A Meeting of the Minds in Mesa? (Updated, June 24)

Neo-Nazi planetoid J.T. Ready rallies his boyfriends...

 While Jack McManus is in Mesa today (June 22), he really should make a courtesy call to local anti-immigration activist J.T. Ready. The two of them see the world in very similar terms, at least in their choice of enemies.

Like McManus, Ready served in the Marines, albeit briefly and without honor or distinction: He somehow managed to be court-martialed twice. 

More recently, Ready -- a conspicuous representative of the National Socialist Movement -- was briefly a member of the JBS, despite the fact that the Birch Society has an ironclad rule against collateral membership in anti-Semitic and other bigoted groups. That rule apparently didn't survive Jack McManus's decades-long involvement with a schismatic Catholic group founded by unabashed anti-Semite Leonard Feeney. 

...Ready following a post-rally beer or two.

Both the NSM and the Feenyites embrace political models under which severe civic restraints would be imposed on Jews and others, albeit for different reasons. 

Ready and his comrades would insist that only those who belong to the volkish nation -- people of supposedly "pure white" extraction -- would be citizens; the Feenyites insist that the state must be controlled by their proprietary brand of Catholicism. Although they disagree about the particulars of government administration, both groups agree that Jews should be disenfranchised and, if necessary, expelled. 

Where the subject of illegal immigration is concerned, however, I doubt there is any daylight between McManus and Ready. Among other things, they've both endorsed the deployment of the military at the border as a means of turning back the Brown Peril from Mexico.

Neither of them seems to have noticed that, both in Arizona and nationwide, immigration  -- both legal and illegal -- is sharply down since the housing bubble collapsed. The same downward trend is apparent regarding violent crime in Arizona.

Jack's Summer Speaking Tour is entitled "Stealing the American Dream: How Illegal Immigration Affects You." In terms of title and marketing, this is pure, undisguised pandering, coupled with opportunistic scapegoating: In a time of severe and deepening economic hardship, Jack and the bankrupt JBS brain-trust are encouraging people to believe that brown people who speak with funny accents are the cause of their misfortune. Needless to say, where Ready and his goose-mincing boyfriends are concerned, Jack's message is coming in five-by-five.

There was a time, not terribly long ago, when the JBS went to great lengths to explain how people of Ready's ilk are used to cultivate conflicts that expand government power at the expense of liberty. (In fact, William F. Jasper produced Pulitzer-worthy work on the subject.) Right now, the panderers running the organization are so worried about finding a "wave" to ride they're willing to allow themselves to be co-opted. 

Get a room, guys: Ready and Russell Pearce

The most acute threat to the "American Dream" in Arizona, as elsewhere, is a profligate, incurably corrupt government that has destroyed our economy and is suffocating our liberties. This has nothing at all whatsoever to do with immigration; our enemies are not the people misruling Mexico, or those driven from that country northward; it is the people controlling the regime in Washington, D.C.

The dated, ill-informed presentation Jack will disgorge this evening will have nothing to do with the causes of Arizona's economic afflictions. The current issue of Harper's magazine offers some genuinely terrifying details: 61.5 percent of all Phoenix mortgages are "underwater"; unemployment is probably running at about 18 percent, or higher; the newly created town of Maricopa, forty-five minutes southwest of Phoenix, suffers a "distress index" (percentage of home sales involving bank-owned or pre-foreclosure properties) of 76.8 percent. 

"In a neighborhood called Maricopa Meadows," writes Ken Silverstein, "we rolled past a block of McMansions, all but a handful of which had gone into foreclosure." Silverstein's guide observed: "You've got people doubling up in houses so they can split utilities.... The story is the same from here to Queen Creek to Buckeye, in all these places that people scattered before the crash." 

As the New York Times recently reported, the real estate industry in Arizona -- which, like Nevada, fell prey to a delirious, Fed-financed real estate frenzy earlier this century -- is now essentially a subsidiary of Fannie and Freddie. When the Fed's bubble was expanding, Realtors sold homes to unqualified buyers at grotesquely inflated price. Now that the bubble has burst, Realtors are doing a similarly brisk business in repossessions. 

A threat to the "American Dream"? Murder victim Brisenia Flores.

In all of this, the chief villain is the Federal Reserve. 

To the extent illegal immigration played a significant role, it was in providing  relatively inexpensive labor during the boom. Now that the bust has descended, the jobs are gone and the laborers go elsewhere. 

What this means is that the immigration problem -- yes, "problem," not "crisis" -- is what the JBS used to call a "tangent" -- a distraction from much more important matters. 

Rather than exercising leadership, Art andJack are content to join in the torchlight parade: They extol the supposed merits of Joe Arpaio, the Mussolini of Maricopa County, and promote the "papers, please"  measure promoted by Ready's political paramour, Russell Pearce.

Meanwhile, Ready and his bunkmates -- who consider themselves a self-appointed law enforcement auxiliary -- are bidding fair to become public face of "immigration reform" in Arizona; an Arizona resident murdered his Mexican-American neighbor following an argument over the "papers, please" law (the alleged killer reportedly told the victim -- who had been born and raised in the U.S. -- to "go back to Mexico");  and shirt-tail associates of JBS Speaker's Bureau attraction Chris Simcox (who is in a bit of trouble himself) are accused of murdering an innocent man and his nine-year-old daughter (both of Mexican ancestry) in a deranged robbery plot intended to fund a breakaway Minuteman faction.

No, Jack isn't responsible for any of this, nor is the JBS. But there was a time, once again, when the JBS would use whatever influence it had to defuse manufactured ethnic conflicts, rather than abetting them, either actively or obliquely. (Witness the role the Society played in de-fusing an orchestrated race riot in Americus, Georgia during the 1960s, or Delmar Dennis's speaking tours exposing the Klan.) Even if Jack were inclined to play the role of peacemaker, I don't think he could do so credibly.

For all of these reasons, and many more, it would be entirely appropriate for Jack to break bread with J.T. Ready while he's in Mesa today, even though the spectacle -- like much of what Jack and Art have done to the JBS -- would make Robert Welch weep through gritted teeth.

                                           Update: Appleton's Inexhaustible Hypocrisy

Apparently, there is no limit to what a contributor to The New American can get away with, assuming he or she isn't named William Norman Grigg.

On the TNA website today (June 24) can be found an essay entitled "In Immigration Debate, Politicians are the Problem," by the immensely gifted Becky Akers. Published near the end of Jack's "Stealing the American Dream" immigrant-bashing tour, Akers' essay deftly and effortlessly demolishes the fraudulent foundation of Jack's presentation -- namely, the idea that immigration is an unrelenting "invasion" of alien usurpers who are (as Alan Scholl once put it) "wrecking our economy."

Those blaming immigrants -- legal or illegal -- for the loss of jobs or other economic problems "are scaping the wrong goats," Akers observes. "If they truly want to `fix' unemployment, they should go after politicians and bureaucrats, not immigrants. Government destroys exponentially more jobs than immigrants could ever `steal'...."

Akers observes that "we play right into our rulers; hands when we beseech government to `protect' jobs, whether from immigrants or from foreign competitors via tariffs." Ah, but what about the federal government's constitutional duty to protect each state from "invasion"? Doesn't Washington have a duty to "secure the borders"?

Not exactly.

The Founders, Akers writes, "didn't include `Control movement into and out of the country' among those [limited federal] powers," Akers observes. "In fact, the nearest the Constitution allows government to approach immigration is `establish[ing] a uniform Rule of Naturalization.' But setting the standards whereby people become citizens is far, far removed from walling off our borders or erecting bureaucracies to harass everyone, American or not, with orders of `Papers, please.'"

"When it came to jobs or borders, the Founders knew better than to trust the State," she concludes. "Why don't we?"

Implicit in that question is the following one: Why the hell is Jack McManus abetting misplaced trust in the State in his "Stealing the American Dream" excursion?

Akers' essay is quite comparable to my now-notorious June 22, 2006 "Birch Blog" installment entitled "Phony Immigration Debate vs. Real Police State Threat." We agree that the immigration issue is cynically exploited as a distraction by opportunistic politicians, and it is being used to manipulate the public into accepting police state measures. But Akers actually assails the claim that there is a constitutional case for immigration restriction -- and she does so in an essay published by the JBS while its President is making exactly the opposite case in a national speaking tour.

Art Thompson treated my re-publication of the immigration-related Birch Blog essay as a firing offense, because I was publicly disagreeing with his, ahem, inspired "leadership" in a matter of nuance. There is nothing nuanced about Akers' disagreement, which was published with the imprimatur of TNA editor Gary Benoit -- you know, one of the four former friends who connived to stab me in the back and throw my family to the wolves. 

Nemo me impune lacessit!

The McManus Credo: Dulce et Decorum est Mendacium Decir

He never stops lying, and until the breath permanently departs his lungs he never will. 

For an inveterate liar like John McManus, a speaking tour presents a number of potential pitfalls. One is the possibility of being asked, in public, about the lies you have told and the people you have betrayed. This happened to Jack during an interview on KID-AM in Idaho Falls, and he handled the matter with the unctuous dishonesty that is his most recognizable trait. 


"I'm curious as to why you fired William Norman Grigg," inquired a caller during Jack's appearance, "and also if you would address the accusations of anti-Semitic statements, [such as] saying that Jews and masons are the cause of the conspiracy --"


"Now, wait a minute," interjected an audibly flustered McManus as the host very thoughtfully cut off the caller. "Hold on a second, you're spreading a lot of rumors."


"Mr. Grigg refused to, uh, adopt the positions of the Society regarding decorum in his blog and so forth," Jack lied, inventing yet another version of what happened in October 2006. "We asked him to do so, he said he wouldn't, so we said, okay, well then we can't continue."


This is an extravagant falsehood, as I have discussed elsewhere. "Decorum" had nothing to do with my firing. I was fired for publishing a blog on my own time -- one Appleton used as a fund-raising tool for nearly two weeks after I was terminated. The only specific charge Art Thompson could muster was that I had used my blog to publish material that had been "rejected" by Appleton because I had disagreed with JBS management on matters of "nuance."

I was offered the opportunity, after the fact, to grovel for my job by agreeing that everything I wrote or spoke for public consumption would be subject to prior approval by Appleton. 

One of those who would be given the veto over my writings and utterances was John F. McManus, who had spent decades promiscuously violating the JBS's standards and principles regarding anti-Jewish bigotry.

Jack's second answer is a combo platter of mendacity, one that is even larger, more audacious -- and, quite unintentionally, very revealing.


"He [Grigg] has accused me of being an anti-Semite," Jack continued. "An anti-Semite is somebody who hates. I don't hate anybody, I never have hated anybody, I'm not an anti-Semite -- and I don't want to discuss the matter any further."


Notice that the caller did not connect the two questions: He didn't ask Jack why I had characterized him as an anti-Semite, or even mention that I had made the accusation. Jack's answer was intended to leave the uninformed listener with the impression that I was the source -- apparently, the original and only one -- of the idea that Jack has ever expressed anti-Semitic views.


Jack knows this isn't true, of course -- because, among other things, Jack eagerly used me in October 2005 to defend him against those accusations. 

The source of those accusations is a large and enviably well-documented dossier compiled by Art Thompson, who had become alarmed over Jack's anti-Jewish agitation no later than 2000. Jack's side career as a Jew-baiter made him (and the JBS) vulnerable to blackmail during the 2005 management struggle. 

When an effort was made to blackmail Jack, I resigned my job in disgust and, to an extent, his defense -- not because I sympathized with his bigoted views, but because I couldn't countenance the use of criminal means to settle a leadership dispute. 

At the time I knew nothing about Jack's views beyond the clips I had been shown by his critics in the previous JBS administration, and the fact that he had used the repellent expression "slimy New York Jew" in a conversation. After Art Thompson was appointed CEO, Jack asked me to re-join the staff.

It wasn't until Don Fotheringham used his website to publicize the Art Thompson-created dossier on Jack that I learned that he had spent years propagating anti-Semitic nonsense, while pulling down a pretty decent salary to be the figurehead president of the JBS. He did so in prolonged, conscious defiance of the Birch Society's principles. This is why he was -- at Art Thompson's initiative -- removed from his position as JBS president. As the effort to blackmail him in 2005 demonstrates, Jack's actions directly threatened the very existence of the organization.


So, naturally, Jack was reinstated by Art Thompson as JBS president, and a year after I had risked my job on their behalf, Jack and Art stabbed me in the back. 


Jack's self-serving definition of "anti-Semitism" as "one who hates" is worthy of remark. I can't address Jack's inner life, or his unspoken motives, so I grant that it's entirely possible that he doesn't hate Jews. That isn't the issue, nor is Jack's definition of "anti-Semitism" the proper one for our purposes. 

Jack is committed, as a matter of covenant, to a minuscule and deeply authoritarian schismatic para-Catholic cult founded by unabashed anti-Semite Leonard Feeney. In 1959, Feeney -- a defrocked priest still referred to as "Father" by his followers -- insisted that  "the Jews, as an organized force, are the implacable, declared enemies of Christianity — of its tenets, its traditions, its moral code, its very culture. We think it is vital, too, for American Catholics to realize that the Church has always known this fact about the Jews, and, to the extent of her influence, has counseled and decreed regulations for curbing their malice." (Emphasis added.) 

 Feeney and his followers insist that "the state must declare itself officially Catholic" -- that is, "Catholic" as defined by Feeney, since everybody else in the Roman Catholic Church is controlled by the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy. Under a Feeneyite regime, the "curbs" inflicted on Jews by the state would include the denial of citizenship. Historically this has led to some pretty ugly consequences, up to and including the Shoah.

Presumably, Jack would see this as a form of rigorous "Christian" love -- the same kind of tough but necessary correction that Torquemada and other torturers applied in order to purify Jews and other heretics through pain. The day after I was fired, while I was still bleeding from the dorsal knife wounds he helped to inflict, Jack sent me an e-mail professing to be my friend. So there's reason to believe that his views of affection would be suited to the practice of "Christian" kindness of the sort described above.

Despite the fact that the Feeneyite ideology is utterly incompatible with constitutionalism, let alone the professed principles of the JBS, Jack has been peddling this stuff while taking home a Birch paycheck -- and he's been doing so for decades.

Several weeks ago, I received a letter from a veteran in the liberty movement who describes his first meeting with McManus: 

I first met Jack in 1973. I was a high school senior in Boston. My history teacher, [name omitted] ... had given me "The Law" by Bastiat and I discovered I was a libertarian. [The teacher] told me about the JBS bookstore in Belmont and I rode my bicycle over to check it out.

That's when I met Jack. I was at the bookstore perhaps once a month or so buying books. When you entered the front door, the book store was to the right, and Jack's office was to the left. If Jack was there he'd always invite me into his office for a chat. Jack would give me his spiel on the Masonic Pope, the Masonic  UN, and the Masonic Masons. In the summer of 1974, I told Jack I was planning to go to [an Evangelical Christian college] that fall. Jack was horrified! "They hate the Catholic Church!" he said. I was still indifferent to religion. I decided on [that school] because I didn't want to go to a leftist college like Boston University or any of the other schools in Massachusetts.

I'd found out about [the school Jack hated] through their ads on the back cover of American Opinion magazine, and I made the mistake of assuming that since the JBS bookstore sold lots of libertarian books, (Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, Bastiat, etc) that anything and anyone connected to the JBS also had to be good. Duh!

Anyway, I only lasted one semester ... and soon after I returned in December, Jack told me about St. Benedict Center, which at that time was in Harvard, MA. He also loaned me a number of books about catholic history, extolling the virtues of the Inquisition, Queen Isabella, Philip II and the like...

It didn't occur to me at the time, but looking back, and reading what you say about Jack on your blog, it is interesting that at no time did Jack seem interested in what I might do in relation to the JBS, but he was extremely interested in getting me involved with SBC. [the Feeneyite cult's religious community].And all of this while sitting in his office in the Birch Society headquarters, collecting his salary from the JBS.

So his religious crusading goes back at least to mid-1974.

Jack is obviously deeply committed to the Feeneyite religion. On the basis of his example it's apparent that honesty is not among its tenets. 

Nemo me impune lacessit!