Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson grows uncomfortable with the tone on the right:
Questioning the legitimacy of our government is the poisoning of patriotism. It is offensive for the same reasons it was offensive when elements of the left, in the 1960s and 1970s, talked of the American “regime.” Because it distorts the United States into something unrecognizable in order to advance a partisan ideology. Because this is still the “last best hope of earth,” not a police state. Because Americans have fought and died for this country, and to turn on it in this way is noxious. It is dishonest. And it is dishonorable.
He’s responding to people like Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and Rand and Ron Paul. It’s true that rather extreme things are being said about the tyranny of the federal government in light of recent revelations about the IRS and the NSA, but demonizing the federal government has been at the core of the conservative movement ever since the New Deal. I’ve always thought that conservatives “turned on this country” in a noxious, dishonest, and dishonorable way. Gerson never particularly cared until the base of the party started attacking the Intelligence Community.
Ah, another member of the Frankenstein family, finds out that he can’t control the monster he helped create.
Hey, asshat, where were you when folks on your side of the aisle were calling people like me and the folks on our side, ‘treasonous traitors,’ when your “Young Churchill,” W, was President?
Or that we wanted America to lose, because we hate America.
Ring a bell, asshat?
No, that wasn’t noxious.
No, that wasn’t dishonest.
And no, that wasn’t at all dishonorable.
Why don’t you go and do the anatomically impossible to yourself, Mr. Gerson – or die, trying.
I totally agree with c u n d Gulag. They only care if their crap is hurting THEM.
I remember when the Republican controlled House passed a bill condemning a BLOG that said Bush was being kinda Nazi-like for ignoring the FISA court to spy on people. Now, it’s NAZI, NAZI, NAZI all day every day and people like Gerson don’t give a damn.
Well, he does give a damn. He’s just late to the party.
He gives a damn only in the most self-serving of ways.
Yeah, not a Gerson fan myself, either, as I find him (ob)noxious.
This is what is so infuriating (okay, among many other things) about these Republican spin-offs: they don’t want Government in any way, shape, or form, but they champion the Constitution, which spells everything out. But they don’t want the Constitution for EVERYONE, just white Christians. Equality isn’t equal for eveyone, y’see, not those poor folks who refuse to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, or the “minorities” who aren’t REALLY True Americans…
It’s gotten to such a ridiculous point now, where they want to strip women of their reproductive rights, blacks of their voting rights, immigrants of their citizenships, gays of their human rights, and just about everyone else of their right to the pursuit of happiness, it’s not even a democratic country at all. They want it all, their way, and they will lie, cheat, and gerrymander their way to get it.
It’s not enought that they let W run the country into the ground, but now they want to scorch it so no one can hope to make things work.
I hate that.
When the minority party holds the majority party hostage. Its no longer a Democracy. I really hate these people. We are being bullied at every turn from judges to guns to a budget. They used their Tea Party brown shirts to intimidate congress by walking around with assault rifles during the Affordable Care Act debate. The Repuglican party in its present form is a bunch of angry idiots. No plans only hate and self-interest occupy their thoughts.
I’m not saying 51% should get 100% of the voice.
I’m saying they should get 51%.
It would be nice.
1850. Or 1861 to be sure.
1787, really. At that time the conservatives were insisting that the Articles of Confederation were just fine the way they were and there was no need for a convention of the states to discuss possible revisions.
I think the 12 years between the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the ratification of the Constitution are a part of the problem. The Declaration of Independence united everybody, but the debates over the Constitution divided them. The attitude of a lot of Americans was that they hadn’t fought and suffered so much to throw off one distant, meddling government just so they could set up another one.
Yes indeed. We keep thinking South Carolina’s refighting the Civil War, but they’re really fighting the Constitution. Confused by the fact that conservatives use the term “federalism” to mean “anti-federalism”.
“remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.”