Keith Ablow's Fox News op-ed "It's Time for an 'American Jihad,'" and his recent assertion that President Obama probably allowed Ebola into America because he thinks black people are owed reparations, aren't to be taken seriously, except as signs that Ablow is 52 years old and is not even remotely as well known as generational peers such as Ann Coulter, Dinesh D'Souza, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham; he's never had a #1 bestselling book of his own (he did co-author a parenting guide with Glenn Beck that sold some copies, but that doesn't count). He and his wife got married in 1995 and have two children; I don't know their ages, but maybe they're heading off to college soon, or are already there. College is expensive. It's time for Ablow to up his game.
What he's doing now, at this stage in his career -- suddenly generating more-extreme-than-thou, clickbait-y, high-concept rants -- reminds me of how some middling baseball players, after a few years in the majors, have suddenly decided to bulk up on performance-enhancing drugs, and have found themselves with vastly increased home-run totals and national acclaim. Think of ballplayers who decided to juice up when you read something insane like this:
An American jihad would reawaken in American citizens the certain knowledge that our Constitution is a sacred document that better defines and preserves the liberty and autonomy of human beings than the charter of any other nation on earth.Yes, he's actually recommending that other countries operate under our Constitution, and that our politicians should run for office in other countries.
The Constitution, along with the miracle of our nation's founding and the providential history of America fighting and winning war after war against oppressive regimes, proves our manifest destiny not only to preserve our borders and safety and national character at home, but to spread around the world our love of individual freedom and insist on its reflection in every government.
An American jihad would embrace the correct belief that if every nation on earth were governed by freely elected leaders and by our Constitution, the world would be a far better place....
We would urge our leaders, after their service in the U.S. Senate and Congress, to seek dual citizenship in other nations, like France and Italy and Sweden and Argentina and Brazil and Germany, and work to influence those nations to adopt laws very much like our own. We might even fund our leaders' campaigns for office in these other nations.
Does he mean it? Of course not -- but given the high level of wingnuttery in right-wing commentary, particularly on his own channel, he has to say something dramatic to cut through the clutter. He's got to do it -- the competition for the attention of the crazy base is fierce, and he's not getting any younger. He wants his piece of the pie.
Note that Ablow uses the phrase "manifest destiny" approvingly in the quote above. In his Ebola rant, he said in disgust, "We don't have a president who has the American people as his primary interest, who believes the country has Manifest Destiny and has been a force for good." My prediction is that he's already begun to sketch out the book he hopes will be his #1 bestseller, and title of it will be ... Manifest Destiny. (The subtitle will How the Treasonous Obama-Clinton Democrats Have Crushed America's Soul and Why the Spirit of Liberty Must Renew America's Purpose or some such blather.) His lecture fees will increase. Maybe he'll get his own prime-time Fox show. Maybe he'll be there to grab the baton when Limbaugh passes it. Even a middle-aged guy can dream, right?
