Nothing amuses me more than when one of those radio pitchmen inadvertently posing as a conservative reveals his true place on the political spectrum.

We saw such an event a couple of years ago when the mattress salesman I like to call Marxist Levin pulled out of the Conservative Political Action Conference because the John Birch Society was a sponsor.

There is only one sort of person who freaks out at the mention of the Birch Society:

A leftist.

That was the common pattern back when I went to college in the 1960s, but until the Levin incident I had never heard of a purported conservative coming out against the John Birch Society.

As I noted here, all of these "neo" conservatives are really non-conservatives. Neoconservatism is an internationalist movement begun by Trotkyites and is the exact opposite of the traditional conservatism espoused by traditional conservatives like me, Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan.

When you actually read about what the Birchers espouse today, you find it's nothing more than traditional, small government conservatism.

I saw that Tuesday evening when I attended a hearing on the revised state plan at Monmouth University. The audience was full of right-wingers testifying in opposition to the plan. Many were carrying a Bircher brouchure linking the plan to Agenda 21 of the United Nations.

You can examine that argument here and decide what you think of it.

As for the hearing itself, I will be writing more about it in the near future.

What I found interesting, though, is that the people who testified against the plan showed the sort of small-government, small-town values espoused by the John Birch Society.

Go the their site here and read up on it for yourself. Try and figure out just what the JBS espouses that would upset a real conservative - as opposed to a socialized-medicine advocate like Levin.

As I've noted, the odds are against Ron Paul actually winning the Republican presidential nomination. But he has performed a great service by exposing Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the rest of that crowd as the frauds they are.