David Horowitz and the politics of anti-truth

Unsurprisingly, the Supreme Court yesterday rejected the challenge to Obama’s status as a natural-born U.S. citizen, apparently without argument; or, rather, it simply refused to hear the case. The information given in the Court’s docket (in pdf) is laconic in the extreme:

08A407 DONOFRIO, LEO C. V. WELLS, NJ SEC. OF STATE

The application for stay addressed to Justice Thomas and referred to the Court is denied.

As Thomas Lifson pointed out yesterday at American Thinker,

This issue has been successfully kookified, labeled as unworthy of attention. This started out normally, with the mainstream media ignoring the issue, or treating it as tin-foil hat material. Then it got eerie as even conservative talk radio ignored it. Finally, new-media, solid conservatives like Michelle Malkin and David Horowitz dismissed the issue and joined the MSM in treating doubters as tin-foilers (Michelle even ran a picture of a man in such a hat with her article on the matter).

Indeed, half of Michelle Malkin’s website, on the rare occasions I visit it, seems to consist of denunciations of “moonbats,” “tinfoil hatters,” and the like. So her mindlessly dismissive comments on the Obama natural citizenship issue are standard fare for her.

All the cheap “moonbat” baiting in the world does not change the fact that Obama’s birth certificate hasn’t been seen, the circumstances of his birth remain highly mysterious, and, therefore, in the absence of facts, the reasonable belief will remain forever that Obama is NOT a natural-born citizen of the United States and that we have ignored the Constitution by allowing him to become president.

I would go further and say that Obama’s refusal to supply this information makes it a virtually certain conclusion that he is not a natural-born citizen and that he knows it.

(Note: I qualify this statement below to say that there is something damaging about the birth certificate, not necessarily that it shows he’s not a natural born citizen.)

* * *

David Horowitz’s war against the Obama truthers continues (and I use that disparaging term here in two senses: in its usual sense of conspiracy nuts, which is the way Horowitz sees them, and in the sense of people who want the truth about Obama). In full-blown bully-boy mode yesterday at NRO (and, as a further possible indication of how strongly he feels about the subject, it’s the first time he has ever published an article at NRO), he told them—meaning all of us who would like to know the truth—to “shut up about the birth certificate.”

His attitude does not entirely surprise me. In our many e-mail exchanges over the years, Horowitz repeatedly made it clear that my interest in truth, as distinct from Horowitz’s own notions of what was politically important and feasible, made me odd and intellectually unsound. Which didn’t offend me, by the way. That’s just the way that he is. If you want to deal with David Horowitz, you’ve got to accept his continual put-downs. But now he has, in effect, expanded the anti-truth put-down he used on me in private and has applied it to millions of conservatives. Those who want to know the truth about Obama’s birth, he writes, are suffering from “Obama Derangement Syndrome.”

Well, excuse me. I am not deranged about Obama, I have no desire or designs to get his election canceled. I would, however, like to know the truth. But again, in Horowitz’s book, in which “politics” is the highest reality, that is enough to get you classified as deranged. Remember that this is a man who spent years insisting with intense emotion that we were “winning” in Iraq and that Iraq—because it had held an election or two under massive U.S. military protection—had become a free country. In 2005 Horowitz even rejected publishing a debate that Jamie Glazov had proposed between himself and me on whether Iraq was free; Horowitz simply didn’t want any questioning of the dogma. Then in 2007 the President and his team admitted we had been losing in Iraq all along and they radically changed their strategy. Meanwhile, Freedom House to this day designates Iraq as Unfree. I’m sure that the massive discrediting of the triumphalist claims he and his website had been passionately making for years—the very claims that were leading the U.S. into disaster—didn’t discommode Horowitz at all. As he would explain it, the politics of that time required that support for the Iraq involvement be maintained. It was the people who wanted to have a truthful debate on the issue who were dangerously out of touch with reality. That was the way he described me then, and it’s the way he describes the people today who want a truthful debate on Obama’s constitutional qualifications.

Another evidently non-deranged person who is having none of Horowitz’s bully tactics is Randall Hoven, who writes today at American Thinker:

Mr. Horowitz whizzes right by the issue of whether or not Obama is Constitutionally qualified. He simply says it doesn’t matter. He asked,

“What difference does it make to the future of this country whether Obama was born on U.S. soil?”

When the U.S. Constitution is clear on a matter, we are not supposed to re-think “what difference does it make to the future of this country.” If we do this re-thinking at every step, we would not need a Constitution; we would merely cogitate on how proposal X will affect our future. In short, no need for a Constitution.

In this case, the Constitution is very clear. Article II, Section 1 states, “no person except a natural born citizen … shall be eligible to the Office of President.” No fuzz there. No need to look into penumbras and emanations. If a guy ain’t natural born, he can’t be President.

But, the election already happened. Too late, right? That’s Horowitz’s contention.

“How viable will our Constitution be if five Supreme Court justices should decide to void 64 million ballots?”

Again, the Constitution is clear on this in the 20th Amendment.

“If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified … ” [My emphasis.]

The U.S. Constitution tells us exactly what to do in the current situation. The election is not some kind of deadline. Even the true election by Electors is not the deadline. The deadline is “the time fixed for the beginning of his term.” That would be January 20, 2009. We have not yet reached the Constitutional deadline. The Constitution even hints that there is, or should be, some kind of qualification process: “if the President elect shall have failed to qualify.” (By the way, that part of the Constitution was not written by dead white guys some 200 years ago; the 20th Amendment was ratified in 1933.)

If we find that Obama is not natural born, then the Constitution says Joe Biden shall be President until the President thing gets sorted out. Everything about that is horrible. Unfortunately, it is exactly what the Constitution says we shall do. It does not “suggest”; it says “shall.”

Are we to apply the Constitution only in cases where it is convenient to do so?

Those of us concerned about this, at least some of us, are not driven by keeping Obama out of office. Look, we’re talking President Biden. We’re talking disqualifying the first African-American to be elected President. We are talking Constitutional, existential crisis. Riots in the street, even civil war, maybe. This is a very bad situation.

But for all I know, there is a simple way to get past this. Perhaps some kind of retroactive re-definition of “natural born” that would handle Obama’s particular technicality. I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer. I’m actually hoping someone knows a clean way out of this.

For all I know, the facts of this case could turn out to be wonderful: Barack Obama is indeed natural born and we all live happily ever after. But the facts are key here. If he is not natural born, we should not ignore that fact.

Unfortunately, the facts are not clear. Multiple witnesses say Obama was born outside the U.S., that his father was not a U.S. citizen and his mother was a minor. If those are the facts, he was not “natural born” per the laws in place at the time. Other cases have advanced different arguments challenging Obama’s eligibility under the natural born citizen clause.
As much as we wish the bad thing to go away, the “evidence” brought forth to prove Obama’s natural born status is next to non-existent, despite what you might have read or heard. Yes, there was a birth announcement in the Honolulu newspaper at the time. Yes, the state of Hawaii said his birth certificate has been verified. Yes, we’ve seen Obama’s birth certificate and it says he was born in Honolulu.

Each of these claims falls apart upon the slightest examination. For those of you tired of the subject, skip to my Conclusion. For anyone curious about the evidence presented to prove Obama’s natural born status, read on….

[jumping to end of article]

I think this series of actions is what lawyers call due process and due diligence. That, in my mind, is what we should be doing rather ignoring the entire matter because it is so unpleasant. We should also not be rope-a-doping the legal situation just to push the issue past January 20, 2009. Simply address the issue in a straightforward legal and Constitutional manner. That’s all I ask.

But please, do not tell us to deny the facts, ignore the Constitution and “shut up.” George Orwell reminded us that

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows.”

Two plus two makes four. And the U.S. President must be natural born.

[end of Hoven article]

- end of initial entry -

December 10

Bruce B. writes:

You wrote: “I would go further and say that Obama’s refusal to supply this information makes it a virtually certain conclusion that he is not a natural-born citizen and that he knows it.”

Maybe he is a natural-born citizen but can’t prove it? What if he simply can’t find the birth certificate? He might have tried to falsify one at some point in the past but is now afraid that someone will figure it out to his embarrassment or worse.

LA replies:

You’re right, there are other possibilities. It could be there are problems with the birth certificate that would suggest he’s not a NBC, even though he is. It could be there are other things about the birth certificate that would be damaging, short of showing or suggesting he’s not a NBC.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 09, 2008 05:55 PM | Send