“Choom Gang” alumnus thinking of overriding states that legalized marijuana use

Here’s what is potentially awesome about conservative criticisms of Benghazi and drone policy. It seems to be generating a serious conversation about the problem of the War on Terror and the notion of perpetual war. Can we start talking about the far reaching consequences of a nation that describes itself as perennially at war. Conservatism has a critique of government as an octopus whose arms can work their way into our very homes, and snatch essential freedoms from us. They deploy this critique in order to oppose nationalized healthcare, progressive income tax rates and the regulation of firearms. The Constitution, they argue, provides critical checks on government power.

Except that, of course, issues of national security historically have demanded the suspension of Constitutonal protections. This did not begin with George Bush, it has been a part of American warfare since the attacks on “Tories” during the American Revolution. But here’s the thing. For most of our history, those suspensions of Constitutional protections were limited to the time of war, wars that had clear beginnings and ends. Now arguably, we’ve been in a state of constant war not since 9/11, but 1947. And before you say that there’s something substantively different about the Cold War, I will remind you just how repressive this nation was towards communism in the forties and fifties. There were strict regulations on cultural content, secondary education, the nation was on a hunt for anything “subversive.”
But nonetheless, we should’ve learned from that period, instead of relieving it now. It shouldn’t take us two decades to get out of this perpetual war space, if this is a society that has truly progressed, why can’t we recognize it?

Except now, conservatives are I guess. Will these critiques of state power and the disbelief in its honesty and automatic “executive privilege” remain once Obama is out of office? I hope so.

libfreeordie on May 22, 2013 at 6:32 PM

The Barack Obama that campaigned on the fatal flaw of the Bush administration was to let actions stray from our ideals–and standard liberal bromides, cannot be the one who says “You know, sometimes you have to drone-strike people.” A 9-11 event can almost justify a swing like that to a sitting president, but there is not much new information flowing to President Obama, other than possibly those that decrease his ignorance about how things really are.

If we can move beyond the concept that Obama is an evil despot focused on destroying the nation, it becomes a lot easier to understand how and why he so quickly abandoned his critiques of the War on Terror once he became head of the U.S. security state. The federal government had *incredible* institutional intertia. This is, of course, why conservatives critique the government’s inability to innovate in comparison to corporate America (though I think those critiques are based in an entirely different private economy than the corporatist/monopolistic one we have now which actively squelches new ways of doing things). So Obama entered into an institution operating with its own incredibly inertia, and frankly, he’s someone who doesn’t seem to have very many clear progressive principles. His whole career he has actually campaigned *against* radicalism and framed himself as a moderate. He ran to the *right* of Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primary on healthcare and national security (remember he argued for a surge in Afghanistan?). He ran against Bobby Rush (and lost) and did so campaigning against the angry identity politics of the past. Obama’s notion of “moving forward” has always included “moving forward” form the beats of leftist radicalism. So a combination of the man’s inherent moderate ideology and belief in “the system” as “fair” all would lend us to think that he would be precisely the President to continue Bush’s foreign policy with few changes. When you look in hindsight, this should have been clear to most people.

But for whatever reason (and I’m not going to diagnose it, lest this thread devolve) the right categorically *refused* to recognize these very basic facts about Barack Obama. You can interrogate why that is. But there’s no question that the belief that Obama is somehow a leftie, pinko commie who wants to rule this country and steal all of our freedoms has led people to imagine (I suppose) that they are subject to some new kind of aggressive attack on their civil liberties. And that’s false. This isn’t new. So my question remains. Will conservatives continue this line of attack against the next head of state or is it simply because they don’t like the man?

libfreeordie on May 22, 2013 at 7:11 PM

Friggin’ modern day Socrates, where are you? On google and wiki-effing-pedia?
oldroy on May 22, 2013 at 8:39 PM

Watching you act a damn fool on this thread……

libfreeordie on May 22, 2013 at 9:19 PM