And I say this frankly as a man who doesn’t link to WND often because of their support for kookery (although I am always impressed with the work of Joseph Farrah) but Jon Henke’s recent call to shut down a business for daring to put forward ideas he finds unseemly (and much of the Jerome Corsi corpus is beyond unseemly) on The Next Right reeks of doctrinaire leftism. What’s worse is that that Henke is taking issue with what is, as far as conspiracy theories go, eyebrow raising boilerplate that is essentially harmless quackery that falls far short of the truly offensive theories the left has often thrown around like 9/11 being an inside job. Here’s Jon Henke’s outrage over WND promoting a theory no more outrageous than aliens building the pyramids:

In the 1960’s, William F. Buckley denounced the John Birch Society leadership for being “so far removed from common sense” and later said “We cannot allow the emblem of irresponsibility to attach to the conservative banner.”

The Birthers are the Birchers of our time, and WorldNetDaily is their pamphlet.  The Right has mostly ignored these embarrassing people and organizations, but some people and organizations inexplicably choose to support WND through advertising and email list rental or other collaboration.  For instance, I have been told that F.I.R.E (The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) – an otherwise respectable group that does important work – uses the WND email list.  They should stop.

No respectable organization should support the kind of fringe idiocy that WND peddles.  Those who do are not respectable.

I think it’s time to find out what conservative/libertarian organizations support WND through advertising, list rental or other commercial collaboration (email me if you know of any), and boycott any of those organizations that will not renounce any further support for WorldNetDaily.

The irony of Henke calling WND unseemly while advocating an Alinsky-esque attack on a private business is thick enough to be used as pancake syrup and sweet enough to induce diabetes. Birtherism is silly and deflates under its own internal logic. After all if Obama is the chosen candidate of a cabal of powerful people looking to hide the truth of his identity why wouldn’t they have worked out the pesky details of his birth certificate in advance? The sinister yet incompetent secret society that runs the world is a theory only subscribed to by people who have never been in the real world long enough to understand that such nonsense is impossible.

But is Bitherism more offensive than John Birch Society anti-Semitism? More disgusting than “truthers” claiming that the passengers and crew of flight 77 are really alive and well? More harmful than Geraldo promoting the Satanic Ritual Abuse hoax, which led to innocent people being jailed?

No, of course not. But Henke hasn’t gone after people who still peddle all of the above nonsense. Where is Henke’s boycott of the sites that claim Israelis are bombing “innocent” Muslims? Where’s Henke’s call for a boycott of advertisers on sites that are supporting a re-emergent S.R.A. movement? Where’s his anger at sites that cater to truthers? You know, DailyKos, Anti-War and The Examiner? I haven’t seen much from Henke on those unseemly sites.

I’ve also yet to hear him attack Jerome Corsi, apparently the fountain from which all of the sins of WND flow, for his more outrageous and evil attacks on decency. The man is, like Obama’s “Green Czar,” a truther, or at least he pretended to be one to sell books on the Alex Jones show (check the comments in this post on Infowars, where crestfallen suckers who supported him cry about being betrayed by truther Corsi when he publicly denounced them) which is much more embarrassing to the right than Birtherism.

For that matter Ron Paul has been chummy with Alex Jones for too long if you ask me, so why aren’t we attacking him?

The answer is so simple it may escape any Henkeites who think his boycott is a good idea. We aren’t fascists.

The Next Right partially claims to be working for a big tent, but Henke and his squishy compatriots are as purge happy as the Christian Falange wing of the party that thinks Nikki Haley can’t be governor of South Carolina because she was raised Sikh. I think Ron Paul is a kook on many issues, but I’m proud to say he is part of my Republican Party even while attacking many of his ideas.

Likewise I think most people who look at Jerome Corsi uncritically can see he is at best a huckster. His attacks on Bush, who kept this country safe with the deck stacked against him and liberated fifty million people from Baathist National Socialism, Talibanism and jihadism, were as despicable as they were untrue. But I have never claimed he should not be allowed to put those ideas out there. Henke is arguing that Corsi and anyone who has ever supported him should be put out of business.

The next right Henke seams to envision takes us far to the left, where we abhor the marketplace of ideas. He is advocating for a future where disagreeing with someone is good enough reason to bankrupt them and unseemliness is a crime that should be punished. Make no mistake, I am not a big WND fan and I won’t defend their sometime hysterical screeching, but I will defend WND’s right to screech from Henke’s “conservative” gestapo. To claim we should destroy the livelihoods of people because we don’t like their association with some crank is Castroism, not conservatism, and if The New Right wants to help chart a course for Conservatives, Republicans and Libertarians in this country I would hope they would steer us away from Marxist anti-freedom policies and toward a future where issues are debate on their merits, even within the party.

Here’s WND’s response. And Henke’s unhinged attack on the RNC for not bowing to the mighty Henke!