The conservative imagination online

By Rod Dreher • January 4, 2012, 9:18 AM

I’ve just been sent a link to the Imaginative Conservative website, something that I’m very glad to see, and pleased to bring to your attention. It’s a Kirkean sort of place. Here’s a piece from last month by Brad Birzer, marking the passing by Congress of the National Defense Reauthorization Act, which, as you know, was subsequently signed into law by Obama. Excerpt:

On the 220th anniversary of the ratification of that most excellent common law document, the Bill of Rights, Congress (as the House had already passed it earlier in the week) agreed to hand over some of the broadest powers to the Executive branch it’s ever given away.

President Obama will sign this into law very quickly, if he hasn’t already done so by the same this is posted. Once he signs it into law, the dreams of every progressive president since Teddy Roosevelt will have been fulfilled. The executive will now be authorized by Congress—against a number of vital constitutional provisions—to detain American citizens accused of terrorism indefinitely and without trial.

There’s been very little public debate about this, and the news reports from the major news outlets yesterday mentioned these wide-sweeping powers only in passing. There’s more than a little hypocrisy in all of this, given the way the press responded to the rather heinous Patriot Act (remember how we were promised that would be a temporary measure) under Bush and the Republicans a decade ago. But, the NDAA is even worse than the Patriot Act, and it’s now clear that the Patriot Act was merely one step in the advance of this move toward extreme centralization.

As I wrote at CatholicVote yesterday, I believe it’s very possible that yesterday or the day (probably today) President Obama signs this into law will be remembered by future historians of western civilization as the “official” day the American republic became an empire, in the way historians now regard the murder of Cicero as the last day of the Roman Republic and the first day of the Roman Empire. I know many readers of TIC already believe we drifted fully into an empire, but we’ll all admit, I think, that we’ve been drifting for a very, very long time. As with Rome, we’ve kept the forms of the republic by destroying the essence of it.

Cranky old Ron Paul, let it be said, is the only presidential candidate talking about this.

14 Responses to The conservative imagination online

Mr. Patrick says:

January 4, 2012 at 9:48 am

Those of us who suffered from “Bush Derangement Syndrome” have already traveled this path of grief for the death of our Republic. With the added sting: that at the time, it was being accomplished by a really popular guy.

But to be honest, killing the Republic happened as soon as Congress handed over to the President the nuclear football. What is the power of indefinite detention next to the power to order the mass suicide of the human race? Obama was no savior, the wheels were set in motion long ago. Just remember that when you vote for any president, you are electing a dictator; there are no acceptable “placeholders”. When you vote, you must choose the prospective dictator whom you trust most to wield the imperial power without blowing us all up.
cfountain72 says:

January 4, 2012 at 9:51 am

“Cranky old Ron Paul, let it be said, is the only presidential candidate talking about this.”

Hate to be repetitive, but a prophet is almost never appreciated in his own time. Obama’s statement reminds me of the scene in Star Wars Epsiode III, where Senator (future Emperor) Palpatine talks about taking the emergency powers reluctantly, but that he’ll return them as soon as possible…

“It is with great reluctance that I have agreed to this calling. I love democracy. I love the Republic. The powers you give me I will lay down when this crisis has been abated! My first act, with this new authority, is to create a Grand Army of the Republic, to counter the increasing threat of the Separatists.”

So, we spend $1 trillion/year on defense, and we still end up losing our rights? How does that work again?

Peace be with you.
texasaggiemom says:

January 4, 2012 at 10:02 am

What does it say about us that the conservatives may have to rely on the ACLU and the Supreme Court to preserve even the most basic of liberties?
http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/president-obama-signs-indefinite-detention-law
brians says:

January 4, 2012 at 10:09 am

Cranky ol’ Ron is also the only candidate who’s called American corporatism what it in fact is. Fascism. Corporations are people, you know.

See Masty’s piece, “The Bill of Reichs” on the same site. Timely for the Ron Paul conversation.
ralston.joe says:

January 4, 2012 at 10:15 am

“Once he signs it into law, the dreams of every progressive president since Teddy Roosevelt will have been fulfilled.”

??????????????????????

The Bush Administration started this practice, although it was not yet signed into law. Remember? Not sure how Bush, Cheney, et al were “progressive”.

Two further points:

1. I am confident that this statute violates both the habeas guarantee in the Constitution as well as the heightened standard of proof for charges of treason in Art. III sec. 3.

2. Now for the Orwellian part: the standing requirement makes it difficult to challenge the constitutionality of the provision, since (absent a specific judicial carveout for cases of government funding of religion) only someone who has suffered an injury in fact can obtain standing to bring suit in the first place. But if the person suffering such an injury in fact has been disappeared by the military and will be detained indefinitely w/o trial or even access to an attorney, how can he file a writ of habeas corpus challenging the constitutionality of the statute that allows his being disappeared? Ta-da! We live in a police state, because of “terrorists” the government has the power to define at its discretion.

Because of this issue I, a reliable liberal, cannot vote for Barack Obama. Although you won’t see me voting for whichever clown emerges at the front of the GOP fail parade. It’s a shame that this is the best one can do in the face of such obvious fascism.
Fr Mark says:

January 4, 2012 at 10:15 am

TIC looks like a promising endeavor – and what a delight to see an article by my former classmate Lee Cheek!

Glory to God for all things!
Noah says:

January 4, 2012 at 10:47 am

I can’t place the Republic-to-Empire transition on a single day or event. Some of the process began in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. If I had to put a year on it, at least, I would nominate 1945. It was then that our elites — and to a lesser, though still broad, extent, the public — fully embraced globalism, massive standing armed forces stationed the world over, the elevation of the executive far above the legislative branch, and endless expansion and centralization of the federal government.
Polichinello says:

January 4, 2012 at 10:52 am

The Bush Administration started this practice, although it was not yet signed into law. Remember? Not sure how Bush, Cheney, et al were “progressive”.

I think the writer is harking back to the early-20th-century progressives, who liked the idea of strong central state managing almost every affair. In that vein, Bush followed a Wilsonian policy against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Really, Wilson would have called him a puss.
ralston.joe says:

January 4, 2012 at 11:24 am

“I think the writer is harking back to the early-20th-century progressives, who liked the idea of strong central state managing almost every affair. In that vein, Bush followed a Wilsonian policy against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Really, Wilson would have called him a puss”

In my opinion, he is taking the all-too-common right wing potshot at liberals (who, it must be noted, often refer to themselves as “progressives” these days since the word “liberal” has been poisoned by a 40 year long conservative smear campaign – the idea that there is an unbroken, coherent, chain of political “progressivism” spanning across about 100 years of US history involving hosts of demographics strains credulity in my view). That potshot is of course defining everything in the world considered bad as “liberal” (or its modern proxy, “progressive”). The corollary is that everything considered good is called “conservative”.

It gets old. And it’s childish. And it detracts from otherwise sound criticism of what is out-and-out fascism from a conservative perspective (something badly needed and sorely lacking from the GOP these days, in my view). That’s all.
Polichinello says:

January 4, 2012 at 12:02 pm

If the writer hadn’t included a reference to Teddy Roosevelt, I’d agree that it’s a cheap shot, but he’s writing from an Old Right perspective, which considers both TR and Woodrow Wilson to be the fons et origo of the contemporary leviathan. Actually, many will go back to Lincoln, and the real purists are still grinding an axe over the Whiskey Rebellion. The writer’s masthead references M.E. Bradford, who was denied at position at the NEH because of his criticisms of Lincoln’s centralizing tendencies.
Polichinello says:

January 4, 2012 at 12:06 pm

Bear in mind that you do have a centralizing strain running through the 20th Century that was often contemptuous of individual liberties. FDR’s National Recovery Act and his internment policies show that he had little problem bring the power of Leviathan to bear on individual citizens, and this was picked up later by LBJ and Nixon’s regulatory expansions. There have been pauses–the 20s obviously, and less so with Eisenhower and Reagan’s administrations–but the tendency has been to concentrate more and more power in the center.
JonF says:

January 4, 2012 at 6:30 pm

American govermment have commited grave sins against the Constitution before, and that did not start with TR and the 20th century. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. Jackson shot the Supreme Court his middle finger when he deported the Cherokees, and Adams, the ink hardly dry on the Bill of Rights, signed a law to criminalize criticism of the administration.

In regards to Rome, the Empire began when Octavian had himself acclaimed Princeps and Imperator. There was nothing unique about Cicero’s murder (done at Mark Antony’s behest, not Octavian’s). Other dictators had drawn up proscription lists of enemies and had them murdered without a shred of judicial process. Julius Caesar was noteworthy for NOT doing that– and he got his death for it because he left his enemies alive and free to plot against him.
cecelia says:

January 4, 2012 at 11:32 pm

I suspect we must rely on the ACLU to save us from this travesty -
Siarlys Jenkins says:

January 5, 2012 at 1:41 am

Did anyone note that President Obama was trying to reduce this sort of provision in the bill, and the Republican congress insisted on handing these unprecedented powers to the man they consider the enemy of all that is good and decent about America???

One suspects they plan on greater use of these powers being made when they get their man in the White House. With luck, the worst provisions will be overturned by an “activist judiciary” or repealed by a “progressive” congress before that happens.