Finding Thomas Sowell’s new home

May 5, 2007

Guest Post by Morbo

As the Carpetbagger reported this week, right-wing columnist Thomas Sowell believes America is in such bad shape that a military coup might be needed to set things right.

I’d like to say I was surprised to read this, but we’ve come to the point where virtually nothing the kook right says is shocking any more. No matter how nutty an opinion is, you can be sure that some far-right columnist or blogger has already gone there.

There has always been in the conservative movement a faction that admires fascism. “Mainstream” right wingers — if there is such a thing any more — accuse anyone who points this out of being an extremist, hysterical, outrageous, etc. Yet the existence of this faction is undeniable. I have heard its proponents speak at right-wing gatherings over the years.

Just to be clear, I am not saying this is a majority opinion or even common among American conservatives. Nor am I saying that these people admire Hitler or Mussolini. But I do think that the idea of absolute rule by a right-wing strongman appeals to this faction.

The strongman promises law and order, an embrace of “traditional values” (usually through some type of state-sponsored church, established either by law or de facto), glorification of the armed forces and a crackdown on dissent. Add in puppet courts and a rubber-stamp legislative body and you’ve got the whole package.

You can see why this would attract some on the right.

After all, they are forced to pick up newspapers and see liberals attacking their views in columns and through letters. Furthermore, some liberals write books explaining their ideas that people are free to buy. Sometimes these liberals even appear on television or on the radio. Some have websites. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to shut all of this down? Aren’t free elections overrated, after all? People are quite capable of voting for the “wrong” candidate.

I realize we’re talking about Sowell here, but even a dim person should be able to pick up a book and see that military juntas are a poor form of government. But since Sowell apparently does not know this, let’s do him a favor. Below is a list of countries that currently operate under military dictatorships. I propose that Sowell read the list, pick one, pack his bags and go live there:

Pakistan, Libya, Myanmar (Burma), Bangladesh, Egypt and Fiji.

Does anyone feel like chipping in for plane tickets?

I’ll kick him in the ass, if that helps. I’ll even wear combat boots to heighten the experience for him.

  • i really gonna start to worry if sowell and other wingnuts start up a preakness pool! after all, it is may.

  • “The strongman promises law and order, an embrace of “traditional values” (usually through some type of state-sponsored church, established either by law or de facto), glorification of the armed forces and a crackdown on dissent. Add in puppet courts and a rubber-stamp legislative body and you’ve got the whole package.”

    Not to fan paranoia or anything, but doesn’t that just summarize Cheney’s political philosophy?

  • Born Again Nixonian wingnut Chuck Colson wrote an essay about the Fundies taking over America because the people couldn’t be trusted to make the “right” decisions in 1999.

    One of Chuckie’s most noted $upporters is Eric Prince, the prez of Blackwater.

  • I clearly remember a conversation I had in late 2000 at my kids ECFE (Early Childhood Family Education) class with one of the other fathers. He gleefully explained that after Bush won the election that the Republicans would control all three branches of the government and could “rule by force”.

  • Sowell sounds like a shrill for the Unitary Executive nuts. Anti-American the lot of them.

    The particular bent you highlight in the post carry insecurity to the extreme. They embrace an authoritarianism that is homogenous to their feelings of vulnerability – whitey gets scared when there are sooo many different people who seem soo alien to the grand narrative passed down in their families for generations. The marriage completed under the Bush WH has been between neocon powermongers and the bent you speak to in the post. The Bush crowd has just been effective in allaying the feelings of insecurity by promising the politically weak they would take care of them and their grand narrative from cradle to grave. -Kevo

  • What Sowell is really alluding to is we should just throw our full support behind Bush or else it would be better to have a military take over that would force us to. He wants no more dissent but a declaration of Bush as emperor. He only believes in a democracy when it agrees with him and resents having his face rubbed in his own pile. What he hates most is being entirely insignificant.

  • When did Ol’ Massa ever care what the houseboy thought? Guys like Sowell are just another houseboy looking for Ol’ Massa to give his life meaning.

  • When I visited Fiji before the military dictatorship, I came away hating the place. I’m sure the tyranny hasn’t made it any better. Thomas Sowell is invited to go there and report on his findings.

  • Put Sowell’s support for a “military coup” together with With God on Our Side: One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military by Michael L. Weinstein & Davin Seay…

    … and worry.

  • What’s really bizarre about this is, if you read the whole column, it looks like he was trying to be George Carlin. This is not a real column, it’s a serious of random observations where he’s trying to be funny or clever. He couldn’t come up with a real column, which leads me to speculate that he was trying, and failing, to defend Iraq, or Gonzales, or Attorneygate in drafts he threw away.

    Speaking as a writer myself, when you think of something small & clever you like, but there’s no room for it in the bigger thing you’re working on, you file it away for later. When you can’t produce a column on deadline, you collect all the little bits you have and publish them. There’s nothing wrong with this practice in and of itself, unless you’re a crypto-fascist like Sowell.

    But think about it. This isn’t something he came up with randomly. This is something he wrote down *earlier*, decided he *liked* it, *saved* it for a rainy day, pulled it OUT again, and published it without hesitation.

    Shouldn’t he be fired for this, in a just world? Isn’t this patently Un-American? Yeah, I know he won’t be, but let’s stay outraged, just the same.

  • I always said Afghanistan under the Taliban was the right winger’s paradise: no central government, controlled by religious fanatics and everybody packing heat.

  • But the thing is, CB and all, that invitations to leave are just what the right wingnuts offered to/demanded for all those earnest liberals and other sane persons almost forty years ago.

    Does “America — Love it or Leave it” ring a bell? or how about “Go home to Rusia where you belong, you commie pinko!” Or am I merely the oldest person here to add a comment?

    Nanuq
    In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. — George Orwell

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