Warning: The following is a fantasy about what could still be ….

Executive privilege is a key tool of the unitary president. If we would just formally legalize “executive privilege” and unitary leadership for all levels of government, life would be so much simpler. For example, none of government leaders would need to raise money for election campaigns and we the people would be rid of studying the issues and the ‘trouble of voting’ because campaigning and elections would no longer be needed. Of course, a few other changes would be required to keep this privileged unitary system (PUS) running.

Full blown PUS means we get rid of two thirds of all government and replace it with a unitary presidency. Who needs a rubber stamp legislature or judges who only support executive policy anyway? Extend PUS from the national level to the local level. All political decisions would be made by our unitary leaders at all levels of government. We could have a unitary national president, unitary state governors, unitary county commissioners, unitary city mayors, and home owners associations with unitary presidents to run all government and community activities as they see fit. And they all would be granted rights of executive privilege.

Imagine Washington, D.C., reduced to the unitary White House and K Street lobbyists occupying the historic offices of our Capitol Building. Add to this the Straussian neocons and support of The Federalist Society who would not only counsel the unitary executive but could curate our national and state museums to help us understand the nobility of the unitary executive and its rightful privileges. Access to our Constitution and Declaration of Independence would be limited to a select few of these consultants. This would help assure a unitary interpretation of these documents in support of the national unitary policy.

Similar changes across our state capitals and all local levels of government and community organizations would be made to carry the unitary policy to all.

Voting would become a relic of history just like the legislature and court system. Why bother voting if there is only one choice? We could just let the corporations pick our leaders. No voting also means no more worrying about election fraud.

Just think of the corporate profits saved by eliminating the need for corporate political contributions. These profits could instead be used to increase corporate executive benefits packages and pay for the lobbyists. After all, don’t they deserve the extra pay in this new system? They are not only paid for directing managers of large corporations, they should also be paid for their sage advice during all those secret meetings with the unitary executive branch of all levels of government. And they are all protected by executive privilege.

To implement these efficiencies and make our daily lives less complicated, a few other changes would be necessary.

In addition to legalizing the unitary executive and executive privilege, all the open meeting laws would have to be nullified. They would no longer be necessary. A unitary executive, by definition is trusted – or else ….

Open meetings were meant to keep the citizens informed so they could vote intelligently, but with voting and election fraud eliminated, who needs to know what the unitary executive and the corporate executive are saying behind closed doors. We all trust they will be fair and we’ve been told by the neocon curators that they were selected by those who know a truth too complicated for others to comprehend.

PUS would need a unitary source of information. The current situation has far too many variables for keeping the unitary governments stable. Also, citizens need to be entertained while the unitary government works aggressively to spread PUS to the rest of the world. This will also help secure our ‘homeland.’ All sources of information and entertainment would be merged into Fox News and other Rupert Murdoch media enterprises.

PUS would need a unitary evangelical religion to support the policies of the unitary governments – no more separation of church and state. Keeping them separate is just too confusing for maintaining a unitary executive.

All local and national law enforcement would be merged with the Justice Department. This would put national policy enforcement under the Attorney General. Combine that with the international policy enforcement through the Joint Chiefs of Staff and we have a unitary approach for battling all enemies – both internal and external. This, of course, works best when combined with executive privilege, secret meetings and no checks and balances by less knowledgeable third parties.

To control the ‘few’ internal enemies, the unitary governments would need to set aside remote sections of the country. They could use portions of the public properties leased out to the oil and gas corporations to ‘house’ these delusional dissidents and enemy combatants. They would be very useful in recovering the oil, natural gas, coal and other resources needed for both reducing the nations dependence on external energy sources and to support its ever expanding ‘international unitary expansion efforts.’

Higher education would be reserved for neocons, corporate leaders, lobbyists, media moguls, enforcement leaders and leaders of the national mega church. This would assure they are making the right decisions for the rest of the nation. It would also comfort the ruled to know they are in such noble educated hands.

Isn’t this just what we need? No more partisan bickering. No more filibustering. No more pork. Just one happy unitary country. In fact, why don’t we just get right to it? Why put it off any longer?

We’ve come a long way since 1994 and the Contract with America. GWB has brought us right up to the edge of this neocon future. Why try and stop it with an election in November. GWB can just declare a national emergency and ‘suspend’ the elections.

Just let it happen. Tell GWB you’re willing to give up your right to vote so he can stay on and finish what he started. But maybe he’s ready to retire and move to a unitary corporate position as a consultant for John McCain.

“Some say” that McCain is willing to provide a brand new Harley motorcycle to the first 1,000 signers of the unitary pledge of allegiance he plans to have developed.

If I made a major decision that I later came to regret because it is costing me much more than I can manage while still living my life of ‘luxury,’ what options do I have. Should I ask strangers to make up the difference so I can continue my comfortable lifestyle? Or should I take a look at my situation, my rationale for the bad decision, my way of life, my other resources, and then take responsibility and make some adjustments?

Most of us would probably take responsibility and work to figure out our own solution. More than that, most of us would probably not have made such a bad decision in the first place. Most of us would have considered the long term risks and decided not to jeopardized the future of our family.

On the other hand, the Bush Administration that hasn’t done as we would have done. Instead, they have made multiple bad decisions (invading Iraq, ignoring New Orleans after Katrina, tax cuts for the rich, unregulated subprime loans, etc.) and are asking other countries (China and Japan) and future generations to pay for their mistakes. Not only have they performed poorly as our leaders, they have actually made themselves, and their rich supporters, richer and more powerful (unitary president, over compensated CEOs, unchecked Blackwater Inc., suspension of habeas corpus, etc.) in the process.

The administration, their small group of avid followers and friendly media moguls actually don’t mind having China and others pay for their expensive mistakes as long as they are getting richer in the process. These rich and powerful know as long as China is willing to loan the US much of what it needs, they can continue to enjoy their 2006 tax cuts. Isn’t it time to take away their tax cuts and make them pay for their mistakes?

If you’re not quite convinced, maybe a little historical perspective on income taxes would help. Take a look at US individual federal income taxes in effect during WWII in the tables below. The rich of the time were taxed at up to 94% of their income over $200,000 in 1945. After inflation, these 1945 dollars become $2,090,800 in 2005 dollars.

If The Greatest Generation supported WWII with higher taxes, shouldn’t those who support the Iraq occupation pay with higher taxes?

(Cross posted at OOIBC.)

In early November, 2007, I wrote, “I believe this nation will only survive as a republic by upholding all the extraordinary and very thoughtful measures our Founding Fathers of the late 1700s established in our Constitution. I also believe, as they did, that, ‘we the people’ are the foundation of the process and that if we fail to do our part, the entire system will devolve into a dictatorship.” This posting expands on that by summarizing the influence of the Federalist Society on GWB’s administration and its promotion of the unitary executive.

The Federalist Society (FS) is an organization that is working to move this nation closer to a dictatorship or at least to a federal government that shifts significant power to the executive branch of government. The quote most often associated with the FS is from Federalist Paper Number 78 by Alexander Hamilton,”It can be of no weight to say that the courts, on the pretense of a repugnancy, may substitute their own pleasure to the constitutional intentions of the legislature…. The courts must declare the sense of the law; and if they should be disposed to exercise WILL instead of JUDGMENT, the consequence would equally be the substitution of their pleasure to that of the legislative body.” In today’s vernacular, Hamilton was concerned about “activist judges.”

What are some of Mr. Hamilton’s other beliefs? Some of these can be glimpsed from what he sought to make part of our Constitution during its creation. Here is a brief summary from Wikipedia:

Early in the Convention he [Hamilton] made a speech proposing what was considered a very monarchical government for the United States …. Based on his interpretation of history, he concluded the ideal form of government had represented all the interest groups, but maintained a hereditary monarch to decide policy. In Hamilton’s opinion, this was impractical in the United States; nevertheless, the country should mimic this form of government as closely as possible. He proposed, therefore, to have a President and elected Senators for life. He was also for the abolition of the state governments. Much later, he stated that his “final opinion” in the Convention was that the President should have a three year term. The notes of the Convention are rather brief; there has been some speculation that he might have also proposed a longer, and more republican, plan.

During the convention, he constructed a draft on the basis of the debates which he did not actually present. This has most of the features of the actual Constitution, down to such details as the three-fifths clause, but not all of them. In his draft, the Senate was to be elected in proportion to population, being two-fifths the size of the House, and the President and Senators were to be elected through complex multi-stage elections, in which chosen electors would elect smaller bodies of electors; they would hold office for life, but were removable for misconduct. The President would have an absolute veto. The Supreme Court was to have immediate jurisdiction over all suits involving the United States, and State governors were to be appointed by the Federal Government.

So, in addition to being concerned about activist judges, Mr. Hamilton also supported a strong executive. An executive not unlike the one we have watched grow with GWB. This strong executive is referred to as the “unitary executive.” Here is a summary of the theory of unitary executive from Wikipedia:

• Creates a hierarchical, unified executive department under the direct control of the President
• Limits to the power of Congress to divest the President of control of the executive branch
• Would put all independent agencies such as the FCC, FTC, SEC, FEC, etc. under the executive branch

This brief summary also included the following statement, “The theory has been associated with conservative legal thought and members of the Federalist Society (FS).”

Add to this strong desire by the FS for a unitary executive the following links between GWB and the Federalist Society:

November 2007 – GWB provides keynote speech at the 25th Anniversary of the Federalist Society
June 2007 – David Addington, chief of staff and former legal counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, asserted that the vice president is exempt from oversight by the Information Security Oversight Office.
May 2007 – Bush moves to institutionalize the unitary executive
November 2006 – Dick Cheney speaks at Federalists Society annual convention.
January 2006 – Samuel Alito, appointed by GWB to replace Sandra Day O’Connor, has been a supporter of the unitary executive for years
April 2007 – Department of Justice list shows membership in Federalist Society may have affected firing of eight U. S. Attorneys by the GWB
September 2005 – Chief Justice John G. Roberts, former member of Federalist Society, appointed by GWB
November 2004 – The then Attorney General John Ashcroft addresses the Federalist Society as a member.
2001 to 2003 – John Yoo, an active member of The Federalist Society, worked with John Ashcroft and developed the Yoo Doctrine or unitary executive theory
2001 to 2007 – GWB uses signing statements to implement the unitary executive

And to this, add a list of FS members and their GWB job titles:

• Spencer Abraham (Secretary of Energy)
• Alex Acosta (Deputy Assistant Attorney General)
• John D. Ashcroft (Attorney General, joined teaching staff at Pat Robertson’s Regent University)
• William Barr (appointed Attorney General by President George H. W. Bush in 1991, advocate for phone companies)
• Bradford Berenson (Associate Counsel to the President)
• Robert H. Bork (Nominated by R. Reagan for Supreme Court in 1987, AEI scholar, helped found FS, fired Archibald Cox – Watergate prosecutor.)
• Ralph Boyd (Assistant Attorney General)
• Jay Bybee (Circuit Judge, U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, 9th C., worked with John Yoo on ignoring Geneva Conventions)
• Linda Chavez (GWB’s first nomination for Secretary of Labor, Fox News Political Analyst, argued that “liberal politics” were aiding terrorism)
• Michael Chertoff (Assistant Attorney General, addressed FS along with Cheney in 2006)
• Jeffrey Clarke (Deputy Assistant Attorney General)
• Paul Clement (Principal Deputy Solicitor General)
• Daniel Collins (Associate Deputy Attorney General)
• R. Ted Cruz (Associate Deputy Attorney General)
• Viet Dinh (Assistant Attorney General)
• John Engler (former Governor of Michigan)
• Noel Francisco (Associate Counsel to the President)
• Sarah Hart (Director, National Institute of Justice)
• Orrin Hatch (Senator, co-chair with Bork on FS Board of Visitors)
• Brian Jones (General Counsel, Education Department)
• Brett Kavanaugh (Associate Counsel to the President)
• William Kristol (Editor and publisher of the political magazine The Weekly Standard, son of Irving Kristol grandfather of the neocons)
• Edwin Meese (Attorney General for R. Reagan, Iran-Contra Affair, Roe v. Wade litmus test for judicial nominees)
• Charles Murray (author of The Bell Curve)
• Gale Norton (Secretary of the Interior, notable for her laissez-faire attitude toward environmental issues)
• Ted Olson (Solicitor General, wife Barbara is founding member of Independent Women’s Forum)
• Thomas Sansonetti (Assistant Attorney General)
• Antonin Scalia (Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court)
• Eugene Scalia (Solicitor, Department of Labor)
• Kenneth Starr (Starr Report led to Clinton impeachment, currently defending Blackwater)
• Larry Thompson (Deputy Attorney General)
• Edward Whelan (former Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General)
• John Yoo (former Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, visiting AEI scholar, supports secret eavesdropping, worked closely with David Addington – Cheney’s chief of staff)

Combine the administration’s FS pro unitary executive lawyers with the neocons from AEI and Center for Security Policy and the 150 lawyers from Pat Robertson’s Regent University and you have all the enabling a dictator needs.

Here is a long list of the right-wing who’s who in GWB’s administration.

The transition from three coequal branches of government to a unitary executive has been progressing at an increasing rate. It may not finalized by GWB, but it could very well happen with the next right-wing authoritarian president.

Dick Cheney and his staff never cease to appall us. Where is this twisted view of our Constitution coming from? How is it that no one else for over 200 years has ever conceived of such perversions?

The following excerpts from Cheney’s Guy, by Chitra Ragavan, might help explain how this has happened and who’s behind it.

The son of a career military official, Addington was born and raised in the nation’s capital [The nations "bad barrel."] ….

Addington began his government career 25 years ago, after graduating summa cum laude from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and with honors from the Duke University Law School. He started out as an assistant general counsel at the CIA and soon moved to Capitol Hill and served as the minority’s counsel and chief counsel on the House intelligence and foreign affairs committees. There, he began his long association with Cheney, then a Wyoming congressman and member of the intelligence panel. Addington and Cheney–who served as President Gerald Ford’s chief of staff–shared the same grim worldview: Watergate, Vietnam, and later, the Iran-contra scandal during President Reagan’s second term had all dangerously eroded the powers of the presidency. “Addington believes that through sloppy lawyering as much as through politics,” says former National Security Council deputy legal adviser Bryan Cunningham, “the executive branch has acquiesced to encroachment of its constitutional authority by Congress.”

A second critical article of faith for Addington has to do with the presidential chain of command. “He believes there should be the shortest possible distance from the president to his cabinet secretaries, and he does not like staffers or coordinating bodies in that chain of command,” says Cunningham, who worked closely with Addington and also was a Clinton administration lawyer.

Addington is a strong adherent of the so-called unitary executive theory, which is cited frequently and prominently in many of Bush’s legislative signing statements. The theory holds that the president is solely in charge of the executive branch [Except for Dick Cheney] and that Congress, therefore, can’t tell him how to carry out his executive functions, whom to pick for what jobs, or through whom he must report to Congress. Executive power, separation of power, a tight chain of command, and protecting the unitary executive–[those became the guide stars of Addington's legal universe.

As the Pentagon general counsel, Addington soon alienated the armed forces' judge advocate generals by authoring a memo ordering the proudly independent corps of career military attorneys to report to the general counsel of each service. "He [Addington] wanted the military services to be not so independent,” says a retired Navy JAG, Rear Adm. Don Guter. “It came under the rubric of civilian control of the military. It’s centralization. It’s control.”

… After the 9/11 attacks, the JAG officers were marginalized from the decision making on military tribunals and detainee treatment policies. They became among President Bush’s most vocal critics within the military.

Win or lose, those who know him say Addington simply outworks his adversaries. Even when lightning caused a fire that nearly destroyed his home, Addington missed just a day of work. His office piled high with paperwork, eschewing a secretary, Addington is impossible to reach by phone, but he E-mails colleagues at all hours of the day and night about urgent government business and, sometimes, his own arcane intellectual pursuits ….

… In a series of letters to David Walker, the comptroller general of the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, Addington argued that neither Congress nor the courts could “intrude into the heart of executive deliberations,” because it would inhibit the “candor” necessary to “effective government.” Addington argued strenuously that no matter what the political or policy outcomes, protecting the information sought by the [energy] task force was the right thing to do. “They gave up short-term political expediency,” Berenson says, “for the larger constitutional principle.” …

After 9/11, there was a small group in control of White House decision making. This group included three lawyers – A. Gonzales, John Yoo and Addington.

Whether or not he became the de facto leader of the group, as some administration officials say, Addington’s involvement made for a formidable team. “You put Addington, Yoo, and Gonzales in a room, and there was a race to see who was tougher than the rest and how expansive they could be with respect to presidential power,” says a former Justice Department official. “If you suggested anything less, you were considered a wimp.” Others say Addington and Flanigan influenced Gonzales, who lacked their national security background.

The administration’s first goal was winning passage of a congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force. …

In an Addington-influenced OLC [Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel] opinion issued shortly after 9/11, Yoo wrote that Congress can’t “place any limits on the president’s determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing, and nature of the response.”

A second critically important issue was what to do with those captured on the field of battle. … The discussions were short-circuited, several former administration officials say, when Flanigan, one of Gonzales’s two top aides, wrested away the group’s work product on military commissions. With Berenson’s and Addington’s assistance, Flanigan wrote a draft order for the White House, based on an OLC memo arguing that the president had the legal authority to authorize military commissions–period.

That led Bush, on November 13, to authorize the secretary of defense to create military commissions to deal with “unlawful enemy combatants.” The Pentagon’s entire corps of JAG officers was kept in the dark, as were Ambassador Prosper, Bellinger, then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and then Secretary of State Colin Powell.

… A draft memorandum, dated Jan. 25, 2002, signed by Gonzales and written, sources say, by Flanigan with Addington’s input, called Yoo’s opinion “definitive.” The war on terrorism, Gonzales extrapolated, is a “new paradigm” that “renders obsolete” the “strict limitations” the Geneva Conventions place on interrogations and “renders quaint” the protections it affords prisoners. …

… In August 2002, the head of OLC, Jay Bybee, signed a memo interpreting the U.S. law prohibiting torture and implementing the U.N. Convention Against Torture. Addington helped shape the Bybee memo, which was authored by Yoo. Once again, the State Department–which has the lead role in monitoring implementation of the treaty–was left out of the discussions.

Bybee, Yoo, and Addington saw the torture statute, unsurprisingly, as an unwarranted infringement on executive-branch power. Their goal was to interpret it as narrowly as possible, and their memo, consequently, explored the outer limits of the interrogation methods the statute allowed. The three lawyers agreed that the president could override or ignore the statute, as needed, to protect national security. …

As with the incarceration and interrogation issues, President Bush’s decision, within days of the 9/11 attacks, authorize the National Security Agency to conduct electronic surveillance inside the United States, without review by the secret Justice Department intelligence court, had David Addington’s handwriting all over it. Bush, Addington and others in the small coterie of conservative administration lawyers argued, had the authority to order the secret surveillance under his constitutional authority as commander in chief and by the authority granted to him by Congress’s use-of-force resolution before the invasion of Afghanistan. …

The article concluded:

As legal scholars continue to examine the government’s 9/11 policies, David Addington’s singular presence looms larger than ever. What is unclear, at this juncture anyway, is how history will regard him: as a legal path setter who devised innovative means to help a president defeat an unconventional enemy or as a dangerous advocate who, in pushing the envelope legally to help prosecute the war on terrorism, set U.S. foreign policy, and America’s image in the world, back by decades. Even his toughest critics in the administration say Addington believes utterly that he is acting in good faith. “He thinks he’s on the side of the angels,” says a former Justice Department official. “And that’s what makes it so scary.”

Now here is the latest from Mr. Addington according to a June 21, 2007, article in Raw Story:

“Your position was that your office ‘does not believe it is included in the definition of ‘agency’ as set forth in the Order’ and ‘does not consider itself an ‘entity within the executive branch’ that comes into the possession of classified information,’” a National Archives official claims Cheney chief of staff David Addington wrote to him.

Contrast that with what Cheney said on July 25, 2001, on ABC’s Nightline concerning his meeting with top executives from the energy task force, “This request that in fact we’re supposed to provide him [member of Congress] with this information with respect to those meetings in the Executive Branch between the Vice President and other individuals strikes me as inappropriate.”

President Bush has been taking exception to our laws by using signing statements and to our Constitution by eliminating part of it. All the while, the Republican Congress has been sparing the rod and spoiling the child and letting him get away with anything.

But finally, the majority of voters have taken a stand and told them all, “Enough!”

Does this mean the Administration or its authoritarian leaders are going to listen to the voters or that voters were only concerned about one issue? Not likely.

ARE THEY REALLY LISTENING TO US?
The 2006 midterm election was an important first step in fixing all the things wrong with our broken government. However, there is a segment of the population that has other plans they want to implement and they are very goal-oriented and determined. John Dean provides the following quote from Bob Altemeyer on the right-wing authoritarian (RWA) followers that helped elect our current authoritarian social dominators (underline added for emphasis): “Probably about 20 to 25 percent of the adult American population is so right-wing authoritarian, so scared, so self-righteous, so ill-informed, and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds. They would march America into a dictatorship [single-party state] and probably feel that things had improved as a result. … And they are so submissive to their leaders that they will believe and do virtually anything they are told. They are not going to let up and they are not going away.” Here is how the Washington Post described the election results, “With fewer moderates, Republicans are less likely to feel pressure to bow to the wishes of moderates”

Since the RWAs cannot let go and since their social dominator leaders still need them to support their common authoritarian agenda – a single-party state, the Administration is only pretending to respond to the election. The President has done this by finally allowing Don Rumsfeld to take another bullet for the Administration. The same tactic was used the last time the Administration was in trouble. Then they sacrificed I. Scooter Libby for the Valerie Plame leak.

As was stated in John Dean’s Conservatives Without Conscience, “… All of the key staff people close to Bush and Cheney have very long relationships with them. These have been mutually beneficial relationships. Stated differently, Bush and Cheney are protected by staff who will take a bullet for them. That, I believe, is precisely what Scotter Libby is doing for Dick Cheney regarding the Valerie Plame leak, and if he goes down, he knows that Cheney will take care of him …. ”

So, the President and others are blaming the loss of the election on one issue – Iraq, and are therefore providing a quick fix to satisfy our instant gratification needs. In the meantime, they are ignoring the rest of the message behind the election.

WHAT ELSE NEEDS ATTENTION?
Fixing all that is broken in our government is not just about firing Rumsfeld and pretending to ask for outside advice on the mess in Iraq.

It’s about replacing preemptive attacks on non-democratic, possibly threatening, countries with the promotion of peace between warring middle eastern factions so they can choose a future that won’t foster internal conflict and terrorism.

It’s about replacing fear mongering with sanity and the cooperation of citizens and local, state, national and international intelligence organizations to protect us from terrorism.

It’s about replacing tax cuts for the rich, government spending beyond its means, and robbing the future of our children with paying our own way, bettering the middle class and reducing our dependency on international financing to fund our national debt.

It’s about stopping the redacting of the Constitution, i.e., eliminating habeas corpus, and modernizing our existing laws through cooperation between the Administration and Congress.

It’s about keeping prayer, and probably eventually Bible study, out of the public schools and maintaining our right to choose any religion or no religion at all and keeping religion in the appropriate religious facility.

It’s about keeping only Christian icons out of government facilities and promoting religious tolerance.

It’s about replacing efforts to ban flag burning or intervening in family life and death decisions with non-nationalistic solutions to real national problems like health care.

It’s about leaving decisions on abortion or the right to life to the rule of law – not the rule of religious beliefs.

It’s about an independent judiciary that follows the rule of law not the rule of the mob.

Its about replacing those who violate their oath of office and ignore laws passed by Congress with those who will “protect and defend” the rules laid out in or derived from our Constitution.

It’s about undoing the party-oriented structure of the House of Representatives created by Newt Gingritch and returning it to the pre-1994 seniority oriented structure.

It’s about keeping an eye on our government representatives and not letting them manipulate us with the issue of the hour.

It’s about keeping control of our nation’s future out of the hands of an authoritarian minority and reinstating bipartisan efforts to do what’s best for the whole of the country.

WHAT DO OTHERS THINK?
Some are more optimistic about this mid-term election. For example, Paul Krugman’s article in the New York Times, put it this way:

… I do hope and believe that this election marks the beginning of the end for the conservative movement that has taken over the Republican Party.

But we may be seeing the downfall of movement conservatism [authoritarianism] — the potent alliance of wealthy individuals, corporate interests and the religious right that took shape in the 1960s and 1970s.

Similarly, Jacob Weisberg’s article at Slate.com is optimistic:

Karl Rove’s dream is dying. This is happening for reasons that have nothing to do with Valerie Plame.

Rove’s dream was to reshape American politics by creating a durable Republican majority.

… In Rove’s alliance, the rich provide the cash, and religious conservatives provide the votes.

Notice that both Krugman and Weisberg reference wealth and the religious right as the key to the past successes of the Republican party.

I’m more inclined to agree with George F. Will’s article,

Subsequent elections will reveal whether this election is a harbinger of a new and chronic Republican weakness. For nearly two generations — since the Democratic Party fractured over Vietnam in 1968 and nominated George McGovern in 1972 — the Republican Party has benefitted from a presumption of superior realism regarding the essential presidential competence, national security. Time — actually, 2008 — will tell if Iraq will do the kind of lingering damage to the Republican Party that was done by the Depression, which made the party suspect for a generation regarding the conduct of domestic policy.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

In Power and Absolute Power – What Concerns Me Most, I expressed my concerns about political power being concentrated into one party, either Democrats or Republicans, “… what is taking us back to the really good ole’ days is that the Republican conservatives are being controlled by the evangelical/fundamentalist Christians who want to replace our democracy with a theocracy.” According to the CIA’s The World Factbook, the only Theocratic Republic currently in existence is Iran. Why would citizens in the U. S. want to emulate this?

In Fool Me Once Shame on You, Fool Me Twice … No, Not This Time, I pointed out how this power is being used to continue the ” ‘massacre’ on our constitution” started by Cheney and Rumsfeld under President Ford and continued with Cheney and Rumsfeld under President Bush. I concluded that article with, “As all this indicates, history is repeating itself. And as it was with President Nixon then, it’s time now for President Bush and the bully duo to go.” In Unitary Presidency, Dysfunctional Congress and Judicial Petitions – Is It Too Late to Stop the Redacting of the Constitution?, I continued the description of this massacre and gradual transition to a new form of government, “How much more of this abuse can our system of government take? Has the damage to our rule of law reached the point of no return? Will the rule of opinion dominate our future?”

A confirmation of this attack is the recent ruling by the U.S. District Court in Detroit that, “the National Security Agency’s program to wiretap the international communications of some Americans without a court warrant violated the Constitution”

In Failed Single Party Nations of the Past – Where Are We Going Now?, I summarized a chapter from an old college political science text about what contributed to the creation of Nazi Germany, “This is some of what happened in Germany and Italy before and during WWII. Could it happen here? Maybe, maybe not. Is there a way to judge if it is or isn’t happening? Maybe, maybe not.”

I have now learned that, based on empirical research data generated since WWII, the answer, according to Bob Altemeyer’s The Authoritarian Specter is, “I’m afraid so.” Professor Altemeyer’s work and the work of many since 1950 and the fall of Nazi Germany, is referenced extensively by John W. Dean in his latest book, CONSERVATIVES WITHOUT CONSCIENCE. Chapter 2 of Mr. Dean’s book deals with psychological aspects of “obedience to authority” and the “thinking and behavior of authoritarian personalities.”

Most of his information on obedience to authority comes from the work of Stanley Milgram. Milgram’s work started in 1961 and the results were published in 1974 under the title of “Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View.”

According to John Dean, “this experiment was designed to test … the willingness of those administering electrical shocks to obey the authority figure.” The result of the experiment was that 65 percent of the ‘teachers’ instructed by an authority figure to shock an unseen ‘student’ for incorrect responses were willing to apply up to a 450 volt shock while ignoring their conscience. In reality no one was hurt, but the ‘teacher’ applying the shock could hear the faked screams of the ‘student’ and would still do as they were instructed.

Ten years before Milgram’s work on obedience without a conscience, a study, The Authoritarian Personality, was started at the University of California in Berkeley. Since that study (which has it’s critics) was completed, the understanding of authoritarianism has been extensively updated and validated with empirical data.

The primary contributor to this refinement is Bob Altemeyer of the University of Manitoba. According to John Dean, Professor Altemeyer “not only confirmed the flaws in the methodology and findings of The Authoritarian Personality, but he set this field of study on new footings, by clarifying the study of authoritarian followers.” Professor Altemeyer has been researching and publishing on the spectrum of authoritarianism since 1981. He has written three books and numerous articles for various professional journals.

According to John Dean, Profession Altemeyer has identified three types of authoritarians: The Followers, The Leaders and the Double Highs. The professor has developed psychological tests to identify individuals as either part of a “submissive crowd” or as a social dominator. Those who score high on both tests he calls double highs.

The Followers, as characterized by Altemeyer in John Dean’s book:

• are “especially submissive to established authority“
• show “general aggressiveness” toward others when such behavior “is perceived to be sanctioned” by established authorities
• are highly compliant with “social conventions” endorsed by society and established authorities

The Leaders are characterized in Dean’s book as scoring high on Altemeyer’s social dominance orientation (SDO) test in:

• dominance
• economic conservatism
• belief in inequality
• amorality
• meaness

Here is a more complete list of the “key definition traits” for authoritarian Leaders and Followers from John Dean’s Conservatives Without Conscience:

There is one last trait that is common to most psychologically aggressive authoritarian types that I did not list above. (Keep in mind that authoritarian is a psychological term not a political one.) Until I read John Dean’s Conservatives Without Conscience I did not understand, as well as I do now, what brought me to doing this blog and creating the posts referenced above. I have always felt more concern for power shifting to the right than when it shifts to the left, and now I know why. Anyone who takes Professor Altemeyer’s psychological authoritarian surveys and scores high as a Follower, Leader, or Double High, usually turns out to also be politically and economically a conservative Republican. This is why Altemeyer refers to one of his surveys the right-wing auhoritarian scale.

I think the authoritarian Followers are of least concern. Take away their enemies and they lose focus. The real problem is with the authoritarian Leaders who keep the fear and manipulation going. So, who are these Leaders that we need to get out of public office before they turn this country upside-down? I will be providing that information in a later postings (Part 1a, Part 1b, Part 2, Part 3). If you are now too worried to wait, I suggest to purchase and read Conservatives Without Conscience.

Can This Authoritarian Future Be Stopped?

This blog began over concerns about where the political powers of this country are taking us. As this blog has grown, my concern grew further as I learned how the two political parties had become more polarized over the last 40 years. Now this polarization and concentration of power is threatening our trilateral form of government. Our constitution is under attack from within by both citizens and politicians. What follows are just the latest attacks on our constitution by those who have only personal beliefs and don’t need facts. I have included references to related postings on this blog and other more recent material.

The most recent example of these believers trying to manipulate the judiciary is brought to us by the Harris County Republican Party. After failing to get a Texas Republican judge to rule in their favor and remove Tom Delay’s name from the ballot for Congressional District 22, they have posted a web petition. They hope to influence a three judge panel reviewing an appeal to the lower court’s ruling by using the collective opinion of this web poll. Never mind what the law says, what counts are the beliefs of polarized voters.

Here’s how the editor for the Houston Chronicle put it, “The credibility of American justice rests on judges’ impartiality, both real and perceived. Attempts to influence the outcome — whether through petitions or briefs filed by elected officials seeking partisan advantage — only damage that credibility.”

In a past article, I summarized another example on the attack of our judiciary by polarized power-crazed believers with no understanding of the law. (The word believers is used here in the general sense, not a religious sense.) Since then Justice O’Connor has warned us of the threat of a dictatorship.

The abuse by the Executive Branch and the bullies behind the President of the legislative branch has been going on since President Bush signed the first “law” to come across his desk. He has added more “signing statements” to Congressional laws than all the presidents that came before him. The total number of presidential signing statements of all previous presidents is 322. President Bush issued at least 435 in his first term.

This practice has become so abusive that Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter is preparing a bill that will allow Congress to sue the President. In addition a blue-ribbon task force from the American Bar Association has declared, “Presidential signing statements that assert President Bush’s authority to disregard or decline to enforce laws adopted by Congress undermine the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers”

As for the dysfunctional legislative branch, I first wrote about its sad state last year, where I said, “Like the attack on the federal judiciary, our basic federalist form of government is under threat from ideologues and their impact on the Supreme Court, the Congress, and our two party system.” Since then, Congressman Duke Cunningham resigned after admitting to accepting $2.4 million to influence our laws and The Delay Principle has trumped national security.

How much more of this abuse can our system of government take? Has the damage to our rule of law reached the point of no return? Will the rule of opinion dominate our future? If it’s not too late, are the elections in November our last chance to push the pendulum back before we all loose our heads, or at least before we are imprisoned for disagreeing with the opinions of those in power.