Just when you thought conservative-on-conservative mudslinging couldn't get any funnier, I bring you a post on the official blog of the John Birch Society bitching about the phony conservatives of the National Review:

[...] Since William F. Buckley has descended into senescence and left his publication in the hands of “mini-cons” -- youngish writers spawned by neo-conservatives, or unduly influenced by them – the magazine has abandoned any pretense to conservatism beyond a tribalist attachment to the Republican Party.

NR's “symposium” discussing George W. Bush's 3rd anniversary war speech in Cleveland is the sort of discussion one could imagine reading in the state-controlled Soviet press of the mid-1980s. The panelists seem indecently eager to elbow each other out of the way and step over each other's lines as they regurgitate the potted Party phrases. [ ... ]

“We're fighting pure evil in Iraq,” exclaims Comrade Peter Brookes of the Heritage Foundation in his ten-point contribution. “How many Iraqi women and children have al Qaeda/the insurgents slaughtered?”

I'd guess that the bodycount rolled up by those barbarians is awful – maybe a significant fraction of that compiled by the “liberators.” The insurgents, after all, don't have the means to drop high-yield explosives on residential neighborhoods, as “coalition” forces did in the opening phase of “Shock & Awe.”

Reciting a non-sequitur favored by the Hannity crowd, Brookes writes: “No terrorist attacks here since 9/11. Coincidence? I don't think so.”

I don't think so, either. A terrorist attack on the US would be redundant, given the speed with which the Bush administration is bankrupting our nation and ruining our military – not to mention isolating us from our traditional allies.

Iran-Contra conspirator (and Mussolini fan-boy) Michael Ledeen, who really should be looking at striped sunlight rather than plotting new wars of aggression, was disappointed that Bush's speech displayed inadequate zeal to open up a second front with Iran.

“No talk of democratic revolution,” sneered Ledeen. “No mention that Iran is the leading sponsor of terrorism. No encouragement for the Iranian people. Instead, a cheerful reference to talks between our ambassador to Iraq and the Iranians, as if diplomacy could end a war that Iran has been waging against us for 27 years.”

Almost without exception NR's panelists blamed the media for the unfolding debacle in Iraq. That's the problem: Thanks to the “wreckers” (to use the Stalinist term) in the dreaded MSM, people just won't clap for Tinkerbell.

I like this article. Comparisons of the National Review with "the state-controlled Soviet press of the mid-1980s", with Soviet "commissars", with a "neo-conservative Politburo " and a comparison between the NR's criticism of the MSM with Stalin's persecution of dissidents thrown in for good measure? ... Such nostalgia! It instills in the reader a pleasant feeling of continuity with the past: wherever the Birchers look, they're still seeing red.