Why does John Ashcroft hate America?

A pirate posting of a recent Vanity Fair profile of John Ashcroft makes for an interesting read (it’s long but worth reading–you might want to print it out). It doesn’t have a lot of profound insights, but it does have numerous alarming anecdotes from people who have worked closely with the man.

One point in particular jumped off the page at me, though:

He has supported an additional 10 amendments to the Constitution (including one to make it easier to amend).

Here’s the thing: America is an unusual country in that at its root, it is founded on a document, the Constitution. Older countries–France or Japan, for example–are at root basically big tribes: they are countries because there are more-or-less cohesive ethnic/linguistic groups within their borders. France and Japan have been through any number of different forms of government–monarchy, military dictatorship, republic, etc–but nobody would ever dispute that each was the same country throughout. Many newer countries, for better or worse, are artifacts of colonialism or European tussles, with artificially drawn borders that artificially group together nationalities that probably wouldn’t choose to share citizenship with each other. We saw that with Yugoslavia before, and we’re seeing this in Iraq right now.

The idea behind the USA is that people are made American by their choice to accept a certain set of rules for what it means to be American, and that set of rules is expressed in the Constitution. Change the Constitution and you change the country. Right now there are 7 articles and 27 amendments to the Constitution and Ashcroft would add 10 more? Clearly, he is not happy with this country as it is constituted and wants it to be something very different. Rather than radically change the country to suit his tastes, he’d be better off finding a country that’s closer to his liking and moving there. The rest of us would be better off, too.

14 thoughts on “Why does John Ashcroft hate America?”

  1. i made a little comment concerning certain people’s unhealthy obsession with Ashcroft that appears to have been deleted. i suppose the DHS did that though?

  2. It never registered here. It looks like you attempted a double-post at about 10:07 AM EST, which may have triggered the crapflood-protection feature on this blog.

    And I’m flattered that you find my blog interesting enough to take time away from work at Lighthouse Credit.

  3. Yeah, it’s really “unhealthy” to “obsess” about some trivial little person, oops, no, I mean the friggin’ ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES, trying to radically revamp the document that serves as the foundation for our entire country! What were we thinking?!?

  4. It speaks volumes that when given a choice between a dead man (Mel Carnahan) or John Ashcroft, the people of Missouri voted in the dead man.

    What you’ve written about is the least scary thing I’ve seen about JA. (has anyone else noticed that JA caould just as easily stand for JackAss?)

  5. Adam, this is one of the best takes on Ashcroft I’ve read. I’m not sure how the term “conservative” has become associated with a group of people who seem determined to change the very basis of our country.

  6. America’s Goebel – the arch Nazi – the disaster to justice, fair play and equity. He is a criminal who ought to be tried as a major destroyer of what is right and just…

  7. I read after 9/11 that: John Ashcroft recieved information from the FBI in an August 6th memo stating that airplanes could be hijacked and used as weapons. The following day, Ashcroft started flying only military and private jets. Can anyone confirm this? I cannot find it anywhere on the net and I looked voraciously. I know I read it somewhere. Thanks.

    Marty

  8. Thanks for putting up this link. I tried to thank the guy whose page the article is on, but there’s something wrong with his site or my browser.

    Nothing to add. I’m jealous of people who can say, what I want to say, so much better.

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