CONSERVATISM: THE HUGE VICE

If conservatism is founded on the one little truth that what is good should not be thrown out just because it's old, (see last post) it is nonetheless also founded on one huge human vice, namely, SELFISHNESS. Conservatives are fundamentally very selfish people.

Lest you think that I'm being overly harsh on conservatives, let me hasten to add I believe we are all fundamentally selfish. Why, then, do I chastise conservatives for this fault? Why is conservative selfishness worse than that of, say, liberals?

The difference between conservatives and liberals with regard to selfishness is that conservatives are quite satisfied with their selfishness. They think that their behavior is just fine; so much so, in fact, that they are unlikely even to be aware of their own selfishness. They make important "principles" out of what is essentially just selfishness, and they use those "principles" to justify their behavior. The "principle of self-preservation" and the "principle of preserving private property" are the two most important deductions from the vice of selfishness that conservatives use to justify their selfish behavior. Conservatives can usually be sure that no one will challenge these "principles," even though they are far from incontestable; but the only reason that most people do not challenge them is because most people, as I said, are selfish.

The principles can be contested, however, by people who have evolved beyond selfishness. One such person was Christ, who--ironically--is often cited by conservatives as their "Lord and Savior" or--as an illegitimately appointed chief executive once put it--their "favorite philosopher." Christ attacked both the notion of self-preservation and the notion of preserving private property in a single biblical passage:

Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. (Matthew 5:38-41.)

This is not a passage that religious conservatives like to have pointed out, because it contradicts their selfish tendencies. And it is difficult for most of us normal human beings to understand how Christ, or anyone else who is completely selfless, can make such demands on people. But Christ and others like him did not think that obeying the command was impossible; so those who really follow Christ should put a lot of energy into trying to understand how he could expect them to obey such a command--and even if they can't understand, they should obey anyway.

The conservative way, however, is not to obey Christ, but to deify their own selfishness and to transform Christ into their own image. Conservatives see Christ as their own personal, holy Rambo, who protects them from all threats and authorizes them to destroy anyone who even seems to be a threat. Thus religion too becomes another force that helps conservatives feel satisfied with their selfishness. After all, if Christ himself wants me to protect myself and my property, why shouldn't I keep the rifles on hand and come out blasting whenever I sense danger?

Religion is just one of the means by which conservatives convince themselves of the righteousness of their orientation. They expend much energy on finding ways to disguise their selfishness from themselves, and for this purpose they will use any pretense that seems noble or virtuous: they will try to wrap selfishness up as patriotism, volunteerism, Constitutionalism, or freedom--anything that will screen their selfish motives. And once they succeed in convincing themselves, they expect that everyone else should be convinced as well.

This demand that everyone else also buy into their self-delusion is perhaps even more compelling than the original need for self-delusion. Conservatives just have to try to force their brand of selfishness on everyone else. The reason is clear: only if everyone else is just as hypocritical as themselves can they hope to avoid being revealed as the hypocrites they are.

Of course, not everyone else is as hypocritical as conservatives. Conservative hypocrisy is just as plain as the nose on your face to such people, and when they point it out, conservatives hate them. So conservatives go to any lengths to try to silence such people: they are "threats," and conservatives know no ethical limitations where "self-preservation" is concerned.

This is the true origin of the massive conservative attack of the past 30 or so years against everything progressive and forward-looking: by the 70's those damn godless "lib'rals" done gone an' got the whole country to see easily the essential selfishness of conservatism. So the conservatives had to build up a whole new armada of societal institutions devoted to rebuilding and fortifying the illusion of conservative righteousness. They built their own think tanks (e.g., the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation) to come up with endless sophistries to make selfishness always look like altruism. They built their own legal fraternity (The Federalist Society) to come up with endless sophistries to make selfishness look like justice. They built their own news organizations (e.g., Fox News, the Rupert Murdoch media empire) to come up with endless sophistries to make selfishness look like news. And they have succeeded. Now the number of voting citizens who can easily see the essential selfishness of conservatism is almost in the minority. The next presidential election will tell us if that number has actually fallen below the midpoint mark.

But before I end this second section of our disquisition against conservatism, let me go back to the remark I made about all of us being selfish, because I haven't yet answered the question of why the selfishness of conservatives is worse than the selfishness of liberals. And there should be no mistake about it: conservative selfishness is much more destructive than liberal selfishness.

The thing that makes liberal selfishness both less destructive and less vicious than conservative selfishness is that, whereas conservatives are satisfied with their selfishness, liberals are always disconcerted by theirs. Conservatives disparage liberals for their self-doubt, but it is this very quality that makes liberals less likely to abuse others, because they are constantly aware of the possibility that their selfishness may harm others. Without an elaborate, self-delusional system in place to keep them unaware of their selfishness, liberals can maintain a check on their less-than-altruistic inclinations. This is not the place to try to divine how liberals develop the particular form of conscience that permits them to keep watch over their own impulses and to imagine how their selfish desires may affect other people, especially since we are critiquing the conservative psyche here. Suffice it to say that liberals are much more self-questioning than conservatives, and that this quality alone prevents their selfishness from becoming intolerant, overbearing, and aggressive.

So the besetting vice at the basis of conservatism is an unseen, and for that reason unrestrained, selfishness.

Now we can move on to the third and last topic in our exposition of contemporary conservatism.

Next Post: How Conservatism's Vice Corrupts Its Good Idea

CONSERVATISM: A BANKRUPT IDEOLOGY

The Hammer is taking today's break from pounding on the Bush machine to examine the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of conservatism.

Despite the insinuation of conservatism into every facet of contemporary life, the ideology is remarkably simple, and thus not difficult at all to understand at its most fundamental level. Once one grasps the basic facts about conservatism, it is quite easy to see how it infects everything it touches.

The simplest way to put it is this: conservatism is founded on one little good idea, on one huge human vice, and on the corruption of the good idea by the vice.

We will treat the three parts of this statement in separate posts over the next few days.

Let's begin right now with the first part:

Conservatism's One Little Good Idea

The one little good idea that is the taproot of all conservatism is that what was good in the past ought not to be discarded just because it is old.

This is just a bit of common sense. Everyone makes use of this maxim all the time. What would life be like if we constantly jettisoned all of our experience?

But conservatives take this nugget of truth and turn it into their prime directive: nothing must ever change or the world will go to hell.

O.K. Maybe I overstate. (Though I have known some conservatives who would have an apoplectic fit if the slightest event in their carefully organized lives did not follow the pattern they expected.) But the truth is that conservatives are much more devoted to the principle of stasis than is good for them, good for others, or suited to reality.

The reason for this, as can be seen just by looking around at the world, is that things change constantly. Especially in the modern world of technology, every aspect of life changes drastically all the time. Obviously, anyone who tries to hold on to the past too tightly will soon find himself outpaced by the world around him. It is a faulty adaptive strategy to keep trying to eliminate one's discomfort with change by continually reaching back into a past that no longer exists. Yet this is the conservative's deepest desire, because change is just too scary.

One can get an idea of the lunacy involved in this excessive clinging to the past by looking at some hard-core conservative websites. We don't have time for a tour here (I assure you, it is fascinating to see how crazy conservatives can be!), but let me just quote one passage from a major conservative website, conservatism.com:

1.2 Why is tradition a source of greater wisdom?

It is a network of commonly accepted attitudes, beliefs and practices that evolves through strengthening of things that work and rejection of things that lead to conflict and failure. It therefore comprises a collection of habits that have proved useful in a huge variety of practical affairs, and a comprehensive and generally coherent point of view that reflects very extensive experience and thought. Through it we know subtle and fundamental features of the world that would otherwise escape us, and our understanding of those things takes on concrete and usable form. (Here's the link: Conservative Wisdom)

This is pure magical thinking. Where is all this stuff that works so well? Is it in the Bible? I don't think so; the Bible is filled with war, sin, and evil of all kinds. Is it in organized religion? I don't think so; not a week goes by without some major scandal in some church somewhere. Is it is politics? Give me a break; that's never "worked" before at all. Is it in science? Maybe, but conservatives reject science because of its connection with changing values.

The truth is that conservatives have NO BASIS WHATSOEVER for their tendency to want to hold on to the past, other than their psychological need to avoid change. And that's pathological, so it's not really a good basis for recommending the ideology to those of us who can see that reality requires adaptation to change, and who are comfortable making those adaptations.

NEXT POST: Conservatism's Huge Human Vice

SANTORUM: ANOTHER CONSERVATIVE MORON

If you want to find examples of the just-plain-mean imbicility of conservative politicians, you don't have to look very far. Now that Republicans think that they have all the power, they foolishly also believe that they can say whatever they damn well please anywhere, no matter how ignorant, intolerant, or benighted their sentiments. That's what caught Trent Lott right after the last election.

And that's what is about to catch Rick Santorum, the especially mean-spirited, dimwitted, regressive, Republican idiot from Pennsylvania. His nasty remarks about gay and lesbian rights are garnering calls for his resignation from his leadership post. Here are the remarks, unedited:

Santorum: Self-Important Republicans' Foot-in-Mouth Disease

This is the kind of inhumane, uncompassionate, uncaring garbage that lies at the bottom of the gigantic pile of worthless trash that passes for conservative "ideas."

Santorum and his ilk continue to prove, day after day, that conservatism is mostly just a convoluted con-job; it's nothing but a cover for the basest, crassest, and vilest selfishness that can be exhibited by human beings.

BUSH: THE MOST DANGEROUS "PRESIDENT"

Here is an article detailing the mess that W and his handlers are leading us into.

THE MOST DANGEROUS PRESIDENT EVER

The fact that any of this stuff has to be pointed out at all reveals just how pathetic the state of the nation's intelligence has become. How can ANYONE could not see Bush for the slobbering monkey-man he is? A moron who can't rise above the level of "freedom is good" when he somehow is forced to answer a question simply has no business being anywhere near the presidency of the United States.

I hope the intelligent people vote in the next election.

BUSH: HOLY AMERICAN EMPEROR

It's no news flash that Bush imagines himself to be waging a holy war against the un-Christianized world. It would take some unbelievably naive and self-aggrandizing notion like that to motivate a person of such low intelligence and even lower character. Of course it would be to no avail to point out that Bush's characteristic mean-spirited sneering at his adversaries, his uncharitable vengeance against those who disagree with him, his bald-faced lying about the intent and effect of his policies, and his nasty temper all fly in the face of true Christianity. No, for Bush, these character traits are all forgivable, even endearing, little quirks. After all, he's been "saved." How do we know? He says so.

That's why Christ said, "By their fruits shall ye know them." Nasty is as nasty does. And W does nothing but nasty.

Anyway, here's an article about W's unbelievable self-delusion that he is Richard Lionheart taking back Jerusalem from the infidel.

CHRISTIAN CRUSADES CONTINUE: BUSH NEW HOLY AMERICAN EMPEROR

Only someone with as little grasp on history, philosophy, ethics, politics, basic science, mathematics, and geography as W could imagine himself as a modern Napoleon.

Sad to say, that's the way things are in surreal America at the turn of the twenty-first century.

CONSERVATIVE RELIGION

On Sundays the Hammer puts down the hammer, stops beating W and his cronies in despotic crime, and discusses more philosophical matters.

Today, on a great Christian holy day, the Hammer would like to point out the use that conservatives make of religion in their never-ending war to make the world safe for selfishness. Conservatives have coopted religion and turned it into a vicious force for hatred. This is nothing new. Oppressive and tyrannical souls have always tried to use religion to justify themselves both to the mindless mob and to themselves. Modern American conservatives are just falling into the same pattern as their predecessors.

There are two different approaches to religion. One perpetuates and intensifies human suffering, the other eliminates it.

The first view sees religion as a rigid, inflexible system of rules dictated by God to prophets and inscribed by divinely inspired stenographers into sacred books. Adherents of this view, believing that their possession of these God-given rules makes them superior to those who do not acknowledge these rules, and holding that no one can be moral without professing these rules, regard themselves as authorized to demand that others live their lives according to the same rules. This is the source of all religious wars and of many political wars as well. It is also the source of civil strife in nations which fail to separate religion from politics.

Despite the conservative cant surrounding their contention that America is a Christian nation, the truth--which is accessible to anyone who is not blinded by conservative mind -control--is that the founders were suspicious about whether religion should play a role in politics. In The Federalist it is pointed out that religion has never stopped people from behaving badly in the political arena, and that the moral restraints that religion tries to place upon improper behavior seem to lose their effectivenss as the number of people in a particular group grows larger. Contrary to the contentions of conservatives--and belied by their own unjust, inequitable, intolerant, and small-minded actions--religion does not produce better behavior in groups of people; indeed, one is lucky if it has any effect on the individual, especially when it is inculcated by indoctrination. Hence the Constitution's refusal to allow religious tests for public officials: no public assertion of religiosity can be trusted, because many will lie just to gain the power of the office they seek, and because religiosity is no test of the capacity to do the people's work, and for a thousand other reasons that make religion irrelevant to a well-governed society based on the right of the people to establish their own governance rather than on the right of a ruler to establish his rule.

(By the way, there is a very interesting treaty, duly passed by Congress and authorized by presidential signature, called the Treaty of Tripoli which contains the phrase "As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion..." This document was read by George Washington and John Adams, passed unanimously by all members of Congress, and signed by John Adams. Conservatives don't talk about this document very much. A few have tried to come up with some sophistries to try to explain it away. But there is simply no counter-explanation for the fact that so many of the founding generation put their signatures to a line that so clearly points to the separation of Church and State.)

Of course, many of the Founders were religious men in their own way. But most of them saw religion primarity as a matter between the individual and his personal Deity. The vast majority of those pushing religion as the foundation of government in the era of the Founders were anti-federalists. It is no surprise that conservatives have tried to revive the arguments of the anti-federalists (who have always been their true heroes) in their attack on our secular government. But it is important for all Americans who care about truth to know that the anti-federalists, along with their inferior ideas, LOST THE ARGUMENT to the Federalists. Our Constitution is the mainly product of Federalists with only a few concessions to anti-federalist thought. We should not let conservatives paint it as an anti-federalist document.

The conservative idea of the role of religion in public life is firmly ensconced in the first view of religion: conservatives seek to use religion as a rigid rule of public behavior, to bully their opponents with it, and to stifle all dissent by appealing to God, or Tradition, or their largely fictional accounts of American History.

The second view of religion is encapsulated in Christ’s remark:

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (Matthew 6:28-29.)

Like Christ, the greatest spiritual teachers of all times and places regard the highest aim of the inner life to be the death of the ego or the self, so that Life or God or the Spirit can flow though unimpeded, as the earth and the heavens and everything in them (except recalcitrant human beings) flow and create and grow and die--without thought for the future or the past, and without defacing the universal handiwork, which is perfect.


But getting conservatives to see the perfection of the handiwork is impossible. They are far too wedded to their own beliefs to give them up, even when they and everyone they know suffers from their desperate attempts to hold on to their self-centered, arrogant, and false certainty. They would rather kill others than admit that they might be wrong in any particular.

This is the whole sad tale of human misery in a nutshell.

Maybe someday a critical number of people will wake up from this nightmare, and their descriptions of reality may conduce others to wake up as well.

Until then, there is no end of writing tragedies.

CONSERVATIVE PIDDLE PROVED WORTHLESS ONCE AGAIN

The the so-called "voucher" plans enthusiastically backed by Republicans are really aimed at funnelling education money from public education into private schools where conservatives can control the curriculum and continue to brainwash ever more helpless children.

The proof that they have no educational value keeps coming out in study after study. But it never makes any impact, because Republicans mount huge publicity campaigns against each and every negative result, explaining it away as an aberration. This is the same strategy they have used successfully since Reagan's time to make their people "Teflon"--confuse the public so that they never put two and two and two and two and two and two together.

Here is yet another result that shows voucher programs to be educationally worthless.

Cleveland Voucher Program Fails to Produce

It hardly seems likely that such programs will produce superior results. Even though the public schools in this country are sadly unfit to promote real education, the voucher-type schools won't do much better, even though they may provide a superior environment. The reason is the pathetic, conservative, mind-contolling pablum they feed the kids: that kind of stuff simply makes it impossible for true thinking and questioning to occur, so the kids don't come out any better off from an educational point of view. And they come out much worse off from an ideological point of view, because they are burdened with conservative beliefs that bear no relation at all to reality, making them selfish and unfit to take part in the cooperative work of a democratic society.

Save the children! Kill vouchers!

BUSH: FAILING IN IRAQ

Here's the real scoop on how much the Iraqis hate us. Funny how these stories only appear in sporadic trickles in the American press, whereas they are quite the staple of the European and Middle Eastern press.

Iraqis Turn Hatred On U.S.

Bush and his crew are not only greedy, bloodthirsty ghouls; they are also profoundly stupid--not in the sense of being ignoramuses, but in the sense of not being able to see beyond a short-term, power-based advantage.

Maybe that is what will eventually, and deservedly, bring them down.

BUSH: NOT EVEN CONCERNED ABOUT APPEARANCES

When W stole into the White House he said he wouldn't tolerate even the appearance of inappropriate behavior; then he and Cheney went mad, appointing opponents of government with HUGE conflicts of interest to every oversight post they could, and handing out contract and goodies to their backers and buddies like lollipops. The hypocrisy--not to mention the illegality--is utterly outrageous. But the press do not report, and neither do the people care. Amazing.

Here's yet another in the stunning line of ridiculously outrageous actions by W and his cronies.

Having seized Iraq by force illegitimately, they now need someone to do police work. So who do they hire? DYNCORP, a company with huge lawsuits pending on HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSE CHARGES stemming from the shoddy work and outright criminal behavior of the company (like providing prostitutes as young as 12 years old) in Kosovo.

Of course, the company is a long-time Bush-backer and major Republican donor as well.

This stinks to high heaven. But so did 3,678 other similar actions taken by W in the past two years. I guess Americans have lost their olfactory sensibilities altogether.

BUSH: FRANTICALLY TURNING THE PAGES OF THE EVIL PLAYBOOK

It looks like the Bushites aren't going to let any grass grow under their feet of evil. Before they've even begun to soak up the oil proceeds from Iraq, they are moving on to the next play in the Wolfowitz-Perle neo-con warbook, Syria.

While We're There Let's Take 'Em Out!

But is there some blowback? Lawrence Eagleburger seems to indicate there might be:

Eagleburger: They'll Impeach Him If He Tries!

I'm skeptical. W has gotten a pass on every evil thing he's ever done. Why won't they give him a pass on mass death and destruction in the service of power-hungry tyranny?

SCALIA: JUSTICE OF INJUSTICE

Today, the Hammer must pound an official who does not belong to the executive branch of the current junta: the most rabid, frothing conservative ever to be placed in a position to destroy American ideals, Antonin Scalia.

Saturday's Washington Post ran the following AP story on Scalia's most recent right-wing public rant at the University of Mississippi in Oxford last Thursday. I quote the whole story because Scalia's remarks are remarkably revealing about the intellectual emptyheadness of conservative thought.

**********************************
Trying to Interpret The Constitution Risky, Scalia Says
Associated Press
Saturday, April 12, 2003; Page A05

OXFORD, Miss., April 11 -- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said it is dangerous to read between the lines of the 214-year-old Constitution, however tempting it may be.

Strict adherence to the words used by the authors still answers most modern problems, Scalia said.

Scalia, speaking at the University of Mississippi on Thursday, said he considers himself an "originalist" or a "textualist." He said he uses an 18th-century dictionary to make sure he understands just what the 1789 document's words meant to the men who wrote them.

"Over the last 50 years, the court has felt free to give the Constitution new meanings that weren't in the text originally," he said.

He cited grandparents' rights, abortion rights and the former ban on the death penalty as foreign to the Constitution's text. Eventually, such interpretations can render the document meaningless, Scalia said.

Scalia warned against the allure of a "living Constitution."

"It's a lovely thought, a lovely phrase, but it will destroy us or destroy the Supreme Court as we've known it," said Scalia, who was appointed to the court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986.

Scalia said democracy offers legislatures, not courts, the chance to address any issue.

"Persuade your fellow citizens and pass a law," he said.

(c) 2003 The Washington Post Company
****************************************

Right out of the gate, we have the right-wing mantra of "originalism" rearing its ugly and thick head. Is Scalia foolish enough to imagine that using an eighteenth-century dictionary somehow does not fall into the category of "interpretation"? I guess so. It appears that he does not recognize that, even with his beloved dictionary, he is still "interpreting." He has chosen to use as an interpretive tool a book that has only one virtue to recommend it: its relative contemporaneity with his target text. But his tool has a number of disadvantages as well.

In the first place, lexicographers know full well that the standards of scholarship surrounding eighteenth-century dictionaries fall far short of today's best dictionaries; from that point of view, Scalia would be better off using the Oxford English Dictionary if he really wants to know what a word meant in the eighteenth century, since it has copious information on word usage in different historical periods.

But Scalia could dispense with his dictionary altogether if only his interpretive skills were informed by a wide-ranging familiarity with the political literature of the time, in which the central concepts were discussed and debated by the very people who were involved in the creation of the Constitution. And it would be particularly important to pay attention to the Federalist Papers and to other writings of prominent Federalists and Anti-Federalists in order to understand as well as one can the meanings that the parties then assigned to the terms used in the Constitution. (Caution for those who really care about the truth: Right-wingers often assign meanings found in Anti-Federalist writers to terms found in the Constitution; this is a dishonest method of interpretation, since it imports the intentions of the Constitution's enemies into the words of its defenders and creators.)

On top of all that, even if it were possible to come up with a completely unambiguous interpretation of a particular part of the Constitution, Scalia still would have done only one portion of the work. It is here that the conservative mind-control machine has really wreaked havoc on thought in this country. Scalia and his ilk have created the impression in the public mind that deciding what the Constitution says is all that is required. Once that decision is made, he thinks, all we have to do is follow it. That is both wrong and wrong-headed.

They get this idea from the same place that Christian fundamentalists get the notion that all they have to do is "read the Bible literally" in order to do right. One cannot go into all the fallacies that attend this naive, indeed childish, belief. Let it suffice to say that those who believe this tend to be utterly unsophisticated about the difficulties involved in reading anything, let alone the Bible; they tend not even to know that the Bible was not written in English and that controversies about the meaning of every single verse have never been put to rest in the entire history of biblical thought; even if they do know that the Bible was not written in English, they tend to think that the meaning in the original languages is clear and can be transmitted to them by scholars or ministers; and they have no idea at all--because it contradicts their central assumption--that interpretation is always required on the part of anyone who is trying to make sense out of that complex and difficult collection of writings. Like these naive readers, "strict constructionists" maintain that the Constitution is a sacred document whose meaning is sacrosanct, which reveals its secrets only to those with special insight who must not question those secrets in any way.

This mind-numbing approach--which, contrary to the assertions of conservatives, does not make people more responsible and accountable human beings, but actually absolves them of responsibility for deciding the most important issues in life--is Scalia's notion of how the Constitution is supposed to function in American life: as a list of arcane commandments from which we dare not deviate lest we offend the spirit of God acting through our divine Founders. (Don't forget that he once accused those who try to "interpret" the Constitution--always excepting himself and those who agree with him--as obscuring the divine origins of law.)

But this approach shows such a deliberate refusal to recognize the spirit of the founders and the function of a judge that it should constitute impeachable incapacity to fulfill the duties of his office. As I said, deciding on the meaning of the Constitution is only one part of the work. The other part is deciding how it applies to a particular case. This second part of a judge's work is regarded hardly at all by Scalia. He seems to think that his special kind of "strict adherence" to the secret meaning of the Constitution (to which, of course, only he and those who agree with him are privy) will simply make most difficulties disappear.

This notion is extremely curious for a judge, whose job is supposed to be to interpret a law enacted by a proper authority, and then determine how that general rule applies to a given situation. If general laws were so easily applied to particular cases, there would hardly be any need for judges at all. And it hardly seems likely that the Constitution, which is called "a fundamental law" in The Federalist (No. 78) should be easier to apply to particular cases, since it must be brought to bear on innumerable issues, many of which the founders could never have foreseen.

Wherever Scalia gets his strange notions of judgeship from, they do not seem much like the notions of a judicial magistrate's duties presented in The Federalist.

The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is in fact, and must be, regarded by the judges as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought of course to be preferred; or in other words, the constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents. (Federalist 78.)

Note that the founders expected the Constitution to need interpretation even in their own time. This means that they expected even their own contemporaries to have divergences of opinion on the meaning of the words themselves. That being the case, no eighteenth-century dictionary is going to be the magic bullet that solves all problems of interpretation. Wise judges are going to have to be more intelligent and sophisticated readers than Scalia to decide what the Constitution means, so that they can then compare that meaning to the meaning of subsequent laws.

Do the founders offer any help on this point? Again, this passage from The Federalist, discussing the role of the court in protecting the people from their own legislators, is instructive:

The complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential to a limited constitution. By a limited constitution I understand one which contains certain specified exceptions to the legislative authority; such for instance as that it shall pass no bills of attainder, no ex post facto laws, and the like. Limitations of this kind can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of the courts of justice; whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing. (Federalist 78; emphasis mine.)

The help afforded here is in the phrase "manifest tenor." Not even an eighteenth-century dictionary is going to be able to make that phrase mean "original text." What the founders are saying is what ANY DECENT JUDGE should know: it is the SPIRIT of the law, not its LETTER, that should guide judicial thinking.

In the case of the Constitution, the founders had the wisdom to lay out its "tenor," its spirit, in the Preamble:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

This text establishes six ends that the Constitution is intended to serve: 1. union; 2. justice; 3. domestic tranquility; 4. defense; 5. general welfare; 6. liberty.

The manifest tenor of the Constitution, therefore, is that it promote these six ends. And that fact alone makes the job of a decent judge very difficult, because not only does he have to decide how any particular piece of the Constitution relates to these six ends, but he also must decide how any other piece of legislation relates to these six ends. It is entirely possible that a piece of legislation might encroach on one of the six while at the same time promoting one of the others. For instance, a law against discrimination might inhibit the liberty of a racist while at the same time promoting justice.

A supreme court justice, then, if he or she is worthy of holding the office, should be capable of thinking through complex questions that balance all of the six ends served by the Constitution in order to come to a rational assessment of what the Constitution means when it is applied to any particular case. Scalia's simplistic fundamentalism--which tries to establish an "original text," a "letter of the law" that obviates complex reasoning--makes the task of penetrating judgment impossible; and this makes him entirely unfit to be a judge anywhere in America, let alone on the Supreme Court.

Of course, all of this has been presented under the assumption that Scalia really believes what he says about "original intent." But of course, like most conservatives, he only believes what he says when it is convenient for him. When the "original intent" argument serves his purposes, he holds out what he insists is the letter of the law and demands no deviation from it. When it does not suit his purposes, as in Bush v. Gore, he trashes the letter of the law and devises a sophistical argument that he insists is the spirit of the law. (The Bush v. Gore decision is so ludicrously unjust that he wouldn't even sign it, and he went to the unheard-of length of trying to say that it set no precedent--another refusal to acknowledge the basic duty of a justice on the Supreme Court, which is to set the precedents that must be followed by our entire legal system.)

Elsewhere Scalia has said in public that new laws based on interpretations of the Constitution, such as the many new rights that have been enacted into law since the sixties, cannot be guaranteed to increase freedom--they might well decrease it.

This kind of remark is a clue to the conservative cast of mind in general. Conservatives think the Constitution is all about protecting freedom. This is because they believe that they have or can get whatever they need, and they want to be left alone to enjoy those benefits. Thus they have little concern with, say, justice or the general welfare. This simplifies their thinking greatly. Unfortunately, it does so while increasing their tolerance for injustice and inequity.

This also explains why conservatives are always trying to protect the status quo--that is, the situation in which they possess the majority of the benefits. And it also explains why they love the "original intent" argument: because they can cast it as "the way things were meant to be," namely, that I be left alone to enjoy my blessings. "Don't change anything!" they say. "I like things the way they are!"

G. K. Chesterton had this to say about conservatism:

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.

This truth is totally overlooked by conservatives, who imagine that if they can just hold on to the old customs, the old values, the old social order, their blessings will remain forever in their possession. That is magical thinking in a world where change is the only constant. The truth is that we need to keep changing and updating our beliefs, our values, and our laws, or we will eventually find that reality has left us behind on the dustheap of history.

Of course, Chesterton is wrong that conservatism is based on leaving things alone. As I have said before, it is based on selfishness. It merely uses the idea of leaving things alone as the primary means of promoting its selfishness.

So the next time you hear one of Scalia's rants about the sacrosanct nature of the Constitution, recognize it for the miserable sham that it is: another ultra-conservative, fundamentalist, simple-minded, hypocritical attempt to protect and promote the unjust, inequitable, anti-social privileges currently possessed by the conservative class.

SUNDAY HIATUS

The Hammer is taking the day off today. The death and destruction rained on Iraq by W and his bloodstained crew, together with the damage done to international law and all standards of decent behavior on the part of nations--all this has taken its toll on the our spirits.

We will use the day to recuperate, and to imagine a world in which power-mad morons like W cannot exist because the common man no longer needs to look to such frauds to justify his existence.

Tomorrow: Scalia on the Hotseat

BUSH AND CO.: THE EVIL NEVER STOPS

Here's a story about the latest outrageous "judge" put up by the Bushites to sit on the Federal bench:

Another Right-Wing Whacko Nominated by Bush

This nomination has caused even the Washington Post, which has backed Bush's previous outrageous nominations, to side with the Democrats. The Post now says the Democrats have no choice but to use every tactic available to them to block Bush's outrageous nominations.

The Hammer could not agree more.

BUSH: LYING IS OK WITH AMERICANS

Every word that comes out of W's mouth, including every preposition, particle, and interjection--is a lie. Do a Google search for "Bush Lies" and you will turn up enough evidence of his pervarications to convince anyone but a brainwashed Bush-worshipper that he is many thousands of times the liar than Clinton could ever have been. And his lies cost lives.

Here is Robert Parry's excellent summary of the mindless stupidity of American media-duped Bush supporters:

Parry: How Stupid ARE Americans, Anyway?

Just one quotation from the piece says a lot:

As he marched the nation to war, Bush presented himself as a Christian man of peace who saw war only as a last resort. But in a remarkable though little noted disclosure, Time magazine reported that in March 2002 – a full year before the invasion – Bush outlined his real thinking to three U.S. senators, “Fuck Saddam,” Bush said. “We’re taking him out.”

Time actually didn’t report the quote exactly that way. Apparently not to offend readers who admire Bush’s moral clarity, Time printed the quote as “F--- Saddam. We’re taking him out.”
....
The agitprop, the crude lies and the other public-relations techniques that have rallied the nation to war make the beginning of Bush’s "crusade" to rid the world of "evil" look more like the Stupid White Man’s Burden.

Until the decent, fair-minded majority of Americans take back the reins of power from these lunatic ultra-conservatives and their violently vocal minority of supporters who pretend to be the majority and who use the media and fake polls to project that image--until then, the world will suffer more and more death and destruction.

Wise up! Throw out Bush and his insane puppeteers!

BLIX: ANTI BUSH MURMERS

Hans Blix, chief weapons inspector in Iraq before the Bushites had to start their war in time for the next election cycle, is now talking openly about the subterfuge used by the Bushites to whip up popular support among their hopelessly ignorant American audience. Although everything the Bushistas did was so openly and blantantly deceptive--using faked documents, changing their pitch every other week, throwing around jingoism like rock salt--that a perceptive chimp could have detected their mendacity, only a minority of Americans could summon the intelligence to spot it.

Now Blix is simply saying what was always evident to everyone except the indiginous American moron contingent:

Blix: Bush LIED

Wake up, people! This whole crew is a bunch of lying, scheming, vicious power-mongers, war-mongers, and profit-mongers who will stop an NOTHING--not law-breaking, not killing, not mass destruction--to get whatever they want, which is, in the end, complete, uncontested world domination.

Their consistent tactic is to divide and conquer. Let us stand together!

ANOTHER DAY ON THE BUSH IMPERIAL WARPATH

Let's see what's been happening in Bush's little war today.

First of all, Colin Powell makes it clear that Bush was lying when he implied that he gave a crap about the UN role's in Iraq: Powell says that the coalition (i.e., the US, now that Bush has played Blair for a sucker) will select the "interim" government of Iraq.

Powell: Iraq is OURS

As usual, the Bushites choose the MOST OUTRAGEOUS option, and then expect the whole world to just fall at their feet. It is just a matter of time until this strategy fails. So far, they've managed to steal an election, allow corporations to write their own regulation or deregulation, steal from the poor to fund a massive tax cut for the rich, appoint enemies of government oversight to every governmental oversight agency, bludgeon Congress into eviscerating Constitutionally protected rights, unilaterally dump the Kyoto global warming treaty and the nuclear anti-proliferation treaties and the international crimial court convention, bully and harrass the UN, violate international law and disobey the will of the UN security council, invade a nation that was not an imminent threat, kill thousands of civilians, demand that the UN pay for the damage they've done, and now they want to install their own puppet regime in the country they've destroyed. Looking over this partial list of the innumerable evils perpetrated by the Bushites, it seems incredible that no opposing force has yet arisen to put an end to their inhuman vileness. Surely the moment of their demise must be at hand! Such malefaction certainly cannot continue forever.

But their Waterloo is clearly not yet here. While they continue to crow and strut about their crushing attack on a nearly defenseless foe; while they gloat about having the "will" to bring an overwhelming battery of weapons to bear on a small and devastated enemy; while their violent and ignorant American supporters dance at Ground Zero proclaiming the destruction of Iraw to be America's vengeance for 9/11--while all these mindless power-worshippers celebrate an apparent victory, the true nature of this attack's aftermath is beginning to become clear to the decent people of the world.

Here is the future for US troops in Iraq:

4 US SOLDIERS KILLED BY SUICIDE BOMBER

The Arab street is stunned right now, but in the coming weeks and months you can be sure that the martyrs' brigades will be taking out our troops using every guerilla tactic they can devise. Reagan had to turn tail and run out of Lebanon, and thought it is still unthinkinable to criticize that Republican saint for anything, the incident is a blemish on his resolute mean-spiritedness. W's handlers will do anything to prevent that from happening to their new Republican saint. So US retaliation against the guerillas will be vicious and ruthless. And this will only enflame the Arab resistance even more.

And here is an Iraqi viewpoint the Bushites are trying to keep the media from showing:

"IF THIS IS THE PRICE OF FREEDOM, I DON'T WANT IT."

But despite the intense media control being exerted by the Bushites wherever they can (they were able to squelch the expansion of Aljazeera's English-language website probably by having SYSCO--the world leader in bandwidth control, which just conincidentally is lookiing for some favors from universal corporate buddy-boy "Cheese" Cheney--refuse to assign more capacity to the Arabic network), Arab television is continuing to show the actual mayhem and death being perpetrated by US forces all across Iraq. These images will be with the enraged young men of the Arab nations for a long time, and they will certainly lead some of them to take out their rage in ever new ways against the US. Here's a story:

ARAB TV: SHOCK, DISMAY, ANGER

Will Bush ever have to bear the stigma of having aroused the emnity of virtually the entire world against America? Or will he continue to destroy all civilized international relations while being swept into a second term by a combination of rigged elections and idiot conservatives, and then be instantly canonized like Reagan? The decent people of the earth surely want him gone as soon as possible. That is the number one priority for Americans of good will:

Parrish: Take Bush Down

And here is the way to do it:

OUST BUSH IN '04!

Let us work incessantly for peace, until the day the Bush and his ilk can no longer hold their heads up in polite society for shame at believing the base and vile untruths that give their grasping, power-hungry little souls meaning.

Cheers!

NEO-CON WHOOPFEST

The neo-cons are riding high today. The fall of Baghdad has given them the short-term goal they were expecting to get as soon as they went into Iraq. Plenty of "Love the USA" reaction-shots from smiling Baghdadites, plenty of "dramatic" video of Saddam-art being destroyed by Iraqis.

This is just what they wanted. Now they can play and replay those video images for their moronic base of bloodthirsty power-mongers, who can use it to pretend that they are Iraq's greatest benefactors instead of the Iraq's absolute oppressors.

Those who love peace around the world are in shock today, just as the decent people of the United States were in shock the day the Supreme Court defied the Constitution to deliver a presidential election to a usurper. It is deeply dismaying to see the forces of regression win battles. But they will continue to win because they stop at nothing, they know no shame, and they recognize no check except power. It would be nice if they could be beaten by fair means, but it seems unlikely, since they turn their opponents' fairness into a weakness, and if they cannot, they simply take what they want and thumb their noses at anyone who tries to stop them by asserting the rules of law.

So today is their victory parade. There will be no more talk of weapons of mass destruction--that talking point is no longer useful, since there never were any in Iraq. Now the Bush-backers will say that liberating Iraqis was more than enough reason to invade the country. These are, of course, the same people who reviled Bill Clinton for his decision to send the military to liberate the people of Kosovo.

While the neo-cons and rabid Republican robots are whooping it up, here is a reminder of what the Bush junta has accomplished in the far-off land of Iraq:

Pile of Corpses to Bush's Credit

And here is a story of John Kelly, the genius American general who has no more concern for the human beings he destroys than a boy playing with toy soldiers:

We Mow Them Down Like the Morons They Are

These are the brave, the proud, the noble Americans. Bush and Kelly: whoop it up Republicans--these dimwits and heartless killers are your leaders!

WHAT BUSH HAS DONE

There is no such thing as a clear conscience once war begins. The military people love to theorize about "just" wars, but they don't really understand the concept as it was propounded by St. Augustine and St. Thomas. Even though a leader may sometimes be forced to use violence to correct someone else's use of violence, it is never a good thing in itself. War is death, destruction, force, deceit, dehumanization. There is nothing good about that. Once it starts, it threatens to turn everyone involved into demons.

Oblivious to this, our dim-witted "president" swaggers around barely surpressing his smirk that he's a-stompin' on Saddam. He doesn't even have the decency to be the slightest bit ashamed of the devastation and death he has inflicted on people he won't ever see. If he had a conscience, he'd have to be at least a little bit unsure of what he is doing. But he doesn't have a conscience; that's the only way such people keep going without ever looking back.

Here is what Bush has done in Iraq. Read it and weep.

BUSH'S BOMBS KILL WOMEN AND CHILDREN

If he had a conscience, this would haunt him for the rest of his life. But he doesn't have a conscience. So he'll always believe that God was on his side.

What a moron.

BUSH: MORALLY CHALLENGED USURPER DRAGS U.S. INTO MORAL GUTTER

There is nothing like the expression of a true literary giant when it comes to putting the soulless pygmies of world politics in their proper place. Here is Gunter Grass's estimate of the damage done to the idea of rational government according to right by the tiny tyrant George W. Bush:

Gunter Grass: Bush the Destroyer

God help us all. Perhaps this is all part of a long-term divine plan to allow human beings to lead ourselves out of the misery caused by such "leaders" as W and the puppeteers who pull his strings.

CONSERVATIVE MENTATLITY

You may have heard that Antonin Scalia let one of his right-wing biases escape in public last week. During the hearing on the U. Michigan Law School case being used by the Bushies to try to break the back of affirmative action, Scalia let it drop that he, like so many of his mentally crippled conservative blood-brothers, images affirmative action to be an unfair advantage for unqualified people. Of course, the qualified people always have to look like and act like those who already have all the perks--that's what tells you that they "belong" in the first place.


Here is David Broder on the flabbergasting comment made by Scalia:


Broder: Scalia Disses All Underprivileged Americans


This is the caliber of mind that decided the outrageous 2000 election. This is the caliber of mind that has been turning back the tide of progress since Nixon's time. This is the caliber of mind that is revered by the nation's regressives. I'm sure that Scalia doesn't think of himself as a racist, a sexist, a classist, or a rankist. But he certainly is.

BUSH: THE VIEW FROM PRINCIPLE

If anyone out there wants to see what a principled politician looks like (no it's not a contradiction in terms, it's just that very few such creatures can live in the Republican-controlled politics of the past 23 years), here is the expression of one of them:

McGovern: Bush the Disgraceful

Thanks to Sen. McGovern for reminding us what it looks like to stand up to evil.

THE END OR THE BEGINNING?

I was involved in a seminar last week that was discussing Immanuel Kant's 1784 essay called "A Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent." One of the points in the essay is Kant's contention that history has been moving slowing but steadily in the direction of republican forms of government, and it is doing so because the human race is slowly developing all of its innate capacities, including the capacity of reason to rule behavior by RIGHT rather than by MIGHT. A republican form of government is necessary, in Kant's view, because no other form of government allows not only participation of all the people, but also thoughtful consideration of the proper course of action, which must be worked out in the process of representation.

One of the members of the seminar was visibly upset that the current state of American government was not living up to Kant's notion of historical progress. In her view (one that seems completely consonant with events since the abortive 2000 election), the Constitution has been discarded by the current executive branch, which regards itself as the sole power and authority in American political life; those currently in power have the morals of tyrants, and they are only temporarily restraining themselves from seizing absolute power--indeed, they have been doing so beneath the radar since they usurped office, and they will spring it on the nation at a time of their choosing, when the Constitutional defenses have been so weakened that they cannot be stopped.

I certainly share this view of what the Bush junta is doing to America in its fanatical zeal to achieve total world domination. But I also have a perverse sense of positivity about the undeniably disastrous successes of the current unelected government. I recognize that this strangely upbeat feeling of mine may be maddening to some of those with whom I stand in agreement concerning the vileness of the Bush regime. So I'd like to briefly explain why I have some hope in the midst of the current evils being perpetrated by W's puppetmasters.

It seems to me that Kant is at least partly right about the fact that history seems to be moving in the direction of government by right instead of might. The very existence of the UN, weak as it is in many areas, is proof of this point. Even the vile Bushites allowed themselves to be convinced, at least temporarily, that they should make a case before the UN for their illegitimate war on Iraq. Why? Because the Idea of Right has now taken such a hold on the world's psyche that even the evilest of aggressors feels the necessity at least to make the motions of legitimacy in order to sustain the image that he cares about what is right. If the Bushites had not listened to Colin Powell, but had gone into Iraq without making those motions, they would not even be able to pretend that they cared about anything but conquest. Of course, they believe that the whole UN detour was just a waste of their time, but they are wrong, if for no other reason than it allows them to blame the UN for not living up to its reponsibilities--a charge that resonates strongly with the rabid warmongering intincts of the conservatives who back them.

So if Kant is even partly right, I find reason to hope that this conservative might-makes-right philosophy is bringing about its own downfall by coming out into the open where decent but unphilosophical people can see it: the more they show their true, selfish, violent, and mean-spirited colors, the sooner the general public will begin to feel a sort of collective self-loathing at having to go along with them.

Oh, sure, while the war is on it is not to be expected that Americans will resist the war propaganda, and in the immediate aftermath of the war (all of which has to be concluded by September so that it doesn't interfere with the election cycle, unless of course Karl Rove has determined that the next election cycle will be all about war all the time) Bush will once again be maximum leader as he was after 9/11.

But after that, I think they have given themselves so much rope that they can't help but hang. And with any luck, worldwide conservatism will go through the trapdoor with them, never to return as a force for evil. That would be real historical progress.

BUSH: THE CONSCIENCELESS "CHRISTIAN"

Bush has never gone to war. Like so many of his cronies, he dodged the draft. In his case, his father got him into the Air National Guard or something like that, even though he had to jump over the heads of numerous others who were in line before him. And even once he got in, he went AWOL for at least half the time he was supposed to be serving. But I guess that's OK for Republicans; the press don't even think that's a newsworthy story for the first president even to engage in preemptive (or, to use Bushrovian NewSpeak, preventive) war.

But here is a story about someone who is invovled right now in the one-sided killing going on in Iraq. It's not a pretty story:

WE'VE KILLED SO MANY!

The rest of the world looks at what we are doing in Iraq with disgust. The cheering and gloating of the American pro-Bush media and the American pro-Bush ignoramuses looks just as disgusting to the rest of the world. There are some in this country who are cosmopolitan enough to see things that way as well, but not enough, it seems to stop the warmongering Bushites.

If the American media were not so sanitized, perhaps the balance would tip in favor of the cosmopolitans. If Americans could see the torn-up carcasses of the thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians, if they could see the devastated bodies of the hundreds of our own young soldiers who have been wounded and the lifeless bodies of those who have been killed, if they could see the inhuman bloodlust that must be inculcated into our troops in order to make them into killing machines, perhaps they would not be so quick to applaud and cheer at the television images of a war that seems to be nothing more than a sporting event.

Is that giving them too much credit? We don't know, because the media doesn't give them enough credit.

AMERICA'S LOST COMPASS: EASY MORAL REVISIONISM

As is the custom on Sundays, the Hammer ceases raining blows on the Bush occupation machine, and turns attention to another quarter. Today the subject is the shifting moral compass of the American people.

It seems that once the war in Iraq started, many Americans felt that the invasion was justified by the threat of weapons of mass destruction. The fact that this threat was not proven in any satisfactory way, but only repeatedly asserted by the Bush regime; the fact that all the so-called proofs that were repeatedly brandished in front of the media were quickly revealed to be false within days; the fact that no other nation except Great Britain would help up to provide false information--none of these facts seems to have penetrated the thick and indoctrinated skulls of most Americans. "There is a threat, therefore we much bludgeon" became a logical truism for them. By the time the bombs started dropping in Baghdad, a majority of Americans actually believed the administration's propaganda that Saddam had ties to al-Quaida, and that there were "weapons of mass destruction" hidden all over Iraq.

Now it seems, according to recent polls (which, one should always remember, may just be concocted and planted by the conservative media to provide cover for the Bushites), most Americans don't even mind being sold a bill of goods about the reasons for attacking Iraq. They now know that the administration fabricated their reasons for starting the war, but they don't even care. Now they're happy to buy the line that the Bushies are really in it to "liberate the people of Iraq." It doesn't seem to occur to them that if the administration used that line instead of the weapons-of-mass-destruction scare tactic, they would not have supported the war in the first place. American's don't care about liberating suffering people from a brutal dictator; if they did, the US would be a war constantly with all the brutal dictators in the world. No, Americans bought the fabricated threat, and now that it will almost certainly prove false, they will buy the new justification based on liberation, just so that they don't have to feel like they lost the moral high ground.

News flash: America lost the moral high ground a long time ago. Any nation that has so little moral compass that it would allow moral degenerates like W and his crew to steal an election, to ignore the Constitution even to the point of issuing ILLEGAL presidential orders (like the one keeping papers from the Reagan/Poppy Bush administration sealed), to appoint vicious foes of government with enormous conflicts of interest to head every important regulatory agency, to give away trillions of dollars needed by the government to the richest of the rich, and to march the pride of our youth off to wars that do not have any legitimate justification--such a nation has lost its right to call itself moral.

America should be ashamed of itself for following the petty, mean, small, and ignorant usurper Bush. The petty, mean, small, and ignorant portion of our country has just the leader it wants.

They rest of us have to wait and to work tirelessly for the day when the dictator is gone and the cut-throat conservativism-cum-religiosity he championed is discredited forever as the source of the most virulent evils in the body politic.

BUSH: WE DON'T NEED NO STINKING REPORTING

Before Al-Jazeera was forced out of Iraq, the Pentagon was whining non-stop about the "unbalanced" coverage carried by the Qatar-based network. After all, they had the nerve to show actual photographs of U.S. soldiers handling burned-up, dismembered, bodies of Iraqi soldiers and civilians!

A few nights ago, Wolf Blitzer on CNN was doing a brief story on the Arab media coverage, and as he spoke over some doctored footage, he explained that it was too graphic to show on his network. Why? Why can Americans not see what is actually happening? War is graphically violent and brutal. That's a fact. Why does the so-called "free press" only let me see what they consider acceptable for me to see?

The answer is complex. The network doesn't want to offend any viewers; and they certainly don't want to offend the powers that be, who have the ability to cut them off from the sources of information; and the powers that be don't want the American people to see graphic images, because they might lose popular support for the war if people are actually exposed to the body-shredding results of our war fever; and the people themselves don't want to see the results of their war fever, because it might put a dent in their opinion of their own superiority.

So those of us who have access to the internet are the only ones who can actually see what's going on or even read about it. Here is one such article from the Canadian Press:

BODIES EVERYWHERE

Only those with functioning consciences even want access to such stories. If you are still looking for the truth, you are one such person. It's a shame there aren't more like you.

BUSH: BEYOND BELIEF

Those of us who have never thought of W as anything but a disgrace have had the feeling, ever since the Republican convention, that the whole world has entered the Twilight Zone. Even before that, the ludicrous Republican vendetta to impeach Bill Clinton seemed like a hallucination: tens of millions of dollars being wasted by Ken Starr in a futile attempt to track down, or coerce, any tidbit of information that he could use to keep hectoring Clinton; the entire nation tied up for a year with pointless, hypocritical Republican grandstanding in Congress; all media outlets chasing their tails for any scrap of scandal to keep their salacious viewers tuned in. And during the whole time, all the polls consistently (including the intentially skewed "polls" manufactured by the right-wing media!) showed that two-thirds to three-quarters of the American people against impeachment!

But since last summer, when the Bushies rolled out their "new product" of an attack on Iraq just in time for the mid-term elections, the Twilight Zone suddenly fell into a black hole and got swallowed up by the Outer Limits. Now daily life seems like wandering aimlessly through a Fellini film. Here is an image of an out-of-control Rumsfeld puppet mouthing off belligerently at someone whose question rubbed him the wrong way. There is an image of several dozen burned-up bodies of Iraqi soldiers heaped on a truck with US soldiers milling around. Here is a close-up of W's loathesome face as he smirks and chortles about destroying his chosen enemies in the pat phrases of pablum patriotism that is all his handlers can trust him to say in public. There is a report on the first hearing of the independent commission investigating 9/11 which is only now getting to work after being fought vociferously by the Bushies until even they couldn't brazen it out any more, and which they are still trying to sabotage by refusing to fund it properly--even though we spent $60+ million on the completely fradulent Whitewater investigations and $30+ million so far on the latest shuttle disater inquiry, neither of which compare with the enormity of the greatest terrorist disaster ever to take place on American soil.

This is utterly, completely surreal. Those of us who live in the real world, and not in the imaginary America of the delusional red-state reactionaries, have been shaking our heads at one another since the 2000 election saying, "Do YOU know what's going on here? This is so incredible I can't believe I'm not dreaming. Not a day goes by without public displays of contempt from the Bushies for every single American value and for the entire Constitution. And yet it keeps happening! Can it be that we few are the only ones who feel this way?"

No, my friends, we are not the only ones and we are not few. The explanations are not hard to find. Here is how Robert Kuttner puts it all together:

Robert Kuttner: How Bush Gets Away with it

We must resist the propaganda of the right that is pressuring us to believe that we are in the minority. Don't believe the media reports that show one anti-war rally being countered by one pro-war rally: the numbers of spontaneous anti-war ralliers out distances by factors of ten the numbers of drummed-up pro-war ralliers who are brought out by right-wing radio hosts. Don't believe the so-called polls showing massive support for Bush's war: they are conducted with small samples, using loaded questions, and almost always aiming at near 50-50 participation from Republicans and Democrats, which overrepresents conservatives and skews the results massively, because Republicans are 95% in favor of the war and Democrats are only 60% against the war. Simply put: do not trust the mainstream media or a single word coming from the mouths of Bush administration officials. Even if they happen to be telling the odd bit of truth, you can be sure that it is being used to deceive you into thinking that your perfectly accurate sense of unreality is not shared by the majority of your fellow citizens.

That is the great lie that keeps this all going. As soon as the media-sustained illusory soap bubble of a large conservative movement in America bursts, reality will come rushing back to fill up the void. The Bushies and their ilk will be swept away by the inrush, and the rest of us will finally be able to patch up the wounds caused by the evil intentions of the Bush cadre; we will finally be able to remake the world according to real values of right, and justice, and intelligence that are eclipsed right now, as we spin vertinaginously in a Twilight Zone, wrapped in the Outer Limits, and hopelessly adrift in the deep, dark blackness of Bush's truly patholigical, religio-narcissistic delusion.