know that in the post-millennial
political culture we are trapped in, those suspected of political
incorrectness are presumed guilty until proven innocent? The
ethnic and religious composition of every statement, every
position, every off the cuff remark must be carefully weighed
and scrutinized: it is impermissible to criticize three Jews
in a single article if you don't throw a couple of WASPs in
there for measure. This vicious McCaniac assault on the Bush
camp as, of all things, a cabal of anti-Semites has got to
be the lowest blow of all, and the insufferable Warren Rudman
just revels in it. "There's no question in my mind that it's
anti-Semitism," he says. "The way they pronounced my name
in phone calls! They're unhappy it's not Finkelstein." Rich
reports that Rudman did not "think the Bush campaign was clueless
about what was going on."
HEARING
VOICES
But
how, I ask, could one possibly pronounce the
name "Rudman" to make it seem more like "Finkelstein"? Warren
Rudman is hearing things, and he ought to get a complete medical
checkup: Alzheimer's is a distinct possibility. Either that,
or Rudman, like his candidate, is a loose cannon, as nutty
and hyperbolic as Mad John himself. Rudman denounces Ralph
Reed as a "baby-faced assassin" but shows a real appreciation
for the art of character assassination when he remarks to
Rich that Pat Robertson and the Christian Coalition have their
uses: "You love to make enemies like him." This is their campaign
strategy: Demonization is what the McCain campaign is all
about. It is the American version of what is happening in
Europe, where the Right is not only universally abhorred by
the elites but also in danger of being banned. They haven't
gotten around to that in this country just yet: for now, they'll
have to settle for a purely metaphorical firing squad, as
the liberal media keep up a constant barrage of increasingly
wacky accusations.
"CONSPIRACY
THEORIES" –
A NO NO
First,
we are told that a campaign that falls all over itself to
pander to "multiculturalism" and prides itself on its alleged
affinity for and popularity with Latino voters, is really
pandering to anti-Catholic prejudices. When this backfired
in heavily Catholic Virginia – where McCain got creamed
– the McCain camp, undaunted, just moved into the second
phase of their hate campaign – "proving" that Bush is
really an anti-Semite, or, at least, is being used by anti-Semites.
Naturally, it is a coincidence that this charge should arise
just as the campaign rolls into New York. For by the new standards
now being ruthlessly enforced by the guardians of political
correctness, to imply that this is deliberate would be indulging
in anti-Semitic "conspiracy theories."
McCARTHY
AND McCAIN
The
worldwide offensive against the Right has escalated to the
point of complete absurdity: for now we are faced with the
spectacle of the most moderate Republican candidate in a field
once crowded with conservatives being martyred as an American
Haider, labeled a "Pat Robertson Republican" and exiled to
the fever swamps of the "far right." As improbably bizarre
and palpably unfair as this sounds, McCain and his media entourage
may just get away with it – and in the process move the
boundaries of "acceptable" political discourse several giant
leaps leftward. Gee, if even George W. Bush is too "right-wing"
to pass inspection by the arbiters of the permissible, then
Buchanan is definitely out of bounds, and as for me –
I may yet suffer the fate of the Vlaams Bok. What is happening
today makes the McCarthyite hysteria of the fifties seem like
an era of tolerance and civil discourse. At least old Joe's
charge that the US government had been penetrated by Communist
agents at the highest levels had some substance, as Soviet
archives recently revealed. This is more than can be said
for the completely trumped-up charges of "fascism" and "neo-Nazism"
and "anti-Semitism" and anti-whatever-ism that are being thrown
around so lightly by smear-happy McCaniacs and their allies
around the world.
ACHILLES
HEEL
My
heart goes out to those loyal Republicans appalled that their
party is being run over by a media-driven motorcade of militant
"moderates" – who are demonically immoderate when
it comes to smearing and destroying their political opponents.
They are experiencing what we in the Buchanan Brigades have
been going through since 1992. Oh well, too bad you guys don't
have a spokesman as articulate and combative as our
champion, the real conservative alternative to the
interchangeable candidates of post-millennial liberalism run
amok. But then your candidate, like McCain, is a warmonger,
who has all the usual suspects handing him foreign policy
"advice." In the realm that really counts, foreign policy,
where a President can have immediate and deadly dangerous
effect, Bush is just McCain Lite – and their differences
over domestic matters are insubstantial and not fundamental.
The weakness of Bush is not only or even primarily in his
persona: as a candidate he seems to have overcome his early
incoherence, and achieved a kind of dignity in the midst of
the maelstrom. His vulnerability is ideological: it is the
complete prostration of a mush-mouthed milk-and-water "compassionate"
conservatism up against the muscular clarity of the McCainian
vision of "national greatness" statism and Teddy Roosevelt-style
imperialism. In the face of a candidate who has mastered the
art of bombast, the bromidic ambiguities of the Bushian platform
seem as insubstantial as soap bubbles.
REMEMBER
1952
No
candidate can claim the GOP presidential nomination without
carrying either California or New York. McCain could well
carry New York – and tie up the California results in
court. By carrying the fight to the Republican convention,
and winning in an intra-party battle over credentials, the
McCain forces could win California's rich load of delegates
– just as Eisenhower delegates stole delegates and the
nomination from Taft in 1952. In Texas, the Eisenhower Republicans
ignored the "closed" GOP primaries, and held their own "open"
caucuses, where Democrats and others elected delegates pledged
to Ike. The Taft forces demanded that Texas law be obeyed
and the GOP be allowed to nominate its own delegates, but
the media raised a ruckus about Taft "stealing" delegates,
as Phyllis Schlafly related in her classic A
Choice, Not an Echo. Schlafly cites Alan Drury's novel
Advise
and Consent in describing how the media propaganda
machine went into full operation, as if on cue, to back the
Eisenhower credentials challenge:
"All
the vast publicity machine that always goes into concerted
actin for a liberal cause had gone to work . . . an operation
so honed and smoothed and refined over the years that none
of its proprietors even had to consult with one another. The
instinct had been alerted, the bell had rung, the national
salivations had come forth on schedule."
A
SALIVATION OF NATIONAL PROPORTIONS
The
national salivation we are witnessing – on the part of
the liberal media and the most opportunistic and even shamelessly
power-hungry "conservatives" of the "neo" variety – is
not just disgusting, it is also depressingly familiar to students
of the GOP's history. Will the Eastern wing of the GOP steal
the nomination right out from under the hapless noses of the
conservatives once again? It is a scenario that becomes increasingly
possible in spite of the stunning Bush victories in Virginia,
Washington, and North Dakota. It may be that those conservatives
who remain loyal to their party are about to learn their lesson
the hard way: that the "iron triangle" that keeps the elites
in power consists of the media in alliance with the two "major"
parties. Perhaps they will finally absorb that lesson in Philadelphia
– and remember it long enough to take their revenge in
November.
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