Blog and Vlog with Jack Hunter

Jack joins FOX Business’ Judge Andrew Napolitano in a discussion on the current debt ceiling debate and the GOP “going tiger.”

It’s not exactly a secret that I’ve long been a fan of professional wrestling. These days, this also means being a fan of Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and its current top star John Cena. But not every fan likes Cena. In fact, some downright hate him. Though packaged as the ultimate good guy—whose say-your-prayers-and-take-your-vitamins appeal worked perfectly for Hulk Hogan two decades ago—many fans have come to resent Cena as someone they simply don’t want to accept. For every fan who cheers him, there are always two more who jeer him—vigorously. For the life of me, I cannot understand the vitriol. But I do understand the power of established narrative.

Wikileaks is the organization the entire political class and media establishment told us we must hate. When the whistleblower outfit famously made its mark in November of 2010 by releasing thousands of classified US government cables—which revealed everything from Saudi Arabia’s desire for an American strike on Iran to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s attempts to obtain the DNA and credit card information of United Nations officials—Washington went into immediate demonization mode. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange a “high-tech terrorist.” Vice President Joe Biden would reiterate McConnell’s charge. Clinton said Wikileaks’ actions were “an attack on the international community.” Marc Thiessen wrote in the Washington Post: “WikiLeaks is not a news organization; it is a criminal enterprise.”

I distinctly remember talking to a family member about Assange in the…

In 2009, conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe and a friend dressed as a pimp and prostitute to secretly videotape officials with the government-backed, low income housing advocacy group ACORN. ACORN officials in multiple offices ended up trying to help the couple with advice on how to evade taxes and avoid detection of their made-up sex-trafficking and child prostitution business. This month, O’Keefe released videos of a man going to various state health and human services departments claiming to be a supporter of the IRA (Irish Republican Army). The kilt-clad man asked if “25 Irish nationals” who were “basically shot up in a skirmish in Belfast” could receive Medicaid. The government employees agreed to help him and also to keep the legal and questionable nature of the intended recipients confidential.

Both stories made national headlines and we can no doubt expect similar exposes from O’Keefe in the future. The mission statement of O’Keefe’s organization Project Veritas is to “investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct.” He really has his work cut out for him—as each of these terms will always end up being better general descriptions than unusual exceptions concerning any investigation of today’s government.

Simply put—big government doesn’t work. For that matter, neither does small government. The Founding Fathers’ philosophy on the state—particularly Thomas Jefferson and his followers—was that government was an unavoidably evil and therefore should be as limited and minimal as possible. These men even wrote a legal charter that was…