Shop all books by Tom Woods

People tell me I should not criticize him right now.

I do think some people are behaving in bad taste. But I do not think I am prohibited from making sober remarks at a moment when so many Americans, and the opinion molders who tell them what to think, are getting ludicrously carried away.

The phenomenon we are witnessing is so Orwellian that I can’t resist exploring it. I am less concerned with criticizing McCain — there will be ample time for that — than I am with trying to understand the regime under which we live, and the media lackeys that glorify it.

The tributes to McCain from the major newspapers are so over the top that there’s something more going on here than the perfunctory respect the media shows for most deceased politicians. Real Dissent: A Libert... Thomas E. Woods Jr. Best Price: $8.48 Buy New $7.93 (as of 03:10 EST - Details)

They will not be speaking this way about Pat Buchanan — a real maverick, who was the first conservative I ever saw who broke with both parties (that’s what a maverick does) to point out that the sanctions on Iraq were creating a humanitarian catastrophe that no moral person could support (that’s what an actual conservative says).

As if to show that she has every Establishment ritual already down to a science, even democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter to say this:

John McCain’s legacy represents an unparalleled example of human decency and American service. As an intern, I learned a lot about the power of humanity in government through his deep friendship with Sen. Kennedy. He meant so much, to so many. My prayers are with his family.

“But she had to say something!” some say.

She had to say “an unparalleled example of human decency and American service”?

McCain’s bellicosity in foreign policy knew no bounds. A discussion of all the interventions he favored — every one of which would have intensified the problems it was allegedly to solve — would take all week.

To a conservative movement that knows nothing of its history, this makes McCain a great conservative statesman.

And to the American Establishment, bellicosity is not and has never been a deal breaker.

McCain’s preferred foreign policy has yielded death, displacement, and regional chaos on a massive scale, not to mention a huge shot in the arm to the very Islamic radicalism he assured us he was fighting against.

(McCain’s insistence on being involved in every Middle East conflict under the sun made him some hideous bedfellows, I might add, as when he met with members of the Northern Storm Brigade, which had handed American journalist Steven Sotloff over to ISIS for $25,000.)

We are to believe that McCain was a “maverick.”

This is because from time to time he joined forces with the Democrats, the left-wing side of the Establishment, in order to support a measure that just happened to win him media applause.

That’s our definition of a maverick now?

Ron Paul was a maverick.

He stood up to the entire Establishment, not just its left-wing incarnation, and its beloved institutions.

He cast the sole “no” vote in the House more than all other congressmen put together. Nullification: How to ... Thomas E. Woods Best Price: $2.00 Buy New $8.34 (as of 05:25 EST - Details)

He opposed the Fed when no one else so much as mentioned it, much less criticized it.

He stood up to the empire — the whole rotten system, not just one particular intervention. He even got it through the thick heads of some conservatives that the bipartisan foreign policy consensus represented the very opposite of conservatism.

Will our gatekeepers of approved opinion have such kind words for Ron Paul? The question answers itself.

The last thing the regime and its kept media want is a genuine maverick, a true dissident who asks the questions we are supposed to keep to ourselves.

McCain loved the regime and the empire. At no time did he adopt a position that the New York Times or the Washington Post would consider a fundamental attack on the state.

And that is why they love him. He played by their rules.

They were thrilled to call him a “conservative,” all the better to police opinion in America: why, if you’re a conservative, we have this John McCain fellow for you!

McCain’s legacy lives on in every politician and journalist who jumps on every propaganda report to justify another round of bombing and destruction.

It lives on in every politician who, 15 years after another idiotic military intervention, finally admits it was a “mistake,” never apologizing to the people he smeared at the time who tried telling him it was a mistake and who predicted every obvious consequence that any damn fool should have known. Meltdown: A Free-Marke... Thomas E. Woods Best Price: $0.25 Buy New $20.00 (as of 02:20 EST - Details)

It lives on in a media that craves bipartisanship — but bipartisanship in the service of the state, and bipartisanship in which the left gets what it wants and the right gets a nice photo-op.

It lives on in the families who are missing children because of a war that McCain finally admitted had been a hideous mistake and a ludicrous expenditure of scarce resources.

McCain was a man of the state, in every fiber of his being. That is why they cheer him.

And that is why we must tell unpopular truths — about McCain, and the corrupt empire he served.

The Best of Tom Woods