Forward This To Your Bush Supporting Friends

I was listening to the Majority Report last night, and heard a fantastic interview with First Amendment litigator Glenn Greenwald. (If you listen to one piece of audio on this site, I advise you to stop now and listen to this interview by clicking here:

Have you ever felt passionate about a particular issue but just couldn’t find the appropriate angle or specific way to verbalize your theory on something, only to find someone out there who took the thoughts you’ve been having and did it for you? Eloquently? Typically Mark Morford is that guy for me. Last night, it was Glenn Greenwald.

On this site, I try to be very particular about distinguishing “Republicans” from “conservatives.” Most Republicans typically lean a certain way, and as a result, I typically blue the line between the two in my writing. However, considering I come from the state that will forever re-elect Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, I realize there are some small nuances in some Republican behavior.

Instead of being careful to single out differences between conservatives and Republicans, I should instead use the term Bush conservatives, or Bush Republicans. After all – considering this president has never vetoed a single spending bill, and has set records for the largest federal government and national deficit in the history of America, Bush is neither conservative or Republican.

In Greenwald’s latest blog, he makes some very important points about the political ideology, or lack there of, as it pertains to Bush voters. Specifically he calls Bush Republicans out on supporting Bush’s warrentless wiretaps, where during the Clinton administration, Republicans were sick with anger about the FISA court granting legal permission for such a 4th Amendment violation. I think what he says is not only accurate, but incredibly important as it starts to answer one of the questions 50% of our country, and 98% of the world have when we think of the Bush Administration: How in the hell do people put a check next to this man’s name at the ballot box?

Here are some excerpts from Greenwald’s piece, and again, I’d really recommend reading the whole thing here. It is important (hence me recapping so much of it) because it really encapsulates something I see occurring each day, even on this web site.

I have been accused by an anonymous Bush supporter as someone who should wear a towel on my head, and that because I am against some of Bush’s wildest policies, that I am in effect aligning myself with terrorists. The anonymous reader shouldn’t necessarily be considered a conservative or a Republican, as he is defending Bush ideology, not conservative ideology. He’s not along in using this tactic, and some of what Greenwald writes about highlights this:

Now, in order to be considered a "liberal," only one thing is required – a failure to pledge blind loyalty to George W. Bush. Whether one is a "liberal" -- or, for that matter, a "conservative" -- is now no longer a function of one’s actual political views, but is a function purely of one’s personal loyalty to George Bush.

That "conservatism" has come to mean "loyalty to George Bush" is particularly ironic given how truly un-conservative the Administration is…As much as any policy prescriptions, conservatism has always been based, more than anything else, on a fundamental distrust of the power of the federal government and a corresponding belief that that power ought to be as restrained as possible, particularly when it comes to its application by the Government to American citizens.

Is there anything more antithetical to that ethos than the rabid, power-hungry appetites of Bush followers? There is not an iota of distrust of the Federal Government among them.

We need no oversight of the Federal Government’s eavesdropping powers because we trust Bush to eavesdrop in secret for the Good. We need no judicial review of Bush’s decrees regarding who is an "enemy combatant" and who can be detained indefinitely with no due process because we trust Bush to know who is bad and who deserves this. We need no restraints from Congress on Bush’s ability to exercise war powers, even against American citizens on U.S. soil, because we trust Bush to exercise these powers for our own good.

The rhetoric of Bush followers is routinely comprised of these sorts of sentiments dressed up in political language – accusations that domestic political opponents are subversives and traitors, that they ought to be imprisoned and hung, that we ought to drop nuclear bombs on countries which have committed the crime of housing large Muslim populations.

It’s not an accident that Ann Coulter and her ongoing calls for violence against "liberals" (meaning anyone not in line behind George Bush) are so wildly popular among conservatives. It’s not some weird coincidence that the 5,000 people in attendance at the CPAC this last week erupted in "boisterous ovation" when she urged violence against "ragheads,’ nor is it an accident that her hateful, violence-inciting screeds -- accusing "liberals" of being not wrong, but "treasonous" -- become best-sellers. Ann Coulter has been advocating violence against liberals and other domestic political opponents for years, and she is a featured speaker at the most prestigious conservative events. Why would that be? It's because she is tapping into the primal, rather deranged rage which lies in the heart of many Bush followers. If that weren't driving the movement, she wouldn’t provoke the reactions and support that she does.

…What I hear, first and foremost, from these Bush following corners is this, in quite a shrieking tone: "Oh, my God - there are all of these evil people trying to kill us, George Bush is doing what he can to save us, and these liberals don’t even care!!! They’re on their side and they deserve the same fate!!!" It doesn’t even sound like political argument; it sounds like a form of highly emotional mass theater masquerading as political debate. It really sounds like a personality cult. It is impervious to reasoned argument and the only attribute is loyalty to the leader. Whatever it is, it isn’t conservative.


For a glimpse of how actual conservatives quite recently used to think, one should read this article at FreeRepublic.com, which decries the dangerous loss of liberty and privacy as a result of the Clinton Administration's use of a "secret court" something called the "FISA court") which actually enables the Federal Government to eavesdrop on American citizens! Worse -- much worse -- the judicial approval which the Government (used to) obtain for this eavesdropping is in secret, so we don't even know who is being eavesdropped on! How can we possibly trust the Government not to abuse this power if they can obtain warrants in secret?

Conservatives used to consider things like this to be quite disturbing and bad -- and the eavesdropping then was at least with judicial oversight…(read the entire blog entry here.)