When Bush Comes To Shove

As cliches go, the idea that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world at the start of the 21st century has a lot going for it. Perhaps it has reached a crisis point -- or soon will --, as E.O. Wilson argued in his fascinating article in Scientific American, Bottleneck . Or perhaps it is the culmination of a "conservative" revolution taking place simultaneously in liberal democracies and authoritarian states -- a return to fundamentalist political and religious ideas. Whatever it is, the political message is clear: there are no leaders left to guide the ship of state, only incompetent, fumbling politicians who seem willing to do "whatever it takes" to stay in power or ascend to the throne of power.

Let's face it, by any objective standard the war in Iraq is not going to win a popularity contest. As an expat living in Europe, public opposition to the war in Iraq was almost palpable. Polls released on the eve of the invasion showed only one country in Europe whose population supported American policy: Poland. The leaders of such European countries as Britain, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands et. al. simply ignored public opinion and ultimately sent troops to spill blood on the streets of Baghdad and other cities in Iraq. So much for public opinion.

Even the Bush administration's "unholy alliance" with Libertarian groups such as Reason.com and Cato began to crack because of Iraq. Now, after Bush's big-spending speech at the Republican Convention, some Conservatives seem to be abandoning the Bush ship, since their leader has now dropped all pretence of being a Conservative.

Andrew Sullivan even used the phrase "The End of Conservatism" in a recent blog.

“It’s deception. To propose all this knowing full well that we cannot even begin to afford it is irresponsible in the deepest degree. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the only difference between Republicans and Democrats now is that the Bush Republicans believe in Big Insolvent Government and the Kerry Democrats believe in Big Solvent Government. By any measure, that makes Kerry – especially as he has endorsed the critical pay-as-you-go rule on domestic spending – easily the choice for fiscal conservatives."

Say what? Where has Sullivan been for the last 25 years? President Reagon talked the Conservative talk, but he failed to walk the walk. Newt Gingrige probably would have taken America farther along the road to revisiting Victorian England, but his blossoming intellectual challenge wilted rather abruptly. So now Bush II is carrying the Conservative torch -- but not really. Like most politicians who have tasted the ambrosia of power, he will apparently do whatever is necessary to hang on to it. As one Conservative publication put it, Bush is "no friend of limited, Constitutional government."

It may be that "Bush's War" in Iraq set back the fight against terrorism and gave Al Qaeda time to regroup and disappear after 9/11; it may be that Bush has caused traditional conservatives to recoil in anger and disappointment because Bush has done too little to push a fiscal conservative agenda (except for some extraordinary concessions to the Religious Right in terms of abortion, gay and lesbian marriage, stem cell research and fudging the science on official government websites).

But it seems to me that, when Bush comes to shove, there is another factor in the Conservative equation, one that is seriously underrated: the marriage of political ideology to religious fundamentalism, a phenomenon that is by no means restricted to America.

But more on that later.