Jonathan Turley: Liberals' Defense of Obama's Unconstitutional Power Grabs Appears to be the Start of a Cult of Personality

Turley is a liberal himself. But there are two sorts of liberals: principled ones and partisan ones. Someone like Turley will call out one of his own when one of his own violates important principles.

But most liberals won't. The official word from much of the progressive side of the aisle is glee that Obama is "getting tough" with conservatives (and also, "getting tough" with the Constitution, I guess.)

This is why I won't call most progressives "liberal." The word liberal, despite being discredited in the 70s and 80s when it came to describe the New Left, has an honorable tradition existing well before that time. Many people who we would now call "conservatives" in the 40s and 50s in fact called themselves "liberal" at the time.

There was once a tension, for example, between expanding state power and "liberalism." Liberals opposed it, in the main, and championed the individual

But at some point, the New Left embraced (and how!) growing state power over economic aspects of life (while, I must acknowledge, resisting state power in the spheres of sexuality and free speech) and while they were often termed "liberals," I think that term was misapplied, when one looks at the whole history of it.

At any rate, Turley is a liberal, but those cheering for Obama's unconstitutional collection of all government power within the Executive and his single person are not. They are an assortment of statists, progressives, revanchist cryptosocialists, and simple-minded partisan Democrats who just take the position that anything their team is doing is fine, because it's their team.

Turley calls this "dangerous," and notes that we are now in the slippery slope to a "false democracy." He doesn't say this explicitly, but by "false democracy" I imagine he's thinking of a banana republic, in which there is a pretense of democratic republicanism, but in fact is an authoritarian structure, as the Jefe in such a system actually has all the power.

He says those currently remaining silent will "come to loathe" their silence.

posted by Ace at 04:36 PM

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