Posted on 12/29/2002 7:32:01 PM PST by TLBSHOW
Bush Policy's Newest Critics - Conservatives
It's not the left that is sounding some of the harshest criticism against the President's tactics in fighting the war on terrorism, it's many of the nation's most solid Republican conservatives.
So says Michelle Goldberg writing for Salon.com, claiming that "Rock-ribbed" Republican conservatives s are the "newest, most outspoken critics of the war on terrorism and Iraq."
While the administration isn't surprised when it's being assailed by left wingers for what liberals claim are increasingly draconian assaults on civil liberties, it has been surprised by a similar chorus from more and more members of the traditional right wing.
Goldberg cites such prominent conservatives as former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr who has joined liberal American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as a consultant - and former House Minority leader Dick Armey now negotiating with the ACLU - as two of the top GOP critics of what they see as the administration's dangerous slide towards big brotherism.
Also among those expressing similar concerns are such staunch Republican conservatives as Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly, who Goldberg reports is worried that some of the Pentagon programs are dragging the U.S. towards "Big Brother government as imagined by George Orwell.
"We don't want the government to monitor our daily activities," says Schlafly. "Technology is moving so fast. When they're able to combine our medical records, travel records, education records, gun purchases, credit card records, this is total information that I don't think the government should have about law-abiding citizens if we value freedom."
Goldberg counts Lisa Dean, director of the center for technology policy at conservative Republican activist Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation as another conservative critic. Dean, she reports, warns that the administration's expansion of domestic surveillance programs as "antithetical to everything we stand for.
"I never thought I'd see conservatives running to the government to solve problems like they do now. That's just not conservatism to me," she says. "People look at Homeland Security, the USA PATRIOT Act, national I.D. cards and say, if that protects us, we'll go ahead. I never would have thought I'd hear conservatives say that," she says.
Had Clinton been president, Dean told Goldberg, conservatives would have "pulled together and fought" these initiatives, even after 9/11. Dean explained that many conservatives accept Bush's incursions on civil liberties as a matter of personality, not principle.
"Conservatives trust Bush," she said. "They think he wouldn't do anything to harm them, that everything he's doing is for a noble cause," she says. This personal affinity for Bush, she says, blinds her fellow conservatives to the massive structural changes taking place in government.
"The groundwork we're laying now, we're laying for the next administration and one after that and one after that. At the same time, we're raising a generation of citizens on the belief that it's OK to give up all of our liberties in exchange for security. That's un-American."
Also in the anti-big brother camp is New York Times columnist William Safire, long known as a fervent hawk in foreign policy who now warns that "This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is what will happen to your personal freedom in the next few weeks if [Iran Contra scandal figure] John Poindexter, who now heads the Defense Department's Information Awareness Office -- "gets the unprecedented power he seeks."
One of the harshest conservative critics is Phil Gold, a hard-nosed ex-Marine and long a right-wing stalwart. Gold, who Goldberg describes as a "former Georgetown professor who campaigned for Barry Goldwater, worked on Steve Forbes' presidential run, and has written for publications like the Weekly Standard and the American Spectator" complains that the new direction of the conservative movement is so disturbing that he recently quit his job as a senior fellow in National Security Affairs at Seattle's conservative Discovery Institute because of his opposition to the war with Iraq. Moreover he said goodbye to the right in general in a Seattle Weekly article "Goodbye to All That."
"Over the last several years," he wrote, "I've become sadly convinced that American conservatism has grown, for lack of a better word, malign." That movement to which he has given most of his life he says "has gained the government, trashed its soul, and now bestrides the planet."
"We no longer have a commitment to limited government," he says. "I no longer recognize the movement. What I started out with isn't there anymore. The fact that mainstream conservatives are going along with [Poindexter's so-called TIA program - Total Information Awareness] and with TIPS indicates that these principles are no longer resonant in the movement."
"Power corrupts," he writes. "It corrupts especially when you've got it, but can't seem to accomplish what you set out to do, and you've jettisoned your ideals somewhere along the way but can't quite face the fact."
At the root of this conservative disquiet is the right wing's traditional distrust of government power. They recall Benjamin Franklin's warning that those who sacrifice liberty for safety's sake deserve neither liberty not safety.
Conservatives have genuine fears of out-of-control federal power. They recall Ruby Ridge and Waco, where federal agents killed religious fundamentalists who tried to live outside government's prying eyes. Like Gold, they believe that the Bush administration has betrayed its principles by expanding the federal bureaucracy and authorizing vast new domestic surveillance programs, Goldberg explains, noting that "If big government spying programs are going to be defeated, such conservatives are going to play a major role."
After all, she writes, it was Dick Armey killed TIPS, the proposed Justice Department program that would have recruited mail carriers, meter readers and other workers with access to private homes to act as government snoops. Armey added language to the Homeland Security Bill specifically outlawing both TIPS and a national I.D. card.
"The leadership of Congressman Armey was very important," Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's technology and liberty program told Goldberg.
"Elements of the conservative movement and of the Republican party have held to their principles of limited government."
"Both Ashcroft and President Bush have departed from their earlier emphasis on protecting privacy and have really become statists, who want to impose the power of the state on us to surveil us and also to prevent any dissent," says Steinhardt. "They're certainly not conservatives when it comes to wielding the powers of the state."
In fact, says Steinhardt, the ACLU are now the real conservatives. "We think of ourselves as the most conservative organization in America," he says. "We're dedicated to preserving the values of an 18th century document."
Whatever.
Conservatives are critics of the 'war on terrorism' as being fought at home.
But I'm not aware of any that are critical of our war on Iraq.
For comment, the Kool aid drinkers are going to go crazy.
Bush is as sainted to the Kool aid drinkers as Lincoln. Of course, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, arrested a supreme court judge, instituted an illegal income tax, violated the constitution right of states to peacefully leave the union and started the draft.
On second thought maybe the current occupant of the white house and the 16th occupant of the office deserve each other.
Yeah. Sure.
The ACLU is in no sense conservative.
The article turns out to be nothing but a crock.
You aren't, by any chance, putting yourself forward as being far and balanced on all things Bush, are you?
*Snort*
It's just odd to me that he's using SALON as one of his sources now. Go figure.
I agree. As I said before I like Limbacher and his site, NewsMax.com, but for him to use salon.com as a source is disgusting.
Only a real working ranch has dilapidated buildings on the grounds, with a grain truck with its box up in the air to let the water run out.
I also support the T ball games he runs on the white house grounds.
This is nothing but the old "Divide and Conquer" technique. Lay the bait for the crybaby .02%rs, And they bite everytime. It's how we got Clinton
Whatever you're selling, nobody's buying.
FReepers are FReepers' best friends.
Bob Barr never posted on this website. The dummy could still be in Congress had he decided to remain in his district, instead of moving and taking on Lindner.
If Barr becomes a face for the ACLU, he'll be much less of a friend to Free Republic than we thought. Who needs enemies with those kinds of so-called "friends."
As if they have something to "conquer" us with. HA!
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