Reply #78: Because the RW long ceased to believe in civil liberties

[DBoon]

Their heroes are Joe McCarthy, Francisco Franco, and General Pinochet. If you don't believe me, just go through back issues of National Review.

I'm convinced a very large sengment of the population really longs for a dictatorship. Not just marginalized crackpots, but solid, middle-class suburbanites. They want a society that is above all orderly and clean. They want the "lower classes" to know their place. They want dissidents, non-conformists, and other weirdos punished and locked up. They would be very happy with abolishing the criminal justice system and allows police to just shoot anyone that is thought to be a criminal.

Remember when that young American was facing caning as a punishment for writing graffiti in Singapore? And the Clinton administration initially thought that was a barbaric punishment and tried to stop the caning? And so many solid middle class Americans supported the caning? Never mind that the punishment was so severe because graffiti writing was considered a political crime in state controlled Singapore. Because in the RW view of America, all crimes are political crimes.