When an extremist group like the Southern Poverty Law Center labels you one of the top 30 most dangerous radicals in America, you must be doing something right.
That’s the way I look at it.
If I didn’t make the list, my feelings would be hurt.
But what is it that makes me such a dangerous, right-wing leader to Morris Dees and company?
Do you know what my political views are?
They are a mirror reflection of those of America’s Founding Fathers.
That’s how far we’ve come in America in the last 223 years since our Constitution was ratified and George Washington was sworn in as our first president. Today, the values of James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and the rest of those who sacrificed their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to birth liberty in the New World are considered “dangerous,” “radical,” “right-wing,” “extremist” – at least by the standards of SPLC Inc.
Isn’t that amazing?
Just to remind you who SPLC is: The group’s stock-in-trade is raising hundreds of millions of dollars through fanning the flames of phantom threats posed almost exclusively by those who love America and its Constitution. It also files lots of lawsuits, sometimes even on behalf of real victims of racism, and pockets most of the money raised through heart-wrenching direct-mail pitches.
The most famous example was a judgment SPLC won for a black woman whose son was killed by the Ku Klux Klan. While Dees and company raised $9 million sending out solicitation letters featuring a gruesome picture of the victim, the mom received a total of $51,875 in the settlement. Dees pays himself more than $280,000 a year from the “charity.”
Do you get the picture?
Not only is the SPLC nasty, brutish, extremist and anti-American, but it’s also one of the biggest con games around – an anti-capitalist moneymaking machine.
I’m honored to be listed among so many other great Americans on the SPLC watchlist: David Barton, Michael Brown, Tom DeWeese, Frank Gaffney – even three other WND colleagues: Pamela Geller, Kevin DeAnna and Molotov Mitchell. Just think about it. Of the 30 names, fully 13 percent are WND personalities. Can any other freedom-loving news organization in the world make that claim?
Of course, one of SPLC’s tricks is to mix in heroes like those above with some truly despicable characters – racists like David Duke.
The SPLC is renowned for its enemies lists. In the past they have included the entire tea-party movement, Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, Michele Bachmann, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Rep. Ron Paul, Rep. Paul Broun and, nearly always, me. I seem to make it into every one of the group’s screeds, I’m honored to say.
But you have to remember what motivates the creation of these lists. I think Reason writer Jesse Walker may have said it best last month when he wrote: “The Southern Poverty Law Center … would paint a box of Wheaties as an extremist threat if it thought that would help it raise funds.”
Nevertheless, these periodic reports by SPLC are often treated like the Holy Grail by the establishment media, which is dominated by intellectually and morally deficient characters who genuinely share the totalitarian values of Morris Dees. Just watch as this latest enemies list is treated like cheap wine at a frat-house party in venues like MSDNC and the Old York Times.
While the true extremists are creating the enemies lists, they have more than a few wealthy and powerful friends behind them. Besides the paranoid direct-mail machine SPLC employs, here are other sources of its budget of hundreds of millions:
- the Arcus Foundation
- the Baltimore Community Foundation
- the Cisco Systems Foundation
- the Cleveland Foundation
- the Naomi and Nehemiah Cohen Foundation
- the Columbus Foundation and Affiliated Organizations
- the Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan
- the Community Foundation for the National Capital Region
- Community Foundation (Silicon Valley)
- the Cushman Family Foundation
- the Dibner Fund
- the Joseph and Bessie Feinberg Foundation
- the Ford Foundation
- the Edward and Verna Gerbic Family Foundation
- the Jackson and Irene Golden 1989 Charitable Trust
- the Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund
- the Grove Foundation
- the J.M. Kaplan Fund
- the J.P Morgan Chase Foundation
- the Kaplen Foundation
- George Soros’ Open Society Institute
- the Albert Parvin Foundation
- the Picower Foundation
- the Jay Pritzker Foundation
- the Louis and Harold Price Foundation
- the Public Welfare Foundation
- the Raine and Stanley Silverstein Family Foundation
- the Spiegel Foundation
- the State Street Foundation
- the Steinberg Charitable Trust
- the Vanguard Public FoundationI’m here to tell you I don’t want any of that tainted foundation money.
I would prefer to maintain my values and integrity – and live free in the spirit of American’s Founding Fathers.
Receive Joseph Farah's daily commentaries in your email
BONUS: By signing up for Joseph Farah’s alerts, you will also be signed up for news and special offers from WND via email.
