Cult of Bush (updated)

Glenn Greenwald has a good piece--part meditation, part wall-nailing--on what it means to be "conservative" today. At least, what it means to "conservatives" to be "conservative" today. And what it means, says Greenwald, is this: Conservatism is unquestioning loyalty to George Bush and uncritical agreement with what ever he says today--even if it means ignoring what he said yesterday.

People who self-identify as "conservatives" and have always been considered to be conservatives become liberal heathens the moment they dissent, even on the most non-ideological grounds, from a Bush decree. That’s because "conservatism" is now a term used to describe personal loyalty to the leader (just as "liberal" is used to describe disloyalty to that leader), and no longer refers to a set of beliefs about government.

That "conservatism" has come to mean "loyalty to George Bush" is particularly ironic given how truly un-conservative the Administration is. It is not only the obvious (though significant) explosion of deficit spending under this Administration – and that explosion has occurred far beyond military or 9/11-related spending and extends into almost all arenas of domestic programs as well. Far beyond that is the fact that the core, defining attributes of political conservatism could not be any more foreign to the world view of the Bush follower.

As much as any policy prescriptions, conservatism has always been based, more than anything else, on a fundamental distrust of the power of the federal government and a corresponding belief that that power ought to be as restrained as possible, particularly when it comes to its application by the Government to American citizens. It was that deeply rooted distrust that led to conservatives’ vigorous advocacy of states’ rights over centralized power in the federal government, accompanied by demands that the intrusion of the Federal Government in the lives of American citizens be minimized.

Is there anything more antithetical to that ethos than the rabid, power-hungry appetites of Bush followers? There is not an iota of distrust of the Federal Government among them.

And he's got the goods. He's got the examples. He's got the archives. Don't miss the Update, covering the exhuberant willingness of Free Republic's fire-breathers to throw overboard some of their most cherished positions rather than disagree with Bush's PR Flavor of the Day.

It'll be in the Readings list on the sidebar. Check it out.

And don't miss Digby's tweak of Greenwald's fundamental argument: "It's not a Cult of Bush; it's a Cult of Republican power." Bumper sticker version: It Didn't Start With Junior.


Update: Greenwald provoked a lot of counterattacks after the above was posted. He addresses them pretty thoroughly today.

For those who like their irony applied with a trowel, the conservative pushback was filled with denunciations and dismissals of Greenwald as being a "liberal," as proven by his disagreement with Bush--which was, of course, precisely the pattern Greenwald was calling them on in the first place. Keywords to watch for: "Vibrant examples" and "Some things are beyond satire."