Deconstructing Dennis

Last week, my dad forwarded me an email from a right-wing friend of his featuring a link to this video of conservative pundit Dennis Prager speaking at some event at the University of Denver.  He wanted to know my take on what Prager was saying.  So I watched it and replied thusly:

Well, I watched the clip, and I can’t say that I’m surprised.  He offered an articulate, if disturbing, statement of the conservative/authoritarian view of the country and the world.  He explicitly identifies himself as a paleoconservative (and also perhaps a Palin-oconservative), which is not a Republican archaeologist, but someone who believes in the (mythical) purity of pre-modern life, and seeks to reshape society back into that mold (or is it a corset?).  He blames our current problems on “European professors” who came to US universities “a hundred years ago”, and the foreign, dare I say, French, ideas that they brought with them.  Now that I think about it, he’s fighting the royalist/aristocratic  position in the French Revolution: against the separation of church and state, and in favor of the concept of a (divinely mandated) hierarchy of inequality.  He even goes farther back than that: with his statement that governments that enact policies that benefit their citizens and bring them happiness are immoral, he echoes mainstream medieval thought going all the way back to Augustine in late antiquity, that human happiness is impossible and that trying to bring it about in this world is a sinful deviation from the true path.  He believes that early America somehow embodies this medieval ideal, never minding all the European Enlightenment ideas written into the Declaration and Constitution.  On this illusory basis lies his concept of American Exceptionalism: because we, or at least Republicans, are on the true path, all that we, conservatives, do is inherently good.  So thus the Iraq war was not a war of criminal aggression for oil, strategic position, genocide, profit, and the frail ego of a spoiled alcoholic brat trying to be better than his father, it was about “fighting evil”.  It follows then, that if the US is uniquely good, then everyone else is bad.  He predictably beats up on a number of foreign countries, as well as presenting a false duality between the US and the UN.  In a distorted reflection of Bush’s “you’re either with us or against us” statement, he implies that the only choices available in the world are the US and UN, when there are quite a variety of political, social, and economic orientations from which to choose.  

All in all, this is pretty typical far-right stuff, some of which can be confronted or rebutted on a factual basis, but the heart of which is metaphysical.  Is a modern society in which laws explicitly written by human beings apply to all human beings equally, preferable to a pre-modern society with a legal hierarchy of privilege in which the law, based on arbitrary and unchangeable religious dogma, written by a few elite human beings for the sake of the few elite human beings, applies unevenly by design?  Progressives, heirs of the Enlightenment, would say yes, modern society for all its flaws is better because we control it, and are masters of our own destiny.  Espousal of this view requires a certain tolerance for imperfection and mistakes, as well as the belief that the venture can be successful in improving the lives of humanity from their present state.  Conservatives obviously disagree.  Such happiness as they allow themselves comes from order: obeying strong authority and dominating those weaker than themselves.  To say that these views are incompatible is to say that one should not mix sodium and water, for the inevitable result is a violent conflagration.  And that is where I think people like Mr. Prager are leading us.

Why We Cannot Have The Future We Want Until We Deal With The Past We Have

Dear President (Elect) Obama,

I am writing to you regarding the importance of investigating, exposing, and likely prosecuting former officials of the Bush administration at all levels. You have stated that you want to look forward to the future and create a new, open, and accountable government rather than dwelling on the darkness of the past. My point is that in order to create that bright hopeful future and make it last, we have to act decisively now to prevent the past from repeating itself in the future, which it is wont to do if we refuse to learn its lessons.

Nearly forty years ago, President Richard Nixon was brought down by the Watergate scandal. The picture that emerged from this and subsequent investigations was of an administration that believed and acted as if it was above the law. Nixon authorized illegal wars (Cambodia, Laos), and authorized massive domestic spying operations (COINTELPRO for example). Yet while he was removed from power, he and most of his cohort never faced legal consequences for their actions. About twenty years ago, high officials in the administration of Ronald Reagan, including George H. W. Bush, covertly subverted the expressed will of Congress by supporting murderous terror squads in Central America and supplying weapons to an enemy of the United States (Iran). And for these treasonous acts, a few wrists were slapped, and the remainder of the perpetrators were allowed to scuttle away to the shadows only to return in 2001 with fewer scruples and inhibitions than before. Nixon is gone, Bush 41 is playing golf, and Bush 43 is desperately trying to polish the turd that is his legacy, but the pattern of the past is clear: sunlight will scatter the cockroaches momentarily, but unless they are stamped out and utterly eradicated, they will come back when darkness falls again. Each Republican administration since Nixon's has been an amplified echo of the previous one. Not only do the roaches come back, they come back smarter, stronger, and more insidious than before.

The lesson that the conservative movement learned from Watergate was that the President really was above the law, and the bigger the crimes, the more traumatic any legal action would be, and the less likely for it to occur. Sadly, they were good students. If we do not teach them a different lesson now, they will be back sooner or later. Our democracy barely survived eight years of George W. Bush, it will not survive the next echo.

In order to accomplish the investigations, indictments, and prosecutions of Bush administration officials, it must be made clear to the American public, and indeed the world, that this is not about politics, but about crime. This is a serious law enforcement matter and should be treated as such. Additionally, using the law-enforcement meme should help you with your "look to the future" message as well: law enforcement is necessarily about the past, as one cannot prosecute crimes until they have been committed. Now that we know they have been committed (both Bush and Cheney have admitted on television that they approved "harsh interrogation techniques" that all civilized societies, including this one (formerly), consider torture), justice demands that they are prosecuted. Please direct your attorney-general to set up an independent counsel with broad, enforceable subpoena power to investigate and and prosecute the terrible crimes of the Bush administration. I and many Americans that feel as I do will thank you, the Constitution (if it could talk) would thank you, and many generations of Americans not yet born will have the opportunity that you and I have had to be born into a society where all are equal under the law.

Crossposted to Change.gov