Glenn Greenwald, picking up on David Brooks’ NY Times column today, has a very useful column at Salon. It’s not the first time he, or others (including yours truly) have shaped out these thoughts but it is a cogent re-stating and well worth reading.

The nub of it is that the political terrain has shifted under the existing political nomenclature. Bush and the neo-cons, while operating under the rubric of “conservative” and hailing Goldwater and Reagan as their heroes, have little or nothing to do with traditional, small-government, anti-regulatory conservatism. They have resuscitated and put in the center of their belief system an ancient authoritarianism that responds to, and depends on the mobilization of, fear. The promise of security is wrapped up in the thrill of empire building and fascinating, high-tech warfare.

Don’t pass this essay up.

…the Bush presidency and the political movement that supports it is not driven by any of the abstract political principles traditionally associated with “liberalism” or “conservatism.” Whatever else one wants to say about the Bush presidency, it has nothing to do with limiting the size, scope and reach of the federal government. The exact opposite is true.

On every front, the Bush administration has ushered in vast expansions of federal power — often in the form of radical and new executive powers, unprecedented surveillance of American citizens, and increased intervention in every aspect of Americans’ private lives. To say that the Bush movement is hostile to the limited-government ends traditionally associated (accurately or not) with the storied Goldwater/Reagan ideology is a gross understatement.

But none of this expansion of government power has been undertaken in order to promote ends traditionally associated with liberalism either — none of it is about creating social safety nets or addressing growing wealth disparities or regulating business. Instead, federal power is enlisted, and endlessly expanded, in service of an agenda of aggressive militarism abroad, liberty-infringement domestically, and an overarching sense of moralistic certitude and exceptionalism. This movement is neither “liberal” nor “conservative” as those terms are understood in their abstract form, but instead, is radical in its attempt to fundamentally re-define the American government and the functions it serves.

That is the central point of our current political predicament: the Bush presidency, and more importantly the right-wing movement which created and sustained it (and which will survive Bush’s departure), are not adherents to any mainstream American political ideology. And many people, including neoconservatives themselves, have acknowledged this, and that is also the critical insight of Brooks’ column today.

Salon.com: Greenwald