Posted on 05/26/2008 5:44:35 PM PDT by The_Republican
Barack Obama recently said, "I believe in our ability to perfect this nation." Clearly there is something the candidate of "change" will not change—the pattern of extravagant presidential rhetoric. Obama is trying to replace a president who vowed to "rid the world of evil"—and of tyranny, too.
But then, rhetorical—and related—excesses are inherent in the modern presidency. This is so for reasons brilliantly explored in the year's most pertinent and sobering public affairs book, "The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power," by Gene Healy of Washington's libertarian Cato Institute.
Healy's dissection of the delusions of "redemption through presidential politics" comes at a moment when liberals, for reasons of liberalism, and conservatives, because they have forgotten their raison d'être, "agree on the boundless nature of presidential responsibility." Liberals think boundless government is beneficent. Conservatives practice situational constitutionalism, favoring what Healy calls "Caesaropapism" as long as the Caesar-cum-Pope wields his anti constitutional powers in the service of things these faux conservatives favor.
War is, as Randolph Bourne said, "the health of the state." And as James Madison said, war is the "true nurse of executive aggrandizement." Today's president has claimed the power to be the "decider," deciding on his own to start preventive wars, order torture prohibited by treaty and statute, and arrest American terrorist suspects on American soil and hold them indefinitely without legal process. But Healy's critique of the heroic presidency ranges far beyond national-security matters.
"Tell me your troubles," said FDR, Consoler in Chief, in a fireside chat with a radio audience. In 1960, the year the nation elected a charismatic (a term drawn from religion) president who regarded the office as "the center of moral leadership," an eminent political scientist called the presidency "the incarnation of the American people in a sacrament resembling that..............................................................................................................................................................................................................
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
Caesaropapism \Caesaropapism\ n.
The doctrine that the state is supreme over the church in
ecclesiastical matters.
OK, whatever.
Funny thing is, it struck me how much of a system of faith "libertarianism" is.
The conservative ideal to have a president be someone who understands and reveres the Almighty and America's place in His order is not at all the same thing that leftists seek when they build a cult around someone in order to hook the masses by blind emotionalism in order to harness their passing fancies.
God, we're drowning in an ocean of bad ideas and misperceptions.
Congratulations.
This is George Will? Did he have a nervous breakdown?
She sounds just like Mao's wife Jiang Qing.
I’m not up for debating with you because nobody can rationalize like a libertarian, but my position is (based upon a survey of the offerings of self-proclaimed libertarians, most recently here) is that it’s a utopian vision, totally irreconcilable with reality.
A statist calling a libertarian a utopian.
Priceless.
calling me a "statist" is -- I'll be charitable -- ill-informed.
There is no basis for further discussion.
I can’t say that I agree with you but I like the way you put it.
There are only two choices.
You've made yours.
I've made mine.
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