The Coup Next Time

I've been very struck by this passage from Johann Hari's story about the recent National Review cruise.

I lie on the beach with Hillary-Ann, a chatty, scatty 35-year-old Californian designer. As she explains the perils of Republican dating, my mind drifts, watching the gentle tide. When I hear her say, " Of course, we need to execute some of these people," I wake up. Who do we need to execute? She runs her fingers through the sand lazily. "A few of these prominent liberals who are trying to demoralise the country," she says. "Just take a couple of these anti-war people off to the gas chamber for treason to show, if you try to bring down America at a time of war, that's what you'll get." She squints at the sun and smiles. " Then things'll change."

In a way, this is innocuous beach chatter, but the chattiness disturbs. It's like "Hillary-Ann" thinks the idea of executing "prominent liberals" is so obviously appropriate that it doesn't really need much discussion. The right has been much less tolerant of opposition to the war in Iraq than it's been for previous wars. Murmurs of Democratic senators like Ted Kennedy or Hillary Clinton committing the "treason" of aiding and abetting the enemy started up with people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity in 2003. But the pressure against allowing political rights for liberals and war opponents got stronger after the Democrats swept the 2006 elections. There have been a few specific statements about the curtailing of democratic rights by Newt Gingrich (here and here), Thomas Sowell, Harvey Mansfield, and Frank Gaffney, but my own sense is that there was a fairly broad sentiment on the right that the liberals and war opponents shouldn't have the right to win on anti-war platforms.

In a way, "Hillary-Ann" expresses this well. From her perspective, the United States needs to change in fundamental ways. I take this to mean that if conservatives are going to be able to wage the wars they want, people can't be allowed to publish criticisms of wars, put together anti-war organizations like MoveOn.org, put out movies like Fahrenheit 911, or move to cut off war funding in Congress. In this context, putting on show trials and mounting executions for prominent liberals would be a standard strategy for repressing dissent across the whole of the mass media, the Democrats as a political party, and liberal political activists. As "Hillary-Ann" says, "then things will change."

The right-wing is in a weak position now and their position is likely to continually getting weaker unless the surge actually is the success that people like Hugh Hewitt claim it will be. So, there is little or no danger that "Hillary-Ann" will get her wish to see the Bush administration send liberals go to the "gas chambers" the same way that the Nazis executed the Jews.

However, the "next" George Bush elected president will be a different story. Whether that happens in 2008, 2012, 2020, or beyond, there can be little doubt that an incoming conservative president would be eager to launch new wars against the Iraqs and Irans of the world. When that happens, there will be a lot of pressure from the conservative think tanks, talk-radio hosts, and everyday right-wingers like "Hillary-Ann" to start arresting Democratic politicians and anti-war leaders. In effect, making such arrests would be a coup against the American constitutional system. But the right-wing has begun to contemplate such a coup with pleasure.