The New York Times reports today that alarm has been spreading among “left-wing bloggers or purists holding Mr. Obama’s feet to the fire on one issue or another,” among them FISA, free trade, public financing of his campaign, and on and on. Lawrence Lessig, writing about Obama’s FISA repositioning, tells “fellow liberals, or leftists, or progressives, get off your high horse(s).” But some leftists aren’t getting the message. Glenn Greenwald, in typical Far Leftist fashion complains today about torture and FISA, going so are as to link both issues to a more fundamental problem: the “subversion” of the so-called “rule of law”:
This is what a country becomes when it decides that it will not live under the rule of law, when it communicates to its political leaders that they are free to do whatever they want — including breaking our laws — and there will be no consequences. There are two choices and only two choices for every country — live under the rule of law or live under the rule of men. We’ve collectively decided that our most powerful political leaders are not bound by our laws — that when they break the law, there will be no consequences. We’ve thus become a country which lives under the proverbial “rule of men” — that is literally true, with no hyperbole needed — and Mayer’s revelations [of widespread torture] are nothing more than the inevitable by-product of that choice.
Rule of laws, rule of men, whatever. The sissy ninny latte-sipping liberal communist-anarchists on the rabid hysterical moonbat Radical Far Left whine and whine, while sipping lattes and poofing their expensive haircuts, about such trivial “rule of law” issues as: Bush’s legalization of warrantless wiretapping; the suspension of habeas corpus for enemy combatants; the use of torture as an instrument of state power; the use of executive signing statements and executive orders to define, circumvent, and nullify laws passed by Congress; the wholesale nullification of the Rule of Law in pursuit of the Global War on Terror; and on and on. They claim that there’s some kind of “problem” if Democrats–the ostensive opposition party–authorize or facilitate these powers. They act as if there was some ideology that links together these disparate abuses all together, something like the Unitary Executive Theory of presidential power. Unitary, smunitary, I say.
As a sissy ninny Latte-Sipping Liberal Far Leftist myself, I tell my comrades on this side of the aisle (really the dark rat-infested corner in the basement of the Capitol building): chin up. You’re looking at all of this the wrong way. We act sometimes as if the fact that our chief executive has absolute power and immunity to the law is a bad thing, but imagine the possibilities if we take the reins of power. If we can do that, and hold these very same Unitary Executive powers in our well-meaning and infallible hands, then we get to define who is the terrorist and who is the patriot. If we seize power, we decide where the Pentagon bombs and where U.S. aid money flows (hint: we will bomb the Midwest and use tax dollars to finance Al-Qaeda). So the best thing we can do to see our ideals and beliefs realized isn’t to cry over spilt milk–i.e. the Constitution, the Magna Carta, and the very concept of the rule of law–but rather to wholly embrace the total and complete death of the rule of law in favor of the rule of men. Men we like. Men like us.
In that spirit, I propose the following plan of action to America’s first Moonbat Leftist President, whoever he or she may be:
* Use your warrantless wiretapping powers to listen in to the phone conversations of the editorial offices of the Wall Street Journal, The National Review, The Weekly Standard, Commentary, and so on.
* Arrest every right-wing talk radio host you know, and fly them all to Guantanamo Bay. Do not charge them with any crime, but simply insinuate they’re terrorists.
* Torture–via water boarding and any other means you like–any who refuse to confess to the nature of their Secret Plot to Destroy America or any who refuse to divulge the location of the deep-underground cave where Norm Podhoretz will be in hiding.
* Institute by signing statement and executive order any or all of the following: national health care, progressive taxation, income redistribution, protectionism, welfare, housing subsidies, and a free lollipop for every American.
* Declare right-wing militias (anyone who owns guns), militant anti-abortion activists (anyone who thinks abortion is wrong), slightly-too-religious Americans (anyone who attends a church) terrorists. They are, after all, all of them: so it’s best to call them what they are, declare a war on them, then also stipulate they’re not covered under the Geneva Convention, since they’re not uniformed soldiers.
* Appoint supreme court justices who will not be activist judges who claim to want to “protect and defend” the Constitution. Anything that restricts executive power is, as we’ve learned, by definition unconstitutional.
I think when you consider all the possibilities inherent in Unitary Executive Power, you will come to understand how mistaken you were to complain about this FISA and torture nonsense. Think instead of all the myriad opportunities that come with Total Power!
Note: I hope it’s entirely obvious that the above post is a satire, and that I do not advocate any of the above bullet-pointed items, for the obvious reasons: the “rule of men” is wrong when our political opponents advocate it, but it’s equally wrong when those we agree with do the same, even if it’s just a formal possibility in their hands, and remains unused.