Calling Conservative Patriots
Friday, July 20, 2007 at 12:27PM I’m a liberal in just about every respect but in my posts on Pruning Shears I hope to be as even-handed as possible. Conservatives may dismiss what I’m about to write as more unhinged bashing from the nutroots but I write the following as a genuine good faith effort to reach out to those on the right: We need you. We need your voices to join the chorus of outrage over the power grabs of President Bush for the last six years. Much of what goes on in the marketplace of ideas is ideological trench warfare, and it serves an important function in our democracy. People line up behind one of the political parties that best represent their outlook and use all the tools at their disposal to win victories for it. Sometimes that means principles are picked up and put down as needed, even though doing so causes a certain amount of philosophical whiplash (witness this week’s discussion of the sanctity of the filibuster versus the importance of an “up or down vote”). Doing so can serve the larger interest of the party and is understandable.
What’s happening with the executive branch right now doesn’t belong in that category. We have a president who is making claims of executive power that go far beyond what was intended for the office and unless some honest-to-God Conservatives start saying so the issue will be seen as just another political football for everyone to kick around. If a conservative really is someone “disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change” then ask yourself what change you’ve attempted to limit. Do you have anything to say about the latest one, described by George Mason professor Mark J. Rozell as “allowing the executive to define the scope and limits of its own powers”? How about restoring a traditional one like habeas corpus? What existing conditions and institutions have you attempted to preserve from executive overreach? Did supporting the president and the argument that 9/11 changed everything persuade you there was a whole lot of stuff not worth conserving any more?
Our system of government is at a crossroads. The Bush administration has made an extraordinary number and degree of assertions of power, and if you don’t think so just spend a few seconds spitballing: Politicization of the Justice department and its increasingly obvious problems functioning effectively, warrentless wiretapping and disregard of the FISA court, blanket assertions of privilege, the list goes on. If we don’t push back on the president now we will be stuck with these new authorities and will have taken several large steps down the road of despotism. I understand President Bush is your standard bearer right now and there aren’t any attractive alternatives anywhere at the moment. I also understand that turning on him would be cause for unbridled glee on the left as they celebrate the total abandonment of the former champion of the party and conservatism in general. All that acknowledged, I ask that you please not treat executive power as nothing more than the turf on which the moment’s partisan battle is waged.
Right now our nation is in crisis, and in important ways it is an existential one: What kind of country are we? Have we begun to fundamentally change from the one we learned about in civics class? What kinds of changes will evolve from what is being created now? We scoff at third world dictators that rule with a rigged justice system, state controlled press, disappearing dissidents and cowed populace. Is it such a stretch to play out some of the threads we’ve seen started and not end up in a very similar place? We are in great need of patriots, in particular conservative patriots who by their support can help change these issues from workaday tug of war to resistance to creeping tyranny.
And if none of that persuades you, consider all of it being cited as precedent by President Hillary.
Reader Comments (4)
Yes, it will be President Clinton II, and she WILL avail herself of the precedents established. Don't forget that Mr. Clinton and GHW Bush have worked closely together all along, their supposed ideological opposition and generational differences being just for public consumption.
Mark, you say 'Have we begun to fundamentally change from the one we learned about in civics class?'
Have we not in fact begun long ago to change from that country? Every step of the way, as individuals are cowed and intimidated, afraid to respond and challenge deliberate erosions, obfuscations or worse. People are stigmatized by the mere whiff of 'conspiracy theorist' being applied to them, so they back off, and besides, citizens are busy trying to get on with survival, and their livelihood.
In contrast, those who are conspiring against the civil liberties we once held so dear, do so as part and parcel of their livelihoods. And they themselves enjoy an increasingly obscene degree of liberty to do so.
Unfortunately, Reagan killed civics classes in schools, so that business about what "we learned about in civics class" just doesn't hold anymore.
I proudly voted but not for Bush. I thought he would be dangerous choice for this country and now that is sadly more clear than I could have ever imagined. Being a musician I knew the arts would suffer from his leadership but it goes so far beyond that with young men dying in a pointless war and our own country falling apart from lack of funds for health, education and social services.