Welcome back to 7 Degrees of Separation from fruitcakes. And this time, I’m more than a little concerned. Recently, Gary Hart made some comments about immigrants (via Virginia Postrel–the woman with no permalinks versus my interminably long permalinks):
"We must not let our role in the world be dictated by ideologues with their special biases and agendas … or by Americans who too often find it hard to distinguish their loyalties to their original homelands from their loyalties to America and its national interests."
On first reading and knowing Hart’s background I’d have to agree with Virginia that these are simply a larger part of Hart’s concern about the social fabric and social cohesion. Nothing to work oneself up in a dither about unless one wants to dislike Gary Hart.
However, on the way in to work on Metrolink this morning, I was reading my most recent issue of the New Republic. In the February 10th edition there is a letter from one of my favorite wingnut loons, Paul Weyrich (scroll down), Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.
Of course, the Free Congress Foundation and a particular fruitloop by the name of William S. Lind occupied this bloggers obsessive compulsive streak for a few posts previously including this one.
Lind is a fruitcake of the first order. Besides hanging out with Paul Weyrich, he spoke at the Barnes Review Third International Conference on Authentic History and the First Amendment. Essentially this was a bunch of historical revisionists and fruitcakes, many of whom are holocaust deniers.
Virginia Postrel puts Hart’s comments into some reasonable context, but Lind was a military advisor to Hart. Doesn’t this actually reopen the question of what Hart means?
I guess I want to give Hart the benefit of the doubt, but I wouldn’t be willing to give anyone else the benefit of the doubt so I won’t. Does anyone know of any comments Hart has made about this fruitcake? Or if the fruitcake might have dismissed Hart?
Up DATE: Thanks Digby! I got Lind’s name right in the title, but called him Michael in the text. The text is corrected above.