“Some people in this chamber love the Constitution more than they love the safety of this nation. We should all send President bush a letter thanking him for protecting us.” That’s Sen. Sessions today in the FISA debate. (Thanks to Rick Fisk.) He means: some people love freedom more than the state which attacks it, and let’s all thank the Leader for taking away our freedom for our own good.

Andrew Sullivan: “After a rocky start, [Rudy] seems the strongest GOP candidate right now. The South will forgive Rudy’s personal foibles if they are accompanied by relentless, polarizing belligerence against enemies at home and abroad. Christianity may be about peace, but Christianism is about war – a culture war against the enemy. Rudy will shift that fight in the Malkin direction – toward foreign enemies and what many on the right will see as their treasonous allies at home.”

When I was a boy, I read and loved Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here (1935). Tom Cleaver reminds me of one line from the novel: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.”

When did Republican conservatives start to identify state and nation, so that when they say America, they mean the federal government? That is what Bush always means, of course. When he trumpets the generosity of America, he is talking about money the feds have taken by force from Americans, and will now, for imperial political reasons, give to other governments. One of the worst Bushian expansions of the state has been his faith-based welfare, whereby he incorporates Christian charities within the federal ambit. Now he seeks to put all the vast private charity for the tsunami victims under the federal … Continue reading Red-State Fascism