{"id":2398,"date":"2011-01-05T13:54:34","date_gmt":"2011-01-05T18:54:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=2398"},"modified":"2011-01-06T09:37:41","modified_gmt":"2011-01-06T14:37:41","slug":"why-the-tea-party-should-despise-bush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/05\/why-the-tea-party-should-despise-bush\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Tea Party Should Despise George W. Bush"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Future of Freedom Foundation<\/strong><\/a> posted online today this article from the September issue of Freedom Daily <\/strong><\/a>– (also on Counterpunch<\/strong>)<\/a> <\/p>\n

Why the Tea Party Should Despise George W. Bush<\/strong>
\nby James Bovard<\/p>\n

The Tea Party movement is challenging politicians and political establishments in many parts of this country. Many Tea Party supporters define themselves by their opposition to big government. However, according to an April CBS-New York Times poll, 57 percent of Tea Party supporters approve of George W. Bush. <\/p>\n

It is not surprising that Obama\u2019s abuses would cause some people to wish for his predecessor. However, prudent Americans will not forget George W. Bush\u2019s damage to the Constitution, freedom, the economy, and the political system. <\/p>\n

Political cosmetics pervaded many Bush policies. The No Child Left Behind Act was perhaps his biggest domestic fraud. The act was falsely sold as giving a wide ambit of authority to local school officials. In reality, it empowers the feds to effectively judge and punish local schools for not fulfilling arbitrary guidelines. Many states are \u201cdumbing down\u201d academic standards, using bureaucratic racketeering to avoid harsh federal sanctions. Though the No Child Left Behind Act promised to permit children to escape \u201cpersistently dangerous\u201d schools, most states defined that term to claim that all their schools were safe. As long as people believed that Bush cared about children, it didn\u2019t matter that his education policy was a charade. <\/p>\n

Bush browbeat Congress into enacting the biggest expansion of the welfare state since Lyndon Johnson\u2019s Great Society. The White House blatantly deceived Congress about the cost of a new Medicare prescription drug entitlement, withholding key information that would have guaranteed the defeat of his giveaway. The administration launched a federally financed ad campaign showing a crowd cheering Bush as he signed the new law; federal auditors ruled that the ads were illegal propaganda. <\/p>\n

Vote-buying was the prime motive of many Bush policies. Bush signed the most exorbitant farm bill in history in 2002, bilking taxpayers out of $180 billion to rain benefits on millionaire landowners and other deserving mendicants. Bush repeatedly bragged that his farm bill was \u201cgenerous\u201d \u2014 as if Washington politicians have carte blanche to redistribute Americans\u2019 paychecks to any group they choose. Bush imposed high tariffs on steel imports, wantonly destroying thousands of American manufacturing jobs simply because he wanted to try to snare the endorsement of the United Steel Workers and to boost his reelection chances. <\/p>\n

Some of Bush\u2019s cherished reforms consisted of little more than finding new names for old boondoggles. He sharply boosted foreign aid and created a new program, the Millennium Challenge Account. He denounced traditional foreign aid for bank-rolling corruption. But his \u201cbribes for honesty\u201d program was a bust. The U.S. government continued giving handouts to some of the Third World\u2019s most notorious politician-looters. <\/p>\n

Compassionate conservatism <\/strong><\/p>\n

Bush\u2019s compassionate conservatism schemes \u2014 such as the bloating AmeriCorps \u2014 were little more than velvet wrapping for the iron fist. Compassionate conservatism pretends the state does not raise its money by means of coercion and harsh threats against taxpayers. It presumes that since the government just happens to have so much cash in its coffers, why not do some good deeds with it? Handouts become symbols of generosity rather than acts of redistribution at gunpoint. Compassionate conservatism portrays government as a font of moral greatness, rather than a primary source of corruption, manipulation, and degradation. <\/p>\n

Bush\u2019s compassionate conservatism was little different than Bill Clinton\u2019s perennial portrayals of government as an engine for uplift.Clinton and Bush both profited greatly from prattling about moral issues and making moral appeals, regardless of whether their own policies were responsible or honest. Unfortunately, bosh about virtue and compassion is often sufficient to persuade many voters that a politician is a good man. <\/p>\n

Despite the pervasive \u201ccompassionate\u201d pretensions, Bush\u2019s drug policy relied on wrath and harsh punishment (except for special cases, such as his niece Noelle Bush and talk-show host Rush Limbaugh). John Walters, Bush\u2019s drug czar, demonized drug users in federally funded TV ads, portraying people who buy drugs as terrorist financiers threatening America with complete destruction. Federal drug warriors arrested cancer patients who smoked marijuana to control their chemo-induced nausea, busted doctors who gave suffering patients more pain killers than the DEA approved, and carried out high-profile crackdowns on targets ranging from hemp food makers to comedian Tommy Chong (busted for bong trafficking). <\/p>\n

Bush governed like an elective monarch, entitled to reverence and deference on all issues. Secret Service agents ensured that he rarely viewed opponents of his reign, carefully quarantining protesters in \u201cfree speech zones\u201d far from public view. <\/p>\n

Bush dropped an iron curtain around the federal government. His administration hollowed out the Freedom of Information Act, making it more difficult for citizens to find out about government actions and abuses. He invoked executive privilege to block a congressional investigation into the FBI\u2019s role in mass murder in Boston and in framing innocent men for those murders. (Congressman Dan Burton was the point man in challenging Bush\u2019s coverup of FBI abuses in the Whitey Bulger mafia case dating from 1965.) Federal courts acceded to Bush administration legal claims that authorized the feds to carry out mass secret arrests and suppress all information about the roundup (including the names of those detained, charges, and details on prison beatings). <\/p>\n

Protecting America <\/strong><\/p>\n

After 9\/11, Bush decided that privacy was a luxury Americans could no longer afford. His administration gave itself powers to sweep up people\u2019s email with the FBI\u2019s Carnivore system, unleash FBI agents to conduct surveillance almost anywhere, allow G-men to secretly search people\u2019s homes, bankroll Pentagon research to create hundreds of millions of dossiers on Americans, expand the military\u2019s role in domestic surveillance, and vacuum up personal data to create a federal \u201ccolor code\u201d for every air traveler. The Bush administration defined freedom down, pretending that protection from federal prying was no longer relevant to liberty. <\/p>\n

Bush proudly declared in 2003, \u201cNo president has ever done more for human rights than I have.\u201d In reality, he did more to formally subvert rights than any American president of the modern era. He claimed the right to label people as enemy combatants and thereby nullify all of their legal rights. Once detainees had no rights, there were no limits on how they could be abused \u2014 at least in the eyes of some Justice Department and Pentagon officials. <\/p>\n

At times, Bush appeared determined to force Americans to pay almost any price so that he could be a world savior. He declared in December 2003, \u201cI believe we have a responsibility to promote freedom [abroad] that is as solemn as the responsibility is to protecting [sic] the American people, because the two go hand in hand.\u201d But the Constitution does not grant the president the prerogative to dispose of the lives of American soldiers any place in the world he longs to do a good deed. <\/p>\n

Especially in foreign policy, Bush acted as if he had a mandate from God. He declared that at the time he launched the invasion of Iraq, \u201cI was praying for strength to do the Lord\u2019s will…. In my case, I pray that I be as good a messenger of His will as possible.\u201d Bush\u2019s attitude brings to mind the old quip that \u201ca fanatic is someone who does what God would do if God knew the facts of the matter.\u201d Bush\u2019s personal religious views may have fueled his intolerance and rejection of any evidence that did not support aggression. <\/p>\n

The more arrogant and righteous Bush became about spreading democracy, the more the American republic became a parody of the vision of the Founding Fathers, who did not intend to permit presidents to \u201chock\u201d American rights for foreign conquests. <\/p>\n

The desirability of dictatorship <\/strong><\/p>\n

President Bush commented shortly before 9\/11, \u201cA dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier; there\u2019s no question about it.\u201d He used the same phrase to tout dictatorships as paragons of efficiency a month before taking office. He always seemed oblivious to why dictatorships drag nations to ruin. <\/p>\n

Bush declared in 2002, \u201cI\u2019m the commander \u2014 see, I don\u2019t need to explain…. That\u2019s the interesting thing about being president…. I don\u2019t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.\u201d And his prerogative extended \u2014 at least in his own mind \u2014 to giving marching orders to hundreds of millions of Americans. In an October 29, 2003, speech, he declared, \u201cA president must set great goals worthy of a great nation. We\u2019re a great nation. Therefore, a president must set big goals.\u201d But most Americans were not seeking someone to impose goals upon them. <\/p>\n

More Americans recited the Pledge of Allegiance after Bush was elected \u2014 but fewer Americans seemed concerned about government\u2019s trampling their rights. More Americans had U.S. flag decals on their autos \u2014 but fewer Americans supported the right of people to publicly oppose government policies. At least after 9\/11, more Americans revered the president \u2014 but fewer Americans seemed to recall the Founding Fathers\u2019 warnings about the corrupting nature of political power. <\/p>\n

Perhaps Bush\u2019s most important legacy is his embrace of torture. In a June 2010 speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan, he declared, \u201cYeah, we water-boarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I\u2019d do it again to save lives.\u201d There is no independent evidence that Bush-era torture saved any American lives. <\/p>\n

The fact that a former president can stand up in public and admit that he ordered torture is a sea change for the American republic. (While he was president, Bush consistently denied that the U.S. government engaged in torture.) Torture is not a \u201cbleeding heart\u201d issue; instead, it is merely a question of whether a president will have absolute power. In reality, the Bush administration\u2019s torture policies were simply the most vivid example of its belief that the president was entitled to do as he pleases. Assistant Attorney General Steven Bradbury declared in 2006, \u201cUnder the law of war, the president is always right.\u201d <\/p>\n

Bush and many of his supporters forgot that the Constitution was created by a generation of men who had fought a war against the most powerful government in the world. The Constitution was not made for sunny days and smooth sailing. Instead, it was crafted for hard times, with many provisions for dealing with deadly threats to the nation\u2019s survival. For a president such as Bush to act as if he could no longer be bound by the Constitution is an insult to the Founding Fathers, who survived far harsher tests in their time than America did on and after 9\/11. <\/p>\n

If Tea Party activists are truly devoted to freedom, they must recognize the crimes and abuses of both Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. A little history could do wonders to enlighten the partisanship.
\n+++
\nJames Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy [2006] as well as The Bush Betrayal [2004], Lost Rights [1994] and Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave-Macmillan, September 2003) and serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Future of Freedom Foundation posted online today this article from the September issue of Freedom Daily – (also on Counterpunch) Why the Tea Party Should Despise George W. Bush by James Bovard The Tea Party movement is challenging politicians and political establishments in many parts of this country. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2398"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2402,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2398\/revisions\/2402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}