Bruce Bartlett sacrficed a $172,000-a-year salary to write the book Imposter: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. Might you sacrifice $17.16 to buy it here on Amazon?

The Dallas Observer has an in-depth article detailing Bartlett and his firing from the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis because he wrote a book, Imposter, that calls Bush a big-government, pseudo-conservative whose economic policies are worse than Bill Clinton's. John Goodman, NCPA's president, remarks of firing Bartlett, "No one asked me to do this, no one suggested it would be a good thing, nothing like that." Did anyone have to? The conservative movement has, unfortunately, become, in large part, the lapdog of the Republican Party. On principle, I don't feel bad for people who lose $172,000-a-year, do-nothing jobs. But I do worry about the chilling effect a person losing a $172,000-a-year, do-nothing job from a conservative think-tank for the sin of espousing conservative ideas will have on conservative writers, policy analysts, and intellectuals who don't have such posh jobs but might desire one someday. Money clashed with principle, and Goodman chose the former while Bartlett opted for the latter. But Bartlett's is clearly the road less travelled. The knowledge that being a party guy pays will ensure fewer future Bartletts and more future Goodmans. Goodman intuitively knew that keeping Bartlett meant angering board members, drying up donation streams, and alienating powerful friends, such as Karl Rove. So, he fired his longtime employee.

When your business is ideas, it is not all about the Benjamins--at least it shouldn't be. Dollars should chase principles, not the other way around. The purpose of a think-tank is to support ideas and policies, not to settle on the ideas that will raise the most money. Subordinating ideas to money is self-defeating.

That no one had to direct Goodman to fire Bartlett, that he knew what to do without receiving the order, demonstrates just how tethered the conservative movement has become to the Republican Party and its donor base. This relationship has been good for Republicans (they get to trample over conservative principles and still retain conservative support) but bad for conservatives (they get fired for complaining about Republicans trampling over conservative principles).

Look what happened to Kevin Lamb... the SPLC found out he was editing the Occidental Quarterly and they pressured his employer and subsequently he lost his job.

No, the best thing to be is a Republican sychophant. Just drink the Kool-aid and your in the club. If you don't, well, start looking for a new job.

There is a difference, Michael. Bartlett was fired from a conservative think talk for espousing conservative principles. Kevin Lamb was fired from a flagship conservative publication for espousing racism.

Now I'm rather tolerant of differences of opinion, but you go to far when you say that being ejected from polite company for being racist is equivalent to being ejected from the conservative movement for criticising Bush.

This is the kind of heads-up "homework" I turn to FF for.

Has a conservative organization ever been able to get a liberal fired from their job by claiming they were a _______________?

Obi Juan, I believe the correct answer is....no.

Didn't ABC fire Bob Zelnick for writing a book about Al Gore? Don't know, but I doubt Zelnick is a conservative. If you gore the boss' ox, bad things can follow. Look before you leap into the unemployment line.

Skeptic, I completely disagree.

Lamb didn’t espouse “racism.” He was involved in the TOQ, a publication that deals with politically incorrect issues that Human Events once touched. I would look at Lamb’s article in VDARE about how he got fired, or his article for the National Policy Institute about Human Event’s sudden reversal in positions if you doubt that. I seriously doubt that anyone at Human Events was unaware of Lamb’s writing for the TOQ, they just got scared that the Southern Poverty Law Center would write something bad about them.

If anything, Lamb’s firing was more unjust.

Although Lamb did not hide his involvement with the TOQ, he certainly did not go out of the way to flaunt his involvement with it as Bartlett did.

While I in no way approve of Bartlett's firing, it was clearly done in large part for some rational reason. I’m guessing, being a Dallas based conservative think tank that the NCPA gets a good amount of money from rich Bush loving Texas Republicans who no doubt would not like what Bartlett has to say about their hero. In contrast, I seriously doubt that Eagle Publishing gets a substantial amount of money from the Southern Poverty Law Center or their cadre of elderly Jewish women whose social security checks Moris Dees scams them out of by painting everyone from Dinesh D’Souza to Jared Taylor as the Next Hitler.

It makes perfect sense for the NCPA to fire Bartlett. Why the hell Human Events would even care what they have to say is beyond me.

When the SPLC told Human Events and Evans Novak of Lamb and a few other politically incorrect souls of their “extremist” ties, Dees and Co also informed a variety of other conservative publications that they had "Racists" on staff(I won't name them, just in case some leftist/neocon is reading) These are not far out paleo publications, but rather mainstream ones and they correctly told the SPLC to take a hike, and I haven't heard anything of that since.

Like Bartlett, Kevin Lamb has a house (though its not in Great Falls) and a family. Other than a few hard right publications like Middle American News and VDARE, I haven’t seen this reported anywhere. Kevin Lamb doesn’t have the NY Times, and dozens of other mainstream publications writing about his firing, and even if they did, he doesn’t have a book like Bartlett, whose book sales will no doubt increase because of all this publicity. (In fact, just as liberals who hate country music bought Dixie Chicks CDs after they got boycotted by the freedom fry eaters, I’m sure a number of liberals will buy Bartlett’s book now)

Like I said, I don't approve of either, but what happened to Lamb seems worse to me.

Michael-- you clearly have a strong interest in the Lamb case. But TOQ isn't just a publication that deal with politically incorrect issues. It is a racialist publication; it is not exclusively concerned with, but it is very concerned with the good of the white race, which it understands as at odds with the good of other races. There is nothing inherently conservative in racialism.

Thus Human Event's motivation for distancing themselves from an editor of TOQ was both just and "rational" (by this you seem to mean "self-interested, motivated by concerns for money"). In any case, the point is that Bartlett was fired from a conservative group for espousing views essentially linked to conservatism, while Lamb was fired from a conservative paper for being intimately involved in another publication that espouses views that are not essentially conservative. Different case entirely. Why? Being being anti-Bush isn't like, and shouldn't be compared to, being racist.

As a policy wonk, Bartlett was paid six figures to pontificate on various issues at the NCPA's expense, and he used that time to write a book that is clearly against their interests.

Even if I were to grant you that the the Occidental Quarterly is "racist" and that the views they espouse are somehow inemical to conservatism (which I don't,) no one ever questioned Lamb's work at Human Events.

The articles he wrote were pretty much standard political reporting from a mainstream conservative perspective, and he edited the TOQ on his own time. I'm sure that if Lamb moonlighted at the New Republic, Human Events would not feel compelled to not only fire him, but purge him from their records as if he never existed.

The point isn't that "Racism" is not conservative, but rather that it is such an evil viewpoint that anyone who espouses it must be purged from all their jobs and anyone who inadvertantly hired a "Racist" must pretend like it never happened.

Michael, I didn't say all racists should be fired from all jobs. Racists have as much a need of food as any other people. But when the job happens to be about publically espousing conservative views, there is every reason in the world for the employer to distance themselves from people who publically espouse racist views.

Contrast with Bartlett's case: his job was to publically espouse conservative views and he got fired for publically espousing ... conservative views. You are trying to ride the Lamb case on Bartlett's, but it is simply not equivalent. If you can recognize that "conservative" doesn't mean "racist" then you should be able to see the difference between the two cases.

Although this is besides the point here, yeah, actually, I do think that " "racism" " is evil and, actually, I would add that it is part of a weird, _modern_ biology- and genetics-obsessed view of the person. Moreover, as such, it is not conservative in the sense that it is not based in the Christian-Western tradition. It arises only in the ideologies that reject the best and the deepest views confirmed by the Western tradition.

There is a huge double standard in all this. Non-white identity with culture and skin color is considered racial diversity. No one calls anyone out on this form of racism. There is a Latino group going around calling themselves “The Race” (La Raza). I’m absolutely sure if that were on a college application it would win the person a few points. But if you are white, and specifically a white person in this country who was here prior to the “nation of immigrants,” you just don’t fit in polite society. You must forfeit any claim to cultural identity. Can a person whose ancestor’s came on the Mayflower really be considered some form of “immigrant” when their family has been here ~350 years. If so, then the “Native” Americans are immigrants too. It’s reductio ad absurdum.

When people are forced out of polite society their recourse is to, non-polite society. It’s a paraphrase of a JFK quote, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” If you block off debate then people are merely emboldened.

Many of you read similar things that I read. Look at Pat Buchanan. He’s now identifying with the Palestinians. Look at Joe Sobran. He spoke for an organization that denies the Holocaust. Look at Sam Francis. Very intelligent guy, but near the end of his life was left speaking at the American Renaissance conferences which were all that would have him. None of these men started out so low, they were brought there by being shunned. What did shunning do? It didn’t reform anyone in any sense.

What was the problem with simply debating with these people early on, before they were as extreme as they would become, and before the positions they now espouse? And what is even the problem with debating with them now? If you debate someone racist shouldn’t you be able to beat him handily if your position is right? If you simply choose to not debate them then they become heroes within their own movement, and you have in a sense lost the debate between the two opposing view points (although you retain camp followers, which can be a sizeable number).

Pat Buchanan still is a commentator on Cable News and can publish best selling books.

When Joe Sobran spoke at IHR, he did so knowing that some of the few conservative outlets that publish him would cease to do so.

Sam Francis's spoke at AR conferences when he still had his job at the Washington Times (in fact that's what got him fired) and was insturmental in doing so.

While I don't agree with everything they say, I think it seems a bit hasty to act like they were "forced" into having their views.

Pat Buchanan does all he does in spite of everything else. The SPLC and the ADL are always gunning for him, and all "respectable" conservatives will not refer to him by name or reference. He had to found his own magazine!

Bill Buckley threw Joe Sobran off the bus and that was essentially that. Bill left no room for error. And so, Joe Sobran spoke at IHR, what a crime! Where else was he to make speaking fees after Buckley’s exclusion? Perhaps you never head his explanation of the thing: http://www.sobran.com/fearofjews.shtml

I feel for Sobran very much, because I myself have been on the bad end of a semitic epithet. My love for those who bring it is zero, they do it too often, too much, for too little. After such a thing, it is very easy to blame the greater object of which only a subset is really to blame, because they are the most vocal.

Sam Francis was writing for the WP when he was fired for his association with the AR (which I remember as being instigated by a leftist organization). He was what he was. I do not necessarily disagree with his firing on such terms. But can he be simply dismissed as a dimwitted racist (at least within the conservative movement)?

No. He was a very intelligent man, who had great things to say beyond what he had to say about race. And even there, I do not believe we should dismiss him without reading him fully. Race and culture are very much intertwined in the Unite States. Should conservatives dismiss critiques on culture because of where they originate from (which for Sam Francis was from a Southern Conservative bent)? Check your local library and you will find hundreds of volumes on race relations, but how many conservatives are there beyond perhaps, maybe, Thomas Sowell, who only gets a pass because of his race.

I do no believe it is wrong to see that the current views of people have been shaped by very public pressures. Is that not what certain groups intended by putting pressure on people, to change them, if not in the direction they intended?

MrMr:

The way you describe Sobran and Buchanan is seriously misleading. As far as I know, Sobran has never denied the Holocost, and his speech for the organization made that clear. He used it, partly, to talk about (what he often talks about using Shakespeare) groupthink. And Buchanan isn't quite "siding with" the Palestinians-- i.e., on everything-- though he certainly doesn't "side with" the Israelis either. Besides, as Marcus has pointed out, all three of these guys hold the views they hold; they haven't been forced in to them.

Besides, why are you complaining about a quite obvious double standard about the way leftists regard minority racism against majorities and the way they regard majority racism against minorities? It's obvious, frequently commented on by conservatives of all stripes, and conservatives have been fighting it primarily by fighting racial preference as racist. You seem to think that the way to fight the left's double standard on this issue is to legitimate majority racism against minorities. I would call your view silly, except that this view is both seriously wrong and quite dangerous (and would be disasterous for conservatives PR).

Founding a magazine is not a profitable enterprise. Buchanan does not get paid by the American Conservative. He may even be subsidizing it. Yes he's not welcome at National Review or Townhall.com, but his books still sell hundreds of thousands of copies and he's still a cable news commentator.

I'd hate to speculate about Joe's financial well being, but I can only guess that the Institute for Historic Review does not provide huge honorariums for their speakers. As he states in the article you link, some conservative editors who would have continued to publish him, warned him that they would not (and have kept their promise) after he spoke there. I seriously doubt that speaking at IHR was done for financial reasons.

Now I will concede that Joe's views on the Jews and neoconservatives have probably been shaped by the fact that a number of Jewish Neocons went out of their way to ruin his career. I once asked a prominent Jewish (non-neo) conservative if he thought Sobran was anti-semitic, and he said "well, yes, but wouldn't you be if you were him"

As for Sam Francis, he was fired from the Washington Times, not Post, for remarks he made at AR and a few unPC columns, at the instigation of Dinesh D'Souza and the Center for Equal Oppurtunity. (I'll leave it to others to say whether or not this was "instigated by liberals")

I don't think any of Sam's ideological enemies would suggest that he was unintelligent, they simply found his views so "racist" that they were not allowed to be part of "polite society." Francis had his views, they did evolve over time, but I don't see how he was forced into any position, its merely that he chose to sacrifice job security and financial gain to be able to speak his mind.

There is a huge difference between trying to preserve the culture and institutions that ones forefathers created and giving them away and/or destroying them.

Tom Tancredo is the only candidate who can restore a conservative legacy to the Republican Party.