Matthew Yglesias on conservatives and due process:
The underlying issue here, as I've been saying, is that conservatives think that any constraint on the state security apparatus is too much. They believe, contrary to all of the evidence, that the rule-bound criminal justice system can't or doesn't function and that things would be better if we scrapped all the rules. And, indeed, in the civilian context they've worked steadily and systematically over a period of decades to weaken the constitutional protections as much as possible, and bring us as close as possible to their dream scenario of limitless state-sponsored violence. The desire to push certain categories of people (non-citizens) or certain categories of suspects (terrorists) out of the constitutionally protected realm is just part-and-parcel of that broad-based assault on the idea of a rule-bound justice system.
I don't really think this part about "certain categories" is peripheral to this argument. Conservatives didn't merely support "state violence," William F. Buckley's 1957 declaration that the South was "entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where [they do] not predominate numerically." This was an endorsement of vigilante violence against black people, so that white people might still clutch the reins of power. As long as the violence of the state is being used against a defined other who lacks the defined cultural "birthright," whether it be an illegal immigrant, a suspected terrorist, or a black kid walking home from school, such state-sponsored violence is inherently legitimate. The mere possibility that the state might use its resources against groups conservatives identify with provokes massive hysteria, and even when such concerns are legitimate, they don't extend to anyone outside a narrowly defined group. The point is that conservatives don't so much endorse "limitless" state violence -- it's limited in the sense that it should only be applied to "those people." This also may help to explain some of the paranoia about Obama's "re-education camps" and such -- for the first time, the head of state is one of "those people."
Just speaking for myself, when you grow up a minority in the United States, you learn early lessons about the violence of the state not being inherently legitimate, from friends and relatives if not first hand. The casual acceptance of state violence has always seemed to me dependent on one's individual ability to imagine that kind of force used against you, or someone like you, or perhaps even someone you care about. The torture wing of the GOP lacks that impulse entirely, being motivated solely by the intellectual principle at the heart of Buckley's pro-South manifesto.
-- A. Serwer
