When the Right Defects?

Paul Craig Roberts is not exactly a left-wing nut! He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration and an Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. Now for sometime I have been following his commentary on this Bush Administration and folks it hasn’t been a pretty picture. His commentary is often posted at Anti-War and Counterpunch.

Here is his latest and he uses the Nazi and Hitler words. If this guy thinks that we have gone over the edge, we are so over the edge that we are in very serious trouble and territory folks.

Here are some of his words:

What kind of government would destroy the lives through death or disability of over one million people for no valid reason?

The same kind of government that fires its own lawyers for doing their constitutional duty. Navy lawyer Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift was assigned the task of bringing Salim Hamdan to a guilty plea before the unconstitutional military tribunal that President Bush created for Guantanamo detainees. Instead, Cmdr. Swift did his duty and defended his client, winning in the US Supreme Court. The Bush administration retaliated by blocking Cmdr. Swift's promotion, which killed his military career and sent the chilling message to all US military and government attorneys that constitutional scruples are career-enders in the Bush regime. Anyone who stands for the US Constitution is against Bush and his neocon regime.

The Bush regime is proceeding exactly as the Nazi regime proceeded. First, eliminate every person of conscience and integrity from the government. Second, redefine duty as service to the leader: "You are with us or against us"--a formulation that leaves no place for duty to the US Constitution. Patriotism is redefined from loyalty to country and Constitution to loyalty to the government's leader.

Americans are too inattentive and distracted to be aware of the grave danger that the neoconservative Bush regime presents to American liberty and to world stability. The neoconservative drive to achieve hegemony over the American people and the entire world is similar to Hitler's drive for hegemony. Hitler used racial superiority to justify Germany's right to ride roughshod over other peoples and the right of the Nazi elite to rule over the German people.

Neoconservatives use "American exceptionalism" and "the war on terror." There is no practical difference. Hitler cared no more about the peoples he mowed down in his drive for supremacy than the neoconservatives care about 655,000 dead Iraqis, 100,000 disabled American soldiers and 2,747 dead ones.

When Bush, the Decider, claims unconstitutional powers and uses "signing statements" to negate US law whenever he feels the rule of law is in the way of his leadership, he is remarkably similar to Hitler, the Fuhrer, who told the Reichstag on February 20, 1938: "A man who feels it his duty at such an hour to assume the leadership of his people is not responsible to the laws of parliamentary usage or to a particular democratic conception, but solely to the mission placed upon him. And anyone who interferes with this mission is an enemy of the people."

"You are with us or against us."

Now, it seems to me that if folks on the Right think that this Administration is out of control, we are in deep shit folks. Roberts has been warning us for sometime that Bush Co. is deranged and he has now come out and conflated it with the Nazis and Hitler.

If he thinks this we should all be very afraid because we are not talking “The Nation” here we are talking Republicans.

We could be hopeful that the GOP is cracking and that some of those on the Right actually do care about the U.S. Constitution and are distancing themselves from the Radical-Right and their policies, as the Nation is at peril. However, it seems to me that too many folks have tasted the Kool-Aid and like the drink.

I know that sounds so half-glass empty. I am however, based on Roberts columns of late, feeling half-glass full.

The question is will the American Public wake-up from their stupor and demand a change?