"anybody who thinks Guantánamo should be shut down, as I do, is perceived automatically as somebody on the Left. This is because there has been a long tradition within the conservative movement to suppress civil rights. People who got into the movement, and have spent time in the movement, assume that the suppression of civil rights is okay. This is why Bush was able to get the Patriot Act passed, when Clinton did not have the courage to introduce his version to Congress. It is easier to get conservatives to vote for something like this than it is to get Democrats to vote for it. "

Evil is evil, and this describes why the lesser of two evils often actually causes more damage to individual liberty than what was perceived as the greater evil.

"So, the political charade goes on. It will continue to go on until the day that the federal government does not have the ability to write the checks any longer. At that point, all over the world, the superclass will find that they have lost legitimacy in the eyes of the people, and they have lost the ability to control what happens at the local level."

The first and second sentences are true, and one can only hope the third is too.

Excellent article. Thanks for posting it. It is Uncommon Sense.

Why do we care? Is there any real difference between Republicans and Democrats? Within the Republican party, is there any significant difference between conservative and old-line middle-of-the roaders? Upon close examination, with a few (very few) notable exceptions, all of Washington is a homogenized conglomeration of the slightest of differences. that has been left out of the fridge too long and stinks.

A great post. Ayn Rand, it goes without saying, was outside the consensus. Liberty at home and a noninterventionist foreign policy is outside the consensus. It dismays me to see how many posts on Galt's Gulch amount to intellectual ping-pong well within acceptable consensus parameters. If and when liberty and limited, constrained government is restored in the US, it will not be from within the current system. Statism cannot be stopped by accepting the statist premises on which that system rests. Rand correctly identified those premises and the foundations of a just government. How to get there from here: aye, there's the rub. Although she averred that the strike was a fictional device, it may be the only nonviolent way to get to the ideal. The other possibility is waiting for collapse and then promoting the ideal as the way to emerge from the rubble. Of course these two possibilities are not mutually exclusive.

Thanks for posting this. It makes clear that the standard political cleavages that dominate the MSM are a smokescreen hiding essential agreement on statist premises. I don't know enough about Goldwater to say if he was truly outside the consensus. I disagree with the article that Reagan was. He put CFR stalwarts Bush and Baker in his administration, and by the time he left office the government was bigger, more intrusive, and more indebted, long-standing aims of the CFR crowd. From the time he was governor, Reagan's anti-government rhetoric was more impressive than his actual, pro-government record.

Excellent post uncommon. +1.

It's a good idea to find out if they guy you think is being reasonable and rational when he pontificates on a news show is a CFR guy....like Charles Krauthammer. His agenda is probably not your agenda.

It would be refreshing to have a leader not associated with the CFR, IMF, Skull and Bones, Goldman Sacks, or any of the popular inside policy labs. I would like a leader who, for the love of Country made decisions for the benefit of the USA. The rest of the world will adjust. Not only do we not have to be the world's police, we do not have to please the World either. Unless...like the present guy, you hope to be President of the world someday.

To be honest, I had a really hard time following this. The guy talked a lot about Harvard conspiracy groups and how Democrats understand how to manipulate the system, but I guess I'm just missing the rest of his argument here.

Gary Kilgore North calls himself an American Christian Reconstructionist theorist, a long term for apologist. The little I have read authored by the guy shows a love of conspiracy theories from the usual "Christianity is a victim" perspective. North wrote: "I certainly believe in biblical theocracy.” I would not place much weight upon what he says.