Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Baldwin: Conservatives are practicing "Selective Constitutionalism"

I figured this was going to happen if Barack Obama won the presidential election: self-professed "conservatives" would be quick to blast Obama and the Democrats for violating the Constitution... when in fact those same conservatives have turned a blind eye at every opportunity during the past eight years when "their guy" George W. Bush did the same.

That's the kind of hypocrisy that I cannot forgive. And so far as the "Christian" ones go, it tells me that they are not interested in the truth at all.

Chuck Baldwin agrees, writing in his latest essay. The "Constitutional crisis" that many conservatives claim is there because of the dubious nature of Obama's birthplace is diminished, because these conservatives refused to condemn their own just as equally...

Many conservatives seem to be obsessed with this controversy, calling it a "constitutional crisis." The fact is, however, we have been in a "constitutional crisis" for years! The problem is, most conservatives only get worked up over a potential abridgement of constitutional government when it serves their partisan political purposes. In other words, when a Democrat appears guilty of constitutional conflict, conservatives "go ballistic," but when Republicans are equally culpable of constitutional conflict, they yawn with utter indifference.


But, again, most conservatives care little about the Constitution's requirement that a President be a "natural born Citizen." Like liberals, most conservatives are afflicted with a very debilitating disease that I call Selective Constitutionalism. They only want to apply constitutional government when it helps Republicans or hurts Democrats. Most of them really could not care less about adherence to the Constitution. If they did, they would have been up in arms for the last eight years as President George W. Bush repeatedly ignored--and even trampled--the U.S. Constitution.

Where were these "constitutional" conservatives when George W. Bush was assuming dictatorial-style powers and contravening Fourth Amendment prohibitions against warrantless searches and seizures? Where were they when Bush was ordering our emails, letters, and phone calls to be intercepted by federal police agencies without court oversight? Where were they when Bush was obliterating the Fifth and Eighth Amendments? Where were they when Bush overturned Posse Comitatus by Executive Order? Where were they when Bush dismantled the constitutional right of Habeas Corpus? Where were they when Bush lied to the American people about the invasion of Iraq and took the United States to war without a Declaration of War from Congress? Where were conservatives when Bush turned nine U.S. military installations over to the United Arab Emirates? Where were they when Bush ordered his Department of Transportation to open up America's airlines to foreign ownership? Where were they when President Bush nullified (using "signing statements") over 1,100 statutes he did not like? Where were they as President Bush and his fellow Republicans reauthorized one of the most egregiously unconstitutional pieces of legislation in modern memory: the USA Patriot Act? Where were they when Bush signed the blatantly unconstitutional McCain/Feingold Act? I could go on and on...

Baldwin is correct, again. But to those who are looking more for rationale supporting their ideology than daring to question whether that ideology is even right, it won't matter.