Well, ya got your freaks and you got your genius-level freaks: Gore Vidal, in other words. Reader Matt Welch (heh!) sends along this classic "out there" interview with our favorite wacko.
Favorite bits:
We had planned to occupy Afghanistan in October, and Osama, or whoever it was who hit us in September, launched a pre-emptory strike.Posted by Dr. Frank at July 5, 2002 09:33 PM | TrackBackThey knew we were coming. And this was a warning to throw us off guard.
With that background, it now becomes explicable why the first thing Bush did after we were hit was to get Senator Daschle and beg him not to hold an investigation
[The government] plays off [Americans'] relative innocence, or ignorance to be more precise. This is probably why geography has not really been taught since World War II -- to keep people in the dark as to where we are blowing things up.
Because Enron wants to blow them up.
Or Unocal, the great pipeline company, wants a war going some place.
[Bush] does a little war dance and talks about evil axis and all the countries he's going to go after. And how long it is all going to take, he says with a happy smile, because it means billions and trillions for the Pentagon and for his oil friends.
And it means curtailing our liberties, so this is all very thrilling for him.
He's right out there reacting, bombing Afghanistan. Well, he might as well have been bombing Denmark.
Denmark had nothing to do with 9/11. And neither did Afghanistan.
But this is joy for them, for the federal government. Now they've got everybody, because everybody flies.
The second law of thermodynamics always rules: Everything is always running down. And so is our Bill of Rights.
Q: So what's the way out of this? Back in the '80s you used to call for a new sort of populist constitutional convention. Do you still believe that's the fix?
A: Well, it's the least bloody. Because there will be trouble, and big trouble. The loons got together to get a balanced-budget amendment, and they got a majority of states to agree to a constitutional convention. Senator Sam Ervin, now dead, researched what would happen in such a convention, and apparently everything would be up for grabs. Once we the people are assembled, as the Constitution requires, we can do anything, we can throw out the whole executive, the judiciary, the Congress. We can put in a Tibetan lama. Or turn the country into one big Scientological clearing center.
The liberals always say, "Oh my, if there is a constitutional convention, they will take away the Bill of Rights."
But they have already done it! It is gone. Hardly any of it is left. So if they, the famous "they," would prove to be a majority of the American people and did not want a Bill of Rights, then I say, let's just get it over with. Let's just throw it out the window. If you don't want it, you won't have it.