Swamp Critter Chosen by Trump
Posted: April 6, 2018 Filed under: Donald Trump, neoconservatism, Politics, World Government | Tags: Council on Foreign Relations, Drain the Swamp, John Bolton, President Donald Trump 2 CommentsSwamp Critter Chosen by Trump
by JBS President Emeritus John F. McManus
Donald Trump loves catchy phrases. Most Americans have heard him insist on the need to “Make America Great Again.” How to attain such a worthy goal doesn’t require a painstaking search. A return to what made our country great in the first place is all that’s necessary. That means strict adherence to the still standing U.S. Constitution.

John Bolton. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0.
The document governing the nation’s affairs since 1789 created strong brakes on government power and meddling. Decades of drifting away from the Constitution has led to an array of both domestic and foreign problems. Still, the Constitution is the blueprint that made our country the envy of the world. Sad to say, however, reliance on the venerable document hasn’t been the primary focus on the current president’s agenda, or that of his numerous predecessors.
More recently, Mr. Trump has decided that “Drain the Swamp” is a better crowd pleaser. To most Americans, the “swamp” consists of those who don’t have America’s best interest at heart. The president has taken a few steps toward lessening the effect of the swamp denizens, but they’re still around and more needs to be done to lessen their influence.
One who most would consider part of the “swamp” is John Bolton. But this man has just been tapped by Mr. Trump to be our nation’s newest national security adviser. It’s troubling as Bolton is the direct opposite of Mr. Trump’s early claim to be a non-interventionist.
Described by many as an experienced diplomat who served our nation as Ambassador to the United Nations, Bolton should be known as a neoconservative war monger anxious to force the rest of the world to bend to America’s will. His bellicose urgings kept him from gaining senate approval for the UN post given him by President George W. Bush. When the Senate turned thumbs down on that appointment, Bush waited until that body was no longer in session to award Bolton what is termed a “recess” appointment, a tainted award if ever there was one. Numerous senators from both political parties were wary of the man and he couldn’t win Senate confirmation so Bush gave it to him in a legal but underhanded way.
John Bolton has long been a member of the sovereignty-despising Council on Foreign Relations. It would be difficult to find anyone more committed to unnecessary war. He partnered in wanting a second war against Iraq after the lightning quick removal of Saddam Hussein’s forces from Kuwait in 2001. As a member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) dreamed up by neocons Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Abrams, Perle, and Armitage, he joined with his PNAC internationalists to have Iraq invaded again. After the first President Bush lost to Bill Clinton in 1992, these bellicose internationalists tried to get President Clinton to attack Iraq. But Bill had other concerns to deal with and other ideas about how to create the New World Order.
After Clinton’s eight years in office, Bolton called on President George W. Bush to wage preemptive war against Iran. He has lately insisted that our nation should conduct cyber warfare against Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and any other nation accused of this new form of warfare.
The Constitution isn’t being relied upon by the Trump administration. If it were guiding the President and his policymakers, America’s troops would be brought home from endless wars such as those in Afghanistan and Syria. There would be widespread closing down of U.S. military presence in the 130 nations where American troop contingents are currently posted.
But expecting John Bolton as the president’s national security adviser to change Washington’s reigning militarism is unrealistic. John Bolton should be scorned, not elevated to a very sensitive post.
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Mr. McManus served in the U.S. Marine Corps in the late 1950s and joined the staff of The John Birch Society in August 1966. He has served various roles for the organization including Field Coordinator, Director of Public Affairs, and President. Mr. McManus has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs and is also author of a number of educational DVDs and books. Now President Emeritus, he continues his involvement with the Society through public speaking and writing for this blog, the JBS Bulletin, and The New American.
Another Neoconservative Startup
Posted: July 28, 2017 Filed under: foreign policy, Military, neoconservatism, Unconstitutional Wars, United Nations | Tags: ASD, FPI, Irving Kristol, military, neoconservatism, PNAC, world government 1 CommentAnother Neoconservative Startup
by JBS President Emeritus John F. McManus
Here we go again! The champions for socialism, militarism, and world government have a new organization. A successor to the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) is the latest think tank formed to promote big government, war, and the destruction of national sovereignty through economic and political entanglements.

U.S. Marines with Iraqi POWs. Why is war always the answer? Image from Wikimedia Commons, public domain, United States Marine Corps.
One after the other, these organizations are bastions of neoconservatism, the political philosophy launched by Irving Kristol in 1972. Joyfully dubbed “the Godfather of Neoconservatism,” Kristol wrote about his brand of skullduggery in his 1995 book Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea. For its basic goals, he supported “the New Deal in principle” and condemned “the kind of isolationism that then permeated American conservatism.” That’s socialism and internationalism, each an antithesis of Americanism. In addition, neoconservatives have always supported involvement in wars to further their goals.
PNAC debuted in 1997. Founded by Irving Kristol’s son William and veteran internationalist Robert Kagan, its dozens of members included holdovers from the first Bush administration: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Elliott Abrams, Dan Quayle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Robert Zoellick to name a few. They wanted President Bush the elder to reinvade Iraq after the UN-limited goal in that unhappy country had been achieved via the 1991 Desert Storm invasion.
Out of office after Clinton defeated the elder Bush in 1992, the PNAC neocons gathered under William Kristol and pushed hard for another invasion of Iraq. They sought help from President Clinton who had personal problems to deal with and couldn’t comply. Then they went to House Speaker Gingrich who evidently didn’t want adopt their agenda. So the proposed re-invasion of Iraq got shelved.
After George W. Bush replaced Clinton in 2001, PNAC members Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and others were back in the saddle. They put together a plan to reinvade Iraq even before the devastating 9/11 attack. That attack supplied their rationale (a crisis that wasn’t wasted!) to reinvade Iraq. And, revealingly, they sought and obtained authorization not from Congress but from the United Nations.
In 2009, six years after the second invasion of Iraq and the huge mess it produced, PNAC folded its tent and made room for the FPI. Its top leaders just happened to include William Kristol and Robert Kagan, the founders of PNAC. New potential targets turned out to be “China and Russia” along with “Al Qaeda and its affiliates.” FPI’s underlying neoconservative goals were only a little different from those of its PNAC predecessor: “rejection of isolationism,” “strong military budget,” “international economic integration,” etc.
Here we are in 2017 and FPI has been discontinued in favor of the ASD. The new neocon venture lists members such as leading Democrats national security adviser for Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton Jake Sullivan, Obama CIA director Mike Morrell, and Obama Ambassador to Russia Mike McFaul. Calling itself “a bipartisan, transatlantic initiative,” and funded generously by the German Marshall Fund, its Republican neocons are led by William Kristol and Michael Chertoff. Democrats within ASD delight in having common cause with GOP neocons because of their shared loathing of Donald Trump. The potential enemies of these individuals would be Iran and Russia.
Why war? The answer isn’t hard to decipher. War always leads to larger government, increased indebtedness, moral decline, and cries for internationalism. These were common goals of the now defunct PNAC and FPI, and now the ASD. Then-German Chancellor Willy Brandt (a secret Communist) announced the creation of the German Marshall Fund in a speech at Harvard University in 1972. A U.S.–based organization, the GMF is headquartered in Washington DC. from which it will fuel the efforts of the new ASD and other highly questionable ventures.
Learn more how the neoconservatives are changing American politics and take action by getting involved with The John Birch Society today.
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Mr. McManus served in the U.S. Marine Corps in the late 1950s and joined the staff of The John Birch Society in August 1966. He has served various roles for the organization including Field Coordinator, Director of Public Affairs, and President. Mr. McManus has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs and is also author of a number of educational DVDs and books. Now President Emeritus, he continues his involvement with the Society through public speaking and writing for this blog, the JBS Bulletin, and The New American
John McCain, the Anti-Conservative
Posted: February 22, 2017 Filed under: neoconservatism, Politics, Unconstitutional Wars | Tags: John McCain, neoconservative, Republican 6 CommentsJohn McCain, the Anti-Conservative
by JBS President Emeritus John F. McManus
He’s always available for the news programs. Arizona Senator John McCain receives friendly airtime and is relied upon for his perspective because of his willingness to stand apart from true conservatism – which is based on the U.S. Constitution’s limitation of the federal government. The media love him, not because he’s a traditional conservative, but because he’s a neoconservative.

The media love John McCain, not because he’s a traditional conservative but because he’s a neoconservative (photo by United States Department of State [Public domain or No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons).
On February 19, 2017, Jon Karl interviewed Senator Rand Paul on ABC’s “This Week” program. Asked to explain John McCain’s frequent criticisms of President Donald Trump, Paul stated:
I think Senator McCain’s perspective is colored by his disagreements with President Trump on foreign policy. If I were to look at foreign policy, I would say that John McCain has been wrong on just about everything over the last four decades.
He advocated for the Iraq War, which I think destabilized the Middle East. If you look at a map, there are probably at least six different countries where John McCain has advocated having U.S. boots on the ground.
John McCain’s complaint is we’re either not at war somewhere, or if we’re at war, we leave too soon. So we’re not there soon enough, and he wants us to stay forever wherever we send troops.
McCain’s affection for war as can be found in some of his recent Senate votes. Last September, the Arizona senator supported a measure calling for sending tanks to Saudi Arabia that could be put to use in the Yemen struggle. Had his intention not been blocked, the U.S. would have been more heavily involved in yet another Middle East conflict.
Then in December 2016, McCain supported the huge $611.2 billion National Defense Authorization Act, which supplies funding for military action in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. This enormously expensive measure also called for the creation of a “Global Engagement Center” that will finance U.S. activity in countering foreign state propaganda efforts. In other words, the U.S. will be meddling in other nations and calling it part of needed defense of our own. Critics say this new center will drag our nation into more conflicts.
John McCain spent several years as a prisoner of the Communist North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. He rode that credential into gaining a place in Congress as a conservative Republican, a reputation he never deserved. His performance has never seen him siding with traditional conservatism and determined non-interventionism. That’s why the liberal media goes to him for his comments about President Trump and anything that even hints at rolling back big government and having America’s military less involved in skirmishes all over the globe.
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Mr. McManus served in the U.S. Marine Corps in the late 1950s and joined the staff of The John Birch Society in August 1966. He has served various roles for the organization including Field Coordinator, Director of Public Affairs, and President. Mr. McManus has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs and is also author of a number of educational DVDs and books. Now President Emeritus, he continues his involvement with the Society through public speaking and writing for this blog, the JBS Bulletin, and The New American.
Who Are Trump Supporters?
Posted: August 18, 2016 Filed under: 2016 Presidential Election, GOP Debate, Hillary Clinton, neoconservatism, Politics | Tags: 2016 election, 2016 Presidential Race, Donald Trump, media bias, politics, Trump 5 CommentsWho Are Trump Supporters?
by JBS President Emeritus John F. McManus
New Yorker Magazine is hardly a bastion of right-wing politics. Instead, it can usually be found promoting causes championed by liberals, left-wingers, and elitists. Its veteran political writer went to several Trump rallies to find out for himself what motivates anyone to support the New York City mogul.

Image by Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America (Donald Trump supporters) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons)
The report I received – not the article itself– stated that Trump supporters “have had it with” an array of anti-Establishment politicians and policies. There’s nothing sensationally new about that. Its list of reasons is impressive, and they smack of accuracy. It says “Trumpies” are rebelling against anyone named Bush or Clinton, and against political correctness, illegal immigration, welfare waste and fraud, ObamaCare, Federal Reserve money-printing schemes, Barack Obama’s golf, Holiday – not Christmas – trees, global warming nonsense, gun confiscation threats, cop killers, stagnant wages, boys in the girls bathrooms, and more. My own survey assures me that all of that is a correct reading of any Trump supporter.
However, George Saunders who wrote the lengthy piece in New Yorker can hardly be described as an admirer of either Trump or the many Trump supporters he encountered and interviewed as he traveled across the country. On the other hand, the writer of the report (no name was provided) went far overboard in attributing any sort of pro-Trumpism to what Saunders provided.
With more than two months still remaining before Americans vote for the next president, plenty can happen to sway the yet undecided, maybe even move some from one camp to the other. We hope all will base their decision on facts, not on hit pieces or wild characterizations of any candidate.
The two articles mentioned above did agree in one main point. It is that most Americans are tired of promises not being kept by Democrats or Republicans, of changes in the nation’s culture and moral standards, of being given half-truths and lies when honesty remains the best policy, and of sensing that the country is being changed – not for the better but for the betterment of an arrogant well-entrenched few.
But another lesson reinforced from reading the magazine article and the ensuing report convinces me that checking the original is far and away the wiser course. Relying on someone’s view of something may take you far from what it really said.
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Mr. McManus served in the U.S. Marine Corps in the late 1950s and joined the staff of The John Birch Society in August 1966. He has served various roles for the organization including Field Coordinator, Director of Public Affairs, and President. Mr. McManus has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs and is also author of a number of educational DVDs and books. Now President Emeritus, he continues his involvement with the Society through public speaking and writing for this blog, the JBS Bulletin, and The New American.
Neocon Lindsey Graham Calls For Bypassing the Constitution
Posted: March 16, 2016 Filed under: Military, NATO, neoconservatism, Politics, United Nations, World Government | Tags: john birch society, John McManus, Lindsey Graham, military, NATO, neocon, United Nations, war Leave a commentNeocon Lindsey Graham Calls For Bypassing the Constitution
by JBS President Emeritus John F. McManus
South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham parades as a conservative. But he and his ideological confrere, Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, are neoconservatives. The distinction is important because neoconservatism has become a dominant force among many elected officials and media pundits.
What is neoconservatism? The man who always claimed to be the “godfather” of the movement is Irving Kristol. In his 1995 book Neonconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, he wrote, “We accepted the New Deal in principle, and had little affection for the kind of isolationism that then permeated American conservatism.” He also bared the roots of his political and economic preferences when he additionally stated, “I regard myself as lucky to have been a young Trotskyite and I have not a single bitter memory.” So, he wanted the socialism desired by FDR’s New Deal and the U.S. to be the policeman of the world on the way to world government.
The Leon Trotsky he lauded partnered with Lenin in the takeover of Russia in 1917. A few years later after Lenin died and Stalin emerged as the top criminal, Trotsky fled for his life. The two had split because Stalin favored head cracking and gulags while Trotsky wanted to impose Marxist socialism slowly and patiently. His technique called for propagandizing people into choosing it. Both shared the ultimate goal of a tyrannical world government and differed only in how to obtain it.
So, a neoconservative advocates big government socialism and worldwide internationalism via undeclared wars and entangling pacts. Neocon Charles Krauthammer boldly spelled out these goals in a 1989 article appearing in Kristol’s journal, The National Interest. He advocated U.S. integration with other nations to create a “super-sovereign” entity that is “economically, culturally, and politically hegemonic in the world.” His ultimate goal called for a “new universalism [which] would require the conscious depreciation not only of American sovereignty but of the notion of sovereignty in general.”
Neoconservatives love war. Not the kind authorized by a congressional declaration that might result in a quick victory and the troops coming home, but a conflict started by presidential mandate with full authorization supplied by the United Nations or its NATO subsidiary. As Senator Graham stated in a recent Capitol Hill press conference, he wants the president given a green light for another undeclared war: “I agree with the president that Congress should act regarding giving him the authority to fight ISIL.”
War without the constitutional requirement for a formal congressional declaration has been our nation’s policy since World War II. Our forces haven’t won a war since that struggle because they have been hamstrung by rules imposed by the UN, NATO, or presidential dictate. The U.S. never lost a war until our leaders departed from formally issuing a required declaration. Congress, which should have insisted on adherence to the Constitution, lamely tolerated stalemates or losses in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and now in Afghanistan. If U.S. forces are to be employed to defeat ISIS (or ISIL), there should be a declaration of war, not a presidential dictate.
Neocon Lindsey Graham swore an oath to the Constitution, not to presidential power. He violated that oath when he supported granting President Obama trade promotion authority, the power to entangle the U.S. in sovereignty-compromising deals with the European Union and Pacific nations. He also voted for reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, raising the national debt ceiling, and supplying another trillion dollars to fund socialistic agencies of the federal government. And that’s just some of his record over the past year. Check out his voting adherence to the Constitution as calculated by the Freedom Index.
Not alone in what he supports, Senator Graham has become an outspoken leader of the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party. He supports going to war without a required declaration, entangling the U.S. in the UN and harmful trade pacts, and backing continuation and expansion of federally imposed socialism. This isn’t conservatism; it’s neoconservatism. And it’s terribly bad for our country.
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Mr. McManus served in the U.S. Marine Corps in the late 1950s and joined the staff of The John Birch Society in August 1966. He has served various roles for the organization including Field Coordinator, Director of Public Affairs, and President. Mr. McManus has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs and is also author of a number of educational DVDs and books. Now President Emeritus, he continues his involvement with the Society through public speaking and writing for this blog, the JBS Bulletin, and The New American.