We are witnessing a revolutionary power. A power that is out to smash the existing system, and assert its own where unearned wealth and power are in control of the system, and a biblical world-view is asserted on the nation and out onto the world as a whole.
This may seem a bit tangential to the seemingly easy to follow topic of Bush "stopping all leaks," but I just finished "
Bush's Brain" and am getting underway with "
The Great Unravelling" and I wonder now how this "Nixonian" obsession of running a closed shop under ChimpCo. along with how exceedingly odd I found it that Cheney nominated himself as the best choice for VP to the Twig, is this a real indication at what is flat out, the "revolutionary" power of the radical-right which is hiding in plain sight?
What I mean is, that there are core elements within this administration, the neoconservatives in the Pentagon, Cheney and his office, and its close allies in Congress (the religious-right of DeLay, etc.) who are outright dismantling the very system we have come to hold as immutable. I can see how shutting off an "outsiders" foray into what is really going on is of paramount concern to the radicals in power now.
As Krugman points out in The Great Unraveling, consider first the "welfare state" (already distorted in the public psyche and language that "welfare" is a pejorative) as embodied by the New Deal programs, Social Security, unemployment insurance, and Great Society programs like Medicare. If you read the literature emanating from places like the Heritage foundation, which drives the Bush administrations economic ideology, you discover a very radical agenda: Heritage doesn't just want to scale back New Deal and Great Society programs, it regards the very existence of those programs as a violation of basic principles.
Or consider foreign policy. Since World War II the United States has built its foreign policy around international institutions, and has tried to make clear that it is not an old-fashioned imperialist power, which uses military force as it sees fit. But if you follow the foreign policy views of the neoconservative intellectuals who have fomented the war in Iraq, you learn that they have contempt for all that--Richard Perle, chairman of a key Pentagon advisory board, dismissed the "liberal conceit of safety through international institutions." They aren't hesitant about the use of force; one prominent thinker close to the administration, Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, declared that "we are a warlike people and we love war." The idea that war in Iraq is just a pilot project for a series of splendid wars seemed, at first, a leftist fantasy--but many people close to the administration have made it clear that they regard this war as only the beginning, and a senior State Department official, John Bolton, told Israeli officials that after Iraq the United States would "deal with" Syria, Iran and North Korea.
Nor is that the even the whole story. The separation of church and state is one of the fundimental principles of the U.S. Constitution. But Tom DeLay, the house majority leader, has told constituents that he is in office to promote a "biblical world-vew"--and that his relentless pursuit of Bill Clinton was motivated by Clinton's failure to share that view. DeLay has also denounced the teaching of evolution in schools, going so far as to blame that teaching for the Columbine shootings in Littleton Colorado.
So I am really suspicious as this strange "plug the leaks" being just about PR damage control vis-à-vis (one of the regulars "favorite" pet-peeve terms) the yellowcake disaster and the Plame outing.
I see this as a possible indication of a sort of "hunker-down" and keep at it, sort of response whilst they go about their allied "principleS" of tearing apart the foundations of our society in the name of their radical and (as Krugman, referring to Henry Kissenger's frame) "revolutionary" agenda.
I see this as picking up out of the ashes from Newt Gingrich's failed start, and is in fact a real assault on America. More fundamental and damaging to our nation, certainly more transfiguring than if a thousand airplanes in the hands of al-Qaeda pilots.
Is that over-blown?
I think not.
Even Kissenger in 1957 had the framing right in his 1957 disserataion "A World Restored":
Lulled by a period of stability which had seemed permanent, they find it nearly impossible to take at face value te assertions of the revolutionary power that means to smash the existing framework. The defenders of the status quo therefore tend to begin by treating the revolutionary power as if its protestations were merely tactical; as if it really accepted the existing legitimacy but overstated its case for bargining purposes; as if were motivated by specific grievences to be assauged by limited consessions. Those who warn against the danger in time are considered alarmists; those who consel adaption to circumstances are considered balanced and sane.... but it is the essence of a revolutionary power that it possesses the courage of its convictions, that it is willing, indeed eager, to push its principles to their ultimate conclusion.
Why do we continually doubt the very words of the revolutionary power in the radical-right?
Why do we assume they see that working within the system is what they "really" want when they flat out declare that they reject the basic assumptions about the framework of our society?
I see the "Reagan Revolution" and Newt Gingrich's self-proclaimed "revolution" to be precursors to, and in reality the same basic players which are apart the same political camp that are now tearing apart our system. Re-districting, Diebold machine, extra-Constitutional intervention to install this administration, state recalls, media-co-option, radical tax cuts that will force the scraping of the New Deal and Great Society programs, smashing the barrier between church and state.
We have failed so far to respond to this threat, because we have wrongly assumed that the differences where only some initial and outlandish starting point bargaining position in the immutable game of traditional policy haggling. This is not what we are seeing.
This is why this administration has prevaricate don the stated goals and rationalize on everything from tax cuts, to why we went to war in Iraq.
Their real goals are openly reveled by those who have been a party to this administration from before it was even mapped out as a candidate before primary season in 2000.
This has been the agenda of the radical-right from the mid 70s onward. It simply found a willing apathetic populous, one weaned on marketing and thus susceptible to a non-threatening and machismo laden pitch.
This is why I see this damn-the-torpedoes attitude and being an example of the most vindictive administration in generations, reveling in how it is address "leaks" which are not a part of advancing their radical agenda. It cannot be stressed enough that this is not usually viewed within the context of what it is, because the enormity of taking the radical-right at its word, is just too mind-boggling when viewed form within the norms of the establish framework. This is what Kissenger rightly gleaned from examining from history, back in his 1957 dissertation.
This cadre of the radical-right do not care about the rules. They do not care about the system. They wish to smash it apart and assert their own system. A system of protecting unearned aristocratic wealth and power, and asserting a biblical world-view on the nation, and the world.