Of Birthers Birchers and Flat Earthers

To be honest I really hesitated before posting on this subject. I mean why do anything to even acknowledge these wingnuts? But I am seeing too many people buying into the urban-legend that Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen. It is getting to the point where these off the wall conspiracy types are starting to bring discredit on mainstream conservatives. People (especially on the left) are starting to conflate the word "conservative" with flaky tin foil hat nut jobs. This is a serious issue which conservative Bill Pasco addresses in his recent column ...

In January 1962, conservative leaders faced a similar problem: How to deal with the members of the John Birch Society, whose leader, Robert Welch, believed that the former president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was a a conscious agent of the International Communist Conspiracy.

National Review Founder William F. Buckley, Jr., Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, conservative historian and philosopher Russell Kirk, and American Enterprise Institute President William Baroody took it upon themselves secretly to meet at The Breakers hotel in Palm Beach, where they decided Welch and the Birchers would have to be excommunicated from the Conservative Movement, lest their lunacy taint reasonable and responsible conservative political activity.

Were Buckley alive today, is there any doubt he would have the same response to the "Birthers"?

I think not.

The Honolulu Star Bulletin said it well when they wrote in part...

An online posting of his official certificate of birth hasn't quelled the ridiculous accusation that he is ineligible for the presidency. Hawaii officials' verification of the certificate's authenticity has been challenged repeatedly as dubious.

Independent reviews and confirmation of the certificate also have been dismissed as a vast conspiracy involving Obama's parents, state officials, the news media, the Secret Service, think tanks and a host of yet-to-be-uncovered others who have connived since Obama's birth to build a false record so that he could eventually seek the presidency 47 years later.

Seriously folks. When entities as hostile to Obama as FOX News and even Ann Coulter come out and unequivocally state that Obama is in fact a natural born citizen, and STILL the so called birthers refuse to concede, one is well entitled to ask... Where are you people getting your drugs from? As is true of urban legends in general, there reaches a point where the "true believers" become impervious to facts or reason.

But at the risk of wasting my time; here are some facts...

• Barack Obama's birth certificate has been made available for inspection by the State of Hawaii. It has been repeatedly examined by government officials of both political parties (the governor is a Republican) as well as investigative journalists and other experts. Without exception it has been deemed valid and authentic.
  
• His birth certificate DOES have both a signature and a raised seal contrary to widespread reports.
  
• His birth certificate meets the standards of the United States State Department for issuing a U.S. Passport.
  
• Announcements of his birth were published in both of Honolulu's daily newspapers in August of 1961. Maybe the newspapers back then were already complicit in the vast conspiracy to install Obama as the 44th President of the United States.
• Multiple lawsuits filed in an effort to challenge Obama's eligibility to serve as president have been repeatedly dismissed by the Federal Courts. In the most important case (October of 2008) the presiding judge issued a 34 page ruling in which he referred to claims presented by the plaintiff as "frivolous and not worthy of discussion." He specifically stated that the plaintiff's arguments "ventured into the unreasonable." Translated from legalese into plain English the judge was calling the plaintiff a nut and laughing him out of court.

Subscribers to the birther movement must by necessity believe that there is a vast conspiracy at every level of government in the State of Hawaii as also the press dating back to at least 1961 (recall those inconvenient birth announcements in the newspapers). And further that this plot extends into both political parties, the press and mass media at every level, the FBI, Secret Service and other Federal agencies, all engaged in one of the most elaborate conspiracies in the history of the world. This would dwarf the cover up when Bill Clinton had Vince Foster murdered or the cover up when the Navy accidentally shot down TWA flight 800. It would even be bigger than the vast conspiracy launched by George Bush and Israel to carry out the 9/11 attacks and blame it on the Arabs.

In fact the only conspiracy that could possibly compare to it was the one uncovered by General Jack Ripper and revealed to Group Captain Lionel Mandrake in the following memorable conversation...


Of course if we were merely talking about some harmless eccentrics, the sort of people I observed in a recent conversation, who are inclined to believe that the moonshot was faked and professional wrestling is real, it would really be a non-issue. But when you have a group of people standing up and publicly challenging the legitimacy of the President of the United States; that's on a rather different level altogether. In most political societies throughout history such would usually constitute some form of High Treason, and not without good cause.

While I am not arguing that we should take such an extreme view of this, I do think it is harmful and to a certain degree even dangerous to the body politic. Sinister conspiracy theories are not a phenomenon limited to our modern age. There have always been people willing to suspend reason and ignore facts when it comes to believing the worst of public officials who they were predisposed to dislike. History has shown the effects of this sort of paranoid extremism to be corrosive. It impairs the ability to debate real issues if you can't move beyond the validity of the government. It serves to radicalize a political environment that is already dangerously polarized. And as I noted at the beginning of this post; it provides ammunition for the political left to dismiss the President's legitimate conservative critics as cranks. All of which leads me to believe that it is time and indeed past time for respectable conservatives to publicly repudiate these purveyors of dark fantasy and relegate them to their true home, the political fringe.

(Note: This post has been slightly edited for grammar and typos.)