05/05/10 – Jack Hunter – The Scott Horton Show

Welcome back to the show, it's Antiwar Radio on Chaos 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas.
We're streaming live worldwide on the internet at chaosradioaustin.org and at antiwar.com slash radio.
And our guest on the show today is the Southern Avenger, Jack Hunter.
He writes for Talkies Top Drawer and for Charleston City Paper in Charleston, South Carolina, I think it is.
And you can check out his YouTube channel at youtube.com slash Southern Avenger.
Welcome to the show, Jack.
How are you doing?
Good to be with you today, Scott.
I'm doing just fine.
That's good to hear.
I appreciate you joining us on the show.
I've been a big fan of your little kind of YouTube essays that you do there, your little spoken word things that you've been putting out for, what, a couple years now, right?
Yeah, it's been a while.
I've been doing this whole punditry thing for about a decade.
I've been putting out those YouTubes for three or four years.
Just a slight correction, you can find those at the American Conservatives' website now.
It's amconmag.com.
Oh, at amconmag.com.
Good.
Yeah, I forgot to mention the American Conservatives there.
All right, well, and speaking of the American Conservative magazine, I don't know.
Why don't I start it extra general here?
What is conservatism to you, Jack Hunter, Southern Avenger?
How long is this show?
Six hours, seven hours?
We got 25 minutes, but these terms get thrown around so much, and I tend to think that your version of conservatism, how my understanding of your view of the conservative philosophy, it seems like it basically ought to be at least the agreed upon definition.
It's just you're consistent in your philosophy rather than inconsistent.
Maybe I don't necessarily have that right, but what does it mean to you?
In the generalist sense, you know.
Well, you know, conservatism means different things in different places.
If you're a conservative in the Soviet Union, it might mean you want to go back to the old communist regime.
Yeah, Muhtar al-Sadr is taking power in Iraq right now.
He's pretty right-wing, I think.
Exactly.
Yeah, the conservatives in Iran are the more Islamic fanatics, if you will, if you see what I'm saying.
We need to talk about American conservatism specifically.
If you read George H. Nash's book, The Conservative Intellectual Movement Since 1945, or Justin Raimondo's History of the Old Right, Reclaiming the Old Right, or Reclaiming Conservatism.
I'm getting the title wrong.
Sorry, Justin, if you're listening.
But when you're talking about American conservatism, what it is is it's a mixture of conservative folks and libertarian folks who sort of have that Barry Goldwater limited government, let's stick to the Constitution mentality.
Now are there different versions of conservatism?
Yes, in the 70s and 80s with the rise of the moral majority, and Jerry Falwell, you had the social conservatism sort of came into the fold.
Today, with the success of Ron Paul, libertarians are really coming into their own or are more popular than ever.
But all these are different branches of what we could reasonably and justifiably call American conservatism.
Now the problem with what's perceived as American conservatism today, and certainly with Reagan I guess it sort of started.
It got worse with George H.W. Bush, and it certainly went full throttle with George W. Bush, is that neoconservatism, by many talk radio pundits, Republican politicians, and those who speak in mainstream conservatism's name, they're all neoconservatives, and half of them don't even really realize that.
Norman Podoritz, that Uber neocon, said in a speech a number of years ago that the word neoconservative is no longer necessary, because they had pretty much wholly taken over the movement.
And I can't argue with that on many levels.
I'm down here in Charleston, South Carolina, calling myself a conservative, running my mouth on the radio, writing columns for the American Conservative and the Charleston City Paper, and I'm blasting George W. Bush forever going into Iraq.
I'm blasting the Obama administration and any neocons who think it might be a good idea to attack Iran.
And I'm called a liberal.
Well, I agree with Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul.
If we want to go back to Robert Taft and the old writer, I agree with them.
So how I'm a liberal doesn't make sense, but it gives you a pretty good indication of how much the neoconservatives really have taken over the conservative movement.
But I will say this, things are changing.
You don't have that – let me give you an example, Glenn Beck.
Whatever you think about Glenn Beck, there's things I like about him, there's things I certainly don't like about him.
I think he's a talented guy who's sort of all over the place intellectually.
But when a guy like Beck will say on occasion, why are we in Afghanistan?
What's there to win?
And guys like Mark Levin and Sean Hannity and Limbaugh all freak out and attack him.
That shows that there's a little bit of a crack in the mainstream conservative narrative, if you will.
It's happening more and more.
Ron Paul's got a lot to do with it.
Things are getting better, but I hope I sort of answered your question about what is conservatism or what I consider conservatism to be.
Barry Goldwater is a good starting point for me.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, well, there's a whole bunch to get into there.
But on the Goldwater thing, Goldwater was a warmonger.
Bad.
He was not a peacenik by any stretch.
He was good on – especially toward the end of his life, he was much more libertarian on social issues and things like that.
But the reason he lost to Goldwater in 1964 is because they asked him, well, would you go so far as to use atomic weapons to win in Vietnam?
And he said, yeah, why not?
You're exactly right.
And look, I get this from my listeners all the time when I bring up Barry Goldwater's name.
And I'm talking about the constitutional position.
Our friend Judge Napolitano dedicated his last book to Barry Goldwater, who he said is the father of libertarianism in America.
And I don't disagree with that.
I think we have to make a distinction.
And look, I think the Cold War – we build up a military-industrial complex that was unnecessary.
I oppose that.
In retrospect, we shouldn't have done it.
But comparing the Cold War to, say, the supposed threat of Islamic terrorism, if you will – and we'll get to whether that's actually true or not in a second – is apples and oranges.
Comparing a superpower on the world stage with actual nuclear weapons to a ragtag bunch of lone wolves and cells.
Now I bring that up because people will say, well, Barry Goldwater was pro-war.
That's not necessarily wrong, but look at the context of that time.
A guy like Sean Hannity would say, well, Barry Goldwater is no different from George W. Bush.
Uh-uh, that's not true.
You're saying that the Soviet Union is the same as Muammar Ahmadinejad or whatever, straw man that you set up this week to be the next Hitler or whatever you want to call it.
It was a different day, a different time.
I don't agree with much of what we did during the Cold War, but it was certainly more of a threat and more of a concern than anything that they're talking about today.
These neoconservatives bring up Islamic terrorism as a means to justify the military-industrial complex, if you will.
With the Cold War, William F. Buckley, whatever you think of him, when he said we must endure more bureaucracy, more government to stop the Soviet menace, and then we'll dismantle it, at least there was an argument to be made there somewhat.
And then when the Cold War ended and guys like Pat Buchanan said, all right, time to dismantle, the neocons said no.
They searched desperately.
We need a new villain.
But what did they find?
Islamic terrorism.
Barry Goldwater was very different from George W. Bush in that respect, if you look at the context of the time.
Don't forget cocaine.
They had a problem there when the Soviet Union fell.
They weren't quite ready to wage war against Islamofascism yet, so they went for, well, I guess we'll call it the drug war for a little while and kind of fill the gap in there.
All right, well, now let me get back to, because you keep mentioning Hannity and what conservatism is to him.
And this, I think, goes back to what you say about, you know, three generations of neoconservatives now have basically come to define what conservatism itself is without the neo.
And, in fact, I hear this all the time from Ron Paul kids who say, wow, I used to be a neocon, but then Ron Paul kind of snapped me out of it.
And I say, wow, you used to be a commie and then you became a right-wing warmonger and then you became a libertarian?
And they say, no, no, I was just a right-wing warmonger.
But this kind of gets right to the point.
Is Sean Hannity a neocon, even though he's lifelong right-wing warmongering, illiterate, whatever he is?
It seems like he's just a typical conservative.
But what's happened is, since he doesn't have any brain cells, he lets Norman Podhoretz and the rest of the ex-leftist radicals do all his thinking for him.
He's a neoconservative by default.
In other words, he is, but he doesn't even know it.
I think we have explicit neoconservatives.
There's not that very many of them, guys like Norman Podhoretz.
Or even politicians like Lindsey Graham or John McCain.
I think they know what they are doing when they advocate for war.
They believe in that Leo Straussian sort of idea of telling the big lie.
Oh, yeah, we've got to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here.
In the back of their minds, they really know what they're up to.
A guy like Hannity I think really believes that if we don't have troops stationed all over the world, that somehow something terrible is going to happen.
Instead of looking at the reality of the fact that terrible things happen on our homeland, precisely because we have people stationed all over the world.
I don't think he sees the difference.
And the nonsense that's coming out of his mouth, I really think he believes because he's kind of dopey.
So is he a neoconservative?
Yes, but he doesn't even know what that is.
He thinks he's just a true blue Republican standing up for guys like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell.
And that's what conservatives are supposed to do.
And he's too dim to examine himself and know the difference.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, sure.
Well, and a big part of what's going on now, like you talk about Glenn Beck saying, hmm, Afghanistan, huh?
Maybe why bother?
Or, you know, I heard that there is a Bill of Rights after all.
This is kind of a symptom of the fact that we're in Democrat times.
And here these people are trying to say, oh, Obama's Hitler, Obama's Hitler.
It's kind of hard to ignore who he inherited all that executive power from.
Well, that's exactly right.
Let me touch on the Beck thing since he's such a big influence with the Tea Parties and Sarah Palin, of course, Rand Paul.
You've got this sort of weird mixture of libertarians and social conservatives and crazy talk radio guys who are all influencing the Tea Parties.
What I've experienced – I've spoke at two Tea Parties.
I attend every rally they have here in Charleston, been a few thousand people.
And even on my radio show talking to grassroots conservatives who did vote for John McCain and who did vote for George W. Bush.
When I used to make the argument that George W. Bush is a liberal because he has this Woodrow Wilson progressive view of the world, that we're going to make the world a safer democracy.
They would say, Jack, you're a liberal Democrat.
How dare you attack our Republican president?
Post-Obama, when I say, why are we in Afghanistan at this point?
What is there to win?
Iraq was a mistake, and we must admit that so we don't make any mistakes in the future.
90% of the hatred I used to get from conservatives is gone.
They are upset about stimulus spending, bank bailouts.
And what I make points like, if you're out at a Tea Party and you're saying no more spending, that's the Tea Party message.
Stop spending.
That's the most easily understandable, succinct message they're putting out there.
And you support what we're doing overseas, but you still think Iraq was a good idea or you think escalation in Afghanistan is a good idea.
Go home.
You are wasting your time.
You're wasting your breath.
Because what you're telling me is that all this domestic spending is offensive to you, but the big government we have overseas, which costs as much, if not more, is completely fine.
You're negating your argument.
I wrote an open letter, a column, to our own Senator Jim DeMint here in South Carolina once, who I think is stellar when it comes to constitutional spending issues.
You could always count on Jim DeMint to oppose TARP, bank bailouts, the whole bit.
But he's not on foreign policy to his credit.
He admits that Iraq was a mistake to a degree, but we still should have did it, blah, blah, blah.
At least he's willing to reflect, which is more than I can say for a guy like Sean Hannity.
But I made the argument, Senator DeMint, when you're talking about we need to stop spending money and expanding the budget, and you continue to support our foreign policy overseas, you are negating your argument.
Now that message plays much better now post-Obama than it did during the George W. Bush years, in part because the narrative has changed.
Being a conservative is no longer just being pro-war.
It's about stopping spending, and it also has a lot to do – it cannot be underestimated – with the success of Ron Paul.
Yeah, hear, hear for that, and thanks for mentioning it, because I'd hate for him to go unmentioned.
Well, you know, here's part of this, too, and this is – I guess goes right to the importance of Ron Paul.
And this is why he was such a big deal, was because he said, hey, you don't have to be Michael Moore to be a peacenik.
You could be a Texas Republican and be a peacenik.
And people went, oh, really?
Awesome.
Finally.
Because the way it was before, you know how it is.
It's all about attitudes and narratives more than it is details.
And the narrative, Jack, was that, look, tough guys want to go beat up terrorists, and turtleneck-wearing sissies don't.
Big surprise.
So if you're not from Berkeley and you don't drive a Prius, then you know that now's the time to kill, boys.
But the fact is, when it comes down to it, that no, this is the time to put your thinking cap on and to be smart.
If terrorism is about getting a reaction out of you, then you ought to premeditate your reaction really carefully, rather than just flying off the handle like they were trying to get you to do.
The turtleneck guy was the one who was thoughtful enough to at least see what was going on here.
Well, that narrative is what's got – let the neoconservatives get away with as much murder, quite literally, frankly, as they have.
That you're a wimp if you're anti-war, or you even question foreign policy, and that you're tough if you don't question it.
Don't question your government.
Well, that's a hell of a message for conservatives.
What we need to do – Tough like Bill Crystal.
Macho man.
Mr. Five Deferments, Dick Cheney.
Boy, there's a tough guy there.
Yeah, none of them have ever even grown a whisker on their face.
I mean, John Bolton, but then again, he's one of these lifelong right-wingers.
But I don't think there's a single one of these neocons who's ever even had to shave his chin before.
Well, that's exactly right.
I've never seen a bigger bunch of pantywaste in Washington, D.C. than the Bush administration with Rumsfeld and Richard Perl and Paul Wolfowitz and all those guys.
But it's important that we change the narrative.
What lets the neoconservatives get away with, literally, murder so often?
Because they do portray it as you're a wimp if you're anti-war.
I like to put it like this.
First and foremost, probably one of the most noble things any human being can do is to serve their country.
When you sign up and you're a soldier, you're doing your duty.
You're serving your country.
All you're doing is taking orders.
That is very noble, and I always support our troops.
What citizens should do is question whether their government puts those troops in harm's way for stupid reasons.
And that's what we don't do.
If I tell Sean Hannity, you know what, we shouldn't be in Iraq because our troops are too good for that.
There's no point.
Our country's too good for that.
It's not going to get us anything.
He would say that I'm anti-American or unpatriotic.
That is stupid.
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
And furthermore, if you're a conservative, let's look at it this way.
When you argue with liberal democrats about welfare, and you say, you know, since LBJ spending all this money on the Great Society… … the more we subsidize this problem, the more we intervene in the lives of poor people, we've only subsidized the problem and we've expanded it.
There are more poor.
There are more people dependent on the government.
We've only made the problem worse.
What do liberal democrats tell conservatives?
You're heartless.
You're cruel.
You're anti-poor.
You don't understand.
There's no way we can pull out.
We have to keep doing this indefinitely.
Well, conservatives are like that on foreign policy.
Look, we've had troops stationed around the world for eons.
We had the Gulf War.
We've invaded Iraq.
We're escalating Afghanistan.
These idiots are now eyeing Iran.
God knows what they want to do in Yemen or Pakistan.
We do more and more and more, more intervention, more subsidizing the problem.
And more people are attracted to al-Qaeda in that mindset than ever before, says Michael Schur, 9-11 commission report.
Everybody pretty much admits that blowback exists, that this problem is being subsidized and expanded by our foreign intervention.
And what do conservatives say after just looking at the damning evidence?
They say, well, we can't pull out.
We must do more.
We must stay in the fight.
The war on poverty and the war on terror are so similar, especially in the glaring hypocrisy on both sides.
Yeah, absolutely.
I wish David Hackworth was still alive, man.
I remember in late 2002, early 2003.
By the way, for people who don't know, the reason David Hackworth isn't alive is because your government sprayed their own hero with Agent Blue and gave him bladder cancer.
And that's why he's dead right now.
In 2002 and 2003, I remember him on The Hannity Show saying, no, you shut your mouth, boy, and you listen to me.
And he's probably the only one who could make Hannity say, yes, sir, and go ahead and be quiet.
I thought he wasn't on Fox anymore, by the way, but go ahead.
And man, Hackworth just laid out the case.
Look, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden hate each other.
I'm not asking you, I'm telling you about what it means to have these guys fighting urban warfare and doing search and destroy missions in an Arab town somewhere and deep in the heart of Baghdad and whatever.
I mean, man, he just laid it out.
There's no weapons.
He knew, well, you know, he'd been alive and paying attention the whole time.
So after 10 years of sanctions and bombings and no weapons whatsoever since they'd all been destroyed by the end of 91, he knew.
And he was one of the only ones who could say to somebody like Hannity or any other right-winger, you shut up, I'm talking now, boy, and get his point across without being shouted down because he was Hackworth.
You can't – what are you going to do, out-patriotism Hackworth?
You're exactly right, and they ignore figures who say things they don't like.
Hannity will have on Pat Buchanan from time to time and he'll discuss anything but foreign policy.
And the few moments it comes up, well, we don't agree on that, and he'll immediately dismiss it because they have their own neoconservative narrative, and they want to follow it.
And look at how they ignore these talk radio pundits and the mainstream conservative movement, what's going on with Rand Paul.
Here's a guy who even many libertarians are like, well, I don't know if he's as libertarian as I would like on foreign policy.
I think he's probably such, but I understand their concerns.
But to the mainstream conservative movement, he's every bit as horrible as his father.
We're not going to talk about him when he wins that Senate race.
And he's up there making national headlines just like Jim DeMint being one of the most conservative members of the Senate.
What is Limbaugh?
What is Sean Hannity?
What are these guys going to say?
Are they going to continue ignoring him?
And why?
Why does Sean Hannity have on Karl Rove for Pete's sake two or three times a week talking to him about limited government, but acting like the Rand Paul campaign in Kentucky doesn't exist when Sarah Palin endorses them?
I mean, if Sarah Palin eats at the Waffle House, Sean Hannity is doing an hour on that.
If he endorses it, she endorses a Republican candidate like Rand Paul.
They're not talking about it.
My point being, and going back to what you were saying with Hackworth, they ignore figures that destroy their narrative.
They have to keep it going.
But we are winning.
We are puncturing through little by little.
Yeah, well, it does seem that the worse it gets, the more people start going, wait a minute, man.
That's Southern Avengers, guys.
Got a point.
Well, now, let me tell you this, because I'm a libertarian.
I view myself and my own philosophy as outside of the left-right spectrum entirely.
If anything, maybe like Rothbard once wrote, I'm all the way to the left, the individualist, anarchist, libertarian kind of perspective.
But really, I think I'm just completely outside it.
But what I often like to try to do in order to get the point across to people, not that I'm necessarily always that effective at it, is attack the left from the left and the right from the right.
So if you're a true liberal, then you should not have one moment of patience for anything that even smells like a hint of it could violate any part of the Bill of Rights ever, ever.
For example, or bombing innocent people, things like that.
And then on the right side, as you've been talking about, you attack it, fiscal policy.
OK, fine.
I can see that foreigners aren't human beings somehow, and it's perfectly OK to murder their wives, their children, their sisters, and whoever you feel like.
But it costs so much money, that kind of thing.
And I was thinking that most especially, as you mentioned, the biggest danger that we face right now is the possibility of a war with Iran.
And I wonder whether you've done too much on that story, and I guess I'd just like to ask you to, because that's what the narrative that we must attack Iran comes from the right, and it can only be debunked from the right.
Well, first off, you're talking about the left-right paradigm.
It's important to argue from circumstance.
I was a Pat Buchanan guy in 1996 and 2000.
That's where I sort of come from, that sort of Richard Weaver, Russell Kirk, Pat Buchanan, paleoconservative right.
That's what I am.
Of course I'm a big Ron Paul guy now, and both of them have more in common with each other than the neocon mainstream, so it all works out.
But as far as arguing from circumstance, I got my start at a FM rock station here in Charleston.
You'd hear Stone Temple Pilots.
You'd hear Weezer.
Then you'd hear Jack Hunter talking about politics.
I did not call myself a conservative at that time even though I was every bit the conservative I am today because that was not the context that Jack Hunter was being featured in, if you will.
It wasn't worth making that argument.where everything is about who's a liberal and who's a conservative.
It's important to reclaim being a conservative.
Like look, these guys, these Republican politicians, George W. Bush, these talk radio guys like Hannity, are not conservative, and here's why.
And you have to argue from circumstance to sort of reclaim that and make your point.
In other words, if I'm a liberal, they're not going to listen to what I have to say, and I'm not a liberal.
And more importantly, as far as leftists and dealing with them and the hypocrisies, because Obama's foreign policy is almost identical to George W. Bush's foreign policy.
I'll talk to some of my Democrat friends who say, oh, well, Obama's changed.
I'm like, no, it's the same.
It's the same thing, and they will tell me.
I remember one particular conversation with a Democrat friend.
He said, well, in Afghanistan, do you realize how they treat women?
Obama has to do something about that.
I go, well, let's jump back a few years here.
Didn't Sean Hannity used to say and go on and on about Saddam Hussein's rape rooms and all the torture and human rights violations as justification for why we were in Iraq?
And they would say, yeah.
I go, well, how is that any different from your argument now that we should be the world's policemen?
And they will try to rationalize and say it's not the same.
It is the same.
And we need to call them on their BS, quite frankly, whether arguing from the right or the left.
Getting to your Iran question, I did actually write a column a while back, Iran, Iran So Far Away.
And I don't think that title is original to me, of course, Flock of Seagulls reference.
But I've been having this conversation with callers who are now saying on the news that, oh, well, Iran might be able to attack us by 2015.
They've got this, and they've got that, uranium enrichment, and this, that, and the other.
This is Iraq all over again.
All of the things that we're supposedly worried about with Iran being a threat, Iran is not a threat.
Ahmadinejad is not the next Hitler.
Iran does not threat the United States in any way, shape, or form.
Get that through your skull, and they'll argue with me about this.
And I will say, were these not the same arguments you heard about Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and was any of it true?
And you'll get them to admit that eventually.
This is Iraq all over again, 100%.
Yeah, well, and especially, I like your example that you bring up there, that could shoot us with a missile by 2015.
That was a headline from last week where it says in the first paragraph, If Russia gives them three-stage ICBMs, then they'll have some.
Yeah, big freaking deal.
I mean, again, it's not just that it's the same lies as against Iraq.
It's that they're just as idiotic.
Here in Iraq, there was no nuclear program at all.
In Iran, there is a nuclear program, and there's an IAEA cop sitting right there measuring every bit of it, and safeguarding it, quote-unquote, capital S, safeguarding all of it, and continuing to verify the non-diversion of their nuclear material.
You know, it's the same thing watching, you know, when Bush is in power, I always watch Fox.
When the Democrats are in power, Barack Obama, I always watch MSNBC, so I get the worst of the partisan pro-state kind of spin.
And, you know, it's the same with, and on the Iran issue, of course, everybody's going to be just as bad, especially now.
It might be even worse now, since the Democrats have such a stake in defending their president.
But, like, you hear Chris Matthews or any of these guys tell it, Oh, yeah, Iran, nuclear danger, threat, this, that.
Nobody ever talks about, well, wait a minute, what do they have?
What are the names of their three or four different nuclear facilities that we're interested in?
And what exactly is going on at any of them?
And does any of this amount to the threat that I just called it?
No details allowed on TV, ever!
Well, they don't talk about the intimate details, which will tell you much about the reality of the situation.
But even, furthermore, let's say, for argument's sake, and I fully expect them to, that 10, 20, 5 years from now, they do get a nuclear weapon.
So what?
So what?
We subsidized the problem.
Ron Paul made a great point during the 2008 campaign.
The quickest way to get respect in that part of the world is to acquire nuclear weapons.
We quit threatening you, and we subsidize you.
You get more foreign aid than you ever did.
I'm more worried about the loose nukes floating around in Pakistan, if you had to pick, than Iran potentially maybe someday, whenever, getting a nuclear weapon.
They look at the whole situation wrong, but once again, it's about building up a boogeyman.
You need a boogeyman to invade and occupy or impose sanctions.
That's what this is all about.
Yeah, I'm afraid so.
Well, so let's talk about kind of, well, the hopefulness for the right.
Because I guess I was in high school in the 90s, graduated about halfway through.
And I was always a libertarian, so I'm not a neo-anything.
I've never been a Republican or a Democrat or a conservative or a liberal.
Thank goodness, what baggage.
I must be a real burden trying to carry that stuff around.
I'm a Republican when Pat Buchanan or Ron Paul are running for that office.
Other than that, I really am an independent.
But everybody I got along with politically in the 90s was a right-winger pretty much, except for – well, that's not really true.
There were left-wingers who were leftist enough that they hated Bill Clinton and the warmongering, evil Democrats and whatever.
And so I hung out with them and had a radio show on Free Radio Austin and stuff, the good lefties.
But there was a lot of right-wing anti-government sentiment in the 1990s.
But then in 1998 it turned from we hate the government to we hate Bill Clinton.
And we just can't wait until we get another Republican in there.
And, of course, the Lewinsky thing was the worst part of that.
And then when George Bush took power – I mean, George Bush's son took power.
They all went, oh, yeah, we love government and completely forgot.
And it turned out that they're really just a bunch of partisans.
I mean, that's what we're looking at here when Obama leaves, whether it's after the next election or the one after that, is all these right-wingers are going to get right back in bed with whoever the Republican is and cheer for the bombing of whoever they're told to cheer.
Right?
I think some will, and I'm not so sure all will.
And that's what's encouraging about what's going on.
People are trying to paint the Tea Parties as just a bunch of disaffected Republicans who are all pro-war.
That's not the case.
Tom Woods made a point that he's been invited to speak at different Tea Party events, including that horrible national convention in Nashville they had, which was not representative of the Tea Partiers at large.
And many of the local organizations spoke out against it.
But the idea that they're all going to go back to being pro-war Republicans is possible, but it's not definite.
I think that's the difference we're seeing right now.
I think you might see with the Tea Partiers a split where some of them go back to hanging out with Karl Rove and Sean Hannity and think guys like John Boehner are great just because they yelled at the Democrats one day.
And the very enthusiastic Tea Partiers who are serious about spending and limited government, if you go to their events, the two things that make them the maddest, from my experience, are if you call them racist, that they're just there because we have a black president, or that they're just Republican partisans.
It really angers a lot of them.
I've seen it.
I am not.
To hell with George W. Bush.
I've heard people say that.
So I think we might be seeing a split here where we might have a bigger anti-war possibly.
We're not quite to that point yet.
I don't think they've thought about things that far out yet, but they're certainly more receptive to it, these grassroots conservatives, than ever before.
I see hope, and I think it's a mistake to dismiss these people when they're trending in the right direction.
You said you've always been a libertarian.
When I was 17 or 18, I was a Rush Limbaugh-loving, Republican-voting, just standard.
Quite frankly, neoconservative.
Didn't even know what that was at the time.
Then I picked up the conservative mind by Russell Kirk.
Then Pat Buchanan ran for president in 1996 when I was about 20 years old, and on and on and on.
I sort of trended in the anti-empire, old right, Robert Taft, somewhat libertarian, traditional conservative position, if you will.
Well, these people, if they're on their journey, these Tea Partiers, they're waking up from the Bush hangover, and they're sort of trending in the right direction… … and they're at least willing to ask questions or listen to challenges to their former assumptions, that's encouraging.
And we're seeing that more than ever, and we need to keep encouraging that.
Yeah, right on.
Well, I certainly agree with you.
It's sort of the same thing as so many liberals and leftists and progressives.
I wouldn't necessarily say they were ever really anti-government in their philosophy.
But Tom Paine was even running articles saying, maybe federalism isn't such a bad idea, and citing the medical marijuana challenges and that kind of thing.
Emperor Bush's centralization, all his signing statements and his unitary executive and aggressive war made a lot of liberals and progressives and leftists really suspicious of state power.
And I would say more of them have stayed good than right-wingers stayed good, at least in terms of their intellectual leadership, like the Glenn Greenwalds of the world.
Glenn Greenwald's great, absolutely.
Compare him to Jonah Goldberg or something over there at the National Review after Bush took power.
I mean, I guess this is really how it is, is that most people, they buy into the one side or the other thing.
And then when it switches, when the power switches, then the peaceniks and the Bill of Rights mongers like you and I get to try to collect those washing out from realizing that the side that they thought they liked really isn't that good after all.
And kind of bring them into this new anti-everything center rather than the pro-everything center.
That's the way I look at it.
Well, I think you need to make a distinction between grassroots rank and file, which is what I was talking about with the Tea Parties and these sort of pundits and intellectuals and the elite class as represented by guys like Jonah Goldberg.
Yeah, fair enough.
I don't see Jonah Goldberg ever changing.
I didn't see the right wingers saying we're the anti-war right wing.
The people who were really anti-government in the 1990s, the people who were standing next to me helping teach the third guy that George Bush Sr. was a coke pusher.
And then they all just went home when his son took power.
They certainly weren't opposed to the wars.
I mean, there's the American Conservative Magazine and whatever, but that's the exception that proves the rule here.
The rank and file right rolled right over for Bush and Cheney and stayed that way until at least Katrina.
Well, you're absolutely right.
And look, most conservatives, whether the grassroots or self-identified conservatives who really latch onto that label, it's very important to them.
Whether talk hosts like Hannity – I keep bringing him up because he's a perfect example of what's wrong with that medium, quite frankly.
Hannity, some of these Republican politicians, grassroots.
When they're defending the term conservative, there's a laundry list of things they believe in that they consider conservative, and they don't reflect too much.
This is the same for liberals, by the way.
This is the same for both sides.
If you're a liberal, I agree with Barack Obama.
Whatever his agenda is, you sort of rationalize and support that.
Same thing with the conservative.
Well, George W. Bush stood for this.
I'm going to rationalize and support that.
Our job, whether you're a Glenn Greenwald guy on the left who's spectacular on calling people's hypocrisy, calling out hypocrisy and just blindness in many instances… … or guys like what you do, Scott, or what I do, our job is to change that laundry list.
In other words, if you have a guy like Ron Paul or Pat Buchanan or Joe Scarborough on MSNBC who's saying, why are we policing the world?
If you've got a guy like George Will who's now saying, why are we escalating in Afghanistan?
The sort of pile-on effect of different conservatives asking questions, it's our job to change that laundry list.
Is it as true in 2010 that being pro-war is as much a part of being a mainstream conservative as it was in 2006, 2007, 2008?
Is it there?
Yes.
Is it as strong?
I would argue not.
But if McCain was president and we were already at war with Iran?
That would be horrible, yes.
They'd be all cheering for it at the top of their lungs too and telling me and you that we're both traitors and we're on the side of the ayatollah obviously.
Oh yeah, I'd be a liberal democrat again if McCain was president, which is why I argued that he should not win.
I voted for Chuck Baldwin in 2008, but I wrote a column, Thank God McCain Lost.
And I explained, I said conservatives can never get their collective sense about spending back, and we can never get this monkey off our back of foreign policy if this idiot wins.
And I think I've been proven right so far quite frankly.
Absolutely.
And I think it's kind of sad to have seen so many liberals kind of go the way of defending the state for having Obama.
It really has hurt the peace movement a lot.
But then again, I mean, in philosophy, I think, you know, we'd agree that the two are not really that different from each other.
But in terms of the effect that they have on the people of the country politically in the left and right sense, I think it's, you know, like you said, it's a good thing.
Certainly for the right.
It's a good thing that they're not having to sit around trying to defend this guy.
But secondly, I think just on the personal level that that guy has the combination of ignorance and just a simple minded hatred.
And he's so erratic that I think that if he was the president, we certainly would be at war with Iran right now.
And I think he's the kind of guy that, you know, like when Dick Cheney was pushing for strikes on the Russians in Georgia in August 2008.
I think that if that had been John McCain, he would have called for airstrikes against the freaking Russians, Jack.
I mean, that guy, he's the worst.
He's the most dangerous guy around.
I'd take Obama over him a hundred times in a row.
No matter how much I hate Obama.
Absolutely.
I told people during the election I would vote for Obama over McCain, even though I didn't like Obama.
That's why I voted third party.
I was in a good conscience vote for either one of them.
You know, people call me on occasion, Scott, and say, well, what about Sarah Palin?
I'm not sure what she stands for.
I'm not sure she is either.
But when I tell people what my main concern is, I don't dislike or hate Sarah Palin.
This is my concern, and I use the Georgia-Russia example that you just brought up, which is why I mentioned him.
When you have a guy like Randy Shuneman, who was McCain's foreign policy advisor, was a lobbyist for the Georgian government trying to bring them into NATO… … and that skirmish happened between Russia and Georgia.
Guys like Randy Shuneman, John McCain, who said we're all Georgians now, would have had American boots on the ground if they were part of NATO.
That's what that obligation means.
I ask people on my radio show or out on the street, do you think that American troops should be in a country like Georgia?
99% of them say no.
Look at what we're doing now.
We can't do that.
That's crazy.
I'm like, well, Sarah Palin, one of her primary advisors, thinks that's a good idea, and she would argue to that end.
I bet you a dime to a dollar.
And they might not believe it or disagree or whatever, but I say that's my problem with a figure like Sarah Palin.
That's my problem with a guy like John McCain.
They will make all sorts of arguments for us doing things that people on the street, everyday average Americans, would never agree to before they construct this narrative, if you see what I'm saying.
And that's what we need to fear.
That's what we need to stay away from.
We need to push these people away.
Yeah, well, and here I thought that if there was one thing, one thing that the American people all agree about and are right, it's that we don't want a war with Russia.
I mean what the hell?
That's got to be argued about?
Scott, I'm glad you brought that up.
People call up and say, Jack, what is a neoconservative?
The Atlanta-based talk host, Neil Bortz, on our station here in Charleston, who says if you use the word neoconservative, you must be anti-Semitic.
You've heard that before.
So Jack Hunter, what is a neoconservative?
I go, well, let me put it to you like this.
In the 1980s when Ronald Reagan held diplomatic talks with Mikhail Gorbachev, he was called by Newt Gingrich and Norman Podoritz and other neoconservatives an appeaser.
That it was Munich in 1939, and it was Neville Chamberlain all over again.
In retrospect, as a conservative listener here in Charleston, South Carolina, do you think Reagan did the right thing in meeting with Gorbachev, or were the neoconservatives right and we should have went to war with Russia?
Of course, across the board they say Reagan did the right thing.
We shouldn't have gone to war with Russia.
I said that's a neoconservative and never forget it.
Yeah, good call too.
And of course, for people who are confused, if the neoconservatives are the left-wing radicals inside the conservative movement, why would they want war with Russia?
That's the funny story.
It's because if you look at somebody who, like say John McCain, right?
Like who hates Russia more, or who hated the Soviet Union more even than the white protestant cold warrior supporters, the hardest core of the hard core?
It was the Trotskyites, because they lost to the Stalinists.
And they hated – that's why they were the founders of the National Review, because they could be counted on to be more pro-war than any southern avenger.
Well, you're exactly right.
As Trotskyite socialists, it's always a world struggle.
There's a world struggle they're fighting for where they've taken that vision and now it's a world struggle against Islamofascists.
Or perhaps Russia, if you're John McCain and you're gunning to go to war with them.
It's the same mentality applied in a different field.
Craziness.
Well, I sure am glad you're out there.
And I'm not sure what we disagree on.
Maybe the border or trade with China or something like that.
But I don't even want to talk about those things, because if you're any better on any of those things, then you'd just be a libertarian.
And we've got plenty of great libertarians.
We need good leftists and good right-wingers out there.
And you're doing a hell of a good job of leading them toward peace from the right there.
And I really appreciate it, Jack, a lot.
Well, thank you, Scott.
And I enjoy listening to your show frequently when I get into these discussions about Iran.
By the way, how can I channel Scott Horton's information about Iran into my brain?
Because he's so much more better informed than I am.
Well, that's easy.
Just stay tuned right after this.
All right, everybody, that is Jack Hunter, The Southern Avenger.
Thanks again, Jack.
Take care, Scott.
All right, you guys can find him at the American Conservative Magazine.
That's amconmag.com.
Also at Talkies Top Drawer, or maybe that was a used-to-be, at Charleston City Paper.
And definitely go check it out and bookmark youtube.com slash Southern Avenger.
And I'm sorry, I don't have the number of his radio station, but he's on the air on the AM there in Charleston, South Carolina.
And we are going to talk about Iran right after this.