Wednesday, May 02, 2007

I Know It's Been Said Before, But...

Glenn Greenwald on Harvey Mansfield's plea for establishing "One Man Rule":

I just want to add one related point here. Much of the intense dissatisfaction I have with the American media arises out of the fact that these extraordinary developments -- the dominant political movement advocating lawlessness and tyranny out in the open in The Wall St. Journal and Weekly Standard -- receive almost no attention.

While the Bush administration expressly adopts these theories to detain American citizens without charges, engage in domestic surveillance on Americans in clear violation of the laws we enacted to limit that power, and asserts a general right to disregard laws which interfere with the President's will, our media still barely discusses those issues.

They write about John Edwards' haircut and John Kerry's windsurfing and which political consultant has whispered what gossip to them about some painfully petty matter, but the extraordinary fact that our nation's dominant political movement is openly advocating the most radical theories of tyranny -- that "liberties are dangerous and law does not apply" -- is barely noticed by our most prestigious and self-loving national journalists. Merely to take note of that failure is to demonstrate how profoundly dysfunctional our political press is.

And Kevin Drum finds NRO's Thomas Sowell pining for a military coup--here:

BANANA REPUBLICANISM, CONT'D....Quote of the day, from Thomas Sowell:

When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can't help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup.


Now that's a comforting, conservative thought, isn't it? I wonder what Buckley thinks of NRO publishing stuff like this?


(And in case you're wondering, there's no further context. That's the whole quote. It's one bullet point in a long series of dyspeptic observations about how liberals have ruined the country.)

1 comment:

Alexander Carpenter said...

Glad that you posted on this. I couldn't believe Mansfield's comments.

This is the comment I left for Greenwald:

Back to the 1700s

Excellent points Glenn and good to note that this is rooted in Mansfield's Machiavelli scholarship. That Prince-informed thinking justified European authoritarian governments during the 17th and 18th century. Louis the XVI was the embodiment.

Mansfield's arguments are nothing new, merely the articulation of exactly what the American revolutionaries fought against. In fact, Mansfield would be a great justifier for George III.