Category Archives: Fire This Time

Another Look: My Campus Crusade for Free Speech, 1963

While we worked on finding another suitably notorious Communist, we also set out to get a right-wing spokesman. This one was easier.
What was the most right-wing organization in the country? The Nazi Party, of course. And George Lincoln Rockwell, its flamboyant leader, was only too happy to talk to anyone who would listen. One telegram and he was set to go.
When Rockwell came, we moved to a smaller theater space in the student center, where it was still standing room only. Rockwell’s speech was a bombastic stream of bizarre sociological and anthropological “facts” that added up to, “they’re bad and we’re good.” I remember him saying that there were “breeds of people, just like breeds of dogs.” Dennis and I did not sit on a platform with him, as we had the others; the front row was close enough.
Several people walked out during his presentation advocating racism, anti-semitism & national socialism.
Rockwell caused lots of talk. A few days after his speech, some sociology professors held an open discussion they titled, “Is George Lincoln Rockwell a Closet Homosexual?”
While many dismissed Rockwell as a kind of evil clown, and he was murdered by own of his own in 1967, he remains a cult figure for sectors of the rightwing which are still around.

A Titanic Evangelical Ship of Fools: Michael Cromartie’s Doomed Voyage

Politico linked to a lengthy 2013 profile of Cromartie & his mission from the main intellectual evangelical mouthpiece, Christianity Today. It’s a very interesting period piece, clearly aimed to help Cromartie shore up fundraising for the project in the rocky post-Crash years.
Under the subhead, Michael Cromartie is guiding media elites into a more accurate view of conservative Christians, the article also highlights both the value of Cromartie’s work, and in retrospect its poignant, perhaps even tragic underlying folly

Watergate Reruns, Richard Burr & Other Pipe Dreams

Today, after the Comey firing & many other shocks, some of us are hoping to see this story re-enacted in and around today’s Senate, complete with Robert Redford & Dustin Hoffman skulking in the background.
Unfortunately, one of our wiser peers, retired editor & columnist Edwin Yoder, has just thrown a big bucket of ice water on these nostalgic fantasies. In the Raleigh NC News & Observer, he lays out the more realistic, gloomy scenarios:

“Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been touted by some admirers as a potential reincarnation of the late Sen. Sam Ervin. Ervin’s Senate select committee on campaign abuses began the unwinding of the Watergate scandal. . . .

Never Mind Armageddon: World War III Is Coming First — I’ve Seen the Secret Plan

And you better read fast, because according to this source, D-Day for what they’re confidently calling “Operation Clean Sweep” is 1500 hours (3 PM for civilians) Central Daylight Time in “early May.” (BTW come to think of it, I’m writing this post in “early May,” and it’s past 3PM; so maybe today is not this extra “Mother’s Day.” Maybe.)

Perhaps you’re tempted to snicker, or even guffaw at all this, especially considering the source.

Well, laugh if you want, but be careful, because maybe the joke is on you.

After all, this blogger is rather late coming to the party involving exploring the ties between this paper and the Oval Office guy. Much bigger, weightier media types have been all over it for quite awhile.