Cult of personality

A great read from Rick Perlstein in the The Village Voice entitled "The Church of Bush."

It touches on the very things that are most disturbing about Bush (something sadly missing from the jib-jab cartoon making the rounds), his faith that he is god's instrument and his corresponding disdain for democracy. It is a faith that his cult embraces as well:

"Once I interviewed a Freeper who told me he first became a committed conservative after discovering the Federalist Papers. 'I absolutely devoured them, recognizing, my God, these things were written hundreds of years ago and they still stand up as some of the most intense political philosophy ever written.'

I happen to agree, so I asked him--after he insisted Bush couldn't have been lying when he claimed to have witnessed the first plane hit the World Trade Center live on TV, after he said the orders to torture in Iraq couldn't have possibly come from the top, all because George Bush is too fundamentally decent to lie--what he thinks of the Federalists' most famous message: that the genius of the Constitution they were defending was that you needn't base your faith in the country on the fundamental decency of an individual, because no one can be trusted to be fundamentally decent, which was why the Constitution established a government of laws, not personalities.

'If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary . . . '

Conservatives see something angelic in George Bush. That's why they excuse, repress, and rationalize away so much.

And that is why conservatism is verging on becoming an un-American creed."