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-Caveat Lector-
offtopic, but you may want to read
The Ugly Truth About the
Republican Party:
The Myth of GOP Conservatism
by Kevin Tuma
http://www.libertyforall.net/2002/archive/sept29/ugly-truth.html
"An elective despotism was not the
government we fought for."
--Thomas Jefferson
"Degrees do not matter...
one does not bargain about inches of evil."
---Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
As a paleoconservative, I find myself these days looking back at the Clinton
Administration with a sort of warm, golden nostalgia. Much has changed since
those days...and not for the better.
To anyone with even a basic understanding and respect for the Bill of
Rights, the United States, since September 11, 2001, has begun a nightmarish
descent. To put it simply, the Bush White House has put the Constitution on
the chopping block in ways the Clintons would have never dared to attempt.
The US public---naive and obedient as always--blithely sucked up the maudlin
flag-waving and crocodile tears that accompanied the passage of the Patriot
Act and the Office of Homeland Security. Authorities can now invade homes
without warrants, arrest people without charges, and jail people without
trials.
The Feds have declared Posse Comitatus obsolete, and they are creating
hordes of military police to be unleashed upon the country. A new branch of
the military is now on the drawing board, to deal with "domestic
threats"--i.e., common American citizens. Despite the fact that we are not
at war, the government continues to hold hundreds of military prisoners in
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and apparently will deal with them using military
tribunals. People in the Press continue their ongoing demonstration that
there's no lie the Federal government can tell that they are willing to
expose, and no usurpation of power that they will ever find objectionable.
Even the United States' 'shadow government' has been openly discussed--and
no one dares to criticize the concept. Orwellian newspeak abounds.
The government continues to turn the word Treason on its head with its
unconstitutional treatment of the public and its illicit treatment of 'enemy
combatants' like Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla. In the latter case, the
'terrorist' is an American citizen being held without any charges, denied
all legal representation, denied the right to defend himself, and the right
to face his accusers. No one in the Imperial Media cares. Machiavellian
plotting to establish armies of secret police and citizen informants goes on
unabated, despite the fact that these measures did not pass Congress. The
small public outcry generated by the TIPS plan is swept aside...a citizen
informant system will be implemented anyway. Why? Because the Attorney
General says so. Apparently, Mr. Ashcroft learned a very valuable lesson
from his predecessor, Janet Reno: The Attorney General is--absolutely and
without question---above the Law, and is capable of creating policy by fiat,
just like the President does. We now have a modern triumvirate of entities
that create policy, and answer to no one: the Supreme Court, the President,
and the Attorney General of the United States. All Americans are subservient
to their whims.
The abuse of liberties in the name of safety goes on. The government
continues to push for National ID cards and a computer chip implant tracking
program for children--it would appear that human privacy is just as
irrelevant now as human liberty. Only human 'safety' is important, even if
it's the safety of the gulag. The New York Times published an article
suggesting that the Feds have built concentration camps within the United
States...there was no real denial from the Executive Branch. Media talking
heads have actually asked citizens if they think torture of 'terrorist
suspects' is a good idea--as if to suggest that favorable public opinion
would legitimize such tactics. In the War On Terror, no potential abuse of
civil liberties goes unconsidered. One gets the queasy feeling that once
official Washington has finished off what is left of the Constitution, they
will revive the Inquisition and go after the Magna Carta next.
It is time for a realistic assessment: We are living in a Police State right
now. Not six months from now. Not ten years down the road. Not if someone we
do not like gets elected President. Not if all our guns are taken away.
Right now.
The only reason you are reading this article here is because they haven't
started censoring political dissent on the Internet...yet. There are many
evils that have not been implemented to date, but the mechanical apparatus
of totalitarianism is completely in place, oiled, idling, and ready for use,
thanks to the War On Terror.
America was fascistic and centralized before, but not nearly this bad.
American citizens at least had some legal protections against government
abuse in the past, and some means to keep an eye on the Feds--these have
been essentially stripped away. The Independent Counsel Act is dead, thereby
making it much harder to investigate the Executive Branch. The FBI is
rewriting its own rulebook to make Federal whistleblowing a dangerous and
difficult thing to do. The Freedom of Information Act has essentially been
nullified-to protect our "national security".
The Fourth Amendment is effectively dead until the USA-Patriot Act is
repealed, or until it is declared unconstitutional by a high court. The
Patriot Act's deadly provisions do not sunset, despite government
misinformation to the contrary. Most of the other nine amendments of the
Bill of Rights have been ignored for years. They will certainly be ignored
now that the Federal government has voted itself unlimited power and control
over our domestic liberties in the name of security. Meanwhile, we are
inches away from full-blown Martial Law, and in constant danger that it will
be put into effect at the slightest new terrorist provocation.
Unfortunately, these changes are pretty much unknown to the typical
indolent, unfocused US citizen. While the average American was lazing
around, stuffing his face with potato chips, and watching "Big Brother" on
TV, the Federal Government became Big Brother in real life. Sadly, it
requires effort---like reading and thinking---to see that our liberties are
being threatened from within; this is apparently beyond the scope of most
modern Americans. Of course, another reason why there has been little outcry
is because there has been very little information disseminated by the
official state propaganda corps we once euphemistically called "the Free
Press".
The biggest problem, however, is not the fat, lazy American or the many
goose-stepping little Goebbels of our news media--the big problem is that
these changes have been wrought by a Republican President who was elected by
millions of gullible conservatives. There is no "lesser of two evils" or
philosophical core to the Republican Party, and the inarticulate Mr. Bush is
proof of that pudding. The massive abrogations of freedom that have come
from Washington since 9-11-01 are an official product of Republican
governance. They cannot be blamed on Bill Clinton or Al Gore or Tom Daschle.
The GOP has been wholly in charge of post-War-On-Terror Washington, and is
fully responsible for the unconstitutional policies that have been enacted.
These are oppressive government policies that--if implemented in the 1990s,
under Clinton and Reno, would have provoked screams of outrage. The mavens
of talk radio are now silent about civil liberties, and seem only interested
in discussing the joyful topic of going to war in the Mideast again, and
killing more fleeing Iraqi soldiers. There are no philosophical principles
behind the policies of the Bush Republicans; they simply want to seize as
much Federal power as possible, and make war. The 21st Century conservative
movement is not just an intellectual wasteland..it has become a primary
threat to our freedoms as well.
However, the real reason the Republican Party is a threat to liberty is not
because conservatism itself is an errant philosophy. The reason is because
the Republican Party never stood for conservative values in the first place,
and is lying to the public whenever it attempts to co-opt the values of
conservatism. Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater were never the standard
bearers, or the rule. They were the exceptions to the rule, at least when
they were at their best, and were not being manipulated by empire builders
themselves. The real Republican Party is and always has been an arrogant
political body, dominated by snobs and big business people who are more
interested in Robber Baronism than honest capitalism. They have always been
ready and willing to use Big Government to enforce their schemes, to hand
out corporate welfare to them, and to protect their
investments--particularly in the case of petroleum. The Republican
establishment backs the Federal Reserve, the IRS, and other unconstitutional
agencies while giving shifty-eyed lip service to the concept of small
government and lower taxes. Such people have no populism in their soul, and
no concern for the constitutional rights of the little people--and they
couldn't possibly care less about the size, scope, and intrusiveness of the
government. Snotty corporate monopolist wannabes and closet socialists are
the true heart and soul of the GOP…not the poor, misled middle-class voters
who believe "that government is best which governs least".
That is not to suggest that the Democrats are any better. They aren't; their
party is a massive fraud as well. But they are also not any worse. Those
voters who mistakenly thought they were worse are responsible for voting
Bush into office, and thereby destroying the 4th Amendment. This abrogation
of human liberty probably never would have happened under Gore, had there
been a President Gore, because talk radio and the FOX News Channel would
have provided large-scale political dissent that we do not have today.
Unfortunately, the GOP masses have proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that
they are every bit as much a bunch of partisan lemmings as the Clintonistas
were. And they have also disproven--with their popular President, who is
treated with kid gloves--their own long-held contention that the elitist
news media is liberal. On the contrary. The elitist news media is a whore,
dancing to the tune of those with power and influence--and if it is firmly
anything at all, it is firmly Anti-Liberty and Pro-Big-Government. How
fortunate for the Bushies that their beloved "President 911" stands for
exactly the same things.
The word 'conservative' implies preservations of values and important
traditions. In America, our most important traditions would be embodied in
the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. By this standard,
the most conservative Americans around today are libertarians, not
Republicans. However, very few libertarians today would willingly claim the
word 'conservative'..and I can hardly blame them.
What is called 'conservative' today is warmongering 20th Century statism
drummed to a flag-waving beat. The common diatribe used by liberals--that
'Republicans are still living in the 1950s'--is incorrect; they are actually
living in the 1940s, instead. It is very telling, for example, that Rush
Limbaugh is a huge fan of the Spielberg film "Saving Private Ryan", and had
nothing but praise for Tom Brokaw's book "The Greatest Generation". How
apropos that Limbaugh calls himself the "Doctor of Democracy". If
Republicans pine for the histrionic days of World War II, they are
nationalists--not conservatives. They are longing for the nostalgic
trappings of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's world, not a conservative culture.
FDR was both a Communist and a liar, but, additionally, he was also a very
effective warmonger and militarist. War, apparently, is very important to
the Republicans--they do not worry much about little things like rights or
liberties; they want to be fantasy heroes with a gun, like Rambo or Dirty
Harry. The star-spangled cloak that self-proclaimed conservatives like Rush
and Hannity and O'Reilly and Kristol wrap themselves in is a fabric of
big-government nationalism and military expansionism. If boot-stomping
nationalism is all conservatism really stands for, the warmed-over '60s
peacenik academics who have called Hitler a 'right-winger' are correct.
The true spiritual father of the Republican Party is not Goldwater, or
Reagan, but Abraham Lincoln. Some people might misinterpret this as a
compliment. I refer to the real Abraham Lincoln. The same Lincoln who
suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus, and the same Lincoln who used a noble
human idea---the freeing of the slaves-to wage a greedy war of aggression on
a separate and sovereign nation, and to grind its culture and people into
the ground. The same Abraham Lincoln who ordered the arrest and imprisonment
of newspaper editors and publishers who disagreed with his war, and ordered
Federal troops to demolish their printing presses. The same "Honest Abe" who
ordered troops to interfere with the election process in opposition
Congressional districts, and who ordered the arrest and imprisonment of
several dozen state legislators. The same brooding tyrant who went on to
order the military arrest of a sitting member of Congress who was a war
opponent, and then have him deported from the United States.
Abraham Lincoln was the ultimate Federalist and the ultimate propagator of
War. He was the summation and the embodiment of the essence of
Republicanism. There is nothing new about this; it is how things have always
been. Republicans in authority have almost always kowtowed to corrupt
business interests and marched the US to war for greedy causes, just like
Lincoln did. Any list of historically prominent GOP leaders is predominantly
a list of globalists and elitists who have believed in a strong, centralized
government. There is no grand and glorious history of GOP conservatism...GOP
conservatism is a sham. They are not capitalists or constitutionalists; they
are statists.
And that is the ugly, untold truth of the Republican Party.
Copyright 2002 by Kevin Tuma
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