Enlightenment Watch - April

In a liberal democracy, the government is the people. You may be familiar with this concept from examples such as the times I have written about it or ambient culture, like The People vs. Larry Flynt. The concept of the government and the people being coterminous stems from the Enlightenment philosophers. The ultimate power in any society, according to that view, rests with its people--agents of a state are only using power delegated to them by the people.

In a totalitarian dictatorship, by contrast, the government is the party. You may be familiar with this concept from the examples of the Soviet Union or Mussolini's Italy. The concept of the government and the party being coterminous stems from the legacy of every warlord, despot, and regional strongman in the history of humanity--whatever faction seizes control is the only one with a right to power.

The Bush Administration, Karl Rove, and other Republicans have made it more clear than ever that under their watch, the government of the United States will be coterminous with the Republican Party. The continuing sagas of the US Attorney firing scandal and the suddenly disputed right of habeas corpus, joined by a new scandal at the General Services Administration, all reveal the sad truth of this Republican governing philosophy.

Habeas Corpus
Glenn Greenwald, the blogging jewel in Salon.com's crown, filed a little-reported update in the Republican war on the 800-year-old right this weekend. According to Greenwald, two of three Republican frontrunners for the 2008 nomination are convinced habeas corpus exists. As far as I know, John McCain still supports habeas, but neither Romney nor Giuliani do.

We're not just talking about some contemporary issue like trade deficits or abortion here: habeas corpus is the very foundation of all democracy. The importance of this issue was summed up nicely by that famous bleeding heart hippie liberal Winston Churchill (as quoted by Andrew Sullivan by way of Greenwald):

The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him judgment by his peers for an indefinite period, is in the highest degree odious, and is the foundation of all totalitarian governments whether Nazi or Communist. [emphasis added]

GSA Corruption
It was revealed this month that the General Services Administration, which oversees office supplies and real estate for the federal government, was being directed to help Republican candidates win elections in 2008. The GSA is not the first place you would look for partisanship, especially since using its resources and capabilities for partisan purposes is illegal. But one of Karl Rove's deputies was dispatched to give a slideshow on such strategies this January.

US Attorneys
A typical Republican defense for the firing of the eight US Attorneys is that all US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President, and he may remove them for any or no reason. I don't know of anyone who is disputing that fact. But the Justice Department initially claimed that the USA's were fired for performance reasons, yet it has become obvious that they were removed for political reasons. We probably wouldn't have had a scandal if the Administration had just been up front about that. But, like the best mystery novel detectives, sometimes the best way to solve a case is to wait for the perp to slip up.

"But detective, how did you know I committed the murder?"
"I didn't. You just told me."

The politicized aspect of the US Attorney firings that gets the most attention is the involvement of many of the fired prosecutors in corruption and fraud probes. For example, Carol Lam was fired from her position in Southern California after getting a conviction on Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA) in a defense contracting corruption case. Recently it also became apparent that Lam's ongoing corruption probe was getting close to the Vice President's office. US Attorneys in New Mexico and Washington were allegedly fired for failing to adequately prosecute election fraud, which turned out to mean they didn't manufacture the evidence their superiors wanted to see on Democratic election fraud.

Less attention has been paid to the proposed (and subsequently withdrawn) appointment of Tim Griffin to replace Bud Cummins as US Attorney in Arkansas. You may be thinking, "So what? It's a politically appointed post, why not install a former Karl Rove protégé like Griffin?" It just so happens that Griffin used to be an opposition researcher for the RNC. During that time, Griffin likely committed grave voter fraud felonies himself. More to the point, it would seem like an unlikely coincidence that the Administration wants to give their top opposition researcher subpoena power in the home state of Hillary Clinton, just in time for her presidential candidacy.

As Johnathan Alter summarizes it in this Olbermann clip,

what Rove was trying to do is in jurisdiction by jurisdiction, protect Republicans, go after Democrats, and essentially turn our criminal justice system into what they have in a banana republic [i.e. any totalitarian system].

Conclusion
I should qualify that I don't think most rank and file Republicans are interested in destroying democracy from its very foundations. But the Republicans in power sure seem to be. This means that in this case the opponents of liberalism are probably not accurately described as conservatives. But what, then?

Andrew Sullivan makes a crucial distinction between membership blocs of the Republican party: "If conservatism is about preserving one's own past, fundamentalism is about erasing it and starting afresh." There is no question that things like habeas corpus are part of "one's own past" for most Americans, and the people in power are obviously not interested in "preserving" them. Yet, Bush & Co. also don't seem to be interested in "starting afresh" so much as in recreating the type of despotism that dominated the world prior to 1776.