Andrew Breitbart’s recent smackdown of Max Blumenthal at CPAC (for his vicious smears against James O’Keefe) serves as a reminder to us all that when Liberal “journalists” attack, they have one goal – and it isn’t reporting the truth. It is to win at any cost no matter what the damage is to the victim. It is called the politics of personal destruction and it reflects the utter nihilism of Liberalism.
The tactic has been used repeatedly by the left (see Sarah Palin), but is particularly disturbing when used as a cudgel to destroy decent, hard-working Americans. One such decent, hardworking (and extremely patriotic) American is Barrett Moore, founder of Triple Canopy.
I met Barrett a couple of years ago in Chicago at a luncheon for Navy SEAL, Marcus Luttrell author of the bestselling novel, Lone Survivor and boy do the Liberals hate him.
As I mentioned, Moore was the founder of Triple Canopy, one of America’s first private military companies (or PMC) and under his stewardship, he assembled one of this nation’s most impressive fighting forces – most of whom were retired members of the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (1st SFOD-D) (Delta Force) – and sent them overseas to help carry our burden in Iraq. What’s more, he did it at a fraction of the cost and much more efficiently than the American government ever could. That’s private enterprise for you, but because his private enterprise involved guns, the Liberals focused on him like a laser beam.
Their attacks would come not only while he was at Triple Canopy, but even more devastatingly once he had been forced out.
While at Triple Canopy, detractors from the left weren’t the only problem Barrett had to deal with. He also had a handful of business partners eager to carve out bigger and juicier government contracts. For that to happen, Triple Canopy would have to move from their fifty-yard-line seats up into a skybox. In the world of Department of Defense contracts, the big players are those who did $1 billion or more with DOD annually. At the time, Triple Canopy was in the hundreds of millions of dollars range. This was a very respectable number to be sure, but it wouldn’t put them in the Defense Department’s inner circle. To get to the $1 billion level, they needed to find a way to bring in even more contracts. It was at this moment that Triple Canopy was made an offer that only Barrett Moore could have refused.
The Central Intelligence Agency introduced Barrett and Triple Canopy to a wealthy organization that provides the CIA with much of its innovative technology and technical services. It was a match made in heaven, or so everyone thought; everyone that is, except for Barrett.
Ironically, when Triple Canopy had first arrived on the scene in Iraq, it had taken up residence in one of Saddam’s former palaces with the CIA literally in the palace to the left of it and the Army’s elite Delta Force Squadrons in a palace to the right. It was an uncanny metaphor for what Barrett believed was driving the CIA’s suggested merger/buyout of his company.
His reluctance to go along with the plan stemmed from several concerns, not the least of which being his devotion to the operators that formed the backbone of his company. In short, he had no interest in becoming the paramilitary arm of a technology organization that took its marching orders from the Central Intelligence Agency. You see, Barrett had created Triple Canopy to be a place where operators could still honorably serve their country alongside the same caliber of soldiers they had worked with in the Special Operations community. He’d be damned before he would sell those men out.
Barrett’s partners, though, saw things differently. They didn’t mind if the CIA wanted access to Triple Canopy’s talent, as long as the merger would result in big payouts. This put the partners and Barrett at loggerheads and their eventual uncoupling was an unpleasant and ugly affair.
After a protracted legal battle, Barrett was forced out as the founding CEO and largest shareholder, but with a sizable settlement from Triple Canopy (whose remaining partners ironically never did succeed in selling the company despite repeated attempts).
With Barrett Moore retired from the PMC world, the Liberals no longer had him to demonize anymore – at least not until he came roaring back with a new concept and a brand new company. His idea was so offensive and so horrific to Liberals that the George Soros/SEIU funded Center for Independent Media (now re-branded as The American Independent News Network) not only went after the concept, but after Barrett as well. After all, if you can’t attack the message, attack the messenger.
So what was this Liberal bête noir? Its bite hardly seems worth the Leftists’ bark. You see, Barrett actually had the temerity to suggest that people be self-reliant. He had the unmitigated gall to intimate that in times of disaster (natural or “man-made”) that the big government nanny state might not be there for you.
This audacious man wanted people to move beyond their ingrained experiences that stores are always open and their shelves are always full – what Barrett calls the “7-Eleven” effect. There is a genuine need to change this mentality and have people consider what they would do if our just-in-time delivery system was disrupted and grocery stores and pharmacies were unable to restock.
He wanted people to learn to become self-sufficient and not rely upon the government for help in an emergency. He had even invested $20 million of his own money to master the private disaster response arena and become an expert in all aspects of preparedness. How dare he! How dare this rapscallion throw up speed bumps along the road to Socialism! Obviously, this man didn’t know how evil his message of self-empowerment was. Something needed to be done. Somehow, Moore needed to be taught a lesson once and for all. Enter the progressive advocacy communication web site Michigan Messenger and their related radical blogs.
In a series of hit pieces, the Michigan Messenger went after Barrett Moore in every way it could. It started by attacking the overall purpose of his business – helping people prepare for the unexpected.
Moore’s company, appropriately named Sovereign Deed, offers a wide range of products and services, all geared toward continuity of life; a mandate our government long ago abandoned, but which Liberals believe is still its sole purview.
Whether it’s helping you stock the appropriate type and amount of provisions for you and your family in case of a supply-chain disruption, assembling a high-end bug-out-bag, subscribing to updates from their global analysis center, or developing post-event contingency plans, Sovereign Deed is all about helping people survive situations all of us hope never happen.
But being self-reliant threatens the Liberals’ vision of dependence upon a glorious, utopia-promising big government, so they attacked Sovereign Deed as being nothing more than salvation for the rich. In their twisted view of the world, private sector businesses should simply give their services away. If the truth be told, Sovereign Deed has actually done just that. After the earthquake in Haiti, Moore and his company donated over 200+ metric tons of relief supplies (310 pallets) including food, medicine, medical equipment, tools, shelter and children’s toys with no fanfare whatsoever.
When the Michigan Messenger’s ridiculous, anti-private sector message failed to gain traction, they moved to the next page in the Liberal playbook and attacked Moore personally.
At DePauw University, Moore nearly single-handedly revived the university’s Army ROTC program (which had been driven off the campus by liberals in the 1970s) and simultaneously joined the US Army Reserves; working with a military intelligence unit based at Eli Lilly’s Indianapolis laboratory facilities where it focused on the Soviet bioweapons program. A highly intelligent, physically fit, patriotic young man, Moore was on the radar screens of many prominent government agencies.
After graduation, Moore disappeared for seven months of “additional training” before turning up in Australia – a covert hotspot for illicit weapons trafficking. Within a short time, Moore had “amazingly” established an exotic car import business (bringing Porsches in from the United States and Europe), which allowed him to infiltrate a major organized crime ring affiliated with the Russians. But a perfect James Bond plot this wasn’t.
Whether it was via the Russians from on high, or via members of the crime syndicate Moore was mapping, it became suspected that he wasn’t who they thought he was and they attempted to assassinate him and send a message to the US. Moore,survived the attack and has the bullet wound to show for it.
When the plot to assassinate him failed, corrupt Australian law enforcement officers (tied to the organization Moore had been working to infiltrate), created a sophisticated plan to frame him. By the time the High Court of Australia (their Supreme Court), had officially and fully exonerated him, Moore had spent forty-three days in a maximum-security Australian prison.
All of this became fodder in the Soros-backed Michigan Messenger’s attempt to discredit Moore and prevent him from locating Sovereign Deed’s supply distribution nerve center in a small northern Michigan community suffering in tough economic times. Such is the nihilism of Liberals that they’d rather attack Moore, than see his business provide much-needed jobs in a community all too happy to have him there.
In its final attempt to smear Moore, the Liberals (many of whom have probably never had a real job, much less created jobs for others) lumped him in with a host of other “evil” men like Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain, Henry Heinz (of Heinz Ketchup fame), Milton Hershey (of Hershey’s Chocolate fame), Henry Ford, Mickey Rooney, Johnny Unitas, Wayne Newton, Walt Disney, Larry King, and Donald Trump; all because at one point in his long and successful career as a businessman, Moore had filed for personal bankruptcy when a Taiwanese manufacturing company had falsified insurance documents on a factory in which millions of dollars of his inventory had been destroyed. By falling on his sword, Moore not only saved his business and the jobs of his employees, but he was able to build the business back up and eventually sell it. That business is still alive and well today. But that’s not the story you’ll read in the Soros/SEIU funded Michigan Messenger.
With the power of the Internet, the Michigan Messenger screeds against Barrett Moore and his noble efforts at Sovereign Deed, pop up to the top of any search prospective clients conduct. Those articles have tarnished a good man.
Barrett Moore’s reputation and good name have been besmirched and that’s wrong. It is important for me that the record be set straight and that the facts win out. What’s more, it’s important that the dangers of Leftist advocacy journalism as practiced by the Michigan Messenger and other Liberal “news” outlets of its ilk, be brought to everyone’s attention. Today, it’s Barrett Moore and Sovereign Deed, but we all need to ask ourselves: who will it be tomorrow? Me? You?
When the going gets tough, the Liberals all pull together on behalf of their team, but conservatives too often pull apart. It’s time we took care of our own – especially when it comes to the life and business-destroying, “just-the-fiction-ma’am” assassinations the Left so revels in and so thinly veils as “journalism.”
So how do we do that? How do we begin to take care of our own? We begin by calling these people out and exposing their lies just as Andrew Breitbart did with Max Blumenthal at CPAC. Simply put, we no longer roll over. We set the record straight and we commit right now to back each other up every time a Liberal journalist attacks. Believe me, Barrett Moore wasn’t the first and he definitely won’t be the last, but working together we will dull the impact of these attacks and eventually drown them out all together.
Big Journalism
