I don’t think Bill Clinton was hated the way many on the Left _hate_ Bush. In fact, I think a lot of people actually liked him while not caring for what he did or how he handled the office. I’ll grant that there is a significant amount of dislike for Hillary Clinton. But the questionis whether people will dislike her so much, should she be elected, that they will actually be self destructive. Which is the point of the article.

My friend Tom Kratman wrote a book on a future where a Hillaryesque woman becomes President.

It’s called a “State of Disobedience”. The opening is supposed to be from a textbook circa 2097.

As we have seen in the preceding chapter, at no time since 1860 had the United States of America stood as close to civil war as it did a mere eight years after the turn of the century. With unprecedented sharp divisions in political, economic and social philosophy; with a near perfect balance in the electorate, the Congress, and the utterly political Supreme Court; with the growing specter of political failure equating to the levying of criminal charges, conviction and prison, politics – American politics – had become a very dangerous game indeed.

Interesting times.

I’m a liberal. I don’t think that President Bush is stupid or evil. But I (and I believe most other thinking liberals and constitutional conservatives) am saddened and depressed that in pursuing his administration’s goals that he and the people who work for him have felt the need to ignore laws, constitutional restrictions and some of the more abstract ideals that once made me so proud.

These days I am often puzzled by conservatives defense (and the media’s obliviousness to) of actions and policies that once would have roused deafening bi-partisan objection.

We are not a fearful people.

We are a nation that insisted in the face of strong opposition from its allies on formal legal trials for the war criminals of Nazi Germany. Providing lawyers for the accused with evidence documented and presented. These were not show trials. Some were acquitted. Some were sentenced to prison. Some were executed.

This was not a fearful country. This was a proud country unafraid of the light.

This same country has now rejected the right of habeus corpus for any non-citizen it deems an enemy combatant.

What constitutes an enemy combatant? We don’t know. This administration has told us that we don’t have a right to know.

Why is this defended by conservatives?

Men are being held year after year, never being accused, never being told why, never being able to stand up in the bright light of the rule of law and defend themselves.

Is this the country that you grew up in? It’s not the one I remember.

This country now kidnaps citizens of foreign countries and sends them on to other countries for interrogation. What kind of interrogation? We don’t know. We have been told that it is no longer our right to know what is being done in our name.

This does not make me hate Bush. This makes me sad. This brings me to tears when I remember the pride I once felt in my country.

These are the actions of a fearful people – afraid of the light that we have embraced throughout our history.

We now have complicated legal discussions about whether a technique called waterboarding is torture. A technique invented for use by Torquedo in the Spanish Inquisition, used by Pol Pot and declared illegal by our own government when it was discovered it had been used on our soldiers by the Japanese in the Phillipines – evidence of which was later used to convict the Japanese of war crimes.

This administration has said “we don’t torture.” But seems to think that changing the definition is enough to support that strong statement.

Is this the country you grew up in? I didn’t.

These are the actions of a fearful people. These are the actions of fearful country.

We are not a fearful people.

These are only the greatest hits of a long list of instances in which this administration has hid – from demanding telecom amnesty without ever detailing why the companies actions deserve protection even though a court has ruled that all the lawsuits have legal merit and deserve to be heard – to administration members refusing to respond to congressional supoenas and on and on and on.

What is everybody so afraid of? Why is everybody so afraid to vigorously defend and explain their actions?

When did we become a fearful people?

What are we afraid of?

A bearded lunatic hiding in a cave with a makeshift backdrop and a video camera?

This is the person who has the power to turn a mighty nation like ours into a quivering, shaking, secretive mess? This is the person who makes us turn our back on the rule of law and decency? On 300 or so years of a grand experiment that had the audacity to proclaim that every man has rights? A grand experiment that cobbled together people from hundreds of countries by telling them and believing that here we can create a society that rejects the the idea that power or class or religion or country of origin has anything to do with what a man truly is or what a man can become?

Is it him? The Shias? The Shiites? Hezbollah?

Is it possible that this beautiful country whose example has set the standard for human rights and decency – whose devotion to the rule of law and transparency has inspired so many could so quickly cower and reject the very principles that made it great?

Because of the pathetic, deluded Bin-Laden?

We are a better people than that.

The attack on the world trade center was horrific, cowardly and indefensible. But this administration’s actions have not honored the principles that were attacked that day. And that makes me depressed. It does not make me hate.

“….I’m sure you conservatives….”

Notice the use of the plural. If I mean to say that I believe that you, Gaius, behave in a certain way, I’ll say that. I was talking about the behavior of conservatives (again, plural) toward Hillary. No projection needed.

Unfortunately, this irrational, blind hatred leads them to simply oppose ANY and ALL intiatives, actions, policies, etc. of the Bush administration – even if doing so causes them to directly and actively oppose the security and safety of the American People. And they have done so on a remarably consistent basis. They’re like the little kid on the playground yelling “IS NOT!” in the face of obvious contradictory evidence because not doing so would mean they’d have to admit they were wrong. And the liberals, of course, are NEVER wrong (at least not in their own minds).

And, even happier knowing that the progressives will live the rest of their lives acknowledging that they could not destroy President Bush.

I am proud that I voted for President Bush.