Morning in Paranoialand
We should have a contest and reward the person who finds the most errors and distortions in this column in The Nation by Jonathan Schell. According to this nut, we are living in a dictatorship...or soon will be if Bush isn't impeached. This is what the Left has sunk to. Here is an excerpt:
The danger is not abstract or merely symbolic. Bush's abuses of presidential power are the most extensive in American history. He has launched an aggressive war ("war of choice," in today's euphemism) on false grounds. He has presided over a system of torture and sought to legitimize it by specious definitions of the word. He has asserted a wholesale right to lock up American citizens and others indefinitely without any legal showing or the right to see a lawyer or anyone else. He has kidnapped people in foreign countries and sent them to other countries, where they were tortured. In rationalizing these and other acts, his officials have laid claim to the unlimited, uncheckable and unreviewable powers he has asserted in the wiretapping case. He has tried to drop a thick shroud of secrecy over these and other actions.
There is a name for a system of government that wages aggressive war, deceives its citizens, violates their rights, abuses power and breaks the law, rejects judicial and legislative checks on itself, claims power without limit, tortures prisoners and acts in secret. It is dictatorship.
The Administration of George W. Bush is not a dictatorship, but it does manifest the characteristics of one in embryonic form. Until recently, these were developing and growing in the twilight world of secrecy. Even within the executive branch itself, Bush seemed to govern outside the normally constituted channels of the Cabinet and to rely on what Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff has called a "cabal." Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill reported the same thing. Cabinet meetings were for show. Real decisions were made elsewhere, out of sight. Another White House official, John DiIulio, has commented that there was "a complete lack of a policy apparatus" in the White House. "What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm." As in many Communist states, a highly centralized party, in this case the Republican Party, was beginning to forge a parallel apparatus at the heart of government, a semi-hidden state-within-a-state, by which the real decisions were made.
One wonders how these eunuchs on the Left would fight terrorism. They don't want the terrorists investigated, incarcerated, or profiled. They don't want us to be able to spy on them to find out if and when they are going to strike again. They don't want us to try and extract information from them which might save American lives. In short, it seems that they want to "live and let live" with a faction who has called for the death of every American citizen. I firmly believe that they would rather see George W. Bush out of office than see terrorism defeated. That has been obvious for a long time. Their priorities are screwed up beyond belief. It is infuriating to watch them work so hard against America's interests in order to satisfy their psychotic hatred of Bush. WE must be able to work as hard against them in order to secure our freedom and indeed our very lives. It's pretty sad when two wars must be fought...one against the terrorists and one against our own countrymen who are too dense to see the damage they are inflicting on their own country, or even worse, are willing to inflict that damage as long as it means they get their power back.
The danger is not abstract or merely symbolic. Bush's abuses of presidential power are the most extensive in American history. He has launched an aggressive war ("war of choice," in today's euphemism) on false grounds. He has presided over a system of torture and sought to legitimize it by specious definitions of the word. He has asserted a wholesale right to lock up American citizens and others indefinitely without any legal showing or the right to see a lawyer or anyone else. He has kidnapped people in foreign countries and sent them to other countries, where they were tortured. In rationalizing these and other acts, his officials have laid claim to the unlimited, uncheckable and unreviewable powers he has asserted in the wiretapping case. He has tried to drop a thick shroud of secrecy over these and other actions.
There is a name for a system of government that wages aggressive war, deceives its citizens, violates their rights, abuses power and breaks the law, rejects judicial and legislative checks on itself, claims power without limit, tortures prisoners and acts in secret. It is dictatorship.
The Administration of George W. Bush is not a dictatorship, but it does manifest the characteristics of one in embryonic form. Until recently, these were developing and growing in the twilight world of secrecy. Even within the executive branch itself, Bush seemed to govern outside the normally constituted channels of the Cabinet and to rely on what Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff has called a "cabal." Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill reported the same thing. Cabinet meetings were for show. Real decisions were made elsewhere, out of sight. Another White House official, John DiIulio, has commented that there was "a complete lack of a policy apparatus" in the White House. "What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm." As in many Communist states, a highly centralized party, in this case the Republican Party, was beginning to forge a parallel apparatus at the heart of government, a semi-hidden state-within-a-state, by which the real decisions were made.
One wonders how these eunuchs on the Left would fight terrorism. They don't want the terrorists investigated, incarcerated, or profiled. They don't want us to be able to spy on them to find out if and when they are going to strike again. They don't want us to try and extract information from them which might save American lives. In short, it seems that they want to "live and let live" with a faction who has called for the death of every American citizen. I firmly believe that they would rather see George W. Bush out of office than see terrorism defeated. That has been obvious for a long time. Their priorities are screwed up beyond belief. It is infuriating to watch them work so hard against America's interests in order to satisfy their psychotic hatred of Bush. WE must be able to work as hard against them in order to secure our freedom and indeed our very lives. It's pretty sad when two wars must be fought...one against the terrorists and one against our own countrymen who are too dense to see the damage they are inflicting on their own country, or even worse, are willing to inflict that damage as long as it means they get their power back.
posted by Jennifer at 3:02 AM
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