Rush to Judgment: Lovin’ to Hate the Constitution

by Jim Washburn

Anyone hear “OxyContin Rush” Limbaugh’s speech to CPAC this past week? Conservatives are misunderstood, he said, blaming the liberal media, you know, the one that’s signed him to a $400 million contract? Somehow, even though Republicans have been in control of our government for much of our lifetimes, they haven’t been able to get their message across, according to Limbaugh. Did you know, for Rush example, that “we love and revere our founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence?”

But that damned liberal media. In the same news cycle in which Limbaugh’s blovating was treated as news, the press also reported on the just-released Bush administration memos that showed just how very much they loved the Constitution. In much the same spirit with which White House experts deemed the Geneva Conventions quaint and outmoded, they issued legal findings that the President had super-Constitutional powers to pursue his war on terror, unfettered by that musty old document, or by precedent, or by Congressional or judicial oversight, or by the public’s right to know what its government is doing; indeed, his powers weren’t even bounded by space or time, since a “war on terror” knows no borders or end.

Even conservative legal scholars were aghast at the scope of the claimed powers, which included the president’s ability to nullify any international treaty—though treaties are clearly Congress’ domain in the Constitution—to conduct arrests and imprison persons in the US without warrants or due process—both protections granted in the Constitution—to quash First Amendment rights to free speech and a free press as the President saw fit, and to torture prisoners upon his whim. A person could be deemed a terrorist solely upon the President’s say-so and could essentially be treated however he chose, forever if he also so chose, with no opportunity, ever, to prove his innocence. That’s how these guys rolled with the Constitution.

As far as we know—and there isn’t much we’ve been allowed to know—some of these assertions of power were never pushed to their ugly limits. Even Bush’s first Attorney General, John Ashcroft, not exactly a libertine, thought some of this expansion of powers was dangerous to the republic. And in Bush’s final days in office, White House lawyers reined in the scope of some of these claims.

Some have called this a late-term return to reason, when new lawyers could reflect on the legal memos away from the heat of 9-11. I’m more inclined to think it’s an extension of the same sick thinking that led to the original memos. They didn’t want Obama to have such sweeping powers; they’re not for any president, just the “right” ones.

Somehow the system of government laid out in the Constitution, and the “inalienable rights” it guarantees us, is alien turf to these minds. “C’mon, we’d just been attacked!” Well, we made it through the Civil War, world wars and the Cold War with the document relatively intact, yet Bush had to assume the powers of an emperor because we were attacked by guys with box-cutters? The Constitution has had some holes shot in it—Lincoln suspended habeas corpus; Roosevelt interred citizens of Japanese ancestry—but it wasn’t rent asunder, as it’s been by an administration that clearly had no use for the shape or spirit of the government it envisioned. Can you imagine how peeved Thomas Jefferson would be if he saw all this? At least he could go fuck a slave to cool off.

But back to Rush. He also told us this about conservatives, “We don’t want to tell you how to live. That’s up to you.” Which is pretty much true, if your idea of living is confined to making money without regard to the planet or public health. But if you want to talk about abortion, smoke weed for your cancer, read Henry Miller, have oral sex (long a felony in many states thanks to Republicans), marry the person you love, die with dignity or have some assurance that your government isn’t monitoring your every email or phone call, well, yes, they do like using the full force of the federal government to tell you how to live.

And how is it that Barack Obama—who, in the financial crisis Bush left him with, might be compelled to increase the federal stake in our well-being—is being compared with Stalin and Lenin by Limbaugh, Mike Huckabee, and other conservatives? I mean they’ve skipped right over Canada, the whole of Europe and most other civilized nations who give their citizens more bang for the buck, to group Obama with those two? Conservatives told us for years that Lenin and Stalin were worse than Hitler, so aren’t they saying the leader the majority of the American people support is worse than Hitler? And aren’t they saying that we who voted for him are all little Hitlers?

So when Rush assures us that conservatives “love people” and that they place their faith in the individual, are they talking about some other country? Because it sure can’t be this one, where the majority of individuals proudly voted for Obama. We’re Americans, buddy, and we voted for the leader who’s a Constitutional scholar, not the one who is its assassin.

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