"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Despite the insistence of many people that opposition to torture is a liberal/conservative issue, I don’t think it is.  I think that it’s basically a function of authoritarianism more than anything else, though undoubtedly numerous people reading this will disagree.  This email, I think, sums it up nicely.

Hey Lee.

I’ve been reading your blog for awhile now, and I just have to say, you’re right on with telling some of these so-called “conservatives” to go fuck themselves re: Bush/torture. I don’t consider myself “conservative”, and I didn’t vote for Bush either in 2000 or 2004 (abstained both times...), but I am a strong supporter of both the War on Terror generally and the war in Iraq in specific. Sadly, I think the Bush Administration has let this country down as far as national security goes. While the Democrats don’t even bother to talk the talk on the war, the Republicans talk the talk, but when push comes to shove, they’ve consistently failed to prepare adequately for the conditions in Iraq and, as you, Andrew Sullivan, and many others have pointed out, have more or less ceded the moral high ground in this conflict with this sickening dithering regarding the use of torture.

If conservatism still meant what it originally meant—small government, individualism, and free market (though I’m far from a fundamentalist on that particular point), I might feel comfortable calling myself a “conservative” of sorts. However, as you’ve stated many times on your blog, conservatism in this country, at least as embodied by the Republican Party, has become little more than a Christian Socialist movement, and someone such as myself --who believes that there’s really nothing wrong with most drugs, has no problem with what people do in their own bedrooms, doesn’t give two squirts of piss if Janet Jackson showed her nipple on TV, and who views rubbish such as “intelligent design” as little more than thinly-veiled attempts to circumvent the separation of Church and State—obviously has no place whatsoever in such a movement, regardless one their stand on individualism and small government.

All of that, of course, is leaving out the instant disqualification one receives for believing that George W. Bush and his administration aren’t the leaders this country—and the Western world—need at this point in history, as you well know. In some ways it seems reminiscent of the way that one cannot be a “liberal” in this country without believing that Bush is a terrorist and that the War in Iraq is analogous to the German invasion of Poland in 1939.

The Kos-Kidz like to throw around the phrase “rubber-stamp Republican,” and I think the term is actually reasonably descriptive of a lot of so-called conservative Republicans. It’s refreshing to actually see conservatives like you and Andrew Sullivan who refuse to allow yourselves to get sucked into mindless partisanship and stand up for that most important of “conservative” values—individualism. So view this e-mail as something of a “fuck yeah!”

-Vincent
wordvirus.blogspot.com

There are two ways to view this.  The first is that, because a liberal agrees with my position, this is evidence that I’ve abandoned conservatism and I’m some kind of crypto-leftist.  The second is that the idea that conservatives would support this kind of authoritarian empowering of the state is so foreign to the actual message of conservatism—individualism, limited government, etc.—that the only people who oppose it are liberals, libertarians, and classic conservatives.

I believe it is the latter.  I have no doubt whatsoever that most of you will believe it is the former.  It’s a lot easier to swallow than admitting to yourself that you’re supporting something antithetical to your own beliefs.