The Bush Legacy

For those who would condemn the Bush Administration for lacking a single accomplishment during their long tenure, I would counter that we can thank George W. Bush and his minions for demonstrating incontrovertibly that the movement conservatism he championed is a bankrupt ideology, to be relegated to the dustbin of history with the other discredited twentieth century “–isms” such as Marxism, imperialism, communism, fascism and national socialism.
The neo-con underpinnings of movement conservatism rest upon the populist illogic that government is a negative element in society, that all taxes are too high, and that any regulation is a barrier to a profitable free market. History and common sense were paved over with simpleminded aphorisms, like the moronic quips of Ronald Reagan, who is the grandfather of all of the political, social and economic pain we Americans suffer today.
Reagan dreamed himself into an America that never existed outside of a grainy black-and-white Hollywood movie, and then preached that fantasy to the wider world. He said stupid things like “Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem” and ordinary people cheered at this idiocy. Yet, George Washington did not think government was the problem. Abraham Lincoln did not think government was the problem. Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not think government was the problem.
Smart people who remembered quotes by intellectual giants like Oliver Wendell Holmes such as: "I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization" were accused of elitism. If you understood that the government’s role was to preserve the twin pillars of freedom and order, and that government required taxes to pay the bills to deliver that sacred duty, you were denigrated as a liberal or a traitor or a fool. Cowboys ruled and most Americans were happily herded like cattle into a political culture governed by nothing less than nonsense.
Fast forward more than twenty-five years since the Reagan Revolution brought to power those who would undo our country’s greatness with inflated rhetoric and demagoguery and we sit perched on the brink of disaster that is uncommonly surprising for most Americans. How is it possible, many would query, that our superpower status has faded, that our national infrastructure is crumbling, that our economy is on the edge of catastrophe? How could this happen?
Well, some might suggest, republics are fragile. They can be damaged by neglect and missteps. There is no doubt that the trail of incompetence in the Bush regime, in matters high and low, has played an immeasurable role in our unraveling. But it goes deeper than simply the ineptitude of an administration comprised of unqualified ideologues. It goes right to the heart of the neo-conservatism that is the platform these bunglers rode in upon.
We have heard much in this electoral cycle about lipstick on a pig. We have heard too little about a bunch of backwoods fringe loonies who tried to sell America on the notion that pigs can fly. I expect we will hear a big thud soon, and that will be the echoing squeal of one discredited pig called movement conservatism bouncing off the pavement. Watch too as the American people consume the scraps of that pig until it will be nothing but a bad memory, though the smell of the cook fires may linger for some time to come.
As we suck the marrow out of the bones, let’s be grateful that President Bush stubbornly pursued the fundamentals of his political philosophy to their logical conclusion: abject disaster. It will no doubt take us a generation or more to get past the damage he and his followers laid upon our country, but at least we will have learned never to tread upon that misguided path again.