It's been a lot of years since I quoted anti-tax activist Jim Tobin in the newspaper, and some of you are going to think I've picked a heckuva strange time to resume.
But Tobin has something to say about the terrorist attacks on America that I think you ought to hear.
It's not that I agree with him; very much the opposite. But with so many voices in our country singing the same song right now, we have to be careful not to ignore the discordant notes.
''Our foreign policy in the Middle East is a suicide pact,'' Tobin wrote in a news release Friday. ''The only way we will be able to avoid more terrorist attacks that will take tens of thousands more American lives is to pull out of the Middle East completely and immediately.''
If you've lived here a while, you must be at least vaguely familiar with Tobin.
For 25 years, he has run a group called National Taxpayers United of Illinois, using that position and his newsletter to attack tax increases, seek tax cuts and decry wasteful spending.
He claims to have the second-largest taxpayer group in the Midwest, with 10,000 members and 200 local affiliates around the state. That's probably exaggerated, but he's definitely not alone.
Tobin gets his name in the newspapers a lot because if somebody proposes a tax increase, we can depend on him to be against it. We sometimes call him a conservative, but he prefers to think of himself as a libertarian. Either way, I'd say he's from the right of the political spectrum.
Where he once was regarded as a persistent but benign tax hard-liner, however, Tobin has hurt his credibility over the years by becoming more and more of a fringe character dabbling in other issues.
He tried to run for governor in 1998 as the candidate of the U.S. Taxpayers Party, but he was knocked off the ballot.
He has called Gov. George Ryan a Nazi and Attorney General Jim Ryan a neo-Nazi. He is scornful of Senate Republican leader James ''Pate'' Philip, probably the state's leading conservative, for being too liberal.
Last year, he disseminated a bumper sticker that read: ''Our governor is a bigger crook than your governor.''
So maybe I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was when I got the news release from Taxpayers United of America, the hat Tobin wears when speaking out on national issues.
Tobin counts this as a taxpayer issue because he calculates the U.S. spends $100 billion a year in the Middle East. He believes that our involvement there is the source of the anti-American sentiment that led to the Sept. 11 bombing. Withdraw from the Middle East, he says, and we eliminate the provocation. Deepen our involvement, and we invite more terrorist attacks on our soil, he believes.
''An all-out war against terrorism in the Middle East would be unwinnable,'' agreed Jeffrey Babbitt, vice president of Tobin's group.
Aware that his viewpoint would be controversial, Tobin told me Sunday he contacted major donors to his organization before proceeding.
"They said, 'You're right. Go ahead,'" according to Tobin.
Tobin, 55, of Berwyn, said his isolationist views also have been received well by his friends and neighbors.
''I don't want to see any more American lives lost for OPEC or Israel,'' Tobin said.
When I suggested I thought Tobin's view might be driven by some sort of anti-Israeli sentiment, he denied it.
''I have no problem with Israel,'' he said. ''We have Jewish people who are members [of Taxpayers United]. I don't have any problem with them. One of my biggest heroes is Milton Friedman, the free-market economist.''
As for Osama bin Laden, Tobin thinks it would be sufficient to put out a bounty for him.
In making comparisons between the terrorist attacks and the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Tobin said he'd read a new book accusing President Franklin Roosevelt of complicity in the Japanese bombing. He believed it.
He stated his belief that Roosevelt was a ''traitor'' who had participated in a ''setup'' of the American forces at Pearl Harbor and suggested he thought the World Trade Center attacks might have been a government ''setup,'' too.
''I wouldn't put anything past these people,'' he said. ''I don't have any proof. I just don't trust these people.''
I told Tobin I thought his views might be well-received by the militia groups in our country, the extremists responsible for our last big scare.
''You're right,'' he said. ''I'm not a member of a militia. But I think they might agree with me. I'm a strong supporter of the Second Amendment.''
So why would I give this much ink to such claptrap?
Because the isolationist message is going to gain a foothold in the months ahead, sometimes from more clear-thinking people than Jim Tobin.
Because the previous worst act of terrorism in the United States was committed in Oklahoma City by an American who listened to some of the same kind of conspiracy nonsense, and we ought to nip it in the bud.
Because the members of Taxpayers United of Illinois need to set their leadership straight, and the rest of us should help.