There exists a long history of authoritarian disaster on the Left, which is rather easily pointed out: where communism reached its extremes in Leninism and Stalinism, for example, we saw the devastating potential of unchecked tendencies toward authoritarianism by way of a Leftist political agenda. What enabled these despotic regimes was fundamentally *not* any particular Marxist or collectivist ideology, but rather an interpretation of these ideologies that favors autocratic government and fears pluralism. In other words, a truly free and pluralist society has room for ideologues like Lenin and Stalin, but ultimately treads toward its own murderous decline when it finds ways to enshrine absolute power in the hands of ideologues instead of merely tolerating them and their political voices within the stable framework of a pluralist and rights-based democratic society. In this vein, for example, America tolerates the unsightly public demonstrations of neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan sheetheads, and does so admirably, its tolerance of even the most abominable speech positions being altogether very different from a (de facto, as it were) ratification of these extreme positions. This is how great pluralist societies work: instead of martyring the fringe, they protect the right of fringe expression and co-opt it into a broader and more sensible political discourse.
That said, here's the beginning of the case against today's American conservatism: whether conservatives like it or not, America is and has always been a pluralist nation par excellence. The greatness of America does not and has never come from any particular 'American' ideology or way of life, but rather through America's impeccable ability to accommodate a daunting range of ethnic, cultural, religious, and political difference under a series of very big tents, doing so by ensuring a set of inalienable rights and shunning authoritarianism. Today's conservatives, however, are committed to a very different narrative of America, a narrative that betrays our characteristic pluralism, our national lifeblood. For conservatives, America's success stems from America as a Christian nation with a free-market economy, a particular set of family values, a way of educating in the great Western European tradition, and particular versions of individualism and self-determinism that sanctify the pursuit of wealth for its own sake. The case against conservatism, however, is not an argument that any of these aspects of the conservative American narrative are wrong, but that the assumed primacy of these aspects of the conservative American narrative is wrong. These aspects--the conservative brand of individualism, the relatively unregulated markets, etc.--are not prime, but derivative, the *results* of a rights-based pluralism that enables some Americans to envision their country in this way, while others can see it differently.
What PMB is getting at, then, is that when conservatives mistake some of the fruits of America's great pluralism and tolerance as the prime American narrative itself--the source of American greatness--they risk establishing a rather narrow, singular version of what America is or ought to be, and consequently they move to defend that singular version at all costs. We see this daily in conservative politics, including, but not limited to, the following examples:
1) The abandonment of the basic right of protection against cruel and unusual punishment in advocating for the torturing of 'enemy combatants,' even when such enemy combatants are American citizens, in order to obtain intelligence (even if this tactic is proven not to work, the point is that the conservative position here is to abandon a fundamental right by making an exception for certain 'special' security cases).
2) The abandonment of basic due process rights (via Miranda) for people suspected of terrorist activity.
3) The threat to remove the American citizenship, through the Department of State, without due process and without conviction, of anyone suspected of cooperating loosely with a government-defined and identified terrorist cell.
4) The abandonment of due process rights and the stopping of people on the street in Arizona based on 'reasonable suspicion' of illegal immigration status (appearance).
5) National prayer days
6) The governments in Texas and Arizona intervening into the substantive material being taught in schools by banning (in AZ) ethnic studies curricula and removing (in TX) Thomas Jefferson, who believed strongly in the separation of church and state, from history of the enlightenment curricula.
7) Assertions that any Americans or American politicians who favor any degree of social welfare provisions are anti-American or 'ruining America.'
8) Assertions that any semblance of government regulation in financial markets, political lobbying, or monopolistic or duopolistic markets is anti-American or 'ruining America.'
9) Assertions that certain Americans living in certain American regions are 'real Americans,' and the 'heartland' is the 'real America.'
In sum, these positions advocate strongly for a singular view of America and Americanness, as opposed to a pluralist America in which ideological difference is not wielded as a threat of exclusion, expulsion, or treasonous hostility.
The case against conservatism, then, is that it's anti-pluralist. The conservative agenda isn't in favor of big or small government, regulated or unregulated markets, personal freedoms or authoritarian measures. It moves back and forth on each of these issues in order to defend, by any ideological means necessary, a singular conservative understanding of what America is and is all about. Even if the professed conservative positions on these issues--small governments, unregulated markets, individual freedom--are ultimately correct, it is incumbent upon all Americans to reject the totality with which these positions are assumed and advanced, for the sake of the true lifeblood of this nation: our pluralism, tolerance, and INALIENABLE rights, all of which can be compromised UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES.
