Occasionally, items in the news make me sit up and take notice of how far from a constitutional republic we really have come. Like this [1]:
There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic.
That’s the opening salvo from John Perry, a regular columnist with the right-wing website Newsmax [2], in an article entitled “Obama risks a Domestic Military ‘Intervention'”. I would like nothing more than to provide you with a link to the whole article, but it has apparently disappeared down the memory hole [3]. Perhaps the editors at Newsmax realized it would be inconvenient to have an article speculating on the potential for a military coup at the same time they are trumpeting the peacefulness of the tea-party protestors and wondering why anyone would accuse them of encouraging dangerous, violent extremism [4]. The quote I harvested above came from Mediamatters.org [5], which detailed this story yesterday. Unfortunately, the did not reproduce the full column. I managed to grab a screenshot [6] of the Newsmax website search function, which proves that the article really did exist, although the hyperlink for the article now returns visitors to the main Newsmax page.
It’s easy to see why the article may be unpopular, not the least because of it’s internal inconsistency. Consider this passage:
[7]Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making.
I must admit that I’m having difficulty imagining a military coup to “restore and defend the Constitution”. How could such a coup propose to be acting in defense of the constitution at the same time they are deposing their constitutionally appointed commander-in-chief? And I’m almost certain that the constitution had something in there about a role for the executive that included more than “ceremonial speech-making”, but perhaps my memory is faulty.
In any case, this sort of fetishism of the military is dangerous on its own right. I can’t understand how the right (which used to be opposed to putting the military in a nation-building role; remember Bosnia?) feels that the military–especially one that just led an overthrow of the existing government– could possibly be more accountable than those in the status quo. And I’ll freely grant that there’s not much accountability now, but can anyone explain how that accountability would be enhanced through a military coup?
But perhaps I’m expecting too much from John Perry. Out of morbid curiosity, I read his previous article as well, entitled “Obama’s Policies Have U.S. at Crossroads of Survival [8]“. In it, Mr. Perry urges us to ignore “the relatively picayune distractions such as climate change, medical care, education, press freedom and responsibility…” and focus instead on the real crisis: that is, the “evolutionary death struggle between tyrannical Islamist extremism and what’s left of Western civilization”. He cautions that “A few more bone-headed decisions at home and in dealing with America’s enemies abroad, and Western civilization could go gurgling down history’s drain — or, more aptly, up in radioactive dust.” Wow, I’m having trouble coming up wit the words to express all that’s wrong with this world view. Suffice it to say, that I’d much prefer we focus on those picayune distractions like climate change, education, etc… rather than beating the drums for more war with “Islamist extremism”.
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