The Patriotic Cliff

Since the Bush Administration began its offensive on all things good and decent, they have focused on one ideology as the root of all evil: liberalism. Liberalism has been blamed for all things from terrorism to a lack of moral values. The idea that the government can do nothing but evil has been replaced by the mantra that everything outside of national security is an expendable job, best left to private companies. While they have suggested that national security can be done better by the private sector, the government should do it better, and they should do it more. The recently awakened press has realized that the government has been spying on regular Americans under the guise of national security. Furthermore, the government has been using secret 'black sites' to detain and torture suspected terrorists to sensitive to relegate to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. While Bush says "We do not torture", there are new allegations of abuse by U.S. soldiers that add on to the list of non-standard abusive techniques used by the U.S. from Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib to Afghanistan (and the alleged CIA 'black sites'). While similar techniques are used in many locations, efforts to connect the dots are labeled as conspiratorial. Even as efforts to uncover the similarities and oversight of non-military commanders are unfurled, such as Janis Karpinski's latest book about her time spent at Abu Ghraib, the military decries any unifying link (ignoring the Bybee Memo, which authorized interrogation techniques disallowed under the Geneva Conventions). Liberalism is blamed for criticizing these moves. It is causing, as the right-wingers describe it, the decay of the social fabric at home, undermining the war on terrorism and even supporting the terrorists. If the conservatives are understood at face value, there is a divide at the center-right between those who are patriotic and those who are treasonous. There is a moral cliff whereby anyone who criticizes the neo-con agenda for remaking the Middle East in the "American" way is a terrorist sympathizer. The cliff divides those who support the historical legacy of America and those who are allied with its enemies. Anyone left of Susan Collins, the moderate Republican Senator from Maine (and I doubt she is in the goodwill list of the main segment of the Republican Party) is a terrorist sympathizer. However, this is not the American way, at least as theorized by the Founders. The founders of this American Republic supported and encouraged dissent and opposed limits on the oppositions freedom to dissent and put forward limits on the majority's power into the Constitution and the rules of Congress. Republicans decrying the Democrats move into a secret session the other day was not a "stunt", it was a minority part using Senatorial rules to force debate on an issue the majority party would not address. In the same way as a fillibuster is not a procedure against the rules of the Senate, the move to secret session was not a grandstanding move by the Democrats to gain attention. In the two party system in which we live (due to the rules of the electoral college), the move into secret session and the fillibuster are techniques enshrined as legitimate in Senate procedure that can allow a minority to bring to the attention of the majority issues that would otherwise be ignored. It is a defense against the facism which seems to be the Republicans' dream. With one party controlling the Congress and the Executive Branch (and having the largest number of sitting appointees in the Judicial Branch), it is the duty of the Democrats to do everything they can to have an opposing voice heard, whether you agree with it or not. Anything else would be a tyranny of the majority.