Kos, Digby and Crooks and Liars picked up on this, but I thought it warranted a closer look.
A right-wing organization called Family Security Matters published the article below on their website; the site has since been scrubbed and the article removed, but here it is, in its entirety:
Exclusive: Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy
Philip Atkinson
Author: Philip Atkinson
Source: The Family Security Foundation, Inc.
Date: August 3, 2007
While democratic government is better than dictatorships and theocracies, it has its pitfalls. FSM Contributing Editor Philip Atkinson describes some of the difficulties facing President Bush today.
Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy
By Philip Atkinson
President George W. Bush is the 43rd President of the United States. He was sworn in for a second term on January 20, 2005 after being chosen by the majority of citizens in America to be president.
Yet in 2007 he is generally despised, with many citizens of Western civilization expressing contempt for his person and his policies, sentiments which now abound on the Internet. This rage at President Bush is an inevitable result of the system of government demanded by the people, which is Democracy.
The inadequacy of Democracy, rule by the majority, is undeniable – for it demands adopting ideas because they are popular, rather than because they are wise. This means that any man chosen to act as an agent of the people is placed in an invidious position: if he commits folly because it is popular, then he will be held responsible for the inevitable result. If he refuses to commit folly, then he will be detested by most citizens because he is frustrating their demands.
When faced with the possible threat that the Iraqis might be amassing terrible weapons that could be used to slay millions of citizens of Western Civilization, President Bush took the only action prudence demanded and the electorate allowed: he conquered Iraq with an army.
This dangerous and expensive act did destroy the Iraqi regime, but left an American army without any clear purpose in a hostile country and subject to attack. If the Army merely returns to its home, then the threat it ended would simply return.
The wisest course would have been for President Bush to use his nuclear weapons to slaughter Iraqis until they complied with his demands, or until they were all dead. Then there would be little risk or expense and no American army would be left exposed. But if he did this, his cowardly electorate would have instantly ended his term of office, if not his freedom or his life.
The simple truth that modern weapons now mean a nation must practice genocide or commit suicide. Israel provides the perfect example. If the Israelis do not raze Iran, the Iranians will fulfill their boast and wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Yet Israel is not popular, and so is denied permission to defend itself. In the same vein, President Bush cannot do what is necessary for the survival of Americans. He cannot use the nation’s powerful weapons. All he can do is try and discover a result that will be popular with Americans.
As there appears to be no sensible result of the invasion of Iraq that will be popular with his countrymen other than retreat, President Bush is reviled; he has become another victim of Democracy.
By elevating popular fancy over truth, Democracy is clearly an enemy of not just truth, but duty and justice, which makes it the worst form of government. President Bush must overcome not just the situation in Iraq, but democratic government.
However, President Bush has a valuable historical example that he could choose to follow.
When the ancient Roman general Julius Caesar was struggling to conquer ancient Gaul, he not only had to defeat the Gauls, but he also had to defeat his political enemies in Rome who would destroy him the moment his tenure as consul (president) ended.
Caesar pacified Gaul by mass slaughter; he then used his successful army to crush all political opposition at home and establish himself as permanent ruler of ancient Rome. This brilliant action not only ended the personal threat to Caesar, but ended the civil chaos that was threatening anarchy in ancient Rome – thus marking the start of the ancient Roman Empire that gave peace and prosperity to the known world.
If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege while terrifying American enemies.
He could then follow Caesar’s example and use his newfound popularity with the military to wield military power to become the first permanent president of America, and end the civil chaos caused by the continually squabbling Congress and the out-of-control Supreme Court.
President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming “ex-president” Bush or he can become “President-for-Life” Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.
# #
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Philip Atkinson is the British born founder of ourcivilisation.com and author of A Study of Our Decline. He is a philosopher specializing in issues concerning the preservation of Western civilization.
Let’s deconstruct.
The inadequacy of Democracy, rule by the majority, is undeniable – for it demands adopting ideas because they are popular, rather than because they are wise. This means that any man chosen to act as an agent of the people is placed in an invidious position: if he commits folly because it is popular, then he will be held responsible for the inevitable result. If he refuses to commit folly, then he will be detested by most citizens because he is frustrating their demands.
Democracy isn’t perfect, no. But it is the best system humanity has ever known—it’s the fairest, the most egalitarian and the most sensible. It allows people to choose their own government, their own policies, their own destinies. Overall, the people usually make pretty smart decisions, except when they’re misinformed. The right wing has made an entire industry out of spreading misinformation, disseminating misleading talking points, publishing bogus research done by front groups, etc. Democracy isn’t the problem—the people who shamelessly manipulate it are.
When faced with the possible threat that the Iraqis might be amassing terrible weapons that could be used to slay millions of citizens of Western Civilization, President Bush took the only action prudence demanded and the electorate allowed: he conquered Iraq with an army.
This is completely nonsensical. Whenever we face the possible threat that a nation may amass terrible weapons to possibly use against us, the only prudent action is to use force? It’s that kind of “every-problem-is-a-nail-and-every-tool-is-a-hammer” thinking that got us into this debacle to begin with.
In addition, there are plenty of nations out there with the potential to amass dangerous weapons—to say that the only prudent option is to go to war with Iran, North Korea, Syria, China, Pakistan (just to name a few) because they might pose a threat is ridiculous. This is the epitome of the 1% doctrine, which burns out our intelligence and military capabilities extremely quickly, leaving us vulnerable.
This dangerous and expensive act did destroy the Iraqi regime, but left an American army without any clear purpose in a hostile country and subject to attack. If the Army merely returns to its home, then the threat it ended would simply return.
I agree with the first sentence. The second, not so much. The justification given for invading Iraq was that Saddam Hussein was a brutal, iron-fisted dictator with stockpiles of WMDs, who was seeking more weapons in order to attack the United States. Since Hussein is dead, the WMD don’t exist and Iraq is caught up in the midst of a bloody, all-consuming civil war, I fail to see how the threat we faced before could return.
The wisest course would have been for President Bush to use his nuclear weapons to slaughter Iraqis until they complied with his demands, or until they were all dead. Then there would be little risk or expense and no American army would be left exposed. But if he did this, his cowardly electorate would have instantly ended his term of office, if not his freedom or his life.
So, the wisest course of action would have been to nuke the Iraqis, glassing their country piece by piece until they gave us what we wanted—and since the WMDs we were looking for didn’t exist, that means Iraq would have been destroyed before they met our demands.
Ironically, Iraq was a dictatorship—the form of government Mr. Atkinson prefers over democracy because it allows a country’s leader to ignore the will of the people. Yet, he advocates killing the people of Iraq in response to the actions of their government, even though the people of Iraq had no influence whatsoever on what their government did. Still following?
The simple truth that modern weapons now mean a nation must practice genocide or commit suicide. Israel provides the perfect example. If the Israelis do not raze Iran, the Iranians will fulfill their boast and wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Yet Israel is not popular, and so is denied permission to defend itself. In the same vein, President Bush cannot do what is necessary for the survival of Americans. He cannot use the nation’s powerful weapons. All he can do is try and discover a result that will be popular with Americans.
So the only two options available to America are genocide or suicide? What kind of stilted, unrealistic, uncompromising, idiotic view of the world do these people have, to believe that America has to either kill its enemies or be killed by them? Just look at the Cold War—America and the Soviet Union both possessed the capability to destroy the world multiple times, yet that power never had to be used. In the end, America found other ways to defeat the USSR without having to resort to either genocide or suicide.
And while Iran may threaten Israel, Iran has been threatening Israel since 1979—that’s nothing new. Israel has a strong, capable, well-funded and well-trained military, and they’ve done a fine job defending themselves over the past sixty years. Iran, on the other hand, has an incredibly unpopular fundamentalist government ruling over a mostly pro-western non-fundamentalist populace, along with a military that is nowhere near as capable and developed as the Israeli military.
Also, Israel has nukes.
By elevating popular fancy over truth, Democracy is clearly an enemy of not just truth, but duty and justice, which makes it the worst form of government. President Bush must overcome not just the situation in Iraq, but democratic government.
Democracy didn’t elevate fancy over truth, conservatives did. Weren’t they the ones who cherry-picked the intelligence to make the case for war? Weren’t they the ones who refused to come up with any post-war planning, because Iraq was going to be a cakewalk? Weren’t they the ones who ignored the extensive sectarianism in Iraqi society? Weren’t they the ones who said they would overthrow Iraq’s dictator of thirty-five years, install a democracy in a nation without any history of democratic institutions and leave, all within six months? No, truth wasn’t a victim of democracy—it was the victim of conservatism.
If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege while terrifying American enemies.
He could then follow Caesar’s example and use his newfound popularity with the military to wield military power to become the first permanent president of America, and end the civil chaos caused by the continually squabbling Congress and the out-of-control Supreme Court.
President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming “ex-president” Bush or he can become “President-for-Life” Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.
So there it is, the dark heart of authoritarian conservatism, their dirty little secret. They want to throw away thousands of years of civilization, throw away the innumerable lives lost advancing the cause of freedom and liberty; throw away the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, Common Sense, the Second Treatise of Government; throw away the civil rights movement, the abolition movement, the women’s rights movement; throw away every single advancement in equality and justice made in the past two thousand years.
And why?
Glenn Greenwald has a brilliant piece explaining why, far more eloquent and well-informed than anything I could tap out. The authoritarian right believes we are engaged in a massive clash of civilizations, equal in scale to perhaps only the Crusades. They believe that terrorists seek nothing less than world domination, and America must do everything in its power to stop that—even if it means giving up our democracy, our rights, our freedoms; even if it means giving up everything our country stands for.
Don’t get me wrong, terrorism is a serious, dangerous threat. But just as it shouldn’t be underestimated, it shouldn’t be overestimated, either. Terrorist networks are scattered, decentralized groups of loosely-affiliated organizations. They strike from the shadows, hiding in remote, underdeveloped areas of the world using improvised, crude weaponry. They have no government, no nation, no borders, no military, no central location, no single leader and no stable source of income. Many of them have little reach outside a small geographic area, except for isolated, sporadic attacks that only occasionally succeed—and attacks like those take a significant amount of time, effort and money to pull off.
And yet, the authoritarian right believes that these terrorist groups are going to accomplish what the British Empire, the Nazis, the Japanese, the Soviet Union, all couldn’t—conquering America. Conquering the world. Not even nations with massive amounts of land, a large population, manufacturing and commercial capabilities, a central government, a large and well-trained military, powerful and capable allies, etc. could accomplish that. Yet, this is a core belief of the authoritarian right—not just that terrorists have the desire and the capability to conquer America, but that if they tried, they would win. Why else would we need a military dictatorship and a President for Life?
To put it simply, the authoritarian right hates America—at least, the America the rest us love. We love America because of the great things it represents, the rights and the freedoms and the liberties and the justice. We love this country because it has done great things, and will do great things again. We love America because it is a nation of laws—not men—where some things (like murder, tyranny, oppression) are never acceptable, no matter who does them.
Because of this, the authoritarian right hates America. They see us as weak, fickle, feckless, stupid—unable and unwilling to protect ourselves. To them, America is nothing more than a flag, a symbol with no underlying beliefs, where no matter what we do we’re always right. They want an America of men, not laws, where conservative supermen will dismantle “the nanny state” and erect “the father state,” an iron-fisted government that tells us what’s best for us and does it, no matter what we the people want.
As Kos and Digby and others have said, these ideas don’t just come from the right-wing fringe. To some degree, they are held by a significant part of the Republican Party’s base—usually dressed up in religious language, portraying an epic battle of Christian v. Muslim, good v. evil. Go to Little Green Footballs or Michelle Malkin or a dozen other right-wing blogs and it becomes crystal clear that this is the foundation of their worldview. This is what they want—an American dictatorship, slaughtering its enemies and establishing itself as not the strongest nation in the world, but the only nation in the world.
There’s a quote—incorrectly attributed to a number people—that goes, “when fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag carrying
a cross.” It’s disturbing to think that there are people out there who would welcome that day.
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Democrashield 
