FREDERICK TURNER writes on Bush-hatred, and change:

At this time in the world’s history a great turning point is imminent. And here we begin to see why there is this strange and unholy alliance between idealistic liberalism, the vestiges of the old socialist left, traditional third world authoritarians, and the unrelenting forces of Islamic totalitarianism, theocracy, and terror. However various their ideas of what is the good, all are united in their desire for an enforced law of the good. Even elements of the human rights movement, much of the anti-globalist community, and a large swatch of the philanthropic world — the so-called NGOs — still yearn for a government that, through sumptuary laws, high taxation, political correctness, and entitlements, would force to happen what people ought to, but do not make happen of their own free will. Much philanthropy has the stated goal of eliminating itself when through its advocacy and lobbying it has given government the power to compel what was once freely given; at which time the employees of the Foundations would presumably take over the powerful role of government civil servants. If the law of right is to become the only enforceable law of the human race, all these constituencies will have suffered what will feel to them to be a mortal setback. . . .

So when the protesters in London tore down Bush’s effigy they were, unconsciously, expressing not only the opposite of the destruction of Saddam’s statue — that is, a desire to reinstate him — but also the motivations behind the smashing of the statue of liberty erected by the students in Tiananmen Square. The symbolism of the Bush fragging was not, as many commentators believed, semiotically incompetent, but strikingly accurate. And the good, pacifist destroyers of the Bush statue were unconsciously leaguing themselves with the army tanks that massacred the Chinese students and trampled their poor plaster version of Lady Liberty — and declaring war on the students themselves. Like their colleagues on this side of the Atlantic, the anti-American protesters stood in solidarity with the Confucian enforcers of the good that gave the order to clear the square of Heavenly Peace, and with seekers after the role of moral enforcer everywhere.

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