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McCain Staffer Supports Dictatorship
Ann Shibler
JBS
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Salon's Glenn Greenwald has reported that Michael Goldfarb, a Weekly
Standard staff member, has been named Deputy Communications Director of
John McCain’s campaign. Goldfarb believes, or so he says, that a
president of the United States has near dictatorial powers.
Follow this link to the original source: "Newest
McCain official: President has "near dictatorial powers""
COMMENTARY:
On October 18, 2007, Michael Goldfarb wrote in a blog on The Weekly Standard
online edition that all major American companies, particularly telecoms,
should cooperate with the federal government if government officials show
up at their doorstep demanding "assistance" with warrantless
wiretapping even if those telecoms were being asked to break the law,
in complete defiance of the Constitution:
If federal agents show up at a corporate headquarters for a major American
company and urgently seek that company’s officers for assistance
in the war on terror, the companies damn well ought to give it as a
matter of simple patriotism, whether the CIA wants a plane for some
extraordinary rendition or help in tracking terrorists via email.
Goldfarb views this as an "act of faith," and true patriotism,
or so he says. He’s really priming the pump, in anticipation of
a true dictatorship by forming public opinion.
Previously, on October 4, 2007, Goldfarb registered his opinion on torture,
saying:
The Tmes indicts the Bush administration for exposing terrorists captured
abroad to “head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.”
Boo hoo.
Since torture sits well with him, it should not surprise that his views
of executive power in general are just a bit more expansive than what
the Founding Fathers intended. How much more expansive? Goldfarb detailed
his views after qouting former Senator George Mitchell’s views on
withdrawing the troops from Iraq:
Mitchell: “Congress is a coequal branch of government…the
framers did not want to have one branch in charge of the government.”
True enough, but they sought an energetic executive with near dictatorial
power in pursuing foreign policy and war. So no, the Constitution does
not put Congress on an equal footing with the executive in matters of
national security.
Greenwald’s assessment and response to that is spot on:
Until the Bill Kristols and John Yoos and other authoritarians of that
strain entered the political mainstream, I never heard of prominent
Americans who describe the power that they want to vest in our political
leaders as "near dictatorial." Anyone with an even passing
belief in American political values would consider the world “dictatorial”
— at least rhetorically, if not substantively — to define
that which we avoid at all costs, not something which we seek, embrace
and celebrate.
Greenwald goes on to say that The Weekly Standard is one of the most
"deceptive propaganda organs of the Bush years." He’s
completely right to be thoroughly disgusted and alarmed at the thought
of Michael Goldfarb being named to a high-level position on Republican
candidate John McCain’s staff.
McCain is no moderate. He is an insider, waiting for his turn at the
helm in what would be a continuation of the Bush administration’s
policies, and worse — and Glenn Greenwald knows it.
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