The Constitution: Sic Transit Gloria

You may have noticed that one of my sacred cows, and I think quite justifiably, is the U.S. Constitution. I resent attacks on it as much -- or maybe more -- than I resent attacks against myself. When all else is said and done, it's the Constitution -- and not just the Bill of Rights, but the whole thing that lays out how the system is to work -- that makes this country possible.

Thus is should be obvious that my contempt for George W. Bush and the thugs in his administration stems not from his stupidity, arrogance and incompetence, but from his own contempt for the American system. I've noted in a number of posts over the years the erosion of that foundation by this administration. I'm not alone -- Digby, David Neiwert, Glenn Greenwald, Jack Balkin and his crew, have all done solid work documenting the trends. The commentators on the right -- vermin such as Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Donald Wildmon, James Dobson, Fred Phelps, and their fellow-travelers and hangers-on -- don't seem to worry about the Constitution so much, except as an impediment to their agenda. They don't really believe in the American system.

I've noticed a couple of major essays on this topic lately. Here's one by Digby that deserves a read. Charlie Savage also has some comments at TPM Cafe. (And here are his previous posts on the topic.)

Take the time to read these. They're important.

Update:

This is relevant: we've been complicit in allowing these assaults on what America means, and the single most effective weapon that the right wing has used has been "security." This post by Auguste at Pandagon summarizes the whole syndrome fairly neatly:

I don’t know why I didn’t stop. I mean, I do, superficially. Picking up hitchhikers is risky. Not so much safety-wise; I can pretty much take care of myself and it’s a busy freeway with a lot of potential stopping places. But it’s risky in another way, in that way that opening up one’s personal bubble is risky. Would he be an annoying companion? Is he on the lam? Will he offer me crack-laced marijuana, or meth, or whatever it is the cool kids are smoking these days? Will I be uncomfortable?

I think that last is the reason I didn’t stop. Which is funny, since I’m rarely actually comfortable. I mean, please, compared to the rest of the world, and compared to many sections of American society, I’m so comfortable I might as well be landed gentry. My car runs most of the time, and I have a backup when it doesn’t. I don’t punch a time clock or work my fingers to the literal bone. There’s food in the pantry, and extra. But somehow, I’m still neurotic, still fearful. I’m so neurotic that I’ve somehow decided that helping someone get from point A to point B, something I used to do as a matter of course, was just too inconvenient, too uncomfortable.

In that few minutes following my refusal, I suddenly saw laid out in front of me the entire vista of the “security first” mindset. I saw a flow chart which led from my extremely venial sin to the absolute supremacy of American security above all other considerations, including the security of what America really means. I never actually drank the Kool-Aid, mind you, but I saw where the sugar and the red powder really come from. American freedoms are shirtless, dreadlocked hitchhikers; I can safely ignore them because they’ll still get where they’re going. They don’t need it to be me that gets them there, and good, because they might make me uncomfortable. I’ve got mine, as meager in some ways as that can feel.

The idea that there's only so much to go around of intangibles like freedoms and rights is one mantra Republicans have been chanting from the time that they began to morph into the party of autocracy. We can see it now in the form of Black ministers and politicians who bristle at the idea that gays might deserve civil rights (after all, they've got theirs), as though they had a trademark on the phrase, or "Christians" who are convinced that granting freedom of religion to anyone else infringes on their inalienable right to be obnoxious assholes.

And the rest of us pretty much let them get away with it. Well, maybe not all of us. It mostly seems to be the bleeding-heart liberals who sit there telling us we have to understand where the neofascists are coming from. Y'know what? I don't care where they're coming from. It's enough for me that the positions they're espousing are repellent.

By the same token, administration assertions that the president needs more power and that Congress must not "interfere" with his decisions or his ability to make them are so much bullshit. That's Congress' job, just as the job of the courts is to overturn laws that cannot be reconciled with the Constitution. (Have I mentioned how much the right wing hates the idea of an independent judiciary?) And that's in the Constitution.

And we sit here and smile ruefully at how ludicrous those people are. In the meantime, we have the Gonzales Justice Department, which is poised to keep handing elections to right-wing exremists until someone manages to pull off mass firings of Bush's political hacks. We have the most corrupt and incompetent government in living memory with only one item on its agenda: gut the Constitution.