The RNC's Heart Of Darkness

George W. Bush is about to deliver his acceptance speech. I'm sure it will be a piece of inspired oratory on the scale of Lincoln's Second Inaugural. In preparation for the speech that will surely convert me to the Bush cause, I'd like to take a moment to look back at the most egregiously authoritarian-nationalist lines of Zell Miller's speech, and try to cull from them the general principles for which Miller argued. To refresh your memory, the lines were these:

For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.

It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag.

Of course, no one would argue against the contention that it is soldiers who defend the freedoms guaranteed to citizens under the Constitution, but that is not what Miller said, nor what he could have meant (one thing his speech was free of was tautology---since nothing in it turned out to be true). According to Miller, soldiers do not just defend rights; they "give" them. This is a fanatically reactionary departure from the underlying premises of the American political system, and of constitutional government in general. Whatever one thinks of the metaphysical basis of natural rights theory, there is no disputing the point that the Lockean conception of innate rights is central to the formation of the American republic, nor that it has proven a durable bulwark against the encroachments on and violations of civil and human rights that convulsed through Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries.*

When Miller proclaims, in effect, that the continued enjoyment of the basic freedoms is the result of the whim of the military, rather than the fundamental and guaranteed sine qua non of citizenship, he repudiates everything noble and just in American political history, from the tradition of government of laws rather than men to the concept of autonomous citizens as enjoying inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property. I've spent the past 24 hours skirting around using the f-word. I won't hedge any longer. Miller represents fascism with a Georgia twang. In embracing him, the Republicans have embraced a politics that is antithetical to and cannot coexist with democratic government.


*I'm quite well aware (i.e. don't remind me) that various ethnic and religious groups throughout our history have been excluded from the social contract upon which the United States was formed. Much of American history has been a struggle and coming-to-terms with those exclusions, and this fact doesn't alter the basic principle that the natural rights are the private, indissoluble possessions of all citizens.

UPDATE: David Adesnik at Oxblog is the latest of quite a few bloggers who are by no means Kerry supporters to work himself into a righteous lather over Zell Miller's remarks:

Sen. Miller is pathetic and dishonest. During the Cold War, the phrase 'red-baiting' described the actions of those who recklessly accused their fellow Americans of supporting the other side. Whereas Communism marched under a banner of red, violent Islamic fundamentalism marches under a banner of green. And what Zell Miller did I can only describe as green-baiting.

Read on.

SECOND UPDATE: Matt Welch has some thoughts on these lines of the Miller speech:

This, my friends, is militaristic bullshit, and if any of you applauded these lines, you ought to be embarrassed. It is the Constitution that gave us freedom of speech and assembly, not our great servicemen and women, and any politician who doesn't understand that -- while looking back fondly on the military draft, attributing peaceful revolutions to American military buildups, and murmuring with approval at "overriding ... all our private lives" -- should be voted out of office with gusto, and forced to do late-night cable shows with Arianna Huffington. This is a child's empty bluster, not some kind of stern, adult "straight" talk. Not to mention the cheap digs on those hated reporters, poets, agitators and protesters, each of which was met with hoots and stomps and hollers from the Republican delegates, many of whom are elected officials themselves.