"They want to stop living a public lie."

President Bush and the people of neo-con conviction are pseudo-conservatives to the extent that they tried to ensure America's supremacy in the world through military action. The first principle of conservatism is not freedom but caution. By repeating the mantra of "freedom," Bush and his ilk shows no understanding of religion or theology. If one reads the Hebrew Torah and the Christian New Testament, one could hardly find an equivalent of the word "freedom."
One would rather find ample reference to the word "justice." And rightly so. We evaluate human behavior according to the principle of "justice" not "freedom."

By "freedom," is it "free will" that Bush is referring to? If it is, "free will" exists regardless of what one believes and does about it. You don't have to do anything special to create it. God has taken care of that long ago. But of course, it is not "free will" that Bush is referring to. It is the "lack of external constraints on one's behavior," he is trying to get at. I can do whatever I want type of freedom. Needless to say, there is no basis of such freedom in any credible religion. Religion by definition "binds." All of this leads me to believe that Bush and his ilk do not know what they are talking about. They are just parroting what they hear from the many.

Simon: Still: I'm utterly unmoved by Andrew Sullivan's disquisitions on how Bush's attempt to spread democracy by force is "fascistic," given that Andrew himself was an early, vocal and dogmatic supporter of the Iraq War -- and one who didn't hesitate to blast the Pope and other religious leaders for their prescient opposition to it.

Simon, his point is not that the Iraq war was a fascist enterprise, but that Bush's belief (as Bush articulated to Brooks and the other conservative journos) that a strong leader is the most important fact in determining a country's/society's direction is fascistic. I wish Sullivan hadn't used the word "Fuhrerprinzip," because it raises the reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy, but I take his point.

Seems to me that Senators Warner and Lugar, who in their proposal asked the Prez to offer a "Plan B," and as a stick picked up the idea from Hillary, that Congress withdraw its authorization for the war, are pursuing this idea of "rejecting" Bush without mockery, derision, etc.

And it sounds to me, from Bush's insta-rejection in response, that Bush will stick to his "my way or the highway" response, even if that means the road to hell for Republicans.

It's surprising to me how supportive most of the GOP is, given the stakes for their party and their ideas. Why are Republicans today so much more compliant towards Bush than Republicans in l973 were towards Nixon?

Lord, is there nothing this "conservative" you people elected unable to screw up?

But according to gang experts, including one who has been called to testify, the real mystery is why it took the Army so long to accept that Johnson was the victim of a growing epidemic of gang violence that has infected all branches of the armed services. Lax enlistment standards have inadvertently allowed thousands of gang members to join the military, including young men who belong to the Crips, Bloods, Latin Kings, and various white supremacist groups. But no gang has infiltrated the armed forces as deeply as the Gangster Disciples, a 100,000-member Chicago-based syndicate that has been linked to an assortment of crimes ranging from murder to mortgage fraud.

"There's no doubt about it—the Gangster Disciples are the biggest [gang] in the Army," says Chicago Police Lieutenant Robert Stasch, who has spent 30 years tracking the group's rise from a handful of street-corner hoodlums to what he calls "the most sophisticated criminal enterprise in the United States."

Founded three decades ago by Larry Hoover, the Gangster Disciples have worked to burnish their image, says Stasch. They have courted politicians and sought to enhance their legitimacy. At one point Hoover changed the group's name to "Growth and Development" and tried to portray himself as the leader of a community organization. According to Stasch, "They even set up a political action committee ... that would actually go to various cities and states, and even to the federal level, in an attempt to get gang-friendly legislation enacted."

Now, with the unintended help of the U.S. Army, the gang is extending its reach worldwide. According to a Chicago Sun-Times article last year, Gangster Disciple graffiti has been spotted all over Iraq. The gang's initials and main symbol, the six-pointed star, have been tagged on concrete blast barriers, armored vehicles, and even remote firebase guard shacks. In an astonishing study of just three Army bases over the past four years, a Department of Defense detective identified more than 300 active gang members. Some experts estimate that up to 2 percent of the soldiers on active duty—perhaps as many as 20,000—have sworn allegiance to one gang or another.

disater in the making

Tolstoy was right, imho.
That idea is from War and peace. He wrote that if people had only obbeyed commands of leaders we wouldn't have destroyed Napoleon, what helped was that millions of simple people started to believe Napoleon was a bastard and felt outraged.
The same with building of communism, untill millions of people believed it was right, it was going on, when they lost belief everything started to ruin despite all attempts of leaders to control the process.

His grotesque defects and narrowminded views do not, however, amount to anything remotely akin to "fascism."

Unless you're the dirt framer turned in for the reward cooling your heels at Guantanamo or the taxi driver killed by nervous troops with an itchy trigger finger.

Bush may not intend fascism, or meant to have the hundreds of screw ups that have cost lives and freedom to thousands, but if the effect is the same, what is the difference when you are on the receiving end of 100 rounds of M16 fire?

"Fascism" has a specific meaning, and it entails a lot more than injustice or even authoritarianism. To apply it indiscriminately to any situation where the full panoply of U.S. Constitutional rights is not available is intellectual sloth.

It's also an illustration of how our shabby current political discourse relies on demonizing opponents. It's apparently not enough to say that Bush is a dope, that his policies are profoundly misguided and based on false premises, and that they have produced a foreign policy blunder of the highest order. No, we have to attribute bad faith to him personally. He can't be wrong, even profoundly wrong. He has to be "fascist" and therefore Evil.

That's a mode of discourse (whether the subject is Bush, Clinton or whoever) that only leads one's opponents to dig in their heels deeper. Since they know full well that the repeated, vocal charges against their man of fascism, bad faith, imperialism, evil, conspiracies, etc. are garbage, they can more easily discount all of the arguments against his policies.

> Well given that this a site about religion, when exactly do you cross the line to being evil?

There's a line?

Simon, I agree that "wrong" does not always equal "evil". We all make poor decisions, some of us more frequently than others. However, Shrubbie's pride is what really concerns me.

I also agree that it's easy to see the forest from the trees when you have some distance. It seems as though we're more interested in what our leaders do wrong than what they do right. Or do they do nothing right?

Personally what astounds me most of all when talking about issues surrounding the sanctity of life, how pro-life, pro-war, and pro-death penalty go together in the same worldview. That just blows my mind.

Fascism is sometimes defined as oppressive, dictatorial control. But a more detailed definition says:

A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

The possibility exists to read Pres. Bush into that definition. Perhaps he doesn't fit all of the criteria, but he has certainly expended a lot of effort into centralization of authority and suppression of the opposition (through, if nothing else, a rather clever form of censorship that involves him largely ignoring the legitimate press). Mr. Bush has absolutely propounded a policy of belligerent nationalism that, to put it kindly, borders racism.

I have known people who were mentally ill but did not fit completely into any clinical definition of a specific disorder. The doctors would say, as an example, that individual showed bi-polar tendencies. It would appear, based on the above definition, our president may not be a fascist but certainly shows fascistic tendencies.