Posted February 11, 2002

Important Guy

Bravo, Justin! You scored a grand slam in knocking Stephen Schwartz's swollen head out of the political ballpark. Another sorryarse ex-lefty, Red Diaper Baby a la Horowitz, this nutcase has been pounding the drums for irredentist Bosnian Islamo-Fascism for close to a decade now. Outside of the fake Lefty, the inevitably inebriated Chris Hitchens, there are few people who appreciate Stephen's work. Even though the Serbs were one of the main victims of Nazism during World War II, Schwartz & Hitchens have tried to demonize them as the new Nazis. Don't be perturbed at poor Stephen's lengthy ad hominems against you, that is his specialty in trade as I discovered in 1993 when I had a lengthy series of exchanges with him in the Anderson Valley Advertiser. Just remember, Justin, not everybody can rise to the eminence of being an ex-obituary writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, as Stephen was. You must appreciate what an important guy Stephen is – zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

~ Michael P. Hardesty, California

Explanation

I can explain ex-Trotskyists becoming neoconservatives – it's a matter of consistent opposition to the role of Stalin and Stalinism in the world. If one really hated Stalinism it made eminent sense to support Reagan in liquidating the evil empire. But can you explain someone posing as a follower of Mises defending a state monopoly, namely Saudi Aramco?

~ Stephen Schwartz

Nobel

At first I could not believe what I was reading, Bush nominated for Nobel Peace Prize. Then it dawned upon me. There was a misspelling. It should have been Piece Prize. Now it makes sense. He already has a piece of Afghanistan for UNOCAL to build its pipeline to the Indian Ocean. Now he wants a piece of Iraq for the oil fields that are there. Then he covets a piece of Iran for the same reason. If the Saudis do not behave he will want a piece of that nation at points where Armco is operating. He will want a piece of Somalia in the eastern region where oil deposits are said to be located. This can go on ad infinitum. Now, it all makes sense. He should win The Nobel Piece Prize.

~ J.P.S., California

Madman Theory

[Regarding Justin Raimondo's column of February 6, "How Everything Changed":]

I first started reading Antiwar.com during the US attack on Yugoslavia in 1999. While I come from the antiauthoritarian left rather than the libertarian right, I've found Antiwar to be one of the best and most useful anti-imperialist sites around – so much so, in fact, that it presently serves as the home page for my browser....

I just finished reading your February 6th column, and I have to disagree that the theory espoused by the likes of Virginia Postrel and "Andreas" represents the sad results of a recent reduction in the collective IQs of the pundit class . . . inasmuch as they, lacking originality, merely swiped the 1995 Strategic Command study, "Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence"....

This Clinton-era pathology in turn was a resurrection of Nixon's "madman theory" by which he proposed to intimidate Vietnam into surrendering by having his couriers and satraps confide to their counterparts that our Supreme Leader was a madman . . . and likely to blow up the world if crossed. Nixon's "madman" theory, in its turn, was apparently a replay of an Israeli policy devised by the Labor Party in the '50s, according to Noam Chomsky (Rogue States, pg. 20), who quotes from then-Prime Minister Moshe Sharett's diary that the party leadership "preached in favor of acts of madness" and warned that "'we will go crazy' if crossed," a weapon Chomsky says was aimed at least in part against the US, whose foreign policy at that time was not entirely in thrall to that of Israel (remember the Suez crisis). So while it is no doubt true that "this 'crazy man' strategic perspective can only be deployed by a terrorist or a totalitarian," it should come as no surprise that the elite groups that carry out foreign policy contain an abundance of such personality types, as the trait of sociopathic megalomania, it would appear, would be an evolutionary advantage in terms of the amorality necessary to ascend such lofty redoubts of power and privilege.

~ Ron R.

Checks

[Regarding Justin Raimondo's column of February 6, "How Everything Changed":]

You wrote, "Since 9/11, people seem a whole lot stupider." I have been watching this phenomenon too and it scares me. It's not just the high-profile pundits, I've seen this with close personal friends. I think you should keep exploring this because it seems that we need more checks on human emotional reactions.

~ Ernest C., New York

Parallels

...I just finished rereading George Orwell's 1984. Bush's declaration "this campaign may not be concluded on our watch" is eerily reminiscent of Orwell's vision of perpetual war for the duel purposes of economics and controlling the population's thoughts and energies. Osama Bin Ladin serves well as a Goldstein and the ever-present threat of domestic terrorism justifying an all knowing police state. Newspeak has become so prevalent in the modern age of liberal PC thought that the current additions to the vocabulary since the war started aren't even noticeable.

~ Paul G.

Iran's Constitution

[Regarding Paul Clark's guest column of February 2, "Demonizing US Enemies":]

Because of some weaknesses in Iran's constitution, a body called the Guardian Council (GC) has the right to interpret the constitution and approve all the laws passed. This makes it near impossible to avoid a "legal" dictatorship, when and if this body doesn't perform up to par, which it has not!

The youth in Iran are maturing in an incredible fashion leading them to avoid any violence in any form. This could be a byproduct of having witnessed so much violence while growing up. Their approach to gaining their freedom has been to vote for the president, whom everyone knows is also the "leader of opposition" in Iran!

~ Ali K.