The Undoing of American Conservatism.

The operation of the Bush administration and its executive branch appointees is now presenting the Republican party with an existential threat. Conservatism is largely about maximizing liberty through the idea that government should remain small and as far removed from people's daily lives as possible.

Yet their "unitary executive" theory and their electoral and governing policies of promoting fear of -- and attacking both real and imaginary -- threats while striving to push a moral agenda have given the ruling class of the Republicans one thing no one ever could have imagined of the party of Lincoln: The cloak of authoritarianism. This stands in utter opposition to everything conservatism stands for.

And the people the party is offering us as replacements to Bush show no signs of bringing the party back to its real conservative roots. Example one could be Mitt Romney's chest-pounding offer to "double the size of Guantanimo," at the last debate. I'm sorry, double how? Start rounding people up? Disappearing undesirables off the streets?

It says a lot about the current state of the Republican party as it is in power that John Ashcroft... yes, John Ashcroft looms as a paragon of both small "r" and big "R" republican ideals: maintaining from his sickbed his opposition to the administration's attempt to extend the illegal spying activities.

I've said it before, the real political struggle of the 21st Century is as old as time itself. It has nothing to do with right versus left -- that poor distinction which is a relic of the French Revolution. No, the struggle for the future of humanity is stark and simple, the struggle between those who treasure and work towards maximizing human freedom and those who would bind us in chains of authoritarianism. And beware, the strongest chains are those we forge ourselves out of fear.