George W. Does Liberty

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The intruders, whether governmental or corporate, always insist that their every incremental incursion on our rights is done solely for our own good: 'We must balance your freedom with concern for your security,' they coo to us; 'We need to collect all of your financial, health, and other records in our databases in order to offer you better service and more convenience,' they assure us, ever so soothingly.

'There are more instances of abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpation.'

-- James Madison

Never in our nation's history has the rude grab for our First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment rights been so sweeping. Let me give you just one glimpse of it: The Bushites' heavy-handed lockdown on our essential right of protest, crude assault that, curiously, the media establishment has either avoided covering or quietly applauded.

BushCheneyAshcroftRumsfeld&TheBoys cannot just come out and ban protest, of course, but they can intimidate and marginalize it...and they are doing exactly that with total abandon. We observers in Texas are not at all surprised by George W's full support for suppressing protest, for he used his governorship as a time to practice his chops.

What we have at work here is the fundamental problem of former CEOs controlling the executive branch of government, for CEO-world is one of toe-the-line, don't-rock-the-boat, don't-challenge-authority deference to Number One. Corporations are essentially hierarchical autocracies, the very opposite of democracies, which have a way of being messy, noisy, disorderly, and oft-times raucously disobedient.

The Bushites, as the world has now learned, are barkers who intend to do it their way, so don't bother them with any democratic niceties or test their patience with your unauthorized opinion. Bush himself not only recoils from dissent, but also is determinedly dismissive of both dissenters and their right to dissent.

As governor back in 1999, he and his clever staff devised the Bush Doctrine of Contained Dissent as a way to keep pesky protestors away and to keep him in a serene political bubble. What they did was literally corral protestors into distant protest pens (how delightfully cowboyish this must have seemed to George, who'd recently acquired his Crawford ranchette and was really getting into his Western Man persona. Yippie-ty-yi-yo!).

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