Joe Conason | John Birch Lives

[bpcmxr]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/12/03/u_n/

"If American conservatism is truly the fount of "new ideas," as its publicists incessantly assure us, why do conservatives constantly promote the stale old ideas that obsessed them in 1962?

Back then, the extremists of the ultra-right regarded the United Nations as the advance guard of the international communist conspiracy. "Get the U.S. out of the U.N. and the U.N. out of the U.S.!" blared the bumper-sticker slogan of the John Birch Society, while the National Review called for the U.N. to be "liquidated."

<snip>

The most embarrassing revelations for the secretary general involve his son Kojo, who enjoyed a lucrative, conflict-ridden consulting contract with Cotecna, a Swiss firm accused of abetting Saddam's abuse of the oil deals. That has prompted Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who chairs a Senate committee investigating the scandal, to urge Annan to quit. That demand is now echoing around Congress and the conservative media, from the Wall Street Journal to Fox News to the cover of the National Review.

An American politician denouncing legalized bribery and conflict of interest sounds mildly ridiculous to anyone familiar with Washington's campaign financing system (and the most recent adventures of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay). But Coleman's assault on Annan would be premature and demagogic even if it weren't so hypocritical."

<snip>

The rest is worth the Day Pass.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/12/03/u_n/

[Wapsie B]

1. Well if the repugs want the investigation stopped

you can be sure there's a whole lot more than a bj going on with this one. But then this is just another of the many scandals to fly right over the heads of much of the American public due to a corrupt media in this country.

[Mari333]

2. The whole isolationist go it alone adolescent chest thumping

is so stale...I grew up around these kind of people...in Indiana...they are living in shantytowns and reading the Turner diaries, and many of them have never left their home state..
Their world view is pretty much this...Im sorry to say..

[texpatriot2004]

3. Does anyone remember hearing that B*s mother

was really into the John Birch society? I think some psychiatrist/doctor supposedly turned her on to it.