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Brownshirts in Our Midst
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Twan
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Apr 16, 2007 22:10 PDT
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The Party of Brownshirts
By Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17541.htm
04/16/07 "ICH" -- -- Neoconservatives have turned the Republican Party
into a Brownshirt Party.
Look at the evidence. While real patriots flee the party, the remaining
supporters cling to power by asserting dictatorial dominance for
President Bush. The Republican Attorney General denies that the US
Constitution provides habeas corpus protection to American citizens.
Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, Republican candidates for the 2008
presidential campaign, believe the president has the power to imprison
US citizens indefinitely without warrants or trials. The “conservative”
Federalist Society favors concentrating more power in the executive.
Neoconservative ideologues claim the right to impose American hegemony
over all others--especially over Muslims.
All of these Republican tyrants and budding tyrants claim to be
protecting liberty and democracy.
Polls show that the percentage of Americans who tilt Republican has
declined to 35 percent. Republican recruits are refusing to run for
Congress. Ken Mehlman, until recently the party’s chairman, says many
voters have lost confidence in Republicans. To win back people’s
confidence, Mehlman says the party will have to become less reliant on
white males and expand its support among Hispanics and blacks.
Decency and intelligence have departed Republican ranks. The party’s
shrunken base consists of ignorant and fearful people who believe Muslim
jihadists are going to murder them in their beds, rapture evangelicals
who believe that war in the Middle East is the prelude to their being
wafted up to heaven, the military-security complex reveling in power and
fortune, and resentful and frustrated people who can freely vent their
anger and hate on “terrorists.”
This collection of fear, delusion, greed, and resentment comprises the
30 percent of Americans who constitute Bush’s base. The Republican
Party has made itself so unattractive that Democrats believe that it is
now possible for a woman or a black to win the presidency.
The Republican Party lost its majority for the following reasons:
Greedy transnational corporations offshored US manufacturing jobs and
destroyed the hopes and livelihoods of blue-collar Reagan Democrats.
The gains from offshoring are diffused, but the costs are concentrated.
The same greedy and short-sighted corporations have spent the first
years of the 21st century destroying the prospects of American middle
class university graduates by offshoring jobs in professional services
and by importing foreigners on work visas who work for less.
Neoconservatives captured conservative philanthropies, cut off funding
to true conservatives, and used the captured conservative foundations to
entrench themselves as advisors to the Republican party. The same
neoconsertives that Reagan fired as a result of the Iran-Contra scandal
occupy important policy positions in the Bush administration and
dominate the National Security Council.
Republican “law and order” apathy to civil liberties easily transferred
to the “war on terror.” Republicans regard civil liberties as
protective devices for criminals and terrorists. Republicans mistakenly
believe that the law can be cut down selectively so that only certain
despised groups are deprived of its protection.
The Bush administration lied to the American people and invaded two
countries on false pretenses for indefensible reasons that the
administration has never acknowledged. The war has had catastrophic
consequences that are now apparent to a majority of Americans, but the
Republican Party still supports the continuation of the war.
The Bush administration has destroyed American prestige and moral aura
with torture scandals and disregard for Iraqi, Afghani, Palestinian and
Lebanese civilian lives.
The Bush administration’s budget and trade deficits have undermined the
dollar. The Bush administration is calling for currency realignments
that will lower the real incomes of import-dependent Americans.
The Bush administration’s determination to exercise American hegemony
through warfare, and its assaults on civil liberties, the separation of
powers, American prestige and on good American jobs and the value of
the dollar have destroyed the party’s support.
America’s virtue is its Constitution. An administration that attacks the
Constitution attacks America’s virtue. The true dangers that Americans
face come from George W. Bush and Richard Cheney and their
neoconservative Brownshirt Party.
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Paul Craig Roberts wrote the Kemp-Roth bill and was Assistant Secretary
of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of
the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of
National Review. He is author or coauthor of eight books, including The
Supply-Side Revolution (Harvard University Press). He has held numerous
academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair in Political
Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown
University and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford
University. He has contributed to numerous scholarly journals and
testified before Congress on 30 occasions. He has been awarded the U.S.
Treasury's Meritorious Service Award and the French Legion of Honor. He
was a reviewer for the Journal of Political Economy under editor Robert
Mundell.
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