I wouldn’t believe he existed. . .

If I didn’t see his goofy visage so damn often. Clifford May, of the mega-bogus Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, lets us in on a secret. There’s a small, backwards, theocratic state in the Middle East that funnels some of its massive U.S. aid back into American public relations efforts. It’s Saudi Arabia! (Oh, yeah, the stateless Palestinians do it, too!)

“It’s no secret that both the Saudis and the Palestinian Authority employ sophisticated American public relations consultants,” sez Cliff. Who are we to question a defender of democracy?

But let me get one thing straight: Frank Luntz is on the Saudi/Palestinian payroll?
(For the whole Luntz document, click here.)

Cognitive Dissonance at Reason

Speak favorably of Antiwar.com on the Free Republic website, and you’ll have your logging privileges revoked. Hey, that’s their right, and closed-mindedness is by no means inconsistent with their platform.

But we should be shocked when a writer at a libertarian mag has to preface a reference to Antiwar.com with the following:

The last time I linked to something on antiwar.com, an angry fellow wrote me to say that he was never going to read anything I wrote again. At the risk of losing still more readers. . .

That’s Jesse Walker on Reason’s interactive blog, Hit & Run. (He linked to Justin Raimondo’s article for today.) His reticence is tongue-in-cheek, but the militant liberventionism and Bush worship among Hit & Run readers is real. What gives?

“The War Doves”

Kris Johansen defends imperialism before his fellow pinkos in the August edition of Adbusters:

Every spring the bulls charge down the narrow alleys of the Spanish town of Pamplona, their thousand-pound bodies careering around corners, hooves clattering across paving stones, and before them runs a handful of individuals who have overcome their fears and leapt into the moment. In this essay the bulls represent the US administration and the runners are all of the people who, like me, have stepped away from the anti-war camp to support the new American empire. We can still hear our old allies, chanting and waving their tear-soaked handkerchiefs – they are the ones behind the wooden barricades that line the alleys, and we remember when we wasted our time in the same safe places.

Johansen goes on to extol Michael Ignatieff, Chris Hitchens, and other belligerent “humanitarians” for bringing out the rouge in the War Party. He concludes with a classic bit of leftist self-dramatization:

Ignatieff, Hitchens and all my new friends, we will run before the bulls with adrenaline howling in our blood and hoof thunder at our backs, and if we occasionally send wild-eyed looks over our shoulders at the leaping, snorting, hulking beasts of liberation, if you detect the dread and terror mixed amid our hope and pride, then you will suddenly understand why we run so goddamn fast.

Here’s to the bulls.