The American Conservative

Is the electoral college at risk of being eliminated? How serious is the threat and how far along are those who oppose the Founders’ design for selecting presidents? Gary Gregg peers into the schemes of supporters of the “National Popular Vote Plan.”

James Pinkerton warns of other progressive machinations. Dissecting John Fonte’s book Sovereignty or Submission: Will Americans Rule Themselves or Be Ruled by Others?, he says that American sovereignty being a fragile thing, stands against a gave threat from global elites.

Fonte, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington D.C., makes a persuasive case that Americans should be worried because even as one-worldism is rejected by the masses, it is still embraced, in one form or another, by much of the elite—the corporate right as well as the intellectual left. If the American public isn’t paying attention, the elites will, in the end, have their way.

Leon Hadar says libertarians aren’t doing enough to influence foreign policy in Washington. And why not? They’ve had numerous successes in shaping tax and immigration positions, but fall short when it comes to foreign policy, leaving neoconservatives with the entire foreign-policy pie.

…there is no reason why libertarians should not form alliances with other policy oriented types or infiltrate congressional staffs as part of an effort to try to influence the foreign policy debate in Washington instead of agreeing to the current informal division of labor under which they are being tasked to do economic and trade policies and the neo-conservatives are in charge of foreign policy/national security.

Daniel Larison is shaking his head at P.J. O’Rourke’s latest, in which he tries to ascertain the foreign policy leanings of OWS protestors.

Mike Lee is serious about cutting the federal budget down to constitutional size. W. James Antle III takes a look at the Tea-Party-backed Senator who has brought grassroots conservatism to the Beltway.

Why are American voters so nonchalant with the ever-shifting religious affiliations of certain politicians? Because in America, that’s the norm for everyone, says Rod Dreher.

Daniel Larison tackles the problem of “democratic realism” and its promotion abroad by neoconservatives.

All that matters for boosters of “democratic realism” is that the U.S. has an “obligation” to promote its “values,” and it doesn’t trouble democratists that the end result is usually antithetical to many of our actual political values.

Pat Buchanan says David Cameron just made the largest wave of his political career as Prime Minister by vetoing Germany’s call for a new European fiscal union.

Like the “fire bell in the night” Thomas Jefferson heard in 1820, a harbinger of civil war, Cameron’s declaration that European fiscal and political union goes forward, only without Britain, may be a harbinger of the breakup that is coming.

Nick Turse asks, “Did the Pentagon help strangle the Arab Spring?”

Prior to the rise of the 2011 Middle Eastern revolution, the U.S. had a long-standing relationship with recently-ousted Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak. Eric S. Margolis says it’s time for the West to apologize for supporting Mubarak’s reign.

Daniel Larison writes about the impact of conservative evangelical Christians on U.S.-Israel policy. This base, he says, dictates the common discourse among Republican politicians.

Patrick Buchanan looks at Marco Rubio’s recent attempt to bring Georgia in NATO. He examines how neoconservative foreign policy in this arena could manifest into an even more precarious situation in the tense chess game of U.S.-Russian relations.

Philip Giraldi writes about the recently downed U.S. drone, now held in possession by the Iranian government. The use of these drones, he says, will become the standard in a new era of warfare.

Shooting down a drone does not produce a Francis Gary Powers U-2 type incident and it can always be claimed that the pilotless vehicle was off course for technical reasons, a form of the plausible denial always sought in covert operations. But intrusion into someone else’s airspace is nevertheless an act of war and can have unintended consequences when things go wrong. CIA briefly considered launching a rescue mission for its downed drone in Iran in an attempt to keep its high tech avionics, surveillance capabilities, and stealth technology from falling into Tehran’s hands. If that option had been pursued, it might well have resulted in a shooting war.

Rod Dreher says it’s deeply disconcerting that Mohamed Elibiary is advising the DHS on counter-terrorism practices. Elibiary, he writes, is a Muslim activist who has publicly praised the Ayatollah Khomeini, and other figures of radical Islam.

How, exactly, does the US government’s DHS choose to take advice from a man who publicly encouraged Americans to read the work of Qutb, whose teachings the 9/11 Commission cited as a prime motivator of Al Qaeda’s ideology, so that all may “see the potential for a strong spiritual rebirth that’s truly ecumenical allowing all faiths practiced in America to enrich us and motivate us to serve God better by serving our fellow man more”? It’s amazing.

Micheal T. Klare from TomDispatch says that Obama’s policy of American buildup in the Pacific Rim could be stirring up a 21st-century sequel to the Cold War, this time with China.

…moves certain to arouse alarm in Beijing and strengthen the hand of those in the ruling circle (especially in the Chinese military leadership) who favor a more activist, militarized response to U.S. incursions.

Patrick Buchanan takes a look at George Nash’s Freedom Betrayed and asks whether Franklin Roosevelt provoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Daniel Larison thinks Ron Paul can win Iowa. Polling in second behind Newt Gingrich, with a ground game that is snowballing in strength, his chances are looking better and better.

As the field continues to be unsettled by the rise and fall of one anti-Romney after another, Paul has consistently been building his organization and climbing in the polls to become the natural alternative to a Romney coronation. Read More…

Schoolyard scuffle? Well this is 2011, so now it’s a sexual harassment. Rod Dreher looks at the out-of-hand absurdity surrounding today’s bully appeasers. On the subject of pettiness, Dreher says Chick-Fil-A is being ridiculous, suing a man for selling shirts with the slogan “Eat More Kale:”

Boo, Chick-fil-A! I’m going to order an Eat More Kale shirt, and we’re not going to eat Chick-Fil-A until they back off. Come on, Chikins, you’re supposed to be Christians of some sort. You make $3.5 billion per year, yet you’ve sicced your lawyers on this hippie because he uses the words “eat more”?

Daniel Larison discusses U.S.-Iranian policy. How would the U.S. react to the targeted killing of American scientists?

It is the best way if the only other possible alternative is openly attacking Iranian facilities. If that is the case, our Iran policy is so intellectually and morally bankrupt that there isn’t much else to say about it. Read More…

Are all deteriorating empires defined by bread and circuses? If it be so, the GOP primary race is doing a marvelous job providing them.

On Friday, Herman Cain suspended his campaign for presidency, amid allegations of a 13-year-affair. Or as The Onion put it, ‎”Rumors of Extramarital Affair End Campaign of Presidential Candidate Who Didn’t Know China Has Nuclear Weapons.” It appears even The Onion can no longer compete with the comedy of the actual campaigns of this election cycle; they’re just running with the raw material.

Perhaps there’s another reason Cain is backing out. Maybe he ran out of quotes from   “Pokémon: The Movie?” Cain has admitted to using a quotation from the animated children’s film at least four times during his campaign.  Read More…

Jack Hunter writes at The Daily Caller that the Senate’s passage of the National Defense Authorization Act has handed a victory to terrorism. The bill’s provisions allow the federal government to “detain… American citizens and it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland,” according to Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is strongly in favor of the bill.

If a primary purpose of terrorism is to induce fear, and Americans are willing to give up their most precious freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism, how is this anything less than a monumental victory for our enemies?

Despite past mantras about fighting al-Qaeda “over there” so we would not have to fight them “here at home,” we’re now being told the war has arrived at our doorstep. ”Battlefield: America” would be an exciting video game scenario, but it’s depressing as a new stage in the real-life war on terror.

Just how long could Americans be detained without trial? Indefinitely. Hunter continues:

Most who support this new power for the federal government — and especially Graham — also agree that what we call the “war on terror” is a war that will last forever. In this light, this new legislation poses a particular danger, or as Sen. Paul explains: “During war, there has always been a struggle to preserve constitutional liberties. During the Civil War, the right of habeas corpus was suspended … Fortunately, those actions were reversed after the war.”

President Obama has claimed he will veto the bill, even though the Democrat-controlled Senate just approved it — but President Obama has failed to live up to the rhetoric of Senator Obama time and time again.

The Federal Reserve is cooking up new plans for managing the economy. Nominal GDP targeting is the new tool in the Fed’s arsenal, but Charles Hugh Smith says it won’t result in real economic growth:

If we scrape away the econo-speak, we find that nominal GDP targeting is simply code for “let’s stop worrying about inflation and crank up the printing press, baby.” While its proponents are coy about exactly what they’re suggesting the Fed do after targeting nominal GDP growth of, say, 5 percent per year, the basic idea is to flood the economy with even more low-interest money.

Daniel Larison takes a look at neoconservatives and the GOP. While there was plenty of criticism lobbed at President Bush from the neoconservative camp during his time in office, they’re still the most ardent Bush loyalists around, because his Middle East policies closely followed their ideas.

Newt Gingrich is certainly no stranger to the Beltway, given his political history, his time as a healthcare “consultant,” and his affiliation with Freddie Mac. Rod Dreher says that for Gingrich to style himself as an “outsider” candidate is preposterous.

Philip Giraldi says despite whatever the official line is, the U.S. is already conducting a proxy war with Iran.

William Lind offers his predictions as to what the Pentagon may look like when America enters a new age of austerity. How will our foreign policy change as a result of drastic reductions in the defense budget?

Several days ago Rod Dreher brought up comments by Britain’s chief rabbi, Lord Jonathon Sacks, relating to the problem of mass consumerism.

“What does a consumer ethic do? It makes you aware all the time of the things you don’t have instead of thanking God for all the things you do have. … the consumer society is in fact the most efficient mechanism ever devised for the creation and distribution of unhappiness.”

Marx claimed religion to be the opiate of the masses, but Judeo-Christian religions, which preach respect and love for life, may be on the decline in America. Is a culture of nihilistic mass consumerism the contemporary substitution? Before the Thanksgiving turkey could even be digested, Black Friday kicked off — on Thursday. Several videos captured the chaos that ensued; people being trampled, shoved, and disregarded. One incident even had people getting pepper-sprayed. Let me not forget to mention the shootings, and fighting over $2 waffle makers. Here is one clip among many floating around the web:

Imagine this kind of chaos, elevated, if the American economy follows the Eurozone into crisis. Dreher is also pessimistic about such a development:

Can you imagine most Americans, whether on the left, right, or in the middle, in the 1930s having such an attitude? What happens to a generation that believes in nothing more than consumerism and sexual autonomy?

Kelly Vlahos says a planned nuclear weapons facility at Los Alamos, New Mexico has already become yet another government money pit: over budget, behind schedule, and unwelcome by New Mexico residents.

It hasn’t been built yet—in fact, the designs aren’t even finished after 10 years. But the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF) has been soaking up taxpayer money all the same …

Does “congress shall make no law” truly mean what it says? Peter Van Buren examines the case of Morris Davis, a federal employee who was fired from his research position at the Library of Congress after submitting a politically-charged op-ed to the Wall Street Journal.

How much heat can Herman Cain take before he gets burned? Rod Dreher talks about Cain’s newest lady-friend scandal — an alleged 13-year affair. Newt Gingrich is no stranger to controversies of infidelity himself, and Dreher says his actions are those of a man indifferent to any moral code.

Daniel Larison says that the postwar policy of Soviet containment fueled the strong foreign policy debates of that era, but the national security debates of this election cycle are far more superficial.

George Scialabba reflects on the career of Christopher Hitchens, in a review of Hitchens’s new book Arguably: Essays.