Neocon-o- m: A Real Threat to America

By Winston Churchill Jr.

Read about Leo Strauss, the pivotal founder of the Neo-Conservative movement here in the USA, and you will meet the epitome of what to expect in a prophet of m.

But since ‘ m’ is a loosely used term for various convolutions, you may however first need to read about general characteristics of “ m”, so as to have the necessary grounding on which to compare that ideological bent with Leo Strauss’ political philosophy. So Google ‘ m’ first and study if you are not already familiar with the concept. There are several articles from which to choose on the Internet.

Then google articles about ‘Leo Strauss’. Again there are several on the Internet.

I mention these prerequisite reading because this commentary is neither a summary of the characteristics of m nor an explanation of was Leo Strauss. Those essays are already written and are easily accessible—there is no reason to repeat or pretend to do better.

Rather we are to contemplate a connection between Leo Strauss, the NeoCons as dynamic and subversive operatives here within, and m in general—to see if there are any connections—especially since it has been the NeoCons’ strategy to consistently use their racist term “Islamo m” and to argue Arabs and Muslims are America’s boogeymen.

Yes indeed, despite the fact that many right-wing Neo-Cons, who have maintained their privileges and connections to work and write frequently for mainstream media’s editorial pages, while others worked prominent think tanks to lobby our taxed paid government, they have conformingly and vociferously screamed wolf whilst their fingers stridently point to “Islamo t” terrorism (even though there is little if anything in the way of real proof that 19 Arabs caused 9-11).

The truth may well be that it is neocono m that we Americans need to be especially aware and especially concerned.

Because not only has it remained consistent for right-wingers, in general, to ‘project’ their own conscious and unconscious tendencies onto outsiders, but specifically, the NeoCons, via their ‘elitist’ conceits, and willingness to embrace deceptive propaganda strategy, including their lavish support of John McCain, they have hitherto been blowing much toxic and ominous smoke, under their cover of make-shifting mirrors, to radically enhance their own tic takeover of this once, more or less, free society.

But equally eminent is the reality that many (but not all) of the most influential Neo-Cons operating inside the Washington D.C. beltway, while others working for some of the most prominent syndications of newsprint, are Jewish. And this is not anti-Semitic, per se, because we can recognize that, by far, most Jewish Americans are neither right wing nor Neo-con (see for example, Eric Alterman’s ‘Bad for the Jews’ column Jan 7/14, 2008 article, see also Peter Dreier’s “Progressive Jews Organize” in The Nation Oct. 1, 2007).

Nevertheless the status of Zionistic Israel, and Israel’s relationship with the United States, continues to be a major problem. Israel is a ‘theocracy’ that discriminates against people of other religions while blowing smoke as it disguises itself as a democracy that honors equality.

Plenty of left-wing and centrist Jewish Americans have come to admit they basically allowed right-wing PACs of powerful Jewish lobbies dictate the Jewish voice here in America (see the October 1st issue of The Nation; and also Rabbi Arthur Waskow’s ‘Why the Silence? Few Jewish leaders have heeded their constituents and called to end the war’ in The Nation Oct 1, 2007).

One eminent hat most Americans ought to question is the very basis of Jewish presumption about homeland territory based on ancient ancestral belief—that is what amounts the political philosophy of the Torah (which is basically of ancient ‘dictatorship’ that presumed ownership to a land settled as ‘foreigners’ from Abraham’s Mesopotamia, say, 3000 years ago) versus the young political philosophy of our Constitutional Republic (that now honors equal rights for ‘all’ irrespective of religion and ethnicity—save the de facto racism against Muslims).

It is relatively clear that the two political philosophies are at odds. Therefore it is time for rational people, who have stepped beyond the superstitions of delusional angel sightings and hearing voices or seeing phantasmagoric or hallucinating sightings, to face this reality and stop supporting an evolving totalitarian state within the new Israel (and now more in the United States).

Nevertheless, the motivation for a Leo Straussian makeover should not be that surprising because if you really study the concept of what m entails, as a set of priorities, patterns and ideals, and compare it to the Zionist movement as it has truly acted out (as opposed to Israeli and AIPAC propaganda), then you can see that there is plenty in common—despite any shock waves that realize m was something commonly referred to people like Hitler.

Nevertheless, the fact is that Israel is nothing, if not a worship of its heightened sense of nationalism and patriotism that is surrounded by a cult for prophets, an ancient and biased covenant with what “they” choose to believe as God, as basically a tribal patriarch named Yahweh. How different then is this theocracy than theocracies the NeoCons condemn in the Arab world?

Furthermore this analysis of comparing the NeoCon mentality, as it evolved from Strauss’ teaching at the University of Chicago, to the general concept of m sheds light on their ongoing plot that has already damaged freedoms in the United States of America. The question we should be asking is whether Israel ‘today’ really confers a sense of equality and equal rights to all peoples living within its terrorities—or are the pundits, whose loyalty resides with Israel, going to continue to lambaste Jimmy Carter and people like of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt?

The answer is no. Israel is not a democracy that confers equality—except to Jews—because it is too busy trying to go back into a time capsule. And although, there may have been several Judaic scholars and Rabbis who have argued for a world model of enlightened democracy and egalitarianism over the ages, the fact pretty much sits that the political philosophy of the Torah of Moses, which is what Israel is still proposed to be based on, was authoritarianism and ethnocentric—not to mention run by a supposedly war-mongering God that eagerly people who disagreed with him or his mortals leaders—that somehow gained the status of not just political leaders—but rather demi-gods.

Furthermore, contemporary Americans should not be fooled into thinking that the God of Abraham versus the God of Moses, versus the God of Job, or the God of David, Erza, Hillel, and then Jesus, or Paul, and then the God of Mohammed, etc., were all the same God. No—each prophet had his “own” conception of the essence of God. Each prophet “projected” characteristics from his own assumptions about God’s tendencies to judge and rule.

In fact it was that Hellenistic Jew Paul who was supposedly the man who most advocated a desire to change religious belief and practice to ‘universal’ application—that is referring to the spirit of the law as opposed to the letter of the law such as birth rites, rituals, etc.

Nevertheless, the early conceptions of the God of the Pentateuch, as handed down from the Old Testament, are conceptions of a petty tin pot tyrant who was partial to a supposedly chosen people. It then seems that the atavistic response of embracing another Zionist theocracy (no matter how traditional via the ages and history), in relationship to the alienations of a modern world, for example to the presumptive myth of glorious Eden, is one that still rejects modernity and the ideal of religious freedom and equality for all—instead of some Nietzschean master versus slave mentality. The spirit of the Pentateuch embraces what is closer to a theocratic Taliban patriotism than what many secular NeoCons claim to despise (because one of Strauss’ teachings was the willingness to manipulate others through religious dogma even if one did not believe in the dogma itself).

Or it is not ironic that enough right-wing, Jewish Americans and Israelis would embrace naïve right-wing Christians here in America to fight Israel’s enemies and to help Israelis get their way—irrespective of the welfare of the Palestinians? Is it not ironic that they willingly do business with the likes of Rev. John Hagee and his kind? (Yet it must be said that ancient Jewish prophets too fatalistically claimed that enemy peoples of the Israel helped Yahweh punish his people so as to teach them a lesson.)

And more importantly, how ironic it is that Israel continually demands more and more “appeasement” from our nation’s leaders irrespective of Israeli leaders’ own attitudes, behaviors, and ethnocentric policies? Israel expects to continue to call the shots, to manipulate our elections with our own donated tax money, and make demands on our country while we, and the rest of the world, are just suppose to concede to their elitist wishes. Apparently they, deluded as a ‘chosen’ people, concede to no one? Why? Is it because they think they “own” God and can therefore act as if they are God?

Yes Israelis take our taxpayer money year after year. They gladly take other resources such as military equipment. Rumor has it they have sold some of our military secrets to countries potentially hostile. And they merely pretend to take our advice while they deliberately sabotage every effort we make to help gain them peace. Meanwhile it has always been ‘their’ responsibility to be responsible for themselves—that is their ‘existential’ reality, as they sit on, who knows how many, nuclear weapons, etc. It is past the time for Americans to rethink policies and relationship with the theocracy of Israel.

Most of world Jewry knows something about the history of Christian prejudice and persecution of their ancestors. Furthermore they are keenly aware of the various Christian versions of the New Testament that are at odds with their own faith. There is indeed something dicey going on in this state of Demark today—that much of the world is in denial. And that is that all too many right-wingers, irrespective of whether they are Christian, Jewish or Muslim, are willing to throw political freedoms overboard so as to exchange them for ‘autocratic’ notions of theocracy—in which they will de facto discriminate against other peoples and ethnicities and groups who worship otherwise.

The manipulation of American xenophobia and ignorance of foreigners are the anthropological realities of what has happened here in the United States via the propaganda machines run by the powers-that-be and pro-lobbyists (see Daniel Lazare’s “Lobbying Degree Zero” in The Nation Oct. 22, 2007).

And as to the question of why some Christian leaders have been critical or prejudice toward Jews, because of the reiterated claim that the Jews killed Jesus, we should remind ourselves that Jesus was Jewish and a Rabbi—and equally they were his first followers. Nevertheless Jesus’ conception of God, as received through tradition, was one of saving ‘all’ peoples—not just reserving a promised land for Orthodox Jews, or their quaint dogmas. Bob Moser in “Who Would Jesus Vote For: The new evangelicals are rejecting the religious right and embracing a broader social gospel” in The Nation March 24, 2008, clearly demonstrate that there is a spectrum of values in the religious sects of America—that are not all reactionary and hidebound.

Based on such a philosophy, Jesus the Jew, would likely have said: “Let the Palestinians enter the Kingdom of God as equals.” So the philosophy would follow to let the Palestinians be equal in the land of Israel. In another words it is appropriate for Americans who still believe in our tattered Constitution and Bill of Rights to ask the American Jewish community and especially the Neo Cons and other secular right-wingers whether it is prudent for Judaism to embrace ‘their’ own prophet Jesus back into their fold (with their own Neo-Rabbinic interpretations)?

Or conversely if not then perhaps world Jewry ought consider retiring the current status of their religion to that of museum mythology—because it does not mix well with modernity and the idea of universal equality—at least not the way it is being played out in the Middle East today—with their long lists of being victims and the baggage of history with some attitude that every Jew should carry the burden of identifying with every strand of Jewish history—no matter how remote was the slavery of some back in ancient Egypt?

Katha Pollitt dutifully notes David Horowitz egomania and chutpuh in her column “David Howowitz, Feminist?” in The Nation Nov. 19, 2007, who espouses and actively promotes Islamo t Awareness Week. This is one of several NeoCons, along with Norman Podhorwitz, Daniel Popes’ Campus Watch and other elitists, like plagiarist Alan Dershowitz, who have worked to destroy free speech on U.S. campuses and the publishing industry.

Why should we Americans, who take our political philosophy from our own fore founders, such as Jefferson and Madison, based on Anglo-Saxon law and the European intellectual enlightenment, want to continue that long history of religious wars and persecution for the sake of buttressing more theocracies that merely pretend egalitarianism—while dogmatic McCarthyism is re-introduced in this country?

Look who supports John McCain the most in the American Newspapers—it is NeoCon pundits like William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, and operatives like Randy Scheunemann, Richard Pearle, and other special interest pundits of the same camp. These are they who are willing to continue to destroy freedom and prosperity for Americans while engaging policy that spreads less democracy abroad.

These are the ones who create an atmosphere of American hegemony abroad that respects no other people save kowtowing to Israel’s right-wing fantasies.

Then according to their whims, the United States too can come to be more like Israel or other even more t states with our own boarder fences, security check points, surveillance databases maintained by private corporations (including Israeli companies), as we the people will continue to be fed propaganda about exaggerated Muslim and Islamic threats. Their information war has been one to convince all Americans that Israel’s enemies are in fact the enemies of the United States of America. They have basically brought their wars to us—and somehow we should feel grateful—or shameful if we are no saluting their idea of patriotism.

Perhaps instead Israel might try becoming more like the United States in the sense of separating Church and State so as to distribute civil liberties more evenly? Then maybe some Arab countries would also re-think their own presumptions on government and a peoples’ framework. Surely most Israelis think and cherish the same things as do most Iraqis and Iranians—jobs, security, a future, respect, etc. Surely the world has enough problems and competition for resources, such as oil and water, that we don’t also need religious politics compounding life’s challenges?

Or if everything has been so up and up then where is the Anti-Defamation League when it comes to identifying and defending anti-Semitism against Muslims and Arabs? Semites are not just Jews—they are a broad band of people from the Levant. Aspersions worthy of note are not just those cast at the sensitivities and imaginations of “Caucasian” Jews from Europe, Russia and the United States—they also include the rampant racism that is fomented against all swarthy peoples from the Middle East by others who claim to be ultimately from the Middle East.

Even given the fact of pogroms and the Holocaust, there is something of a chutzpah in a modern right-wing Jewish people of the 21st century who have traveled the world, and who have actively studied the world and its scholars (and contributing much to scholarship), and yet who still cling to an option for a parochial view of who they were as a people. The beauty of science is that eventually rids itself of bad ideas—too bad the same can’t be said for theocratic enterprise? Yet the facts seem that people have more in common with primate cousins, genetically speaking, than they do with the cultures of people whose history has lived out that are now archeological artifacts from millennia ago.

What alternative do Israelis or the Palestinians have—then to create a shared nation based on equality, and a likely revised religious and philosophical outlook? The idea certainly has been proposed before (see Meron Benvenisti’s “Forty Years of Occupation: the case for shared sovereignty” in The Nation June 18, 2007). Perhaps now, given the constant deception of Israel gobbling up more Palestinian lands, time for leaders to consider it more seriously. All people are similar—Israelis are no better or worse than other people.

Furthermore the question is not: “(Some) Jews Against Obama” (see Eric Alterman, The Nation, March 24, 2008), rather the question is: “How (many) right-wing NeoCons and collaborators are willing to throw out the American Constitution and Bill of Rights just so that they can contribute to an evolving police state here in the U.S. and supposedly feel good about mediocre states elsewhere?”