Alan Keyes
Filiblustering as the clock runs out for Liberty
By Alan Keyes
My last post was another of my frequent attempts to warn people against falling prey to the political claymore mines of the sham party system. These are events, like Rand Paul's Mini-Me filibluster (oops, I mean filibuster, of course), orchestrated by the system's elitist faction controllers in order to waste principled conservatives (in terms of their political hopes and resources) who might otherwise devise a successful vehicle for opposing the de facto coalition government the GOP has formed with Obama.
Whenever I focus on the GOP-deflating truth, people ask me why I'm so unwilling to give the benefit of the doubt to any politician promoted by the elitist faction media as a hero of the conservative cause. One reason is that I'm morally certain that the elitists seeking to overthrow America's constitutional republic will no longer give even arguably positive exposure to any political figures that have not "made their bones" by adopting one or another of the "poison pill" policy positions which fatally wound the Republic's prospects for survival.
The Rand Paul boomlet is a case in point. Paul's filibuster was the occasion for a supposedly "tense exchange about war" between Shep Smith and Sen. John McCain. Smith asserted that there is "a battle for the heart and soul" of the GOP. On the one hand, he said, there is what he called "the Rand Paul wing, with a long-held Republican and conservative view on war, to avoid it at all costs." He contrasted it with the views of McCain and others who "have been interventionists." He asked McCain "is it your sense that Rand Paul may be bringing together those people in the basement who align maybe in some cases more closely with the left than with the right?"
The notion that avoiding war at all costs is a long-held conservative or even Republican view is questionable at best. In general, conservatives align themselves with the principled views of America's founding generation. History resounds with the answer those founding patriots gave when Patrick Henry asked, "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" Like Henry, the Republican Party's founding President,
Abraham Lincoln, took a similar stand stood for liberty and against slavery, though it meant enduring Civil War.
To be sure, conservatives like me oppose the idea that constitutional self-government can be imposed on other nations by force. But when the desire for freedom is thwarted, repressed, or by violence overthrown (as was the continual policy of the Soviet Union during the "Cold War"), we believe, as Ronald Reagan did, that the United States has a vital national interest in effectively opposing the emergence of a world dominated by regimes hostile to liberty.
At best, therefore, Shep Smith's characterization of conservative views is an inaccurate caricature. However, like his famous father, Rand Paul has taken ill-considered anti-war positions that lend credence to Smith's caricature. But his filibuster had little or nothing to do with those positions. His filibuster focused public attention on the use of deadly force against Americans working with those the President and his minions deem to be a threat to the national security of the United States. With Obama in the White House, Paul is right when he says that Americans should be deeply concerned about allowing people to be targeted for assassination on the say-so of the executive branch, without respect for the Constitution's due process requirement. This opens the door to deadly, politically motivated abuses; and Obama and his minions are just the folks to walk through that open door.
But the hoopla over Paul's dramatization of a currently valid concern is mainly being used to promote the idea that he offers a rallying point within the GOP for Constitution-minded conservatives. Of course, by wasting time grasping at this straw man of specious hope, conservatives will forego the opportunity to join in condemning the GOP leaders in the U.S. Senate who supinely acquiesced in a key national security appointment that makes unconstitutional abuses (in the name of national security) more likely. The new head of the CIA has the profile of someone who will readily consent to be the tool of such abuses. Evidently, the Constitution Brennan swears by doesn't include the Bill of Rights.
Elitist faction leaders are placating conservatives with the false appearance of hope for the future, while facts are created that will allow them to crush and intimidate such conservatives long before that future gets here, using spuriously justified deadly force if necessary. And the GOP charade plays right along. This precisely corresponds to the GOP's assigned role in the sham party system, which is to play conservatives with false rhetoric, false hopes and falsely promising personalities, until the clock runs out for liberty.
March 14, 2013
My last post was another of my frequent attempts to warn people against falling prey to the political claymore mines of the sham party system. These are events, like Rand Paul's Mini-Me filibluster (oops, I mean filibuster, of course), orchestrated by the system's elitist faction controllers in order to waste principled conservatives (in terms of their political hopes and resources) who might otherwise devise a successful vehicle for opposing the de facto coalition government the GOP has formed with Obama.
Whenever I focus on the GOP-deflating truth, people ask me why I'm so unwilling to give the benefit of the doubt to any politician promoted by the elitist faction media as a hero of the conservative cause. One reason is that I'm morally certain that the elitists seeking to overthrow America's constitutional republic will no longer give even arguably positive exposure to any political figures that have not "made their bones" by adopting one or another of the "poison pill" policy positions which fatally wound the Republic's prospects for survival.
The Rand Paul boomlet is a case in point. Paul's filibuster was the occasion for a supposedly "tense exchange about war" between Shep Smith and Sen. John McCain. Smith asserted that there is "a battle for the heart and soul" of the GOP. On the one hand, he said, there is what he called "the Rand Paul wing, with a long-held Republican and conservative view on war, to avoid it at all costs." He contrasted it with the views of McCain and others who "have been interventionists." He asked McCain "is it your sense that Rand Paul may be bringing together those people in the basement who align maybe in some cases more closely with the left than with the right?"
The notion that avoiding war at all costs is a long-held conservative or even Republican view is questionable at best. In general, conservatives align themselves with the principled views of America's founding generation. History resounds with the answer those founding patriots gave when Patrick Henry asked, "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" Like Henry, the Republican Party's founding President,
Abraham Lincoln, took a similar stand stood for liberty and against slavery, though it meant enduring Civil War.
To be sure, conservatives like me oppose the idea that constitutional self-government can be imposed on other nations by force. But when the desire for freedom is thwarted, repressed, or by violence overthrown (as was the continual policy of the Soviet Union during the "Cold War"), we believe, as Ronald Reagan did, that the United States has a vital national interest in effectively opposing the emergence of a world dominated by regimes hostile to liberty.
At best, therefore, Shep Smith's characterization of conservative views is an inaccurate caricature. However, like his famous father, Rand Paul has taken ill-considered anti-war positions that lend credence to Smith's caricature. But his filibuster had little or nothing to do with those positions. His filibuster focused public attention on the use of deadly force against Americans working with those the President and his minions deem to be a threat to the national security of the United States. With Obama in the White House, Paul is right when he says that Americans should be deeply concerned about allowing people to be targeted for assassination on the say-so of the executive branch, without respect for the Constitution's due process requirement. This opens the door to deadly, politically motivated abuses; and Obama and his minions are just the folks to walk through that open door.
But the hoopla over Paul's dramatization of a currently valid concern is mainly being used to promote the idea that he offers a rallying point within the GOP for Constitution-minded conservatives. Of course, by wasting time grasping at this straw man of specious hope, conservatives will forego the opportunity to join in condemning the GOP leaders in the U.S. Senate who supinely acquiesced in a key national security appointment that makes unconstitutional abuses (in the name of national security) more likely. The new head of the CIA has the profile of someone who will readily consent to be the tool of such abuses. Evidently, the Constitution Brennan swears by doesn't include the Bill of Rights.
Elitist faction leaders are placating conservatives with the false appearance of hope for the future, while facts are created that will allow them to crush and intimidate such conservatives long before that future gets here, using spuriously justified deadly force if necessary. And the GOP charade plays right along. This precisely corresponds to the GOP's assigned role in the sham party system, which is to play conservatives with false rhetoric, false hopes and falsely promising personalities, until the clock runs out for liberty.
To see more articles by Dr. Keyes, visit his blog at LoyalToLiberty.com and his commentary at WND.com and BarbWire.com.
© Alan KeyesThe views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
