It might be said of ARI “better late than never,” but there is another problem with ARI denouncing neoconservatism:  ARI is in no position to do it with any sincerity.  ARI had published – especially after 9/11 – dozens upon dozens of editorials, press releases and letters to the editor supporting practically the entire neoconservative agenda. Now and then they would criticize the neocons for not being consistent enough, for not being neocon enough, but this was a detail, a disagreement among those having a common cause.

Before 2005 ARI writers totally ignored the leaders of neoconservatism, neither praising nor denouncing them. If we liken the neoconservatives to an army, the officers are men such as Irving Kristol and David Brooks, the “general” (though not all neocons recognize him) Leo Strauss. These, to repeat, ARI ignored before 2005. But all along, before and after 2005, ARI praised the “foot soldiers” – that is, neocons in government and/or in the public eye – men such as Paul Wolfowitz and Daniel Pipes. And it was precisely the neoconservative ideas of these men that ARI praised.

Not all the ideas. For example most neoconservatives oppose Muslim immigration (they usually support other Third World immigration), whereas ARI supports all Third World immigration. In any case ARI promoted most of the neoconservative agenda, and still does. [1]

There are ideas and there are the people who hold them. It is the people aspect we wish to address in this article. Instead of focusing on what ARI says regarding ideas, we focus on whose ideas they are agreeing with. Though it is true that arguing ad hominem – “against the man” – can be a fallacy, when an institution chooses to associate itself with a whole raft of neocons and then denounces neoconservativism it does give one pause.

As for ARI and the neoconservatives, most of the neoconservative positions are harmful to America and ARI agrees with practically all of them, especially on foreign policy and related domestic policy. You find Daniel Pipes and other neocons lauded again and again, you never find James Bovard even mentioned. (See this website’s  Links  page for why James Bovard is out.)

Who then is Daniel Pipes?  And who is Michael Ledeen, Michael Rubin, Paul Wolfowitz? — each of whom at one time or another ARI writers have praised, each of whom answers to the name neoconservative, and it being precisely their neoconservative ideas that ARI writers promoted. We begin with Daniel Pipes.

It publishes Middle East Quarterly once edited by Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute and now by Efraim Karsh, current director of the MEF. Mr. Pipes himself writes a syndicated newspaper column which, according to his website, appears  “in the Jerusalem Post and other newspapers around the globe.”  Apparently the Israeli newspaper is so important it relegates other newspapers to  “other newspapers.” One year the Zionist Organization of America gave him an award for Outstanding Journalism.

The Middle East Forum, according to its website,  “works to define and promote American interests in the Middle East.”  As we shall see, this illustrates a frequently used technique of Mr. Pipes and other neoconservatives:  take a program steeped in self-sacrifice such as an unjust war or foreign aid to their friends (and your enemies), then wrap it in self-interest for public consumption. They know that the rhetoric of reason, principle, freedom, morality, patriotism, America, self-defense, self-interest ... sells.  And that is all their talk of “American interests” is, rhetoric, window-dressing, a shabby and deceptive excuse for another agenda. To borrow a line from Nietzsche, they disguise their secret tyrant-longings in virtue words.

ARI writers are no different from the neocons in this regard. Peter Schwartz, for example, was advertised in the last panel discussion above as the author of the book  The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest: A Moral Ideal for America,  and ARI’s ideal of  “self-interest” is to sacrifice you to Israel — see  This is Our Ally?  on this website. Another example is ARI’s Op-Ed  “Allowing Israel to Destroy the PLO Helps Defend the U.S.” (by Andrew Bernstein, November 8, 2001).

They use the language of selfishness – without the substance – like an incantation that transforms their desire into yours. The technique, like any other lie, is pragmatic, even as its self-deceptive / lying users denounce pragmatism and praise principle. [5]

Then ARI accuses the neocons of advocating self-sacrifice. It’s all very confused. The neocons sacrifice Americans to pay for the U.S. military sacrificing Afghans and Iraqis along with U.S. soldiers, and ARI accuses the neocons of self-sacrifice for – we would say – not sacrificing enough Afghans and Iraqis.  The neocon brand of self-sacrifice is well ridiculed by the bumper-sticker:

Is Daniel Pipes a neoconservative? He thinks so.  The biographical sketch on his website says  “Mr. Pipes takes pride in having been ...”  and there follows a list among which is:  “deemed the neo-conservative movement’s ‘leading thinker’ by Egypt’s Al-Ahram newspaper.”

The hodgepodge that constitutes the notion “neoconservative” makes defining it difficult, but common to all who call themselves neoconservative are, in brief:  big state at home, empire abroad, Israel forever. We will see this in Daniel Pipes as much as in ARI, though ARI is mealy-mouthed about the first two.

Mr. Pipes was interviewed in March 2006 [6]  three years after the U.S. invaded Iraq, Bush and his neocon advisors saying that otherwise Saddam Hussein would kill us all:

Mr. Pipes is a fickle friend. During the Iraq-Iran war some years before, he was urging that the U.S. support  Saddam Hussein. In 1987 in the article “Back Iraq” [7]  he wrote that

Lest there be any doubt that Mr. Pipes regards himself as a neoconservative consider this March 8, 2005 article which (on his website) he titles  “A Neo-Conservative’s Caution.”  He begins by saying that he does not quite know what a neo-conservative is, and continues:

Mr. Pipes writes for National Review and is a contributing editor for National Review Online. He is a regular contributor to David Horowitz’s FrontPageMag.com and to Commentary.  Just look at the company  he  keeps. [9]

Doubtless as a reward for Mr. Pipes’ promoting the Iraq war, in 2003 President Bush appointed him to the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace. Besides running the Middle East Forum Mr. Pipes is now a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Most Americans felt less safe after 9-11. [10]  Not however Daniel Pipes.  In  “My Gloom: Back to September 10” (New York Sun December 20, 2005; the article he quotes is his “Why this American feels safer” Jerusalem Post October 3, 2001)  he writes:

The Middle East Forum Education Fund webpage boasts of its successes, among which is:

The MEF once had a Legal Defense Fund for Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician prosecuted for “hate crime” because his speeches and documentaries offended some Muslims. Whatever Mr. Wilders said about Muslims we support his defense. (He was acquitted June 23, 2011.) But Mr. Pipes defense was unprincipled. He claims to defend freedom of speech yet remains silent while hundreds of other Europeans (and one American) languish in prison for speech offensive to some Jews. As with Mr. Wilders, the content of their remarks is irrelevant to this issue. [11]  The purpose of the MEF’s defense seems to be to oppose Muslim immigration rather than Third World immigration in general.

Mr. Pipes’ fawning articles in favor of reelecting Bush president in 2004 might have been written (not that they were) by Harry Binswanger or Andrew Bernstein.  (See the 2004 section of  Presidential Elections – Ayn Rand & ARI: 1984-2004  and the end of  Our Bold, Fearless Leader  on this website.)

Mr. Pipes founded Campus Watch, which he also directs. Campus Watch encourages college students to report professors whose comments the students consider hostile to Israel – in a word, heretics. The Campus Watch website puts it differently:  it seeks to “monitor and gather information on professors who fan the flames of disinformation, incitement, and ignorance.” This while it and MEF spread disinformation – lies – promoting Israel.

Campus Watch helped destroy Norman Finkelstein’s academic career while being quite happy with Alan Dershowitz – the Harvard professor infamous for the idea of “torture warrants” (not to mention plagiarism in his book The Case for Israel) – and reprinting his articles.

Ironically considering that Campus Watch is part of it, Campus Watch says any existence of an unorganized Israel lobby is a contradiction in terms and “paranoia.”

Alex Epstein, then at ARI, wrote a thoroughly positive review of Campus Watch in The Intellectual Activist December 2002. It is, he says,  “run by Middle East expert Daniel Pipes”  and  “a great act of justice.”  We shall see an example of Mr. Pipes’ expertise in a moment.

ARI allowed Campus Watch to reprint its Op-Eds “Censorship on Campus?” by Onkar Ghate (September 4, 2002) and “Why Do They Hate Us?” by Robert Tracinski (October 1, 2001). [12]

We would have no objection to a “Campus Watch” that was truthful and that focused on anti-American professors, which would include both Islamist and Zionist professors. [13]

In 2000 the Middle East Forum convened the “Lebanon Study Group,” co-chaired by Daniel Pipes and Ziad Abdelnour, president of the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon. They entitled the resulting report (May 2000)  “Ending Syria’s Occupation of Lebanon: The U.S. Role?”  In effect it called for the United States to invade both countries. It called for the U.S. to force Syria from Lebanon, claimed Syria had “weapons-of-mass-destruction” and called for their destruction before it’s too late:

Mr. Pipes is a member of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), closely allied with AIPAC – the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. If WINEP’s propaganda – that propping up Israel is in America’s interest – were not bad enough, according to an FBI whistleblower two of its other members, David and Alan Makovsky, passed classified U.S. nuclear technology to Israel, Turkey and Pakistan. Mr. Pipes has yet to demand that the FBI act on its own files about it. [15]

The Middle East Forum website quotes the Wall Street Journal calling Mr. Pipes an “authoritative commentator on the Middle East.” ARI agrees (see above). You have to wonder though. Mr. Pipes was one of the first to praise Joan Peters’ book From Time Immemorial, which purported to prove that the land now claimed by Israel contained practically no Arabs when the influx of Jews began, and that today almost all Palestinians calling themselves refugees from Israel (or their descendents) are actually immigrants from the surrounding area (or their descendents). The book was a 600 page hoax, a fraud replete with footnotes to nowhere. This is well known and non-controversial. Yehoshua Porath, an Israeli historian (and Likud Party member, so any prejudice would be in the same direction as Mr. Pipes), called the book  “sheer forgery.” [17]  Yet Mr. Pipes wrote in a glowing review that

The following two items are selected from an ongoing entry in Daniel Pipes’ blog entitled  “Caught My Eye – Noteworthy Quotes”:

In a Commentary book review (July/August 2007) of a biography of the U.S. diplomat and historian George Kennan, Mr. Pipes agrees with the book’s author that Kennan “held anti-Semitic views” (quoting Mr. Pipes) in part because “[h]e opposed Washington’s prompt recognition of Israel in 1948.”

Mr. Pipes allowed himself to be featured in the video  Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West  which showed film clips of Arabs interspersed with old film clips of Adolf Hitler. It was produced and distributed – some 28 million copies right before the 2004 election, most given away free – by The Clarion Fund, which in turn is associated with and probably financed by Aish HaTorah, an Israeli organization. [19]  Also featured were two evangelicals, plus Alan Dershowitz and Caroline Glick, famous for her own video, the satire We Con the World.

Early in the video Daniel Pipes is shown saying:  “I would estimate that some ten to fifteen percent ... of Muslims worldwide support militant Islam. That is not to say that only ten to fifteen percent are anti-American or anti-Zionist, no, that’s much larger.”  A revealing conjunction of classes, that, as if  “American”  and  “Zionist”  occupy the same place in Mr. Pipes’ mind.

In a speech elsewhere Mr. Pipes worries about a fifth column of Zionist le— or rather Islamist led immigrants. [20]

In 2008 (at least) he was one of the leaders of Jerusalem Summit, an Israel-based advocacy group that brings together Evangelical Christians, neoconservatives, and pro-Israel figures.

In “Israel’s Best Weapon?” (New York Post July 15, 2003) he wrote that “... other than the Israel Defense Forces, America’s Christian Zionists may be the Jewish state’s ultimate strategic asset.”

The Capitalism Magazine website is not run by ARI but ARI allows it to reprint its articles. Sometimes an ARI writer will publish there instead of on ARI’s website. At the start of the Iraq War, Capitalism Magazine started a website called “Israel is Moral” with the domain name israelismoral.com, now defunct. Interspersed among ARI articles such as  “We Are Either With Israel, Or We Are With the Terrorists” (April 1, 2002)  you could find many by Daniel Pipes, we counted over forty. Judging from the content for the most part these articles could have come from ARI. [21]

Edward Cline, a former ARI guest writer, quoted Daniel Pipes with unqualified approval in several Capitalism Magazine articles. [22]  The Objective Standard, besides advertising Mr. Pipes’ ARI panel appearances, has referenced several of his articles with unqualified approval.

To that end The Objective Standard (Fall 2006) managed to publish a 14,000 word article,  “The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism” by Bradley Thompson,  denouncing neoconservatives  without once mentioning Israel.

Anyone who has studied the work of Daniel Pipes, Charles Krauthammer, Norman Podhoretz, David Horowitz, et al knows that Israel worship is a sine qua non of the neoconservative, without which there is no neoconservative. [23]  And to repeat what cannot be repeated enough, neoconservatives present this worship as American self-interest, claiming that America and Israel share the same values and the same enemies. (The latter of course becomes self-fulfilling when Israel drops U.S. provided bombs on Israel’s enemies.)

Besides Israel, Mr. Thompson neglects to mention Daniel Pipes and other “foot-soldier” neocons. He does consider the more seminal neocons such as Irving Kristol and David Brooks, whom you might call officers, and their intellectual general, Leo Strauss. Mr. Thompson analyzes, and well, the upper ranks of the neoconservative army – but he never considers the foot-soldiers. Neocon principles are bad, but most of their practical actions, their particularly neocon actions, get a free pass.

Besides Israel and the foot-soldier neocons, you will look in vain for any mention of Afghanistan, Iraq or Iran in Mr. Thompson’s article. You have to wonder if his neoconservatives live on a hitherto undiscovered planet.

Mr. Thompson turned this TOS article into a book (with a chapter by Yaron Brook, chapter eight):  Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea, released May 2010. [24]

That ARI writers would denounce Leo Strauss, is so ... Straussian.

More damage control came in the Summer 2007 issue of The Objective Standard:  “Neoconservative Foreign Policy: An Autopsy”  by Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein. The authors denounce neoconservative foreign policy while pretending they had not been supporting it all along.

Even as they denounce it, though, they cannot help promoting a key neoconservative link-up, when they refer to  “an Islamic totalitarian movement openly committed to achieving Islamic world domination, including the destruction of Israel and America.”  Neocons frequently conjoin Israel and America, and when referring to the Middle East use the adjective “totalitarian,” suggesting that we are allied with Israel against Stalin and Hitler.

Then in 2009 came the book  Winning the Unwinnable War: America’s Self-Crippled Response to Islamic Totalitarianism  edited by Elan Journo and featuring chapters by him, Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein. The book’s website displays a positive review by Daniel Pipes and the back cover quotes him praising the book. Craig Biddle’s interview of all three authors was published in The Objective Standard Fall 2009:  “America’s Self-Crippled Foreign Policy.”  The authors distance themselves from neoconservatism by redefining it, then knocking down the straw-man they created. Consider the following by Alex Epstein (we add numbers for future reference):

(1) A neoconservative foreign policy  “lead[s] to a failure to defeat the enemy” and “endless welfare wars.”  (2) It rejects “a self-interested approach to foreign policy.” It fails “to consider the possibility of a self-assertive America that the tin-pot terrorist sponsors of the world would be terrified of angering.”  (3) It “more or less, take[s] for granted the ‘Just War Theory’ framework for evaluating when and how to go to war, a framework that ... renders victory impossible.”

There are three propositions. The first is true, though not in the way Mr. Epstein intends.  A  neoconservative / ARI  foreign policy fails to even address the real enemy, namely our own government as it showers foreign aid on Middle East governments, mostly dictatorships, then bombs on their civilians (frequently via Israel), then foreign aid on the new governments. This is a policy of endless war.

As for Mr. Epstein’s second proposition, when an ARI writer refers to “a self-interested foreign policy” he means, as argued in other ARI Watch articles, self-sacrifice to Israel, and by “self-assertion” he means invading Israel’s enemies.  Neocons use the very same code phrases.  Neocons always dish up their wars as in your self-interest.  Neocon writing is replete with “American interests,” “national interest,” “self-defense,” “our self-interest,” “the defense of America,” etc. – enough to make an authentic egoist sick.

By broadcasting the same “selfishness” as the neocons ARI has set back the spread of Ayn Rand’s ethics by many years.

Perhaps one day a philosopher will write a book called  The Subversion of Selfishness: How Ayn Rand’s Ethics Got Twisted Into Its Exact Opposite. It would expose the  ARI / neocon  masquerade in philosophical detail:  how they couch altruism in the words of self-interest, either in self-deception or Straussian lies for the masses.

Analogous to mystics and quacks trying to describe what they do in scientific terms, the folks at ARI try to put their desires in terms of your egoism.

As for Mr. Epstein’s third and last proposition, it is absurd. Nobody but an ARI writer would characterize neoconservatism as advocating “Just War Theory,” something in fact most neoconservatives explicitly reject. [25]

We now consider some other neocons whose neoconservative ideas various ARI writers have promoted at one time or another.

Mr. Ledeen was one of the many neocons who got into the Whitehouse on the coattails of Ronald Reagan in 1980. During Reagan’s administration he advised the State Department, the Department of Defense and the National Security Administration. During the recent Bush administration he was an advisor of Karl Rove.

For twenty years he was the Freedom Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a neoconservative think tank, and now has the same title at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, another neocon outfit. (The technique behind the label “Freedom Scholar” is the same used by the Corpo Party in Sinclair Lewis’s novel It Can’t Happen Here. Sling around American sounding language for the purpose of destroying America.)

Mr. Ledeen is on the Board of Advisors to the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).

Robert Tracinski, senior fellow at ARI at the time, wrote a positive review of Mr. Ledeen’s book  The War Against the Terror Masters  calling for a war against Iran:  “Unmasking the Terror Masters”  The Intellectual Activist  January 2003.

In the same issue of The Intellectual Activist you find the transcript of a long and friendly interview with Mr. Ledeen entitled:  “Revolt Against Theocracy.”

One fact Mr. Tracinski never brings up:  Michael Ledeen was Oliver North’s Iran-contra liaison with the Israelis. (More about Iran-contra can be found on ARI Watch’s  Links  page.)

A few years earlier (1999) Mr. Ledeen had written the book  Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli’s Iron Rules Are as Timely and Important Today as Five Centuries Ago.  A few quotes from his account of Machiavelli follow.

He has claimed that his book merely describes Machiavelli’s ideas, not his own, which makes his title kind of hard to explain.

These days Mr. Ledeen denies having urged the Iraq invasion, but the record belies his denial.

There’s lots more at  The History Commons. [28]  The man is a complete fruitcake, yet he is part of the  “establishment.”

He was staff assistant on Iran and Iraq in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans 2002-2004, which included the run-up to the Iraq War. He was political adviser for Baghdad’s Coalition Provisional Authority 2003-2004. He edited the Middle East Quarterly 2004-2009.

Currently he lectures at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Civil-Military Relations. He is a Middle East scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a neoconservative think tank, and writes for  National Review  and  Commentary.

He helped write propaganda targeted at Iraqis for the Lincoln Group (LG), part of the Pentagon’s “psychological operations,” after LG won one of three such contracts together totaling 300 million dollars over five years. Like Mr. Ledeen, who performed similar work, he denies any association with LG. After saying he helped LG: “I am not nor have I been an employee of the Lincoln Group. I do not receive a salary from them.” – which dodges the question whether he received money from them for his help.

He is a former Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) which, to repeat, is closely allied with AIPAC.

Mr. Rubin was the lead writer for “Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development,” a report published in 2008 by the Bipartisan Policy Center. Participants in the report included Dennis Ross, Henry Sokolski, Michael Makovsky (former Pentagon aide to Douglas Feith), Stephen Rademaker (of the State Department and whose wife works at the American Enterprise Institute), and Kenneth Weinstein (CEO of the Hudson Institute).

In 2006 National Review sponsored the event “Last Chance for Iraq?: a symposium on the war” featuring Misters Rubin and Ledeen among other neoconservative luminaries.

The following is from Mr. Rubin’s review of the book Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Middle East Quarterly (Spring 2007).  Referring to Chandrasekaran:

In his 19 May 2004 contribution to National Review Online  titled  “You Must be Likud!”  sub-titled  “Anti-Jewish rhetoric infects the West”  he wrote:

In 2004 Mr. Rubin wrote a National Security Presidential Directive arguing for the invasion of Iran, which came to light after Larry Franklin was arrested for passing it on to AIPAC. Years later Mr. Rubin abandoned that idea. His article “Iran: The Case for ‘Regime Change’ ” (April 2010 issue of Commentary) instead urges that the U.S. military embargo gas and kerosene, that the U.S. outlaw dealings with Iran’s central bank, that the U.S. jam Iran government communications, that the U.S. finance and provide rebels with alternate methods of communication, that the U.S. finance and direct propaganda in Iran on “themes revolving around regime change,” and that the U.S. give foreign aid to Iranian rebels – all so that ultimately Iran may be “at peace with itself and its neighbors.” You may not care but you’ll pay for it anyway – a fact he left out mentioning.

He helped plan the 2007 “surge” (of U.S. troops) in Iraq.

He was among Giuliani’s foreign policy advisors during Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign.

In “The Death of the Bush Doctrine” by Robert Tracinski (The Intellectual Activist, May 2002) you read that the Bush Doctrine:

For a long time Andrew Bernstein’s website featured two “guest essays” by Netanyahu. The title of the second was  “The Case for Toppling Saddam: The longer America waits, the more dangerous he becomes” (September 20, 2002).  Apparently Mr. Bernstein first posted these articles during ARI’s run up to the Iraq invasion (again see  Relentless Propaganda  on this website).

ARI has allowed Netanyahu to reprint several of its Op-Eds on his earlier website  netanyahu.org (now defunct).  Alex Epstein sent him a letter dated June 8, 2006, published there, praising him for things he had said on the Rush Limbaugh radio show. Netanyahu’s website also advertised books by Alan Dershowitz – fitting company for an ARI writer.

Netanyahu once commissioned the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies – a U.S. neoconservative propaganda mill – to write a report on future Israeli foreign policy. To that end the Institute created the  “Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000.”  In 1996 it produced the report  “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.”  The gist of it is that Israel should forego future U.S. economic aid (not however returning any past economic aid, or forgoing any future military aid) so that it will have a freer hand to invade Iraq, Iran and Syria. It was signed by among others Richard Perle and David Wurmser both of the American Enterprise Institute, and Douglas Feith of the Hudson Institute.

In 1998, three years before 9/11, Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy drafted a letter to the president urging him to attack Iraq. (This letter paralleled the efforts of another neoconservative group, the Project for the New American Century.) Among the signatories was Paul Wolfowitz, along with Michael Ledeen, Elliott Abrams, Douglas Feith, Frank Gaffney, Joshua Muravchik, David Wurmser and others.

Leonard Peikoff quoted Mr. Wolfowitz’s plea to “end states who sponsor terrorism” in “Fifty Years of Appeasement Led to Black Tuesday” (ARI Op-Ed, Sept. 12, 2001), which he later expanded into “It Is Time to Declare War (ad in the Washington Post, Sept. 20, 2001), and republished as “End States Who Sponsor Terrorism” (ad in the New York Times, Oct. 2, 2001):

During ARI’s run-up to the Iraq invasion Alex Epstein wrote  “The Epistemology of Preemption” (The Intellectual Activist November 2002).  There he criticizes Mr. Wolfowitz for, in effect, not being neoconservative enough regarding preemption. This is just like ARI, using big philosophical words to justify pure thuggery. [31]

Harry Binswanger, in “Soft-Line Ideologues Revisited: Foreign-Policy Soft-Liners are Pragmatists” (Capitalism Magazine January 17, 2004), approves of part of a Wall Street Journal editorial, the part saying it is  “the hard-liners, like Paul Wolfowitz” who are the authentic “realists.”

As with the actions of other what we call foot soldier neoconservatives, the only thing ARI has ever criticized about Wolfowitz is that he is not neoconservative enough.

Currently he is a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Unlike the neoconservative think tanks to which most of the other birds here belong (Hoover, Heritage, Middle East Forum, American Enterprise, Center for Security Policy), this think tank is better described as one-world socialist.

Mr. Miller is also on the advisory council of the Israel Policy Forum based in New York City, according to them an “organization that is committed to a strong and enduring U.S.-Israel relationship and to advancing the shared interests of the United States and the State of Israel.”

Mr. Miller writes mealy-mouthed articles about Israel and the Middle East, ultimately all pro-Israel. They frequently appear in Foreign Policy, other outlets include The Jewish Daily Forward and The Jewish Week, in which last he is also frequently quoted by other writers. He’s more forthright than the usual Israel promoter about Israel’s influence on U.S. foreign policy.

The following is from the MondoWeiss review of Mr. Miller’s recent autobiographical book The Much Too Promised Land:

Mr. Brookes has also worked in the so-called private defense industry, and intelligence industry – apparently there is such a thing.

Currently he is senior fellow for national security affairs at the Heritage Foundation, a neoconservative think tank. Very neoconservative. For example a Heritage Foundation senior manager, David Addington (vice president, domestic & economic policy), was one of several lawyers in the Bush Administration who helped paint over government torture a gloss of legality.

He writes at National Review Online. In “The Fight over CIA Interrogations” (August 25, 2009) he takes care to call torture “interrogation” and torturers “intelligence professionals.” These professionals, he says, “represent our first line of defense.” A legal enquiry into their tactics will have a “chilling effect” on their work “in the field.” Which would be unfortunate because, he says, torture – I meant to type interrogation – is necessary for defense. Thus Mr. Brookes disagrees with more civilized men such as Major Matthew Alexander, who cracked the Zarqawi network, and many others with firsthand knowledge of (torture free) interrogation.

Mr. Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch, a program of David Horowitz’s Freedom Center.

On December, 14 2008 the Ariel Centre for Policy Review, an Israeli group, organized the conference “Facing Jihad” held in Jerusalem. Among the speakers and their talks were:

Mr. Spencer was co-author with Pamela Geller of The Post-American Presidency (2010).

Second Renaissance Books (which became Ayn Rand Bookstore then the Ayn Rand Institute eStore) carried his book  Radical Son  in 1998.  Around that time he was a guest on Leonard Peikoff’s radio show. When Mr. Peikoff told him that in Ayn Rand’s philosophy morality was absolute, objective and not a matter of opinion, Mr. Horowitz replied that in that case Ayn Rand was the same as Stalin.

He is correct about some things. College faculties are rife with Marxists. Sometimes he can properly construe “anti-American” when his Israel worship is not in gear.  Black-on-white crime is under-reported in the media (practically all, not just most, violent crimes where criminal and victim are strangers – “stranger violent crime” – are committed by non-whites).

But David Horowitz’s concern for freedom goes only so far. He never criticizes the so-called Patriot Act, government institutionalized torture, bombing Israel’s enemies – all the typically neocon goals. He mixes Israel worship with a few good points, but the Israel worship is the main point.

He runs the website FrontPageMag.com and an organization called “Freedom Center” yet if there is anything on his website about private property you must need special glasses to see it. Viewing the website just now (a day in July 2010) almost all the articles listed on the introductory page were about Jews and Muslims. For example:

Especially disgusting on the FrontPageMag website was an article about Meg Ryan, and you needn’t care for Ms. Ryan’s politics to be disgusted:  “America’s Sweetheart Meg Ryan: Anti-Semite or Useful Idiot?”  — an exercise in venom, starting with the title (Ms. Ryan graduated from ingénue rôles long ago). The text begins: “Meg Ryan’s decision not to grace the Jerusalem Film Festival with her presence this month ...” and goes down from there: barefaced lies about Israel and Gaza, digs at Ms. Ryan, all dripping with self-righteous nastiness.

At first glance the only thing worth agreeing with on the FrontPageMag introductory webpage were a few articles against unrestricted immigration, atypical for a neocon outlet.  (Its opposition to unrestricted immigration is spotty, though. For example, Mr. Horowitz dropped and denounced their best writer on the subject, Lawrence Auster.)  To repeat, there seemed to be nothing in defense of private property, though Mr. Horowitz was supposed to have ended his leftist ways after being “mugged by reality.” [32]  Some days (the content changes almost daily) the right-hand side of the webpage looks like something out of the National Enquirer.

FrontPageMag frequently mentions Daniel Pipes, agreeably, and he is a regular contributor.

Each fall, since 2005, the Freedom Center has held “David Horowitz’s Restoration Weekend” lasting several days at the Breakers Hotel, Palm Beach, Florida. Past speakers have included Yaron Brook, Michael Ledeen, Pastor John Hagee, John Yoo (infamous for a federal torture memo), Pamela Geller, Daniel Pipes, Caroline Glick, Max Boot ... a veritable Who’s Who of neocons. [33]

Peeking at the website again in November 2013, the focus hasn’t changed. You can buy the book Why Israel is the Victim co-authored by Mr. Horowitz. A $20 donation gets you a T-shirt featuring the Israeli flag emblazoned across the front captioned “I Stand With Israel.” Another peek in June 2016 showed a large ad reading (original all in caps) “Stop the Jew Hatred on Campus” which when clicked objected to criticism of Israel.

In the months before the 2012 presidential election Sarah Palin was shaping up to be the neocons’ candidate of choice. Mr. Horowitz defended her in various blog entries until she dropped out of the race. [34]  Ron Paul, on the other hand, was anathema to Mr. Horowitz. In an interview posted on FrontPageMag March 5, 2007:

Mid February 2011 Ron Paul tried to build support for an amendment to the 2011 funding bill that would end all foreign aid to Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and Pakistan. In response Horowitz wrote a blog entry February 17, 2011 entitled  “Ron Paul Is A Vicious Anti-Semite and Anti-American and Conservatives Need To Wash Their Hands of Him.” [36]

The main page of ARI’s now defunct ARC website once linked to FrontPageMag, specifically to a page featuring an excerpt of an off-the-cuff interview with Ayn Rand showing her unwittingly repeating the Joan Peters hoax. Also on the page was an advertisement for Horowitz’s book A Point in Time: The Search for Redemption in This Life and the Next, which according to the neoconservative Norman Podhoretz is “as moving as it is profound.”

... WAUGH !

Froggy, you’re the only one I know who can wail sarcastically.

Mr. Horowitz’s blog entry “Irving Kristol” on September 18, 2009, the day of Mr. Kristol’s death, reveals his roots. Wholly uncritical, it reads in part (one typo, “writng,” is corrected here):

Speaking of neconservative leaders dying off, when Charles Krauthammer (neoconservatism is “a governing ideology whose time has come”) died, Yaron Brook tweeted a link to a hagiographic obituary on Commentary Magazine’s website subtitled “A life well lived.”

“Ending Syria’s Occupation of Lebanon: The U.S. Role?”
May 2000
Prepared by the Middle East Forum’s “Lebanon Study Group.”
meforum.org/research/lsg.php

“Letter to President Bush on the War on Terrorism”
September 20, 2001
Prepared by The Project for the New American Century.
newamericancentury.org/Bushletter.htm

On the whole:

Comparing the Ayn Rand Intsitute with the neocons we are reminded of a Stalinist slogan from the time of Soviet Russia:  Diversity in accidental details, conformity in ultimate aim.