The Thoughts of a "Real" Conservative

Paul Craig Roberts is a conservative. He 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. I have covered a couple of his commentaries over at MEJ recently and I think what he has to say is insightful and important. The two articles are:

• Virtuous Violence Is Upon Us

and


• Whatever Happened to Conservatives?

The left has been comparing the administration of George W. Bush to Hitler and the Nazis for some time but now in Whatever Happened to Conservatives? a conservative makes the analogy.

Today it is liberals, not conservatives, who endeavor to defend civil liberties from the state. Conservatives have been won around to the old liberal view that as long as government power is in their hands, there is no reason to fear it or to limit it. Thus, the Patriot Act, which permits government to suspend a person's civil liberty by calling him a terrorist with or without proof.
Thus, preemptive war, which permits the President to invade other countries based on unverified assertions.

There is nothing conservative about these positions. To label them conservative is to make the same error as labeling the 1930s German Brownshirts conservative.

American liberals called the Brownshirts "conservative," because the Brownshirts were obviously not liberal. They were ignorant, violent, delusional, and they worshipped a man of no known distinction. Brownshirts' delusions were protected by an emotional force field. Adulation of power and force prevented Brownshirts from recognizing implications for their country of their reckless doctrines.

Like Brownshirts, the new conservatives take personally any criticism of their leader and his policies. To be a critic is to be an enemy. I went overnight from being an object of conservative adulation to one of derision when I wrote that the US invasion of Iraq was a "strategic blunder."

I suggest you go to the above links and read both articles. What Paul Craig Roberts has to say rings true and describes the threat of the Bush theocons much better than anyone on the left has been able to do.