So, the question is, was this the intent all along? Was the war (against Iraq, not against the 9/11 terrorists who had nothing to do with Iraq and is a whole other kettle of fish) a pretext to put all these totalitarian measures into effect? Was the religious right-wing desire for Taliban-like control of the populous to be implemented under the guise of safety and security, just like Hitler promised the Germans? If not, funny how it’s ending up that way.
The President We Were Warned About
George W. Bush is the imperial president that James Madison and other founders of this great republic warned us about. He lied the nation into precisely the “foreign entanglements” that George Washington feared would destroy our experiment in representative government, and he has championed a spurious notion of security over individual liberty, thus eschewing the alarms of Thomas Jefferson as to the deprivation of the inalienable rights of free citizens. But most important, he has used the sledgehammer of war to obliterate the separation of powers that James Madison enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
With the “war on terror,” Bush has asserted the right of the president to wage war anywhere and for any length of time, at his whim, because the “terrorists” will always provide a convenient shadowy target. That’s just the “continual warfare” that Madison warned of in justifying the primary role of Congress in initiating and continuing to finance a war — the very issue now at stake in Bush’s battle with Congress.
In his “Political Observations,” written years before he had served as fourth president of the United States, Madison went on to underscore the dangers of an imperial presidency bloated by war fever.
“In war,” Madison wrote in 1795, at a time when the young republic still faced its share of dangerous enemies, “the discretionary power of the executive is extended … and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.”
Chavez is the guy the founders worried about. He lost a military coup attempt only be elected in the last election Venezuelans will ever see.
You anti-Bush people are incredibly creative at making up stuff that has not happened while ignoring things that have.
Winston Smith and RSweeney,
you guys are right….everything is fine and we are not on a downward spiral to hell….
While Bushco has fouled everything it has touched, the longer lasting and more harmful damage has been done to our economy. Damage to our freedoms can be regained with an active Congress and a conservative Supreme Court.
Recovering any kind of manufacturing base, strengthening the working middle class, developing energy independence, and paying off the national debt will take a generation if it is possible at all.
History will not be kind to the Bushies.
Good article, but it will never reach the people that it should. Conservatives have their heads buried too deeply in sand to listen to any reason. When one of them starts talking at work I just put my headphones on, because they refuse to listen to simple facts…its like talking to a child who covers his ears and screams so he doesnt have to hear you.
I gave up when one of them kept saying “its not that bad over there”
RSweeney, go back to watching FOX news and get off the internet, it has far too much truth for you to handle. Or at least limit your browsing to http://www.conservapedia.com
I’ll worry about Bush when he cancels the 2008 election.
I’m much more worried about the “Look over there!” rhetoric. It sounds like something someone would pull so you don’t notice getting your pocket picked. Just remember Selesi (sp?) in Ethiopia was the only actual Right Wing ruler to seize power in over 100 years, they have all been tyrants, put in power by popular movements. Mao, Stalin, Castro, Musilini, Hitler, Pol Pot, etc.
All on the Left.
#31 RSweeney
I love seeing the cowards express their fear of Hugo Chavez in public forums. What’s he gonna do march up through central America and Mexico to invade Texas.
No, Chavez exercised executive power much as Bush has done. He brought control of resource and infrastructure industry under sovereign national control.
I guess if your an American imperialist that would be threatening. How dare the people of Venezuela control their own resources, the nerve.
What we have is a misunderstanding of the basic principles of government.
It is a myth this idea of a government of the people and by the people. These are all romantic words which does not reflect reality.
America like so many other countries has a stable totalitarian regime. The difference say between a one party totalitarian regime (China) is that America has two parties with voting. However the voting of today is nothing but an elaborate ceremony designed to give the people a warm comfortable feeling they still hold hold the ultimate reins of government.
Pull the other one.
It’s like being an alcoholic denying a drinking problem – it’s under control.
Bush is Republican and should be a lame duck President with the house being Democrat – but…? WTF?
See?
The ‘government’ gets what it wants in spite of the people, not by the people even with two opposing parties at the helm.
If you want to fix something, first you need to determine what is the problem. That is the hard part. Like an alcoholic to admitting there is a drinking problem.
There is no simple solution unless the will of the people really becomes the will of the people – but, hey, who has the time for that…huh?
Cheers
Yeah, yeah, Republicans want to take away all freedom. So let’s vote ’em out and have a Democratic-only government. Then we can have a law telling us what kind of light bulb we can use, and a law telling us what we can drive, and a law telling us we can smoke, and a law telling us what breed of dog we can own and the government will provide every single service paid for by a 100% income tax. Then we’ll change the flag to a field of red with a hammer and sickle on it.
#1 – I always wanted to be poster #40.
#41 oh the horror! democrats will have laws requiring you to use more efficient light bulbs (waaaa!), live a healthier lifestyle (waaaaa!), not have dogs proven to kill little children on the streets (waaaa!), and drive cars that reduce our dependence on foreign oil (waaaaa!) — they might even improve the bridges, and god forbid actually clean up pollution! (god help us!)
meanwhile, the republicans pass laws that allow you to be tortured without trial, without evidence, without even so much as phone call, just like they do in red china — aren’t you proud?
edit: above post for #40, iGlobalWarmer
#41-grog
:sarcasm:
You mean we still have some freedom? I thought that the Patriot Act outlawed our freedom. Don’t you know, it’s not patriotic to say anything against Bushco, Inc.? Now it may even be against the law.
Torture, is good. Who needs evidence, they’re Muslims, and all Muslims want to kill us.
If you “have nothing to hide,” why care about tapping your phone?
Don’t you know that USAG Alberto “Going, Going” Gonzales said that Habeas Corpus isn’t necessarily guaranteed in the Constitution, and is “quaint?”
Hey, if you don’t like this country, don’t try to change things, just LEAVE!
:/sarcasm:
Uncle Dave just in case you might read this you are a complete ass – you should know just as well as I that this exercise in trying to control everything is simply Globalism being implemented, if you don’t understand this you are simply too wrapped up in the Democrat versus Republican obsolete political lines – it’s changed now it’s basically Globalism versus Nationalism – there is no real left versus right anymore.
We’re heading towards a Global serfdom and it’s idiots like you that can figure this out – it’s a race to the bottom of the economic life style and the Democrats are just a interested in outsourcing out economy as the Republicans and with out a Middle Class there will not be Republic or Democracy, if you’d read any history you would understand the implication of what’s happening
Uncle Dave. Yup. You’re a complete ass.
Hey !!! don’t ask me why, but if traaxx says you are, well that is good enough for me. And if anyone is an expert on being an ass, that would be traaxx. If there is anything he excels at, it is being an ass. He is, as most everyone knows, THE complete expert on being an ass.
Now, he could have suggested you are a dip-dork. Traaxx is also pretty good at that too, but not an expert. He could have used the term dipshit, but hey, … . There is that old standby put down, George W. Bush, but I don’t think even traaxx thinks that low of you. James Hill and iHotAir(YOY) might worship you but they are a different story.
Nope, I have to admit that an expert like traaxx, knows his assholes. Hey, not just the hole either, but the whole hole. And surrounding territory. And contents. Traaxx is an ASS man. Yup, he can really identify with an ass. And he is capable of getting up close and personal.
But then again, traaxx has been wrong before. So maybe, just maybe, because what the eff do I know, he may have you confused with someone who actually gives a crap.
#44 – traxx, it will probably surprise you but I completely agree with everything you said there. Except, of course, the part about me being an ass. As usual, people like you like to make ass-umptions about me, and are wrong. I’m totally opposed to much of what the Democrats want. I’m totally opposed to much of what the Republicans want, too. Both are currently run by idiot extremists who live in an ideological, theoretical, rhetorical world completely divorced from reality.
In other words, as a practical realist who wants the Federal government to be able to help people who are truly in need to get back onto their feet and become productive again rather than toss them away and pay for prisons, etc later, who wants government to have no say in our personal lives (ie, shouldn’t be involved at all in gay marriage issues, abortion, drugs war, etc), only wants government involved in business affairs when those affairs go over the limit and harm people and the environment and takes unfair advantage, and who wants the Feds to only take over from the states or private industry on things that are national in scale or simply are national-type things (military, interstate issues, etc) and for rare projects that states or industry can’t do alone because of cost/size (eg., the original interstate highway program), I’m fucked.
Having said all that, weighing the negatives of both parties, at present, without significant change, I would vote for a Democrat over a Republican. They will still fuck things up, but at least they are leaning in the direction on a number of issues in the way I want and don’t support a number of issues I oppose that Repubs want. But ultimately, we all are going to lose, one way or another. I think our downfall as a country has become inevitable as we split farther and farther apart.
#40: Let’s have another Republican voted in who wants to tell us what we can and can’t do with out bodies, who we can be married to (a religious issue, not appropriate for a government to regulate), which corrupt, corporate buddy of theirs our hard earned tax money has to go to, WHAT we can smoke, and so on. Just like a totalitarian government like, say, the old USSR. Then we’ll change the flag to a field of red with a hammer and sickle on it.