Leslie | 28.11.2005 16:38

Following is some background on the "Minutemen Exposed by Their Own" story below. More properly, this should be a comment, but I needed html to make this work and I could only find it here, as a new article. I wrote this for OC Craigs List back on November 1, 2005. By then, Politechs was quietly disappearing from open connection with Gilchrist's campaign and their public website vanished page by page over the first week in November.

Jim Gilchrist’s
New Friends
It’s no secret that Jim Gilchrist’s District 48 run for
Congress is being orchestrated by Politechs, Inc., a political consulting firm
recently relocated to Los Angeles from Alexandria, VA, where it was also known
as Primer-Politechs.
From a left-wing point of view, this alliance of
traditional conservatives and neo-cons is more than a little confusing.
With the move to L.A. came Mary Parker Lewis, President and
CEO of Politechs, flush from overseeing talk show host Alan Keyes’ disastrous
2004 Illinois Senate campaign.  Keyes,
a protégé of Jeanne Kirkpatrick, was outed as a neo-con[1]
by Harvard roommate William Kristol as early as 1988. 
Lewis, one-time president of Alan Keyes Enterprises, Inc.,
still does multiple duty as Chief of Staff for Keyes, Chief of Staff for Keyes’
Renew America initiative, and Executive Director of Keyes’ Declaration
Foundation.  Lewis has to be
commended for tenacity: she ran Keyes' failed 1996 and 2000 Presidential bids,
along with the horrendous Senate race.  Lewis
is long-steeped in neo-conservative schooling, starting with her education at
Scripps College (of the Claremont Colleges) and Claremont Graduate School,
bastions of Harry V. Jaffa’s brand of Straussian, neo-conservative politics.
Lewis brought along a couple of friends. 
One is Connie Hair, now spokesperson for the Minuteman Project. 
Hair, a former B-movie starlet and political consultant for Keyes, became
a right-wing celeb when her
arrival at Free Republic[2]
coincided with the 1999 demise of the Freepers into a viper-ridden cesspool.
Through Lewis, Gilchrist is at one degree of separation
from Keyes.  And through Lewis,
[3]
Gilchrist is at the same remove from William Kristol, founder of the
neo-conservative think thank Project for a New American Century (PNAC). 
Kristol is Lewis’s former boss, as well as Keyes’ former roommate. 
Lewis can provide Gilchrist with access to another one of her former
bosses, former Secretary of Education and tsar of the failed war on drugs
William Bennett, also a PNAC member.
Traditional Conservatives (like The Minutemen)
So what do all these neo-con connections mean to
conservatives?  Traditional
conservatives, following in the footsteps of Edmund Burke, support a limited
role for federal government and historical precedent to guide present actions. 
In that spirit and with an indefatigable faith in “American” values,
they hope to roll back social welfare, affirmative action, and immigration,
depending instead on bootstraps and assimilation. 
Traditional conservatives point to the founding fathers, ever-increasing
domestic productivity, and unfettered civil liberties.
The Neo-Cons and PNAC
The greater part of conservative-side policy-makers have
turned their backs on traditional conservatism and entered into an uneasy
alliance with far right religious fundamentalists to dominate U.S. domestic and
foreign policy.  The neo-cons support
a widely expanded role for the U.S. in the world, aggressively exporting
American capitalism.  Little
interested in democracy, neo-conservatives foster worldwide capitalism and
believe the best way to protect U.S. interests is to expand, entrench, and
protect U.S. corporations around the world. 
Leo Strauss, through his students Allan Bloom and Jaffa, argued for an
elitist hierarchy, in which initiates are privy to the real agenda and the rest
of the citizenry is fed religion and lies, as necessary to forestall objection. 
Defense of Israel is a hallmark of Straussian politics.
The contemporary manifestation of Straussian politics is
encapsulated in the Project for a New American Century, a Washington DC think
tank.  PNAC advocates for massive
increases in defense spending and extending “defense” to overturning regimes
potentially hostile to U.S. economic interests: to establish “an international
order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.” 
The first major initiative of PNAC was a 1998 position paper urging the
invasion of Iraq. 
Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) alerted the U.S. House to the dangers
posed to traditional conservatives by neo-cons:

Since 9-11, protection of privacy, whether medical,
personal or financial, has vanished. Free speech and the Fourth Amendment have
been under constant attack. Higher welfare expenditures are endorsed by the
leadership of both parties. Policing the world and nation-building issues are
popular campaign targets, yet they are now standard operating procedures. There’s
no sign that these programs will be slowed or reversed until either we are
stopped by force overseas (which won’t be soon) or we go broke and can no
longer afford these grandiose plans for a world empire (which will probably come
sooner than later.)
None of this happened by accident or coincidence.
Precise philosophic ideas prompted certain individuals to gain influence to
implement these plans. The neoconservatives—a name they gave themselves—diligently
worked their way into positions of power and influence. They documented their
goals, strategy and moral justification for all they hoped to accomplish. Above
all else, they were not and are not conservatives dedicated to limited,
constitutional government.[4]

Today the neo-cons are pushing a position called “Fortress
America” that envisions a common border around Mexico, the U.S., and Canada,
as reported by traditional conservative spokesperson Lou
Dobbs.[5]  Undoubtedly, good
relations with NAFTA-partner and major oil supplier Mexico is high on the
neo-con agenda.
Forgive this left-winger for being confused.
Gilchrist has, on one hand, befriended the friends of
the Mexican government and major U.S. corporations. 
On the other hand, he continues to attack Mexicans in the U.S. and their
corporate employers through the Minutemen.
Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project reportedly[6]
turned its finances and membership lists over to Politechs. 
Since Politechs’ involvement with the Minutemen, Gilchrist has ceded
oversight of the MMP to Gilchrist’s Minuteman partner Chris Simcox, and now
makes only publicity appearances at the border.  (Meanwhile,
Politechs is running Simcox around the cocktail circuit, which might explain why
Simcox was in Vermont when the Minutemen opened their long-announced October
campaign in Arizona.)  Since hooking
up with Politechs, Gilchrist has endorsed the Congressional Immigration Reform
Caucus position to militarize the border, further eroding the posse comitatus
prohibition against using federalized National Guard troops to enforce law
within U.S. borders. 
Why does this reputedly traditional conservative now
support the deployment of troops on American soil? 
Are his new-found friends, who ordered the militarization of New Orleans
instead of its rescue, and promise us military takeover if the avian flu hits
our shores, collecting some payback?  How
much further Gilchrist’s new friends will lead him toward the neo-cons remains
to be seen.  With the Minuteman
Project’s names and money firmly in their grasp, the neo-cons may discover
that a defeated Gilchrist isn’t worth much.






 


[1]
Robert Barnes, “New Right Rallies to Cause of Md. GOP Candidate Alan
Keyes,” Washington Post 23 Oct 1988: b01.


[2]
Jeff Stein, “Free-for-all at Free Republic” 13 July 1999, Salon Media
Group, 1 November 2005 < http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/07/13/free/index.html>.


[3]
“Mary Parker Lewis Column,” Renew America, 1 Nov 2005, < http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/lewis>.


[4]
Ron Paul, “Neo-conned” 23 July 2003, Liberty Committee, 1 Nov 2005 < http://www.thelibertycommittee.org/neo-conned.htm>.


[5]Christine Romans, "Dismantling the US
Border Bringing Canada and Mexico into Fortress America" 16 Jun 2005, Center
for Research on Globalization, 1 Nov 2005

 http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20050610&articleId=175


[6]
Joe McCutchen, interviewed by Michael Corbin, A Closer Look, Filomax
Media Group, 3 Oct 2005, A Closer Look, 1 Nov 2005 < http://www.4acloserlook.com/realaudio/100305a-collins.ram>.