Carl Schmitt and the Bush Dictatorship
Sunday April 30th 2006, 4:43 pm

If you need evidence the Straussian neocon controlled Bush administration is a dictatorship, consider the “decider” in the White House, according to the Boston Globe, “has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution,” or rather his trashing of the Constitution. No doubt Bush has never read the Constitution, not that it matters—he is president in name only and the executive branch is controlled by a cabal of Straussians who believe in Machiavellian dictatorship, not a constitutionally limited republic. “Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ‘whistle-blower’ protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.”

Once upon a time, Congress had the power to write laws and to the president a duty ‘’to take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” but in Bushzarro world this tradition is turned on its head. In effect, there is no reason for Congress to convene because the Straussian fascists have declared Ausnahmezustand (state of emergency under the pretense of a bogus war on terrorism) and now the executive is free to break laws of all sort, both national and international.

Bush, not Saddam Hussein or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran, is the “new Hitler” and the Patriot Act and subsequent legislation and executive orders serve as the neocon Reichstag Fire Decree (in essence, a continual state of emergency). Bush’s Straussians have put into practice the political philosophy of Carl Schmitt, who wrote Die Diktatur (On Dictatorship) and believed the office of the Reichspräsident should rule supreme and transform the juridical system into a deadly juggernaut.

“These ideas came to neoconservatism both directly through Carl Schmitt and through Leo Strauss who has taught many of the most prominent neoconservatives in the present administration and indeed in neoconservative think-tanks throughout the city, and indeed, throughout the country,” writes the political theorist Anne Norton.

“Many legal scholars say they believe that Bush’s theory about his own powers goes too far and that he is seizing for himself some of the law-making role of Congress and the Constitution-interpreting role of the courts,” the Globe continues. “There is no question that this administration has been involved in a very carefully thought-out, systematic process of expanding presidential power at the expense of the other branches of government,” explains Phillip Cooper, a Portland State University law professor. ‘’This is really big, very expansive, and very significant.” It is the ideology of Strauss and Schmitt in action.

It should also be remembered that Carl Schmitt formulated the idea of “friend and enemy,” that is to say that the enemy is whoever is “in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible.” In the current context, the vaunted “Clash of Civilizations” launched against the Muslim world is just such an “extreme case,” resulting in not only a lot of death and misery in the Middle East but the destruction of “liberalism” here in America (classic liberalism, i.e., the ideas put forth in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights). For Schmitt, it does not matter who the enemy is, so long as enmity is manifestly present and works to strengthen the executive and bring about totalitarianism.

“No wonder that Schmitt admired thinkers such as Machiavelli and Hobbes, who treated politics without illusions,” writes Alan Wolfe. “Leaders inspired by them, in no way in thrall to the individualism of liberal thought, are willing to recognize that sometimes politics involves the sacrifice of life. They are better at fighting wars than liberals because they dispense with such notions as the common good or the interests of all humanity…. Schmitt’s German version of conservatism, which shared so much with Nazism, has no direct links with American thought. Yet residues of his ideas can nonetheless be detected in the ways in which conservatives today fight for their objectives.” Of course, Wolfe has it wrong—Schmitt’s fascism, his desire for totalitarian dictatorship, has nothing to do with conservatives, although it has everything to do with what we now call neoconservatives, more accurately defined as Straussian neocons.

Bush may break laws willy-nilly and legal experts may tell us this is wrong—but it is only a small footnote to a larger and grimmer story. Bush—once again, when I say “Bush” I mean the Straussian neocons, since George W. Bush is a near meaningless figurehead, practically a useful idiot hailing from an elite family of long-term fascists, law-breakers, and Nazi collaborators—is on the Straussian path leading to the ultimate destruction of America (or at minimum turning it into something unrecognizable to many of us). If we are to survive, we must keep in mind Carl Schmitt’s idea of “friend and enemy.”

If you easily dismiss the viciousness of Ann Coulter, Michael “Savage” Weiner, and Rush “doctor shopping” Limbaugh as theatrics, think again—it is the very essence of Schmitt’s “friend and enemy” philosophy in action, even if these “media personalities” are not aware of it.

It has the very real and scary potential to become excessively nasty—even lethal—and soon.