ANNALS OF LIBERTARIANISM, PART FFS.

At The Federalist, Georgi Boorman gives us the usual rightwing schtick about ISIS (i.e., Obama's a pussy let's get our war on):

Despite Boko Haram’s purported pledge of fealty to ISIS, apparently neither organizations’ bloody rampages have reached the level of egregiousness that stirs the executive branch to crush the evil gobbling up Iraq and surrounding territories. President Obama has told us repeatedly that there will be “no boots on the ground” save for “advisers, trainers, and security personnel.” Regardless of whether the advisory missions happen to put those advisers in a combat role, the goal, apparently, is to keep us “out of another ground war.” 

Whether this be on principle of non-interference or sheer ignorance of an organization that will, if unchecked, eventually threaten global stability, the result is inaction (save for a few airstrikes).

By "a few airstrikes," Boorman of course means over 1,300 as of December 2014. At The Federalist, bullshit walks and talks!

The U.S. military wears a heavy boot, but at the moment it does nothing more than cast a shadow over the growing terrorist threat.

With a prose style like that Boorman will go far in the movement. But she still has to thread the needle: something that looks like a solution to ISIS but doesn't come with blinking QUAGMIRE tags all over it. Her Big Idea: Bring back privateers!

“Privateers” were given letters of marque permitting them to capture and plunder enemy ships; an admiralty court adjudicated on the legality of the capture... 

To fight war tourists like Jihad John, hire some guns! Maybe they'll be dashing, shiver-me-timbers young libertarians looking for adventure! Or Somali pirates fresh out of prison!  (Probably, though, they'll be petty criminals and navy rejects with nothing left to lose.)

Some will rightly point out the potential for abuse, as there almost certainly will be, as with all social and governmental institutions. However, the U.S. government would be holding accountable a much smaller group of individuals, whose scope of operations are far more limited than the expansive U.S. military. If abuse were to be found, processes for investigation and prosecution would be in place to swiftly bring to account and deal punishment for violations, as they had in the past.

You know, like with Blackwater.

Some less rational factions will undoubtedly hail this as a crazy right-winged conspiracy to privatize the military. But Founders did not design a Constitution with powers that undermine other powers. If letters of marque were a tool of privatization, what good would it have been to include provisions, just a few lines below this, “to raise and support armies” and to “provide and maintain a Navy”?

I dunno -- the Post Office is also in the Constitution, but conservatarians want to privatize that, too. Self-evidently, their dream is to strip the federal government for parts and empower privateers to handle all its former functions. Of course, the ones who would be fighting ISIS for us would be flying no flag but the Jolly Roger, and if it should turn out that someone else is offering better pay than Uncle Sam, there's nothing to stop them from turning their guns around. That's what happens when you love the market more than your country.

THIS YEAR'S MUDDLE.

After hearing blessedly little from or about him in recent years, I see Hugh Hewitt has become the Important Conservative Journalist of the moment. At National Journal, Shane Goldmacher tells us in "It Had To Be Hugh" that "Hewitt, a professor of constitutional law who often sounds the part, isn't a conventional right-wing talk-radio host" and has "the demeanor of a friendly academic"; he also says Hewitt's "relationship with the mainstream media is complicated." At Power Line John Hinderaker says "Hugh tries to elevate our discourse about politics and public life" and "believes that, day by day, intelligent conversation with important, knowledgeable people on both sides of the political aisle can bring us closer to realizing the democratic ideal."

This does not much comport with the Hugh Hewitt I've been observing lo these many years. For example:

In 2005 an Iraq War correspondent suggested to Hewitt that he didn't really know what was going on at the front, and Hewitt rejoined that he did indeed know because he was at that moment broadcasting from the Empire State Building and "the Empire State Building... has been in the past, and could be again, a target..." Also, "in downtown Manhattan, it's not comfortable, although it's a lot safer than where you are, people always are three miles away from where the jihadis last spoke in America... Although you are on the front line, this was the front line four and a half years ago." Hewitt's primary residence at the time was in California.

By 2006 the war wasn't as popular as it had been and Hewitt explained that turncoats like Andrew Sullivan and Peter Beinart had only "turned defeatists" because they "feel disdained" by President Bush, and that the President should have them over to the Indian Treaty Room for a chin-wag: "Even if some are too far gone into opposition to be recalled, some will wake up." Ah, what might have been!

Hewitt also does his bit for organized religion: When Tom Hanks was pushing his Da Vinci Code movie and said "we always knew there would be a segment of society that would not want this movie to be shown," Hewitt warned Hanks, "Tom: Careful now... stick to the obvious – it is an absurd piece of invention that makes for a fun thriller – and all will be well." Nobody crosses the professorial Hugh Hewitt! When Jeff Jarvis (!) said something negative about the religious right, Hewitt said, "it is a useful exercise to run through Jeff's piece and substitute 'the Jews' for the 'religious right' and all pronounces referring to the 'religious right.' Jeff is of course not anti-Semitic..." That's elevating the discourse!

And Lord, does he go on about that Emm Ess Emm. You can catch Hewitt doing the traditional goldurn-librul-media schtick anytime, but a particularly good example of his "complicated" relationship with it is this 2004 bit in which he suggested that Michael Kinsley, who'd just taken over the L.A. Times editorial page, should hire Roger L. Simon, Laura Ingraham, Max Boot, Jim Lileks, and Mickey Kaus. But what's the difference, Hewitt went on, "even a reinvigorated editorial page and opinion page won't help much given the senior staff's refusal to deal with the poisonous bias in the 'news' reports..." Kinsley for some reason didn't take his advice, and Hewitt must have been pissed: In 2005, when Kinsley's paper did a story about a couple of North Koreans who offered an obviously untrustworthy defense of their country, Hewitt pretended to believe the L.A. Times -- or, as he called it, The Pyongyang Times -- was peddling Nork propaganda.

Hewitt's devotion to the "democratic ideal" is such that in 2011 he was trying like hell to get Herman Cain and Ron Paul bounced from the Republican primary debates so the establishment candidates could have more time on camera.

Other Hewitt nuggets: "The only reason [Chris] Muir [creator of the horrible Day by Day comic] isn't widely syndicated is MSM bias." There's also Hewitt pretending to be outraged at the treatment of John Murtha a year after supporting that treatment.  And Hewitt predicting in 2005 that the Catholic cardinals, inspired by "the cruel death of Terri Schiavo," would elect an American Pope.

And given that one of Hewitt's plums is the right to ask questions at a Republican debate, we should recall this brainstorm of his from 2013:

Proposed opening question for the first GOP presidential debate in the fall of 2015: "Was the 'shutdown showdown' of October 2013 good or necessary -- either or both -- and why?"

I don't have any idea how it will be answered by the 10 or so potentially serious candidates who may be on that stage, but the difficulty of predicting the best answer can be found — where else? — in two movies about war.

But what's the use -- every so often a rightwing apparatchik like Hewitt is elevated and promoted as a fair-minded voice of alternative reason; in fact it's happened to Hewitt before, in a 2005 New Yorker blowjob ("Hewitt is definitely a Republican, but he is no mere mouthpiece"). If Hewitt really thinks the MSM is as nefarious as he portrays them, maybe he'd consider they might only be promoting him to make conservatism look bad.

UPDATE. In comments, The_Kenosha_Kid: "Don't make fun of the dangers of working in the Empire State Building! I saw a documentary once where it was attacked by a giant monkey."

Hardcore spelunkers can also read Hewitt's 2008 propaganda ebook, "Letter to a Young Obama Supporter." At the time, I reviewed its mendacious and definitely not "friendly academic" approach, though I missed some of Hewitt's youth outreach, such as this let-me-put-it-in-terms-you'll understand explanation of why Obama's lack of experience should concern the youngs:

If you could be given golf lessons by either Tiger Woods or the local club pro, guitar lessons by Eric Clapton or the guitarist for the garage band playing downtown, cooking lessons by Emeril Lagasse or by the night cook at the local diner, which choice would you make in every case?

 I like to imagine Hewitt laying aside his pen after that one and sighing with satisfaction, "eat your heart out, Greg Gutfeld."

GULF WAR III - THIRD TIME'S THE CHARM!

I found this charming video via the (so-far) single-tweet account of the American Security Initiative, which Ryan Cooper of The Week informs me is basically Saxby Chambliss, Evan Bayh, and Norm Coleman trying to sabotage a deal with Iran. (Jennifer Rubin refers to it as a "bipartisan group," which pretty much proves it's bullshit.)

To summarize, a sinister van drives into what looks like Toronto, while the radio plays clips of those great Americans Lindsay Graham and Bibi Netanyahu warning us about Iran's nuclear ambitions. But ha, too late, Obama sold us out and blam -- the nuclear device blows the doors off the back of the van.  (The van rears up like a horse just before the explosion, which may be how fission works; I was never good at physics.) Then we hear one lonely siren, indicating the nuclear explosion has wiped out several whole blocks of Toronto.

I wonder how they would be talking to us if they respected our intelligence?

FRIDAY ROUND-THE-HORN.

At first I thought, "O God no Joanna Newsom is trying to sneak back get the spray-bottle" but this song is kind of sticking with me.
•   Jonah Goldberg's column today could have been titled, "I'm not lazy and stupid, you're lazy and stupid!" He says Obama is dumb because he won't admit Islam itself is responsible for the nuts who kill in its name. The President's anodyne ecumenical statement is, in Goldberg's view, the same thing as saying "Michael Jordan didn’t play basketball" or  "We didn’t win World War II" in that, durr, that's stoopid too, right? The analogy invites deeper analysis, so step well back as Goldberg executes his logic-fart:

“No religion is responsible for terrorism,” the president proclaimed, “people are responsible for violence and terrorism.”

Now obviously, there’s some truth to this. We judge people more by their actions than by their beliefs. But reasonable people also recognize that our actions often have a causal relationship with our beliefs. This is hardly a controversial — or even debatable — insight. Orthodox Jews don’t avoid bacon because it tastes bad; they do so because they’re keeping kosher. One cannot intelligently discuss why Mother Teresa helped the poor without referring to her faith. And one cannot discuss why the Islamic State burns, rapes, and enslaves people without taking their religious beliefs into account.

See -- Jews have wacky eating habits, Christians are nice, and Muslims are savage rapist-murders; Q.E.Doritos Cool Ranch! While I attribute the lack of retribution I've suffered for my anti-Mohammed cartoons to global respect for my artistry, I think Goldberg is safe because most non-conservatives can't make out what he's trying to say.

•   Speaking of legacy pledges and the next GOP President, Bill Kristol worries that Hillary Clinton is getting better numbers in the reps-the-future-not-the-past category in a CNN/ORC poll than any Republican Presidential candidate. (Scott Walker's numbers are least bad, perhaps because voters relate his social-net-shredding record to the dystopian future of The Handmaid's Tale or Idiocracy.) Kristol thinks he sees a way out:

Perhaps some new set of concerns in 2016 will overwhelm all the past/future talk. Given the state of the world, that’s quite possible. We could easily have a foreign policy election in 2016. And then people might not mind a steady hand, even if one from the past (think Richard Nixon in 1968).

One thing Americans  seem to have learned from the last clusterfuck in which Bill Kristol had a hand is, let's not do that again. In fact Kristol himself was complaining about "American war-weariness" only last year. Yet now he thinks beating the drum for Gulf War III might get one of his ringers elected. I suppose that's because he has more than average faith in the power of yellow journalism and jingo. After all, he is the editor of the Weekly Standard, which is very influential among people who never read anything they can't get for free on the New York-DC shuttle; that's got to count for something.

•   Whether or not I get to see any of the other big films (see my "On to Oscar" posts), at some point this weekend I'm going to stick my fool neck out, as I have in years past, and predict Sunday's winners. So watch this space! (And the easy way to do this is to get on my Twitter feed, where I announce posts sometime and dish out apothegms.)

•   Yeah it's late and who cares, but there are a few wonderful things about this Noah Rothman Hot Air column defending noted asshole Rudolph Giuliani and the asshole thing he said this week. I mean, it's mostly terrible on the level of Twitchy (look at the sickburn takedown of the media by "Florida-based political operative Rick Wilson"!), but in his flailing Rothman does bang into an interesting defense:

What are we to make of this frenzied attack on Giuliani, in which the whole of the political press reacted as though a man who left office 14 years ago had insulted their mothers?... 

Oh, but he was a leading presidential candidate in 2007, don’t you know? And he delivered the keynote address at the GOP’s nominating convention in 2008. And he’s a frequent guest on cable news, so he must be influential (a claim that could only be made by someone who rarely appears on cable news). But observing Giuliani’s diminished stature today when compared to the last decade renders the media’s reaction even less explicable.

I hope someone in Rudy's retinue told him, "It's okay, chief -- Noah Rothman says it doesn't matter 'cause you're a has-been!" Oh but the very, very, very best is the correction at the end:

An earlier version of this post incorrectly identified the chairman of the RNC as Ron Fournier

May your weekend be as serendipitous.