As a “serious” Jew who places himself to the right of Ariel Sharon on Zionism and insists the White House lacks an “authentic conservative” at the helm, Don Feder stirred the passions of thousands who read his nationally syndicated column.
After 19 years and 2,100 “no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners, full-speed-ahead-and-damn-the-torpedoes” pieces with the Boston Herald, Feder is shifting the outlet for his views on politics and culture from journalism to consulting. Since his last column, July 1, he has launched Don Feder and Associates and a website for occasional commentary, “so my readers wouldn’t feel I deserted them.”
In an interview with WorldNetDaily, Feder said that after nearly two decades it was time to do something new, noting that he had been contemplating a change for about a year.
He believes political consulting work won’t hinder his freedom of expression on the new website, where he plans to make at least weekly contributions.
“I’m not going to get involved with clients unless I believe in what they’re doing,” he said. “I didn’t get into this to make money. I got into it to do good – to further the ideals I’ve been trying to promote in my columns for the last 19 years.”
Columns with the Herald always went through the “filter of an editor,” noted Feder, author of two books, “A Jewish Conservative Looks at Pagan America” and “Who’s Afraid of the Religious Right?”
“Sometimes I had to pull my punches,” he said. “On the website I won’t. ”
The website is called “The Cold Steel Caucus Report,” which recalls Gen. Pickett’s famous charge during the Battle of Gettysburg when, after running out of ammunition, he told his men to use their bayonets: “OK, boys, give ’em the cold steel.”
Among Feder’s highlights at the Herald, he says, was getting picketed at various times by postal workers, Puerto Ricans and homosexuals.
Some 500 angry Puerto Ricans gathered outside the paper he said, to protest a column asserting that making Puerto Rico the 51st U.S. state would be a disaster.
“I seem to be a glutton for controversy,” he said. “I don’t think there was a controversial issue that I didn’t touch on regularly.”
‘Admitting the truth about Islam’
Picking up where he left off, Feder says an appropriate way to commemorate the upcoming one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks would be for the nation to begin “admitting the truth about Islam.”
“When people ask what we have learned from September the 11th, I’m always tempted to say, ‘Damn little,'” he said.
“When our leaders prattle about Islam being a religion of peace, and you have universities teaching a fairy tale version of Islam – public schools as well – this is indicative of how little we’ve learned,” said Feder.
He believes the ordinary lives of Americans have changed little in the past year, other than making them more security conscious and making flying more of a pain than it was before.
“When we went to war in 1941, it was clear who the enemy was: Japanese imperialism and Nazism,” he said. “It would be ludicrous if FDR had made a speech and said, ‘Well, Nazism as an ideology is peaceful, but there are a few people like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels who have corrupted this otherwise peaceful ideology – which many fine and decent people follow, by the way, including our friends and neighbors.'”
“That’s essentially what our leaders from George Bush on down have been saying about Islam,” he observed, “and it’s nonsense. And I think most Americans know it’s nonsense.”
‘Bumper-sticker patriotism’
In a Sept. 3 column on his new site, Feder says that as Sept. 11 approaches we can expect to see another upsurge of “bumper-sticker patriotism,” a “painless and risk-free” variety that will do little to aid what he sees as a fight for America’s survival.
“What’s unfortunate is that most Americans don’t know how else to support America, other than putting a bumper sticker on their car,” Feder told WND.
“One problem is there really is no force promoting patriotism in this country,” he said. “The Republicans aren’t. The Democrats certainly aren’t. Basically all you have are the veterans groups – the Foreign Legion, the VFW [Veterans of Foreign Wars] – and they seem to be more interested in veterans benefits or things like the flag burning amendment than they are promoting patriotism.”
Feder’s commentary suggests 11 ways to be a “real patriot,” from insisting on immigration reform to visiting national monuments.
Fractured conservatives
He says that in his new role he hopes to act as a facilitator to encourage and help more conservative groups to work together.
The movement is probably more fragmented than it’s ever been before, he said, “and not just because we don’t have an authentic conservative in the White House.”
“I do not think that George Bush is an authentic conservative,” Feder emphasized.
Feder recalled giving a recent speech to a well-known “economic conservative” group in which he argued that immigration is “killing” the country.
“Believe me, they didn’t want to hear it,” he said. “Someone stood up during the question and answer period and told me I should move to France and work for Jean-Marie Le Pen.”
Feder, who started out his career in the 1970s and early 1980s with two nonprofit political action groups after earning a law degree from Boston University, said some conservatives seem to think cooperation will hurt their own interests.
“They say, ‘If I get into this project with so and so, he’s going to get all the credit, and he’ll raise money for this group,'” observed Feder, who directed a group in New York state called Citizens for Limited Taxation and, later, the Second Amendment Foundation in Seattle.
“Little gets accomplished,” he added. “Everybody wants to be the big fish in a small pond; everybody wants to have their own organization; everyone wants to feel important, to be a leader.”
He sees this played out in electoral politics as well.
“When conservatives get involved, they always want to run for Congress,” he said. “No one wants to run for state representative or, God forbid, school committee member, or city council.”
In contrast, liberals “don’t need to be leaders right off the bat,” he said.
“The left may be crazy, it may be utopian, it may be vile in so many ways, including the tactics that it uses – the people who coined the term McCarthyism are the greatest practitioners of McCarthyism,” said Feder, but “the liberals, for all of their faults, seem to be far more willing to sacrifice for what they believe in than our people are willing to sacrifice for their ostensible values.”
