I was being sarcastic, as in the Geneva Conventions are “Quaint.” Remember that?

Ozzie, I have to ask:
What did you mean when you said “The idea of checks and balances is already quaint”? In particular I’m struck by your choice of the word, “quaint”. What do you mean?

Is the very idea of checks and balances quaint because of what Cheney/Bush have done over eight years? Or is it quaint because our modern society makes it irrelevant? Some other reason?

Thx. I’m interested because I see the idea of checks and balances as the only hope of saving us from the foibles of human nature itself. That much of the misery we see happening around us is because of the absence of checks and balances.

Once again, Brian, from the piece I posted, which was written in 2007:

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4630

Jon Basil Utley is associate publisher of The American Conservative. He was a foreign correspondent in South America for the Journal of Commerce and Knight Ridder newspapers and former associate editor of The Times of the Americas. He was for 17 years a contract commentator on third world issues for Voice of America. He is a writer and advisor for Antiwar.com, a chairman of ConservativesForPeace.com, and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.

Here’s who he claims to be:
Jon Basil Utley is Chairman of Americans Against World Empire. http://www.iraqwar.org

Mr. Utley is the Robert A. Taft Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He is a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, studied languages in Europe, and lived 15 years in South America. He was in business and then served as a foreign correspondent for Knight/Ridder newspapers. He has served on the Board of Directors or Advisory Boards of many organizations including Accuracy in Media, Council for Inter-American Security, and the Conservative Caucus.

Here’s another article by Utley called An Alternative to the Unending War from October 2001 on a Libertarian website. An example from the article. The war he’s referring to is a general war against muslim extremists:

Can It Be Won?

All of this will inevitably spawn a rethinking of American foreign policy (see my article, “America is Not Rome”). For the U.S., this war is unwinnable, because our policymakers refuse to address its causes, and fear that doing so would make us look like we are caving in to terrorism. Until we do, for every terrorist killed, ten more will take his place, just as is true regarding Israel’s much tougher policies on the West Bank.

It is indeed ironic and threatening that Bin Laden’s objective of making America the enemy of the whole Muslim world is solidly reinforced by naive (or worse) American conservatives demanding attacks on more Arab nations. Fox News, the op-eds of the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times, National Review, the American Enterprise Institute, and Heritage Foundation are filled with demands for policies that will cause the killing of more Muslims, which they euphemistically call “changing the governments.”

This is exactly what Bin Laden planned (see Robert Fisk of the Independent). Bin Laden’s writings argue first for the overthrow of pro-American regimes in the Arab world. He foresees that American attacks on other Arab nations would generate sufficient hatred to bring this about, and that Americans overseas would become targets. Already, the U.S. Navy has severely curtailed shore leave in many nations. Student plans to study in Europe are being trimmed. Our enemies are not going to fight us on our terms, with F-16’s and cruise missiles. Instead, they may hit our soft underbelly: unarmed Americans abroad. They’ll use the weapons they have.

None of the above supports the thesis that we are faced with a “clash of civilizations” or that Muslims love dying in order to get a quick trip to Paradise. This rot comes from those who made the catastrophe we now face: the neo-conservative foreign policy establishment that ran Republican foreign policy. Their interest is in obfuscating the consequences of the interventionist foreign policies they were able to force upon Washington.

As for Bin Laden’s stated political demands on the U.S., they reflect nothing but the political priorities of the Muslim world. Bin Laden has been very clear (as the now-famous British study of his motives has shown): American troops out of Arab lands, an end to the blockade of Iraq, and an end to the occupation of Palestinian lands on the West Bank and Gaza. He certainly uses Muslim fundamentalism as his weapon, but nonreligious Arabs have the same views (witness the hijackers who drank liquor and visited girly bars).

I think he as a bias against fundamentalist Christians. He also doesn’t think much of neo-conservatives.

About the author of the piece I posted:

Jon Basil Utley is associate publisher of The American Conservative

It seems that Foreign Policy in Focus is run by the Istitute for Policy Studies.

Here’s who IPS is”:
* Institute for Policy Studies (IPS): Throughout its history, this think tank has committed itself to the task of advancing leftist causes. It worked with agents of the Castro regime and championed environmentalist and anti-war positions in the 1960s and 1970s; it declared against the Reagan administration’s efforts to roll back communism in the 1980s; it joined the vanguard of what IPS hails as the “anti-corporate globalization movement” in the 1990s; and, most recently, it has furnished policy research assailing the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Here’s who contributes to IPS:
While battling the murderous scourge of Islamic terrorism in the Middle East, the United States simultaneously faces a most formidable foe within its own borders. Determined, well organized, and immensely wealthy, this enemy pours untold sums of money into the coffers of organizations dedicated to ensuring America’s defeat in that war. Yet few Americans are even remotely familiar with this foe, whose benign sounding name — Peace and Security Funders Group (PSFG) — gives no hint of the potential national catastrophe that its policies encourage.

Established in 1999, PSFG is an unincorporated association of more than 50 private and public foundations that give a portion of their $27 billion in combined assets to leftist organizations that undermine the war on terror in several interrelated ways: (a) by characterizing the United States as an evil, militaristic, oppressive nation that exploits vulverable populations all over the globe; (b) by accusing the U.S. of having provoked, through its unjust policies and actions, the terror attacks against it, and consequently casting those attacks as self-defensive measures taken in response to American transgressions; (c) by depicting America’s military and legislative actions against terror as unjustified, extreme, and immoral; (d) by steadfastly defending the civil rights and liberties of terrorists whose ultimate aim is to facilitate the annihilation of not only the United States, but all of Western civilization; and (e) by striving to eradicate America’s national borders and institute a system of mass, unregulated migration into and out of the United States — thereby rendering all distinctions between legal and illegal immigrants anachronistic, and making it much easier for aspiring terrorists to enter our country.

Also Open Society Istitute of George Soros fame.

Ozzie, you couldn’t find more left wing propaganda if you tried– then again mayber you are trying.

Here’s a great article from Foreign Policy In Focus:

America’s Armageddonites
Jon Basil Utley | October 10, 2007

Editor: John Feffer

Utopian fantasies have long transfixed the human race. Yet today a much rarer fantasy has become popular in the United States. Millions of Americans, the richest people in history, have a death wish. They are the new “Armageddonites,” fundamentalist evangelicals who have moved from forecasting Armageddon to actually trying to bring it about.

Most journalists find it difficult to take seriously that tens of millions of Americans, filled with fantasies of revenge and empowerment, long to leave a world they despise. These Armageddonites believe that they alone will get a quick, free pass when they are “raptured” to paradise, no good deeds necessary, not even a day of judgment. Ironically, they share this utopian fantasy with a group that they often castigate, namely fundamentalist Muslims who believe that dying in battle also means direct access to Heaven. For the Armageddonites, however, there are no waiting virgins, but they do agree with Muslims that there will be “no booze, no bars,” in the words of a popular Gaither Singers song.

These end-timers have great influence over the U.S. government’s foreign policy. They are thick with the Republican leadership. At a recent conference in Washington, congressional leader Roy Blunt, for example, has said that their work is “part of God’s plan.” At the same meeting, where speakers promoted attacking Iran, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay glorified “end times.” Indeed the Bush administration often consults with them on Mideast policies. The organizer of the conference, Rev. John Hagee, is often welcomed at the White House, although his ratings are among the lowest on integrity and transparency by Ministry Watch, which rates religious broadcasters. He raises millions of dollars from his campaign supporting Israeli settlements on the West Bank, including much for himself. Erstwhile presidential candidate Gary Bauer is on his Board of Directors. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson also both expressed strong end-times beliefs.

American fundamentalists strongly supported the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. They consistently support Israel’s hard-line policies. And they are beating the drums for war against Iran. Thanks to these end-timers, American foreign policy has turned much of the world against us, including most Muslims, nearly a quarter of the human race.

The Beginning of End Times

The evangelical movement originally was not so “end times” focused. Rather, it was concerned with the “moral” decline inside America. The Armageddon theory started with the writings of a Scottish preacher, John Nelson Darby (1800-1882). His ideas then spread to America with publication in 1917 of the Scofield Reference Bible, foretelling that the return of the Jews to Palestine would bring about the end times. The best-selling book of the 1970s, The Late, Great Planet Earth, further spread this message. The movement did not make a conscious effort to affect foreign policy until Jerry Falwell went to Jerusalem and the Left Behind books became best sellers.

Conservative Christian writer Gary North estimates the number of Armageddonites at about 20 million. Many of them have an ecstatic belief in the cleansing power of apocalyptic violence. They are among the more than 30% of Americans who believe that the world is soon coming to an end. Armageddonites may be a minority of the evangelicals, but they have vocal leaders and control 2,000 mostly fundamentalist religious radio stations.

Although little focused on in America, Armageddonites attract the attention of Muslims abroad. In 2004, for instance, I attended Qatar’s Fifth Conference on Democracy with Muslim leaders from all over the Arabian Gulf. There, the uncle of Jordan’s king devoted his whole speech to warning of the Armageddonites’ power over American foreign policy.

Armageddonite Foreign Policy

The beliefs of the Armageddon Lobby, also known as Dispensationalists, come from the Book of Revelations, which Martin Luther relegated it to an appendix when he translated the Bible because its image of Christ was so contrary to the rest of the Bible. The Armageddonites worship a vengeful, killer-torturer Christ. They also frequently quote a biblical passage that God favors those who favor the Jews. But they only praise Jews who make war, not those who are peacemakers. For example, they vigorously opposed Israel’s murdered premier Yitzhak Rabin, who promoted the Oslo Peace Accords.

Based on this Biblical interpretation, the Armageddonites vehemently argue that America must protect Israel and encourage its settlements on the West Bank in order to help God fulfill His plans. The return of Jews to Palestine is central to the prophetic vision of the Armageddonites, who see it as a critical step toward the final battle, Armageddon, and the victory of the righteous over Satan’s minions. There are a couple internal inconsistencies with this prophecy, such as the presence of Christians already living in the Holy Land and the role of Jews in the final dispensation. In the first case, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and other Religious Right leaders tried to pretend that Christians already in the Holy Land simply didn’t exist. As for Jews, they needed to become “born again” Christians to avoid God’s wrath (or, according to some Armageddonites, a separate Jewish covenant with God will gain them a separate Paradise).

Everyone else — Buddhists, Muslims (of course), Hindus, atheists, and so on – are then slated to die in the Tribulation that comes with Armageddon. As described in the bestselling Left Behind series, this time of human misery ends with Christ then ruling a paradise on earth for a thousand years.

Armageddonites know little about the outside world, which they think of as threatening and awash with Satanic temptations. They are big supporters of Bush’s “go it alone” foreign policies. For example, they love John Bolton. They were prime supporters for attacking Iraq. And, with very few exceptions, they were noticeably quiet about, if not supportive, of torturing prisoners of war (only with a new leadership did the National Association of Evangelicals finally condemn torture in May, 2007). Their support of the Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani shows that they consider aggressively prosecuting Mideast war (to help speed up the apocalypse) more important than the domestic programs of these socially liberal politicians.

On other foreign policy issues, they are violently against the pending Law of the Seas Treaty, indeed any treaty which possibly circumscribes U.S. power to go it alone. They want illegal immigrants expelled and oppose more immigration. They fear China’s growth. They despise Europeans for not being more warlike. The UN figures prominently in their fears, and the Left Behind books present its Secretary General as the Antichrist. Domestically, they strongly support the USA PATRIOT Act and all of President Bush’s actions, legal or illegal.

Armageddonites and Fascism

Author and former New York Times reporter Christopher Hedges argues that worldview and reasoning of the Armageddonites tend toward fascism. In his book American Fascists, Hedges focuses on their obedience to leadership, their feelings of humiliation and victimhood, alienation, their support for authoritarian government, and their disinterestedness in constitutional limits on government power. Theirs was originally a defensive movement against the liberal democratic society, particularly abortion, school desegregation, and now globalization, which they saw as undermining their communities and families, their values, and livelihood. Their fundamentalism is very fulfilling and, Hedges writes, “they are terrified of losing this new, mystical world of signs, wonders and moral certitude, of returning to the old world of despair.”

Hedges, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, also shows that fundamentalists are quite selective. They don’t take the Bible literally when it comes to justifying slavery or that children who curse a parent are to be executed. The movement is also very masculine, giving poor men a path to re-establish their authority in what they perceive as an overly feminized culture. Images of Jesus often show Him with thick muscles, clutching a sword. Christian men are portrayed as powerful warriors.

The overwhelming power and warmongering of the Armageddonites has inspired some resistance from other fundamentalists, but they are a minority. Theologian Richard Fenn writes, “Silent complicity (by mainline churches) with apocalyptic rhetoric soon becomes collusion with plans for religiously inspired genocide.” Their death-wishing “religion” is actually anti-Christian and should be challenged openly by traditional Christians.

The next election will likely loosen their grip on the White House. However, their growing ties to the military industrial complex will remain. Exposure of their war wanting as a major threat to America and the world may well become as destructive for them as was the famous Scopes trial in the 1920s. But that will only happen if Americans become as concerned as foreign observers about the influence of the Armageddonites.

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4630

Jon Basil Utley is associate publisher of The American Conservative. He was a foreign correspondent in South America for the Journal of Commerce and Knight Ridder newspapers and former associate editor of The Times of the Americas. He was for 17 years a contract commentator on third world issues for Voice of America. He is a writer and advisor for Antiwar.com, a chairman of ConservativesForPeace.com, and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. For more articles in the Religion and Foreign Policy strategic focus, visit http://www.fpif.org/fpifinfo/4590.

Last I looked, most Democrats had been bought and paid for by many of the same corporate interests as the Republicans.

First you have to re-instate the wall between Obama and State.