Interview With Sidney Blumenthal

(click title to see entire interview)

LiberalOasis: What makes the Bush presidency "radical" as opposed to merely "conservative" or "right-wing"?

Sidney Blumenthal: It's certainly not conservative in any classical definition of the sense of conserving something.

And, it's radicalism, in some ways is of the Right, but it is a unique radicalism...

...we're in the grip of this radical presidency, and I don't think that the country is fully aware of how radical Bush is, what the true and sweeping agenda is, and how this is changing our country fundamentally, including an attempt to change the nature of our government and Constitution.

It is unique because it's a kind of perverse mutation of conservatism and right-wing thought, but it's unto itself.

And it is unique in that Bush is more radical than any other president we have ever had in American history.

LO: You say that many Americans don't know what the agenda is. How would you summarize that agenda?

SB: I think that agenda is to completely transform our system of government, so that we have an unaccountable, unfettered concentration of power in the Executive.

It's an agenda that also seeks to transform the place of the United States in the world.

Bush has discarded 60 years of broad bipartisan consensus in foreign policy and internationalism.

And in place, asserted an agenda of, using the attacks on 9/11 as the proximate cause, ... first-strike pre-emptive attacks, unilateralism, de facto dismissal of internationalism.

He has shattered our traditional coalitions, including the Western Alliance.

And you can go through the whole foreign policy, but particularly, point to the immense dangers that he has created to our national security interests, coming from the utter fiascos he has engendered in the Middle East.

He also [is] the only President ever to show hostility to science.