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Coultergeist
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Coultergeist
by George Gurley
Ann Coulter, author of the No. 1 best-selling nonfiction book in America-Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right, a small book coruscating with giddy bile-was 20 minutes late to lunch at Michael's, the sunlit media-centric restaurant on West 55th Street. I'd been so excited to meet the glowing scimitar of the American right that I hadn't fallen asleep until 5 a.m. the night before.
Now I was worried that Ann had backed out. Had she figured she'd be un-welcomed, hissed at, throttled at the hub center of the media elite?
Bobby Zarem, the publicist, waved to me from a nearby table. He was sitting with a male writer and a female television producer. Both their composures underwent a remarkable transformation when I told them who would be joining me.
"She's the devil," said the producer, adding that Ms. Coulter was "ultraconservative."
"She is the Antichrist," said the writer. A piece of food flew out of his mouth. "We might have to leave."
Yes, mention Ann Coulter in New York and food tends to fly out of people's mouths. Then they get a knowing look that says, Are you kidding me? Well, I've got her number, oh yes I do .. Then, invariably, these people will use the same two words to describe her: either "crazy" or "insane." She is a lunatic "right-wing nut," and also a dangerous, demonic one.
Her book has been No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction since the first week it came out, in early July, which means that the people who dismiss her also have to deal with a secondary emotion: envy. This was true as well in the case of the drenchingly beautiful blonde Clare Boothe Luce, who reveled in writing hit plays when she wasn't wittily attacking New Dealers; the liberals were supposed to be the wits! It was also true of well-haberdashered libertarian Ayn Rand, and peppery magpie Phyllis Schlafly, whom Ms. Coulter champions in her book for bringing down the Equal Rights Amendment.
On page 2 of Slander-before she begins carving up "unhinged liberals" like Al Gore, Jesse Jackson, Dan Rather, Gloria Steinem and Walter Cronkite-Ms. Coulter attacks the "pathetic little parakeet males and grim, quivering, angry women on the Upper West Side of Manhattan hoping to be chosen as that day's purveyor of hate": the letter-writers to The New York Times.
At that point, I thought I was already falling in love.
However, in the second chapter I experienced an emotion I was less sure about.
"Every pernicious idea to come down the pike is instantly embraced by liberals to prove how powerful they are," Ms. Coulter writes. "Liberals hate society and want to bring it down to reinforce their sense of invincibility."
Now Ms. Coulter had triggered something else in me: I was getting really pissed off. I felt . infuriated . stirred up.
I looked around Michael's restaurant. They were everywhere.
No one at Michael's really noticed Ms. Coulter when she showed up, a sluice of sweat dripping off her long, perfect New Canaan nose, apologizing profusely-radio interview, subway, late for everything. She was wearing a simple black dress and black closed-toe heels. She looked nice, not evil.
"I'm never an insider," Ms. Coulter said, looking around the room, not recognizing anyone. "No, I don't know who they are, I don't care who they are. I don't want to go to their cocktail parties, and I no longer want to bother writing articles they ask me to write, only to have them killed when they discover, `Oh, maybe we don't want to publish a conservative after all.'"
So just write books? I chirped.
"That's right," she said. "That's right. The American people like me; editors don't. I've arranged my life so that I am unfireable. I don't have any bosses. The only people who can fire me are the American people. That's part of the reason I'm not anxious to have a TV show. Who's gonna give me a TV show? I didn't work for an impeached, disbarred President who was held in contempt by a federal judge. That's what they look for in objective reporters."
Next she mentioned some unfair treatment she'd received by Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz, and a recent appearance on MSNBC in which she was attacked by the host, Mike Barnicle (whose name she had trouble remembering for me), and "this Communist yapping at me"-who turned out to be Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor of The Nation.
"I think, on the basis of the recent Supreme Court ruling that we can't execute the retarded, American journalists commit mass murder without facing the ultimate penalty," Ms. Coulter told me. "I think they are retarded. I'm trying to communicate to the American people and I have to work through a retarded person!"
I must have been looking a little terrified.
"So you know, you say something and somehow `Betty Boop' comes out `Adolf Hitler'!" she said, laughing. "What?"
The gaunt Connecticut beauty emitted a horsy laugh.
There are 780 footnotes in the back of Slander, and so far, Ms. Coulter said, only two minor, irrelevant errors have surfaced. "`Do you realize what this means?'" she said she told her agent. "This means the rest of this book is true! This is scandalous!"
Even though Ms. Coulter's previous book, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton, was a best-seller, the publication of Slander did not happen smoothly. At the end of last year, her editor at HarperCollins, Robert Jones, to whom Slander is dedicated, died suddenly of cancer. Then her book was killed by HarperCollins. It took her agent, Joni Evans, two months to find a publisher. Ms. Coulter was told that conservative books don't sell. An editor at Doubleday informed her that "this book does not move the national dialogue forward," to which Ms. Coulter replied, "That's funny, because I thought book publishers made money on the basis of how many books they sold."
The Crown Publishing Group finally came through.
"I don't know-if I were Rupert Murdoch, I think I'd fire some of the people at HarperCollins for turning down the No. 1 best-selling book of the summer for purely ideological reasons," she said. "I think if I were a stockholder in HarperCollins, I'd be interested to know they turned it down because they personally disagree with it because they're Manhattan liberals."
She's been having fun on her book tour. Her recent appearance on Today was "fun" and "fantastic." She'd called Today co-host Katie Couric "the affable Eva Braun of morning TV" in her book, and the media had a glamorous pre-fab cat fight. Larry King Live didn't work out as well. Ms. Coulter was told they'd only have her on with Whitewater figure Susan McDougal. Then Phil Donahue wrestled her unpleasantly on MSNBC.
An old-timer at the next table who'd been staring into space walked by Ms. Coulter and said out of the side of his mouth, "I love the part of your book where you finally nail Reagan for inventing the Al Qaeda," and kept walking.
Ms. Coulter smiled but didn't look up. "I think he's a crazy person," she said. "There's something about celebrity-it attracts people with the tin foil on their heads. I think that was a guy with tin foil on his head."
Ms. Coulter's book is filled with insults. Christie Todd Whitman is a "birdbrain" and a "dimwit," while Senator Jim Jeffords is a "half-wit." The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin is a "political hack duly celebrated for making things up, engaging in unethical behavior, and sliming other liberal journalists for a want of alacrity in bending over for Bill Clinton." Ms. Coulter described this as "colorful commentary." And she said it's all backed up with footnotes.
She called herself "an open controversialist," as though it rationalized everything. Ms. Coulter's gazpacho was taken away. She was served a hanger steak.
Mr. Zarem and his two friends got up to leave. I told Ms. Coulter they'd called her the Antichrist.
"Excellent!" she said. "Excellent. It is a good thing, not a bad thing, to be attacked by the enemy."
Before her book was published, Ms. Coulter had an idea to only run endorsements by her liberal enemies on the jacket flap, but her publisher said no. Instead, there are quotes from Rush Limbaugh, Bill Maher and Geraldo Rivera. Ms. Coulter said she's also friendly with MSNBC commentator and West Wing writer Lawrence O'Donnell and Saturday Night Live political satirists Jim Downey and Al Franken. Ms. Coulter said she handed a copy of her book to The New York Times' David *, who looked it over, then replied: "You know, I've got to start e-mailing you my articles because there's a lot more you could have attacked me for!"
One of Mr. *'s colleagues was not amused. "Frank Rich," she said, "is the only person ever who has refused to be in a green room with me." But former Times White House correspondent Frank Bruni, now in Rome, is a friend of hers, and she said that Times columnist Maureen Dowd doesn't mind her, even after being heaped with abuse in Slander. "She's attacked me," Ms. Coulter said. "I think it's good P.R. In fact, I'm a little disappointed she hasn't attacked me recently."
I asked Ms. Coulter if she wanted a world without liberals.
"Yes! They've nearly wrecked the country. Off with them!"
Was it O.K. to have been a liberal back in the 1950's and 60's?
"Well, yeah. They believed in America then." Then Ms. Coulter said her "opinion of J.F.K. went up" because "Joe Kennedy Sr. was a huge fan of McCarthy. These people were genuine anti-Communists."
But didn't McCarthy ruin hundreds of lives? This wasn't part of the game. Ms. Coulter gave me a give-it-up look.
"I think we're off the topic of this book. It will be of more interest after my next book."
Ann Coulter, who is on the cusp of 40, grew up in a big house in New Canaan, Conn., the daughter of a lawyer and a homemaker from Kentucky. She describes the whole family as right-wing and "cheerfully argumentative." One day in kindergarten, she said, young Ann confronted a teacher in the library who was wearing a black arm band and denouncing America's involvement in Vietnam.
"I raised my little paw," she said, "and instead of reading Bambi to us or whatever that day, we just argued about this." She remembers saying that the country had a "commitment to defend these people, and America's word should be worth something. Exactly as I'd heard it said.
"I can't believe you have me telling you this, but it is Coulter family folklore," she said, and then told her family myth about little Ann taking some stuff from her two older brothers and selling it back to them. "My parents wanted to encourage this incipient capitalism, so they gave my brothers a nickel to buy back whatever it was, and everyone thought it was cute until I took it all back again .. One time was cute, the second time I was being a Democrat.
"I had a very happy childhood-nothing conflicted, lots of friends, lots of boyfriends, athletic," she said. In the seventh grade her beagle, Tiger, died. "That was the only bad thing that ever happened to me."
Her father represented Phelps Dodge Corporation, the mining and manufacturing giant, and while negotiating with the unions, he presided over the largest union decertification ever.
"It was a stupid time," Ms. Coulter said. "The idea that this seems to fit into-which is absolutely not true-is this idea of the WASP's in Connecticut swatting down workers with their polo mallets. To the contrary, my father was not to the manor born, and has had quite a bit of sympathy with the working man. One of those cases was the copper mines in Arizona .. I've worked in one of those mines, as has my brother, as summer jobs. They get very high wages, they get all their health care taken care of, and it's an open-pit mine, so you're working on the side of a mountain-and for the union to be going on strike at that point was just absurd, and they broke the strike and the union was voted out."
Ms. Coulter said she was a "good girl" as a teenager and that one thing she was worried about before her book came out was people sifting through her past looking for dirt. She and an old friend tried, but turned up nothing. "You know, no nude pictures, no drugs, no scandals, no weird associations," she said. She attended Cornell University, was in the Delta Gamma sorority, founded the right-wing Cornell Review. Then came the University of Michigan Law School, where she said she was "infamous"; she started the Federalist Society chapter and began following the Grateful Dead in earnest-she now estimates she saw the band 67 times, but never did even half a hit of LSD.
"No drug has ever tempted me except LSD," she said. "When I'm in the nursing home some day .. I've never smoked pot except passively at Dead shows, but I got a lot of it there." Ms. Coulter can drink, though. "I am a WASP," she said. In 1989, she clerked for a federal appeals court judge in Kansas City. I told her I grew up there.
"I loved Kansas City!" she said. "It's like my favorite place in the world. Oh, I think it is so great out there. Well, that's America. It's the opposite of this town. They're Americans, they're so great, they're rooting for America. I mean, there's so much common sense!
"No, you're a real American."
She said she goes back to K.C. all the time. "You could sit in that beautiful Royals stadium, you could leave your purse in your chair and go to the bathroom-I mean, think of that. There's all these attractive people in Izod shirts and just such good values, they're just normal, fun people, and athletic." She compared Kansas City parties to New York "alcohol" parties. "In Kansas City," she said, "all the parties were always organized around, like, a softball game, waterskiing, going on a ski trip together. Oh, I so loved it."
I agreed with her, sort of. It was annoying how people here look down on Middle Westerners. She said they are "so much smarter and cooler."
She also loves Texas.
"I love Texas Republicans!" she said. "They're these beautiful women, they're so great-looking, they're completely loaded. They're dripping in this gorgeous jewelry, they're really funny and sarcastic and smart. Americans are so cool, and they're such parochial idiots here in New York. I mean, they really do seem to think in the Northeast that the South . is like an English-speaking Saudi Arabia and it must be coached in tolerance."
We were both whooping it up, I'm afraid.
"Oh God, they're so stupid in New York! But it's fun living in the belly of the beast, don't you think? I mean we can laugh at them."
I changed the subject. Who was sexy? The movie stars Ms. Coulter digs are Andy Garcia, Peter Horton and Tom Selleck. She doesn't think George W. Bush sexy but finds it "very comforting" he's commander in chief.
What about Clinton?
"Oh! Never. Oh, he's a pudgy little guy whose greatest moment on the football field involved a clarinet. And take that down."
It was a saxophone, but no matter. Matt Drudge?
"Oh, Drudge, he's the sexiest man alive. Drudge, he's fabulous."
How about CNN's Tucker Carlson, Howard Kurtz, James Carville and Paul Begala?
"I would say I think all of them are pathetic little girly-boys. They're like anti-sexy. They are saltpeter."
How did she feel about the Vice President?
"Cheney is my ideal man. Because he's solid. He's funny. He's very handsome. He was a football player. People don't think about him as the glamour type because he's a serious person, he wears glasses, he's lost his hair. But he's a very handsome man. And you cannot imagine him losing his temper, which I find extremely sexy. Men who get upset and lose their tempers and claim to be sensitive males: talk about girly boys. No, there's a reason hurricanes are named after women and homosexual men, it's one of our little methods of social control. We're supposed to fly off the handle.
"They are supposed to be rock-solid men. Dick Cheney exudes that. Can you imagine him yelling at Lynne Cheney? No. Every female I know finds that so incredibly attractive."
What about Rumsfeld?
"Mmmmm-hmmmm. And I might add, inasmuch as we have just left the Clinton era, everyone recognizes this: There is absolutely no possible way any one of those men have ever cheated on their wives. No possible way. Even Colin Powell, who I don't particularly like politically-no possible way. These are honorable men and I think America recognizes that."
What was the most adventurous thing Ms. Coulter had done?
"Sexually?! Surely you don't imagine I'd answer that. This is not ElimaDate. I'm not on Blind Date."
Could she tell me the wildest thing she'd done in 2001, 2002?
"You're making a lot of assumptions even asking the question. I cannot believe the American journalists are upset that John Ashcroft is asking Muslims what they're doing taking flight lessons but think they can ask me about my supposed sex life."
I'd told her I'd heard she'd dated a Muslim guy.
"Yeah, cat's out of the bag on that one. That was after having him checked out by the F.B.I." She laughed.
"Because of my continued high opinion of Ann," e-mailed the Muslim guy, who did not want to be identified, "I am happy to let you know that she is extremely loyal, devoted to her family, as quick-witted a human being as you may ever happen across. She is the first to laugh at herself. She is kind, charming and extremely appreciative of others. She suffers no fools, but if she were forced to, she would suffer a conservative one. Never a lib. Her parents are unbelievably delightful and very much interested and inquisitive. She is one of those rare people who is capable of original thought. Oh yes, and she loves dogs, particularly beagles."
I asked Ann when the last time was she had cried.
"Tears of joy, when Clinton was impeached."
We headed down Fifth Avenue and talked about The New York Times.
I told her I usually read The Times before bed, because it depresses me.
"Oh, it totally gins me up, it works like coffee," she said. "I read it like a wolf."
How about all those very unflattering pictures they like running of conservatives, I asked. "Oh yeah, oh yeah," Ms. Coulter said. "They ran not one but two photos of George Herbert Walker Bush throwing up in Japan. Not one, one was not enough! Two photos of that. Is your tape recorder running? Turn it on! I got something to say."
Then she said: "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."
I told her to be careful.
"You're right, after 9/11 I shouldn't say that," she said, spotting a cab and grabbing it.
I first started thinking I might be conservative after witnessing the communist radical Angela Davis give a speech at University of Kansas in the late 80's. Hundreds of students cheered after she blamed the Bush administration for the crack epidemic.
This reminded me of that hippie girl my senior year who berated me at a party for saying I admired Margaret Thatcher. "She's a capitalist pig!" she screamed at me. I stammered. Then one of my best friends defended her, saying, "George, sorry, you got no leg to stand on, man." I had left the party ashamed, powerless.
That was in 1991. So I called up this same friend of mine, Hampton Stevens, now a freelance writer now living in Kansas City. He responded to Ann immediately. "I love it when she's unafraid to say that people are stupid and ignorant. She's written some stuff about liberal folly and it's so fantastic."
Did he find her attractive?
"Oh, I'd * the * out of her."
In the cab, I told Ms. Coulter that although back in college I'd been comforted by writers like Tom Wolfe, Camille Paglia and Dinesh D'Souza ("I've dated him, I've dated every right-winger," Ms. Coulter said), I remembered feeling that that nauseating political correctness was the way the world was going to be and I had to accept it.
"And then you moved to New York and it was true," she said. "The rest of America hates New York," she said, laughing. "I love that, I find it very comforting."
There was nothing wrong with me?
"No, we're living in an insane asylum," Ms. Coulter said. She said she "takes joy in liberal attacks. It's like coffee. I mean, usually when I write up a column, I know what's going to drive them crazy. I know when I'm baiting them, it's so easy to bait them and they always bite. That is my signature style, to start with the wild, bald, McCarthyite overstatements-seemingly-and then back it up with methodical and laborious research. Taunting liberals is like having a pet that does tricks. Sit! Beg! Shake! Then they do it."
Ann Coulter is not a screeching reactionary?
"The American people don't think so. I speak for them."
What happens if everybody finally converts to conservatism, then will the liberals finally give in?
"No, liberals are too stupid, they will never give in. They are implacable. They don't read. They hate America."
The cab stopped outside the Empire State Building. Her long, skinny legs stretched to the sidewalk.
"You're never going to get rid of liberals altogether," she said, laughing. Ann Coulter practically glowed at this thought.
I looked up at her from in the taxi. She seemed very tall against the sky.
You may reach George Gurley via email at: ggurley@observer.com.
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This column ran on page 1 in the 8/26/2002 edition of The New York Observer.
http://www.observer.com/pages/frontpage5.asp
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
by George Gurley
Ann Coulter, author of the No. 1 best-selling nonfiction book in America-Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right, a small book coruscating with giddy bile-was 20 minutes late to lunch at Michael's, the sunlit media-centric restaurant on West 55th Street. I'd been so excited to meet the glowing scimitar of the American right that I hadn't fallen asleep until 5 a.m. the night before.
Now I was worried that Ann had backed out. Had she figured she'd be un-welcomed, hissed at, throttled at the hub center of the media elite?
Bobby Zarem, the publicist, waved to me from a nearby table. He was sitting with a male writer and a female television producer. Both their composures underwent a remarkable transformation when I told them who would be joining me.
"She's the devil," said the producer, adding that Ms. Coulter was "ultraconservative."
"She is the Antichrist," said the writer. A piece of food flew out of his mouth. "We might have to leave."
Yes, mention Ann Coulter in New York and food tends to fly out of people's mouths. Then they get a knowing look that says, Are you kidding me? Well, I've got her number, oh yes I do .. Then, invariably, these people will use the same two words to describe her: either "crazy" or "insane." She is a lunatic "right-wing nut," and also a dangerous, demonic one.
Her book has been No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction since the first week it came out, in early July, which means that the people who dismiss her also have to deal with a secondary emotion: envy. This was true as well in the case of the drenchingly beautiful blonde Clare Boothe Luce, who reveled in writing hit plays when she wasn't wittily attacking New Dealers; the liberals were supposed to be the wits! It was also true of well-haberdashered libertarian Ayn Rand, and peppery magpie Phyllis Schlafly, whom Ms. Coulter champions in her book for bringing down the Equal Rights Amendment.
On page 2 of Slander-before she begins carving up "unhinged liberals" like Al Gore, Jesse Jackson, Dan Rather, Gloria Steinem and Walter Cronkite-Ms. Coulter attacks the "pathetic little parakeet males and grim, quivering, angry women on the Upper West Side of Manhattan hoping to be chosen as that day's purveyor of hate": the letter-writers to The New York Times.
At that point, I thought I was already falling in love.
However, in the second chapter I experienced an emotion I was less sure about.
"Every pernicious idea to come down the pike is instantly embraced by liberals to prove how powerful they are," Ms. Coulter writes. "Liberals hate society and want to bring it down to reinforce their sense of invincibility."
Now Ms. Coulter had triggered something else in me: I was getting really pissed off. I felt . infuriated . stirred up.
I looked around Michael's restaurant. They were everywhere.
No one at Michael's really noticed Ms. Coulter when she showed up, a sluice of sweat dripping off her long, perfect New Canaan nose, apologizing profusely-radio interview, subway, late for everything. She was wearing a simple black dress and black closed-toe heels. She looked nice, not evil.
"I'm never an insider," Ms. Coulter said, looking around the room, not recognizing anyone. "No, I don't know who they are, I don't care who they are. I don't want to go to their cocktail parties, and I no longer want to bother writing articles they ask me to write, only to have them killed when they discover, `Oh, maybe we don't want to publish a conservative after all.'"
So just write books? I chirped.
"That's right," she said. "That's right. The American people like me; editors don't. I've arranged my life so that I am unfireable. I don't have any bosses. The only people who can fire me are the American people. That's part of the reason I'm not anxious to have a TV show. Who's gonna give me a TV show? I didn't work for an impeached, disbarred President who was held in contempt by a federal judge. That's what they look for in objective reporters."
Next she mentioned some unfair treatment she'd received by Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz, and a recent appearance on MSNBC in which she was attacked by the host, Mike Barnicle (whose name she had trouble remembering for me), and "this Communist yapping at me"-who turned out to be Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor of The Nation.
"I think, on the basis of the recent Supreme Court ruling that we can't execute the retarded, American journalists commit mass murder without facing the ultimate penalty," Ms. Coulter told me. "I think they are retarded. I'm trying to communicate to the American people and I have to work through a retarded person!"
I must have been looking a little terrified.
"So you know, you say something and somehow `Betty Boop' comes out `Adolf Hitler'!" she said, laughing. "What?"
The gaunt Connecticut beauty emitted a horsy laugh.
There are 780 footnotes in the back of Slander, and so far, Ms. Coulter said, only two minor, irrelevant errors have surfaced. "`Do you realize what this means?'" she said she told her agent. "This means the rest of this book is true! This is scandalous!"
Even though Ms. Coulter's previous book, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton, was a best-seller, the publication of Slander did not happen smoothly. At the end of last year, her editor at HarperCollins, Robert Jones, to whom Slander is dedicated, died suddenly of cancer. Then her book was killed by HarperCollins. It took her agent, Joni Evans, two months to find a publisher. Ms. Coulter was told that conservative books don't sell. An editor at Doubleday informed her that "this book does not move the national dialogue forward," to which Ms. Coulter replied, "That's funny, because I thought book publishers made money on the basis of how many books they sold."
The Crown Publishing Group finally came through.
"I don't know-if I were Rupert Murdoch, I think I'd fire some of the people at HarperCollins for turning down the No. 1 best-selling book of the summer for purely ideological reasons," she said. "I think if I were a stockholder in HarperCollins, I'd be interested to know they turned it down because they personally disagree with it because they're Manhattan liberals."
She's been having fun on her book tour. Her recent appearance on Today was "fun" and "fantastic." She'd called Today co-host Katie Couric "the affable Eva Braun of morning TV" in her book, and the media had a glamorous pre-fab cat fight. Larry King Live didn't work out as well. Ms. Coulter was told they'd only have her on with Whitewater figure Susan McDougal. Then Phil Donahue wrestled her unpleasantly on MSNBC.
An old-timer at the next table who'd been staring into space walked by Ms. Coulter and said out of the side of his mouth, "I love the part of your book where you finally nail Reagan for inventing the Al Qaeda," and kept walking.
Ms. Coulter smiled but didn't look up. "I think he's a crazy person," she said. "There's something about celebrity-it attracts people with the tin foil on their heads. I think that was a guy with tin foil on his head."
Ms. Coulter's book is filled with insults. Christie Todd Whitman is a "birdbrain" and a "dimwit," while Senator Jim Jeffords is a "half-wit." The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin is a "political hack duly celebrated for making things up, engaging in unethical behavior, and sliming other liberal journalists for a want of alacrity in bending over for Bill Clinton." Ms. Coulter described this as "colorful commentary." And she said it's all backed up with footnotes.
She called herself "an open controversialist," as though it rationalized everything. Ms. Coulter's gazpacho was taken away. She was served a hanger steak.
Mr. Zarem and his two friends got up to leave. I told Ms. Coulter they'd called her the Antichrist.
"Excellent!" she said. "Excellent. It is a good thing, not a bad thing, to be attacked by the enemy."
Before her book was published, Ms. Coulter had an idea to only run endorsements by her liberal enemies on the jacket flap, but her publisher said no. Instead, there are quotes from Rush Limbaugh, Bill Maher and Geraldo Rivera. Ms. Coulter said she's also friendly with MSNBC commentator and West Wing writer Lawrence O'Donnell and Saturday Night Live political satirists Jim Downey and Al Franken. Ms. Coulter said she handed a copy of her book to The New York Times' David *, who looked it over, then replied: "You know, I've got to start e-mailing you my articles because there's a lot more you could have attacked me for!"
One of Mr. *'s colleagues was not amused. "Frank Rich," she said, "is the only person ever who has refused to be in a green room with me." But former Times White House correspondent Frank Bruni, now in Rome, is a friend of hers, and she said that Times columnist Maureen Dowd doesn't mind her, even after being heaped with abuse in Slander. "She's attacked me," Ms. Coulter said. "I think it's good P.R. In fact, I'm a little disappointed she hasn't attacked me recently."
I asked Ms. Coulter if she wanted a world without liberals.
"Yes! They've nearly wrecked the country. Off with them!"
Was it O.K. to have been a liberal back in the 1950's and 60's?
"Well, yeah. They believed in America then." Then Ms. Coulter said her "opinion of J.F.K. went up" because "Joe Kennedy Sr. was a huge fan of McCarthy. These people were genuine anti-Communists."
But didn't McCarthy ruin hundreds of lives? This wasn't part of the game. Ms. Coulter gave me a give-it-up look.
"I think we're off the topic of this book. It will be of more interest after my next book."
Ann Coulter, who is on the cusp of 40, grew up in a big house in New Canaan, Conn., the daughter of a lawyer and a homemaker from Kentucky. She describes the whole family as right-wing and "cheerfully argumentative." One day in kindergarten, she said, young Ann confronted a teacher in the library who was wearing a black arm band and denouncing America's involvement in Vietnam.
"I raised my little paw," she said, "and instead of reading Bambi to us or whatever that day, we just argued about this." She remembers saying that the country had a "commitment to defend these people, and America's word should be worth something. Exactly as I'd heard it said.
"I can't believe you have me telling you this, but it is Coulter family folklore," she said, and then told her family myth about little Ann taking some stuff from her two older brothers and selling it back to them. "My parents wanted to encourage this incipient capitalism, so they gave my brothers a nickel to buy back whatever it was, and everyone thought it was cute until I took it all back again .. One time was cute, the second time I was being a Democrat.
"I had a very happy childhood-nothing conflicted, lots of friends, lots of boyfriends, athletic," she said. In the seventh grade her beagle, Tiger, died. "That was the only bad thing that ever happened to me."
Her father represented Phelps Dodge Corporation, the mining and manufacturing giant, and while negotiating with the unions, he presided over the largest union decertification ever.
"It was a stupid time," Ms. Coulter said. "The idea that this seems to fit into-which is absolutely not true-is this idea of the WASP's in Connecticut swatting down workers with their polo mallets. To the contrary, my father was not to the manor born, and has had quite a bit of sympathy with the working man. One of those cases was the copper mines in Arizona .. I've worked in one of those mines, as has my brother, as summer jobs. They get very high wages, they get all their health care taken care of, and it's an open-pit mine, so you're working on the side of a mountain-and for the union to be going on strike at that point was just absurd, and they broke the strike and the union was voted out."
Ms. Coulter said she was a "good girl" as a teenager and that one thing she was worried about before her book came out was people sifting through her past looking for dirt. She and an old friend tried, but turned up nothing. "You know, no nude pictures, no drugs, no scandals, no weird associations," she said. She attended Cornell University, was in the Delta Gamma sorority, founded the right-wing Cornell Review. Then came the University of Michigan Law School, where she said she was "infamous"; she started the Federalist Society chapter and began following the Grateful Dead in earnest-she now estimates she saw the band 67 times, but never did even half a hit of LSD.
"No drug has ever tempted me except LSD," she said. "When I'm in the nursing home some day .. I've never smoked pot except passively at Dead shows, but I got a lot of it there." Ms. Coulter can drink, though. "I am a WASP," she said. In 1989, she clerked for a federal appeals court judge in Kansas City. I told her I grew up there.
"I loved Kansas City!" she said. "It's like my favorite place in the world. Oh, I think it is so great out there. Well, that's America. It's the opposite of this town. They're Americans, they're so great, they're rooting for America. I mean, there's so much common sense!
"No, you're a real American."
She said she goes back to K.C. all the time. "You could sit in that beautiful Royals stadium, you could leave your purse in your chair and go to the bathroom-I mean, think of that. There's all these attractive people in Izod shirts and just such good values, they're just normal, fun people, and athletic." She compared Kansas City parties to New York "alcohol" parties. "In Kansas City," she said, "all the parties were always organized around, like, a softball game, waterskiing, going on a ski trip together. Oh, I so loved it."
I agreed with her, sort of. It was annoying how people here look down on Middle Westerners. She said they are "so much smarter and cooler."
She also loves Texas.
"I love Texas Republicans!" she said. "They're these beautiful women, they're so great-looking, they're completely loaded. They're dripping in this gorgeous jewelry, they're really funny and sarcastic and smart. Americans are so cool, and they're such parochial idiots here in New York. I mean, they really do seem to think in the Northeast that the South . is like an English-speaking Saudi Arabia and it must be coached in tolerance."
We were both whooping it up, I'm afraid.
"Oh God, they're so stupid in New York! But it's fun living in the belly of the beast, don't you think? I mean we can laugh at them."
I changed the subject. Who was sexy? The movie stars Ms. Coulter digs are Andy Garcia, Peter Horton and Tom Selleck. She doesn't think George W. Bush sexy but finds it "very comforting" he's commander in chief.
What about Clinton?
"Oh! Never. Oh, he's a pudgy little guy whose greatest moment on the football field involved a clarinet. And take that down."
It was a saxophone, but no matter. Matt Drudge?
"Oh, Drudge, he's the sexiest man alive. Drudge, he's fabulous."
How about CNN's Tucker Carlson, Howard Kurtz, James Carville and Paul Begala?
"I would say I think all of them are pathetic little girly-boys. They're like anti-sexy. They are saltpeter."
How did she feel about the Vice President?
"Cheney is my ideal man. Because he's solid. He's funny. He's very handsome. He was a football player. People don't think about him as the glamour type because he's a serious person, he wears glasses, he's lost his hair. But he's a very handsome man. And you cannot imagine him losing his temper, which I find extremely sexy. Men who get upset and lose their tempers and claim to be sensitive males: talk about girly boys. No, there's a reason hurricanes are named after women and homosexual men, it's one of our little methods of social control. We're supposed to fly off the handle.
"They are supposed to be rock-solid men. Dick Cheney exudes that. Can you imagine him yelling at Lynne Cheney? No. Every female I know finds that so incredibly attractive."
What about Rumsfeld?
"Mmmmm-hmmmm. And I might add, inasmuch as we have just left the Clinton era, everyone recognizes this: There is absolutely no possible way any one of those men have ever cheated on their wives. No possible way. Even Colin Powell, who I don't particularly like politically-no possible way. These are honorable men and I think America recognizes that."
What was the most adventurous thing Ms. Coulter had done?
"Sexually?! Surely you don't imagine I'd answer that. This is not ElimaDate. I'm not on Blind Date."
Could she tell me the wildest thing she'd done in 2001, 2002?
"You're making a lot of assumptions even asking the question. I cannot believe the American journalists are upset that John Ashcroft is asking Muslims what they're doing taking flight lessons but think they can ask me about my supposed sex life."
I'd told her I'd heard she'd dated a Muslim guy.
"Yeah, cat's out of the bag on that one. That was after having him checked out by the F.B.I." She laughed.
"Because of my continued high opinion of Ann," e-mailed the Muslim guy, who did not want to be identified, "I am happy to let you know that she is extremely loyal, devoted to her family, as quick-witted a human being as you may ever happen across. She is the first to laugh at herself. She is kind, charming and extremely appreciative of others. She suffers no fools, but if she were forced to, she would suffer a conservative one. Never a lib. Her parents are unbelievably delightful and very much interested and inquisitive. She is one of those rare people who is capable of original thought. Oh yes, and she loves dogs, particularly beagles."
I asked Ann when the last time was she had cried.
"Tears of joy, when Clinton was impeached."
We headed down Fifth Avenue and talked about The New York Times.
I told her I usually read The Times before bed, because it depresses me.
"Oh, it totally gins me up, it works like coffee," she said. "I read it like a wolf."
How about all those very unflattering pictures they like running of conservatives, I asked. "Oh yeah, oh yeah," Ms. Coulter said. "They ran not one but two photos of George Herbert Walker Bush throwing up in Japan. Not one, one was not enough! Two photos of that. Is your tape recorder running? Turn it on! I got something to say."
Then she said: "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."
I told her to be careful.
"You're right, after 9/11 I shouldn't say that," she said, spotting a cab and grabbing it.
I first started thinking I might be conservative after witnessing the communist radical Angela Davis give a speech at University of Kansas in the late 80's. Hundreds of students cheered after she blamed the Bush administration for the crack epidemic.
This reminded me of that hippie girl my senior year who berated me at a party for saying I admired Margaret Thatcher. "She's a capitalist pig!" she screamed at me. I stammered. Then one of my best friends defended her, saying, "George, sorry, you got no leg to stand on, man." I had left the party ashamed, powerless.
That was in 1991. So I called up this same friend of mine, Hampton Stevens, now a freelance writer now living in Kansas City. He responded to Ann immediately. "I love it when she's unafraid to say that people are stupid and ignorant. She's written some stuff about liberal folly and it's so fantastic."
Did he find her attractive?
"Oh, I'd * the * out of her."
In the cab, I told Ms. Coulter that although back in college I'd been comforted by writers like Tom Wolfe, Camille Paglia and Dinesh D'Souza ("I've dated him, I've dated every right-winger," Ms. Coulter said), I remembered feeling that that nauseating political correctness was the way the world was going to be and I had to accept it.
"And then you moved to New York and it was true," she said. "The rest of America hates New York," she said, laughing. "I love that, I find it very comforting."
There was nothing wrong with me?
"No, we're living in an insane asylum," Ms. Coulter said. She said she "takes joy in liberal attacks. It's like coffee. I mean, usually when I write up a column, I know what's going to drive them crazy. I know when I'm baiting them, it's so easy to bait them and they always bite. That is my signature style, to start with the wild, bald, McCarthyite overstatements-seemingly-and then back it up with methodical and laborious research. Taunting liberals is like having a pet that does tricks. Sit! Beg! Shake! Then they do it."
Ann Coulter is not a screeching reactionary?
"The American people don't think so. I speak for them."
What happens if everybody finally converts to conservatism, then will the liberals finally give in?
"No, liberals are too stupid, they will never give in. They are implacable. They don't read. They hate America."
The cab stopped outside the Empire State Building. Her long, skinny legs stretched to the sidewalk.
"You're never going to get rid of liberals altogether," she said, laughing. Ann Coulter practically glowed at this thought.
I looked up at her from in the taxi. She seemed very tall against the sky.
You may reach George Gurley via email at: ggurley@observer.com.
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This column ran on page 1 in the 8/26/2002 edition of The New York Observer.
http://www.observer.com/pages/frontpage5.asp
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Comments
Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Thursday, Aug. 22, 2002
WASHINGTON - If leftist policies go forward unchecked, 9-11 will happen again, says popular broadcaster Sean Hannity. Further, he points out, Ronald Reagan warned that attempts to weaken the CIA could endanger American lives.
"Time and time again on issues of defense, on issues of border security, issues of defense spending, issues of intelligence, the left in America has repeatedly been on the wrong side of those issues," Hannity told NewsMax.com.
As his book "Let Freedom Ring" was being shipped to the market, the 40-year-old host - whose three-hour weekday radio show attracts about 10 million regular listeners, less than a year since it went national - outlined for us his case for the American people, with special attention to its first chapter, "Civilization in the Balance."
"I don't want to wake up one morning, and . turn on my television set . and witness what happened September 11th ever again."
And yet, says the conservative co-host of Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes" nightly TV show, the left continues to act as if nothing happened, as if this nation were not at war, as if the deadly wakeup call never happened.
As Hannity sees it, leftist history on life-and-death issues continues as if no lessons were learned from the terrorist attacks on America.
Destroying U.S. Security
"The left is the group that wanted to unilaterally disarm. The left voted for nuclear freezes. It was Ronald Reagan who built up our nuclear defense system," with the left fighting him every step of the way.
"It was Ronald Reagan who stood up to Gorbachev and said, `Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.' It was Ronald Reagan who wanted to go forward with Strategic Defense."
Furthermore, Hannity adds, it was Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan D-N.Y., "who wanted to get rid of the CIA. He proposed abolishing it."
And it was Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., "in conjunction with the Clinton administration, who rendered the CIA impotent by forbidding them to deal with the unsavory characters that a person of understanding knows you have to deal with in a dangerous world where there are evil people .."
"That's their record," says the rising radio-TV star, contemplating what the world will be like for his two small children. "They [left-wingers] can't run from that. They can't hide from that."
Hannity, whose radio show skyrocketed in ratings on New York City's WABC-AM, and then made its debut on a nationwide hookup just hours before hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and rural Pennsylvania, noted that whenever anyone suggested "in the years prior to 9-11 suggested controlling our nation's borders, in a knee-jerk fashion [that person was] labeled a racist."
Hannity's forebears came here from Ireland and ran into discrimination on the order of "Irish Catholics Need Not Apply." That has left him with an understanding of the concern about discrimination against today's newcomers to our shores.
Yes to Lawful Immigrants, No to Illegal Aliens
"But it's got to be legal," he cautions. "I favor immigration. We've got to know who's here. We've got to know who's coming in."
The "visa express" scandal in Saudi Arabia, where one could simply go through a travel agency to get to America even after Sept. 11, illustrates his point.
Even in the post-9-11 world, "some of these guys on the left don't get it," the broadcaster told NewsMax. "They want to give driver's licenses to illegal aliens. They want water fountains in the desert rather than guards preventing people from crossing our borders. They want in-state tuition prices . for illegal immigrants.
"They fight tooth and nail to lower defense appropriations even in time of war. And some of them still question the role of the CIA in the modern world."
Reagan Proved Correct
Hannity "leapt for joy" when his research took him to a 25-year-old warning from Ronald Reagan that America cripples its intelligence capability at its own peril, a warning that was tragically vindicated on Sept. 11.
Way back in June 1977, the future president castigated the Senate committee report that criticized the CIA as if our intelligence service itself were the enemy. As Reagan put it, the committee, headed by then-Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, "makes one wonder if they know who is the enemy."
"Thirty-eight of the report's forty pages were consumed with determining whether the CIA was operating lawfully, not whether they were operating effectively against the Soviets, the Chinese, the Cubans, the Arab world, or other threats," Hannity notes in "Let Freedom Ring."
Reagan concluded his 1977 broadcast with this rhetorical question: "Isn't it time for someone to ask if we weren't threatened more by the people the FBI and the CIA are watching than we are by the FBI and the CIA?"
Later, when he became president, Reagan appointed as CIA director Bill Casey, perhaps the most no-nonsense and most effective leader in the agency's history. Later, it took the likes of Clinton and Torricelli to * what Casey had built. Only Sept. ll caused a serious re-evaluation of the left's perennial effort to weaken or abolish U.S. intelligence efforts.
Gore Proved Wrong
For those who wonder why many Americans were thankful that George W. Bush was president on Sept. 11 instead of Al Gore, "Let Freedom Ring" cites a quote from the former vice president's book "Earth in the Balance," wherein he says that more money should be spent on the environment and less on intelligence, and that the rise of foreign military threats and terrorist networks were "an increasingly remote threat to our national security."
That quotation may or may not have something to do with a report Aug. 11 in the Washington Times that "Democrats look beyond Gore" for the next presidential race. Gore's statement could prove embarrassing if brought up in a televised debate.
Even now, a congressional panel has noted that although Congress has mandated an end to the Clinton-Torricelli policy of not recruiting undercover informants with shady pasts, the turnaround had not been implemented as of July. It was pointed out that a choirboy is hardly credible doing undercover work with terrorists.
As Hannity tells NewsMax: "We still don't get it. We can be hit tomorrow, and it wouldn't surprise me because we have a lot more to do. We have a lot farther to go."
Next: Sean Hannity exposes the left's anti-choice hypocrisy
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/8/21/200459.shtml
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Posted: August 22, 2002
1:00 a.m. Eastern
c 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
If you want to hijack an airplane, you have to catch the passengers off guard. When you show your hand, you must be in a position to overpower them by force or entice them to cooperate.
On Sept. 11, 2001, skyjackers took three planes by surprise. However, by the time a fourth plane, United Airlines flight 93, was on its way to its intended target, the passengers aboard were well aware of what was about to happen. Todd Beamer and a few other brave souls aboard that plane foiled that plan.
Next week, at Earth Summit II in Johannesburg, South Africa, plans will have been made to hijack the world and bring it under the control of the United Nations. However, President George W. Bush, taking a cue from these 9-11 heroes, is trying to steer the United States out of the way in a last-ditch attempt to head off this impending disaster.
The weapon used by these global hijackers is not new. It is called "sustainable development." Ten years ago, when it was first unveiled in Rio de Janeiro, at the first Earth Summit, it seemed harmless enough. In fact, this weapon has been carried by thousands of U.S. citizens, who have brandished it about in their neighborhoods, completely unaware of the lethal effect it has on the freedoms they now take for granted.
The Koran of sustainable development is Agenda 21, a 40-chapter action plan, developed by the haters of capitalism and adopted at Rio to create a world in perfect harmony with nature. Few people have read it. That is why the definition of sustainable development often changes.
Hundreds of multi-national corporations have been persuaded to carry water for sustainable development, which is presented as a concept too big and too important to be stopped. "Come along. Get in our boat or you will be swept away by this rising tide."
To these businessmen, sustainable development has been presented as a way to maintain or kick-start economic growth around the globe without irreparably harming the environment. To the peace loving, it is a way to minimize the differences between the rich and the poor, which create tensions and unrest. To the tender hearted, it is presented as a way to fight poverty and killer diseases like AIDS, while providing clear water and sanitation to billions of people in the developing world.
In June, in Bali at the U.N. pre-conference, the rallying cry was "What are we going to do about the United States?" It was printed on T-shirts. It was the question asked by Chair Emil Salim of Indonesia. It was a question asked by delegates from Third World and socialist countries who are poised to carry off more evil capitalist loot. It was a question on the lips of radical environmentalists from around the globe who want to rid the world of factories and automobiles.
Bush, as the leader of not only the richest but most generous country on this planet, didn't budge. He refused to sign binding international agreements that would further cede away our sovereignty. He would not agree to a mechanism to give the U.N. the ability to tax us, thereby making this aggressive world body self-sufficient.
However, Bush is sending Secretary of State Colin Powell to Johannesburg with an extended but firm hand. Like Todd Beamer, Bush has glimpsed the intended target of these global hijackers and he is determined that we won't go there. Instead, he will tie development aid to democratic and market-oriented reforms by the recipient nations. What a concept!
Bush can keep more of our freedom from being hijacked at this conference. However, he can't prevent our country from being hijacked from within without a lot of help from you and me.
In 1993, his predecessor, Bill Clinton, began implementing Agenda 21 by Executive Order. Congress not only permitted it; Congress adopted legislation that moved us closer to compliance. The Community Character Act provided the seed money to move us toward "sustainable communities" in order to fight a newly created enemy "urban sprawl."
That is how the globalists plan to hijack your community. That is how they are manipulating us into bringing more and more of our private property under government control until, eventually, we all are herded into high-rise buildings, in order to leave the earth free for the animals to roam.
Don't take my word for it. Read Agenda 21 for yourself. If you currently are carrying water for this movement, stop! Attend a town council or county commission meeting and begin fighting this "smart growth" legislation before it is too late. In the words of Todd Beamer, "Let's roll!"
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28689
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
By Wayne Carlson
Published 08. 19. 02 at 19:08 Sierra Time
Many of America's dumbed-down, well-indoctrinated people will take immediate umbrage at the mere suggestion that it is possible for the United States to have political prisoners. This, after all, is "the land of the free and the home of the brave," they will shout. They believe we are "a shining city on a hill" and "the world's last, best hope" for human freedom. At least that is what we have been taught to believe. But is it true, and if so, how can we tell?
I ask these questions in all seriousness, as I believe it imperative that we cast the light of introspection on government. We should be vitally concerned with where our present policies are taking us. As politicians are rarely farsighted in their thinking, being more concerned with looking good in the press, or in their reelection campaigns, it falls to us, the people, to consider where their policies are taking us. It falls to us to make sure that they do not abuse the powers we've entrusted to them and to threaten them with political annihilation if they do. I don't believe we have done our job in this regard, at least not enough of us. The few who bother to read columns such as this are likely not the problem.
For those who sense, as I do, that our country and our freedoms are imperiled, not from abroad, but from within, it becomes necessary for us to reflect upon our present policies. Few would argue that free enterprise, domestic tranquility, world peace, local and state autonomy, personal privacy, and the inviolate nature of the church and the family are not things the government should be promoting, but are they? Are the principles and rights that the country was founded on, such as private property, the consent of the governed, and free association, studiously protected? Does the government refrain from, and repudiate, all laws and policies that trample upon the integrity of the Constitution and Bill of Rights? These questions, and many others that could be asked should give us pause. We might expect the shallow thinker to quickly answer yes since they have been conditioned to trust those in power to always do what is right, despite all evidence to the contrary. They don't even raise an eyebrow when their leaders, with a straight face, tell them that the reason their country is hated, and is now subject to horrific terrorist attacks, has to do with our being "free." Frankly, such idiotic babblings and excuses for why we have people willing to commit suicide in their attacks against us, if truly believed by our leaders, is absolutely frightening. Common sense (not to mention a glance at history), which is somehow absent from the commentary thrust our way, might suggest that the violence directed at us stems from some very real violence, or perceived threat, felt by others, as a result of our foreign policies. Certainly that makes more sense than any bogus explanation pointing to what some psychologist somewhere will likely classify as "freedom envy." How can we hope to prevent recurrences when the real cause is studiously avoided and we are told that to simply challenge the prevailing idiocy is the equivalent of aiding and abetting the enemy? Such reasoning is not merely stupid it is insane.
I realize that for those with no religious faith beyond their worship of the present Imperial State, my words are not merely wasted, but an affront. That cannot be helped. I appeal to those who understand that government can be a useful servant, but a fearful master. There are those who will be ready, during some future crisis, to trade their freedoms for the promise that they'll be taken care of if they'll just "adjust" to the "sacrifices" they will be told are necessary. Our current vague, self-righteous, and unending war against "evil," may be just the means to bring this about. Perhaps we have but to wait for the next attack, when martial law is declared, the Constitution suspended, and the emergence of a permanent police state inaugurated, to witness the willing surrender of the last vestiges of our old freedoms.
What has been lost on the average American is the realization that it took almost 2000 years for the Christian West to produce a system of government on these shores that held the promise of preserving and protecting the people's freedom and liberty. Founded upon principles and truths that had largely eluded mankind throughout history, our ancestors were very aware of how difficult it was to win one's freedom and how quickly and easily it is lost. Thus they spoke of our need to be eternally vigilant, jealously guarding all who approach that "jewel". They understood that only a virtuous, God-fearing people would be able to sustain their liberties. They did not confuse liberty with licentiousness, as we have done in our day. They did not confuse God-given rights with the ever expanding "human" and "civil" rights that plague us today. Finally, they did not confuse God's created order, and man's fallen nature, with Utopian heresies of man's and societies perfectibility through "reason", social experimentation, government edicts, and the power of violent compulsion.
The study of History, and the resultant appreciation for the unequaled achievements of Western Christian civilization gives us the ability to see where we've been, where we are now, and how we got here. It also can show us how far astray we have gone and it points the way back. There is no point in mincing words or engaging in the fanciful delusions that everything is perfectly fine in America today because it isn't. Our liberties, if not our lives, are now gravely threatened by the multitude of evils concocted by the anti-Christian, Communist/Socialist element in our midst, that has reeked so much misery in places like Russia, China and elsewhere. Having first gained control over the greatest bulwark of our liberties, our individual State governments, through military conquest, they no longer act as they were intended in interposing themselves between the usurpers and centralizers that threaten the people's liberties, or the prerogatives of the States. In time, other key institutions, such as the media and education came under their control. Students of history might recall that our domestic Communists once spoke of the necessity of making a "long march through the institutions," before they could successfully subvert the United States. One has but to read the ten planks of "The Communist Manifesto" to see the extent of their influence in the government, and by extension, the government schools today. The mainstream media (thank God for the internet), long ago came under the control of anti-Christian leftists. With all these institutions largely under their control, only the family and the church, along with our remembrance of who and what we are, stands in their way. Who cannot see that the institutions the leftists control, and those they have created to aid them such as the ACLU and the SPLC, to name but a few, continuously work to undermine the last vestiges of resistance to their absolute dominance.
Reflecting back on the questions I posed in the beginning, I would ask you to ponder whether or not government is the real friend of free enterprise, competition, and the small businessman. Is there no favoritism on behalf of "Corporatism"? What about "bailouts," "incentive packages," trade deals, open borders to acquire cheap labor, and the ever-present threat of military protection if corporate interests/profits are threatened abroad? Does a virtual open border policy and the cycle of amnesties for millions of invading foreigners promote domestic tranquility, a more perfect union, and the preservation of our historic culture and people? Only a fool can think
so. Are representative government, or the integrity of the Constitution even possible when nine black-robed, non-elected men and women, serving for life, make or unmake our laws? What recourse do we have when Congress stands silent while these people invent new "rights", and "interpret" the Constitution any way they like, over the objections of the people. What moral credibility do they possess when they sanction the murder of the most defenseless people of all, the unborn? We could go on and on. Who cannot see that this is not the country, nor the form of government established by Washington, Madison, or the rest of the founders? No, it is a fraud, masquerading as the same thing. I cannot speak for anyone but myself, but I know I am not alone in saying that I want my country back. I want my government back. I want it to exercise only those enumerated powers specifically delegated to it, and I want it to respect the 10th Amendment. In short, I stand opposed to those who hate my Christian, Western-European culture and civilization, and who work to destroy every vestige of it. I will not go quietly into "the New World Order." I will seek to rally those like-minded patriots, who love the Old Republic and are willing to fight for it. If we cannot save the whole country, then I'll settle for saving some piece of it by withdrawing and setting up a new government based on the original. If successful, I believe we would recall the sage advice of George Washington who said we should desire friendly commerce with all and entangling alliances with none. In other words, he thought it best that we mind our own business. Why can't America do that today? Perhaps if we followed his advice our children would have no reason to fear terrorist attacks and we could avoid the garrison State mentality that promises to destroy liberty in the name of preserving it. Above all, we could restore the God created order intended for mankind. For a blueprint of this plan I recommend that we all refer back to our Bibles.
Are political prisoners present in the land today? Well, I suppose the military conquest of 11 sovereign States in 1865 would lead one to believe that the Southern people were made political prisoners under another people's control. The unreconstructed adherents of the old Republic today, followers of the old faith that made it possible, certainly might feel like political prisoners as well. Now, before someone says that I must be a radical member of some "lunatic fringe," perhaps we ought to speculate on why fewer than 40% of the people bother to vote in our national elections. Could it be that the majority of these disaffected voters recognize that the two-party political machine is rigged and that it actively works to prevent any challenge to their political hegemony? People don't vote when there is nothing for which to vote.
While we may not have any Gulags or "reeducation camps" (can you say "sensitivity training") yet, history and the nature of unrestrained governments suggest that they are not unimaginable. The present tyranny of "political correctness," which seeks to stifle any dissent or debate, is certainly a symptom of our narrowing liberties and must be vigorously challenged. Time will tell if we are worthy of the freedoms we assume we still have, or if we will allow our children to become little more than vassals of the State. I welcome comments at simplysouthern@i-plus.net
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http://www.sierratimes.com/02/08/20/carlson.htm
c 2002 SierraTimes.com (unless otherwise noted)
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
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"If cowardly & dishonorable men shoot unarmed men with army guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary...and not by general deprivation of constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878