TL:DR

I would really like to know where people like Soderberg get the idea that the U.S. President has the power to “order” private citizens to do anything, let alone to break the law, as even she admits happened here. I’m asking this literally: how did this warped and distinctly un-American mentality get implanted into our public discourse — that the President can give “orders” to private citizens that must be complied with? Soderberg views the President as a monarch — someone who can issue “orders” that must be obeyed, even when, as she acknowledges, the “orders” are illegal.

– Glenn Greenwald

One of the reasons I have a hard time following Glenn Greenwald is that he has a habit of devoting looooong pieces to topics that require two or three paragraphs, tops. But I do find it interesting that Glenn, along with what is in my estimation a sizable majority of the liberal blogosphere, treats the status of being “American” as an immutable value. The idea of an all powerful, imperial executive is hardly “un-American” in today’s political culture. In our current power-worshiping, hero-lionizing milieu, it’s as American as a gas-guzzling hummer that you don’t need. In all honesty we should simply admit that the republic, to the extent that it ever truly existed post-Spanish American war, is dead and buried. All that’s left is for America as it currently is, i.e. the USEmpire, to burn away in all it’s self-destructive, violent glory.

Should be interesting.