Saturday, February 13, 2010

Medina vs the Machines

This past week thousands of Texans listened in amazement to the exchange with Glenn Beck and Debra Medina. The amazement of many was not so much over Medina's responses, which were mostly straightforward, comprehensive and reasonable (more on that later), but over Beck's tactics and his outrageous remarks afterward. But I'm getting ahead of myself. A lot of questions must be asked and answered before we can hope to make some sense of this debacle in American historical context. A few of these, but by no means all, are:

1. Why would Glenn Beck seek to waylay a candidate whose primary policies are amazingly in line with those which he himself has espoused all year long on this FOX news opinion show?

2. Why would Beck, who has often wildly speculated on information he and his team have cobbled together, deny to another the same privilege of looking critically at their government and leaders?

Is it so crazy to question the government? After all, the government is not monolithic. The government is more like the Hindu goddess Mahakali, with her several right hands often having no idea what her left hands (and multiple faces) are doing––or why they are doing it.

*Have not many raised questions about Kennedy's assassination and the possible role of some in government?

*What about the false pretext the government used to begin the Spanish American war?

*What about Wilson running as the candidate of peace, only to involve America in Europe's first great war, justifying our entry into a European dispute as "the war to end all wars?" Yea, right. How about calling it what it really was, "The war to increase the American Empire and make it a world power?"

*What about the false pretexts upon which we entered Vietnam?

*What about the speculation that US leaders knew about the attack on Pearl Harbor but did nothing?

*What about Eisenhower himself warning the people about the military/industrial complex? (Guess he didn't know about the bankers).

*What about the speculation that those in Lincoln's own cabinet may have helped facilitate his assassination?

*What about Ruby Ridge, Waco, agent orange, government drug experimentation, the global warming scam, WMDs, terrorizing citizens about flu epidemics, the scores of food, drug and health issues abounding, and dozens if not hundreds of other questionable events?

When Daniel Webster questioned the notion that Madison had Constitutional powers to conscript our young men, willy nilly, to fight a war for the advantage and folly of a few, was he called a nut, unpatriotic and consigned to the booby hatch of history?

Now that evidence abounds about many powerful among us wanting a unified world government why is it all of a sudden considered crazy to question the motives of some in the government, especially in regard to events of international concern and the world economy?

But the $64.00 question at hand is why, most especially, would media Arch Speculator Beck consider it wacky for Debra and others to do a little of what he's been doing a lot of (and making beaucoup $$$ for doing so)?

3. Why would Sarah Palin, Tea Party Queen par excellence, arrive in Texas only to turn a cold shoulder to the candidate supported by most of the Texas tea party and the Campaign for Liberty, the candidate that supports virtually every policy to which Palin has paid lip service, and by which she has ingratiated herself with the Tea Party people? Why has she snubbed the Texas Tea Party people become a shill for a man who, to put it kindly, has a spotty record, a man who is clearly a politician cut from the same cloth as those she opposed to become governor of Alaska?

4. Why, during the interview, did Beck refuse to explore the critique of Perry that Medina made and completely ignore the libertarian red meat issues Debra mentioned? Why would he then, out of the blue, relentlessly press her on a question that has no relevance in the Texas governor's race whatsoever, and, the moment he gets the sound byte he's looking for, cut Debra off abruptly, immediately don the clown mask and the ooga horn and begin to putting words in her mouth ("I guess that's a 'yes'.")? Why would he then procede to categorically damn her and clearly endorse Perry using the most uncouth and revolting imagery?––Revolting unless, of course, you find the image of Beck French kissing Rick Perry appealing.

5. Why would FOX news, employer of both Beck and Palin, ramp up an attack on Medina right after the interview? You'd almost think it had all been planned. That is, unless you're afraid others might think you're a conspiracy nut, know what I mean?

But if you're not afraid you'd also think FOX may be trying to do to Debra what they tried to do Ron Paul. Remember how FOX ignored Dr. Paul in 2008, despite a popular uprising of support unparalleled in America's political history? Of course, FOX can't handle Medina the same exact way because Debra has gotten so much support she can't be as easily ignored as Paul. And this brings us to our last question:

6. Why would this all out attack come at the very moment when Debra begins climbing in the polls? Timing in politics, as in comedy, is everything and you can bet this is no accident.

7. Why would the large number of letters Beck received prior to the Medina interview include a “common theme”–– complaints that Medina was a 9/11 truther. Really? Why, then, have local hosts in Dallas and Houston, who have received thousands upon thousands of letters for weeks about Medina, pro and con, not received a single one mentioning this subject in any way? Not a single one! Was this really an issue in Beck's mail? We have only Beck's word for it. And if his word is good, why then, did he openly lie a week later on a Houston interview and knowingly play a segment of his Medina interview out of order in an effort to justify his outrageous behavior and further discredit Ms. Medina?

Considering the evidence it is almost impossible to resist concluding that the Machine is hard at work here––not the state Republican machine only, but the National Machine of so-called conservative media––which in reality is simply the Neocon Media. Anyone for Bill Kristol selecting the next Texas governor???

A small but important digression

Old-style Southern Conservatives were fond of saying "Northern conservatism never conserved anything." They say as much because they understood most northern conservatives to be Nationalists, not Patriots. Is this not mere word play? Aren't they the same thing? Hardly. The difference is the difference between Liberty and Tyranny; the difference between a free peoples protected by sovereign states from the unconstitutional usurpations of a renegade Central Government and a hapless people stripped of the dignity and made subjects of an intrusive, coercive, tyrannical Central Authority.

After the failed War for Southern Independence the radical Republicans in Congress followed an agenda supported by their philosophy of consolidated government. It was their openly stated intention to change the American mind, making citizens "love their nation more than their state." Up until the War most citizens thought of themselves as citizens of sovereign states, referring to America as "the Union" or "these United States", not "the United States."

The state represented the concerns of citizens on the Federal level. Far from disenfranchising individual citizens, federalism empowered them, protecting them from harmful, unconstitutional national policy. This allowed them to act freely within their own spheres, to exercise their own right of self-government without fear of outside intrusion. All that ended with the War and the 14th amendment, the ratification of which was and is highly questionable.

As Lincoln Supreme Court appointee Salmon Chase in a moment of candor said, "States rights died at Appomattox."...And with the death of states rights the great hedge of protection between the helpless citizenry and a rapacious, intrusive, tyrannical centralized government was ruthlessly trampled down. Corruption in government exploded in the ten years following the War, taxes skyrocketed, and with it government waste, and countless laws, standards and controls were put on every facet of the lives of citizens. Mr Lincoln's war laid the foundation of centralized government very well for the Progressives who soon followed.

Of course, Lincoln lovers (like Beck, Hannity and Mark Levin) rant on about the evils of modern progressivism but turn a blind eye to the One Seminal Event that is real cause of the erosion of our liberties and our subsequent involvement in needless wars and international intrigues? And for what? (Or should I ask, "for whom?")

Funny, you never hear Beck, Levin or Hannity say, "War is the health of the state." Why? Well, it's not popular with the bulk of their listeners. But mostly they avoid the issue like typhoid fever because they are jingoistic Nationalists, drunk with the delusional wine of American Exceptionalism. They believe some mystical mumbo jumbo about God's will and Manifest Destiny that gives the Federal Government the right to run every other nation's business and establish perpetual military presence in their lands. Believing these or similar such nonsensical things, how can this little media trio ever take a truly principled stand for limited government?

What's this got to do with the Price of Oil in Odessa or Stetsons at Sheplers?

A fair question. After all, The Confederacy is gone, and with it slavery. Isn't that a good thing? Of course. Ending slavery was a good for the every American. But the Federal Government could not have used more brutal, corrupt, unconstitutional or worse means for its accomplishment. I say that because the very means used to end sectional slavery, the unconstitutional invasion of the Sovereign Southern states, de facto, threw the baby out with the bath water. (That poor baby was, perhaps, the first abortion the Federal Government declared to be legal. That baby was, in fact, the very Constitution the Founders gave us.)

From then to now the National government has claimed the unfettered and unrestrained right to crush self-rule among the Union's local peoples, thus making a mockery of the foundational principles in the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration became a dead, feckless document, a museum piece, routinely mutilated by politicians for a few quotes they could use when ever they wanted to sound populist and patriotic.

Such means resulted in the end of official sectional chattel slavery, only to be replaced by unofficial national political servitude, where citizen's rights and liberties were increasingly placed second to the will and interests of the oligarchy steering the Consolidated Ship of State. (One wonders if this were not the real intent of Lincoln and the Racial Republicans all along––former statist Whigs that they were. The real cause of the war could not really have been ending slavery, at least on the behalf of the Federal Government. After all, when the war began there were more slave states still in the Union than had seceded.)

To make a long story sufficiently short, when the dust settled the Federal government that had entered the War emerged from it transformed into one National in Character; Consolidated, Imperialistic, corrupt, confiscatory and tyrannical in nature; the very thing that great Firebrand for Liberty, Patrick Henry, so fervently warned the Virginia Framers about. Indeed, the General Government, primarily through the process of judicial incrementalism, has reduced once Sovereign States to little more than administrative units, good for little more than the collection of Federal taxes and, at times, the elevation of a state leader to the National scene, that is, if he or she's plays ball with the Party faithful. (Hint, hint.)

Today, the little that is left of our freedoms rests upon the whimsical, capricious foundation of the fickleness of those presently in power. What freedoms and rights remain do so, not by Constitutional fiat, the protective hedge of state sovereignty, natural rights or mandate of Law, but because the Chimera on the Potomac graciously permits it...for now.

Virtually every hapless citizen knows that any one of our remaining liberties could be arbitrarily wiped away any moment, in the dark of night with the flourish of a pen from an unelected, nameless black robed entity and we could do nothing whatsoever about it. (Patrick Henry also warned about that.) Today, the vast number of citizens wisely fear the government and seek to live a life in spite of it encroachments and mandates rather than under its protection.

I believe knowing these historical and political realities is essential to rightly understand the exchange between Beck and Medina.

Many people love Beck. No doubt, he's done many good things in helping people wake up to a part, but only a part, of our history, while carefully ignoring other equally important parts. But what he revealed in his interview with Debra Medina was there are those who seek to interfere in Texas politics for hidden, unstated nationalist reasons, plain and simple, and he is their front man and shill. Why else would he have treated Medina worse than he did the ACORN lawyers he interviewed on his television show?

Our patriotism as Texans is clearly being challenged! Will we pass the test?

The question is not so much who will win the election as it is how much Texans will be fooled by this sudden intrusion, this invasion of nationalism, the same real nationalism that despises states rights and the ability of the state to manage its own internal affairs without foreign, yes foreign––I said it, encroachments, threats and distortions.

When we consider all these issues and try to make sense of them we have to conclude that something else is going on here other than the usual Texas-style politics. Something national is at stake, and it involves Rick Perry and Sarah Palin in some way, and it involves him in such a way that he must successfully win a third term.

These events also cast suspicions on just how sincere Sarah Palin's commitment to populism really is. It makes her look not unlike a Republican Party mole placed in the Tea Party movement to co-opt it for Republican use. It makes her look like just another politician who trashes principle for power. It makes her look like a game player, who, like Beck, says she's honest, but then disappears in smokey back rooms only to emerge behaving in ways that are clearly contradictory to her populist rhetoric. Are Beck and Palin who they want us to believe they are?

I think these events also indicate that FOX news is hard at work using apparatchiks Beck and Palin as the proximate means to do to Ms. Medina what they tried to do to Paul.

Frankly, the only one who comes out of this smelling like a rose, a Yellow Rose and True Texan, is citizen candidate Medina.

It's a real soap opera scenario: Will the National Machine coupled with the Texas Republican good ol' boy Machine succeed in keeping Austin weird and Texas politics just business as usual? Or will Texas Patriots, whatever their political sympathies, show their patriotism and rise up in vociferous protest? Soap opera scenario or not, the consequences are much more serious than who gets bumped from the series this year. Citizens of the Free State, the eyes of Texas and those who shed blood to preserve her Independence and protect her Sovereignty are, indeed, upon us.

We take pride in Texas independence; we rejoice in breathing freer air than the other states, and we do. But for how long?

Until the Beck interview I was mostly uncommitted about whom I might vote for. My tactic was that of watch and see. It still is. It ain't over till it's over. I encourage all other Texans to keep an open mind as well. How the candidates handle the next few weeks will determine much. I will keep my BS detector well charged and on 24/7. I will consider them and their policies on their merits, and not coloured by how some nefarious Clown with possible clandestine motives might try to characterize them. The Clown may French Kiss whom he wants, but I will make my decision independent of his folly. As for Palin, as I see it she has not boosted Perry's image by supporting him, she has only damaged her own and given new justification to those who question both her forthrightness and intellectual adequacy for national office. She is not capable of leading, only being the tool of the snakes in leadership.

One thing I am categorically opposed to is Nationalist Neocons intruding into Texas internal politics for clandestine and, perhaps, nefarious reasons. I hope and pray I share that dislike in common with more Texans than not.

Every person likes being of use to others. Feeling that you are is personally fulfilling. But no person cares to be used and manipulated by others for hidden reasons. That is only natural and reasonable. It is also natural and reasonable to deeply resent and protest meddling outsiders who know nothing of Texas and care only to use Her for their own undisclosed ends. Dishonesty is never compelling. When exposed, whether by another or one's own labors of reason, it is downright repugnant. Which brings me to my last point:

The final thing I sensed from the Beck/Medina exchange was this: Medina was trying to be forthright and open, while Beck was not. Honesty and forthrightness go a long way with me, even if I disagree with the person; that, too, is only natural and reasonable.

As for Beck; I thought I may still listen to his arguments from time to time, even after the interview with Medina. But after he flagrantly lied a week later, with malice aforethought, I personally, am done with him. The crude underhandedness I witnessed this past week on national syndicated radio warrants nothing less. Beck: You Messed with Texas and took us for fools! Now you're gone!

Texans for Texas!

the A. Armadillo


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