THE RIGHT IN ECLIPSE. The right-wing definitely seems to be in fin de siecle mode as they anticipate the end of the Bush era. Given the over-all immaturity of the right, that means that conservative commentators are abandoning message discipline altogether and indulging in wishful thinking about transforming American politics so they can always win. It's difficult to say whether the right is just venting their frustration over their inability to control American democracy, harmlessly beating their chests about how tough they're going to be the next time they hold office, or thinking seriously about whether they should launch a Hitler-like constitutional coup the next time they're in power. Maybe all three. However, there's now a fair amount of conservative thinking about how to take the democracy out of American democracy.

THE POLITICAL HACKS AS SKIRMISHERS. Unsurprisingly, Newt Gingrich was the first to jump on the bandwagon last fall by arguing that the First Amendment should be revised to limit the advocacy of terrorism. But Newt's real target is the domestic American opposition to military adventures that he saw as being all too successful in last November's elections. More recently, Thomas Sowell has been hinting at the need for a military coup to deal with the general "degeneracy" of American politics, culture, and education. Although more ambitious than Newt, Sowell is thinking along the same line. Given that the right can't control the United States as it is, they're wondering about the desirability of transforming fundamental American institutions to guarantee permanent right-wing control. In other words, they're wondering about "regime change" in the U. S.

THE PHILOSOPHER AS CLOSER. A couple of days ago, Harvard political philosopher Harvey Mansfield weighed in with an argument for an American president over-ruling the Constitution and statutory law, taking away individual rights, and ruling as a one-man government--in other words as a tyrant. Unlike Newt and Thomas Sowell, Mansfield takes the idea of suspending or overthrowing American democracy seriously enough to attempt to give it an intellectual justification and he refers to Machiavelli, Locke, Montesquieu, the American Founding Fathers, Alexis de Tocqueville, and others in an effort to "prove" that a dictatorial executive can be justified by American and Western intellectual traditions.

There's more...