Tony Snow - a recruit to fight against the (mythical) war against God

His battle against cancer isn't big enough to occupy Tony Snow's time and efforts. He also wants to remake himself as a conservative Christian warrior fighting "‘The Second War In This Country’ ... ‘The War On God’". Apparently Bill O'Reilly has enlisted Snow to fight against the mythical Secular - Progressives.

How long until Tony branches out to join the resistance against the secular - progressive "War on Christmas" and the "War on Easter?"

I guess that Snow has seen how much money Bill O'Reilly has made pushing these mythical culture wars and Snow wants a piece of the action. Why not? It's practical, makes tons of money, keeps them both in the eye of the public (I have no doubt that the applause of the audience is more important than the money) and as wars go, these skirmishes against a mythical enemy are one Hell of a lot safer than actually going to Iraq or Afghanistan with the troops who are fighting real wars.

Today's 'conservatives' are the 'John Birchers' from the 1950's.

The so-called conservatives of today are the direct descendants of the John Birch Society members who in 1964 were shock troops for the Goldwater campaign. Go ahead. Look at this set of goals:

1. The abolition of the graduated income tax.

2. The repeal of social security legislation.

3. The impeachment of various high government officials,

4..The end to busing for the purpose of school integration.

5. The end to U.S. membership in the United Nations.

As you can see, these goals, which were, 40 years ago, the platform of an extremist group on the fringes of American politics, are the all but spoken platform of the Bush administration and the modern Republican party. We have seen numerous attempts to eliminate the income tax; Bush has proposed changes to Social Security that will send it down the road to extinction; Bill Clinton was impeached and Governor Gray Davis of California removed from office; the busing issue has morphed into an intense focus of the easier-to-frame affirmative action; and the Bush administration, on the issue of Iraq and in many other ways, great and small, has worked assiduously to bypass the United Nations and make the actions of the UN worthless (see this notorious article by Perle for a neo-Bircher perspective.)

As Tristero over at Hullabaloo points out, these were key goals of the Bircher's, and again are key goals of the current Bush Republicans.

The Bircher's were conspiracy-driven crackpots who, when elected to office, performed as poorly as the current Republicans do. Nelson Bunker Hunt was a well-known Texas Bircher, and a close friend of George H. W. Bush. Hunt was a model for the right-wing extremist multimillionaires who have financed so mush of the modern Republican Party.

One of those right-wing extremist multimillionaires in Texas has been Bob Perry, famous as the founder and funder of the Swift Boat organization that savaged John Kerry in 2004. I don't find that he was a Bircher, but he is quite as extremist at they are and knows a lot of them. His organization is Council for National Policy, a group of wealthy ultra-conservatives and Texas Theocrats Nelson Bunker Hunt is an ex-President of the CNP.

CNP was founded in 1981 by by Tim LaHaye, author of the Left Behind series of books. Other member of the CNP have been Paul Weyrich, Phyllis Schlafly, Robert Grant, Howard Phillips, a former Republican affiliated with the Constitution Party, Richard Viguerie, the direct-mail specialist. CNP is a major force in the Dominionist Movement and many of the members are known Christian Reconstructionists. Other ex-Presidents of the CNP have been Amway co-founder Richard DeVos of Michigan, Pat Robertson of Virginia Beach, Paul Pressler of Houston, and former Reagan Cabinet secretaries Ed Meese and Donald Hodel, as well as current president Kenneth Cribb.

One more interesting connection: Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, USA is another of the ultra right-wing millionaires and whose sister, Betsy DeVos is married to Dick DeVos of the Amway fortune.

The John Birch Society represents even today the extremist right-wing fringe in America. The Council for National Policy carries forward the goals and methods of the Birchers, and is a nexus between the older Birchers and the ultra-right-wing Social Conservatives.

Oh, and Ron Paul knows a lot of John Birchers and considers them well-educated and good people.

---

For further ideological connections among the descendants of the John Birch Society, see:

• CNN’s Beck thinks John Birch Society is making ‘more and more sense’ from the Carpetbagger Report,


• Thank God for the death of the UN
  by Richard Perle, and (connected through the CNP)


• Rapture Ready
  by Rick Perlstein.

Scaife repents from his attacks on Bill Clinton

I'm not sure what to make of this. I've read it in a number of places yesterday and today, and I know that Richard Mellon Scaife was the clearest and most important funder of the right-wing conspiracy to get rid of Clinton. So for him to be reported to say, after six years of Bush 43, that he has learned that Clinton wasn't that bad after all is really news.

But is it just "Old News?" If we cam believe it, it is another indicator of the utter disaster that is Bush 43, and it may be an indication that the right-wingers who are going to go after Hillary Clinton will not be as well-funded, but is it really significant?

I'm not sure of its significance, but as one who has read Blinded by the Right by David Brock and the Hunting of the President by Joe Conason, both of which protray Scaife as a truly evil wealthy conservative Republican (like Joseph Coors), this is not an expected revelation. Or at least, it certainly makes one think that even the most radical conservatives consider G. W. Bush to be the worst disaster to have befallen America in our lifetimes. [Which he certainly is.]

As I say, I am not really certain what to make of it, so this article is going to be muddled. But the news is interesting.