But it's the Reps that created Gitmo and the doctrine of unlawful combatants!
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Well to be fair, O’Rourke didn’t use the Gitmo example – that’s my contribution.
He did say something however, that seems to address this point. Not that I want to get into the business of parsing the off-the-cuff political theory of P.J. O’Rourke but since we’re talking about his statements, at least as interpreted by me, they should be described as accurately as possible.
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Although he’s a Republican partisan, though a cleverer and more gentlemanly one than many of his co-religionists, he acknowledged that people’s problem is with government power – regardless of the party wielding it. The GOP seems to be about the business of reducing this power so they attract the passionate loyalty of some and the strategic loyalty of many more (“strategic”, because the non-zealot who votes Republican is trying to look out for her/his self-interest by placing the folks who will, they think, reign in government which is inherently dangerous and intrusive. As Chuck0 says, this line of thought, carried to at least one of its logical conclusions, should take some folks to the anarchist position. But of course, this rarely happens here.
Gitmo and the doctrine of unlawful combatants probably don’t come into this concern about government power (leaving O’Rourke now and just riffing) because most folks see that – if they see it at all – as necessary and outwardly directed aggression against alien threats. Bush and company thereby get a free pass on that one.
.d.