Conservatism vs. authoritarianism: The British vs. the U.S. right

"...skepticism of Government power -- which lies not only at the heart of most key British reforms over the last 8 centuries but also at the heart of the American Founding -- is precisely what has been missing almost completely from the American Right, for which there is now no federal government power too great or too unlimited to embrace. The American right-wing faction which now dominates the Republican Party is defined largely by their insatiable lust for limitless government power in virtually every realm -- spying, detentions, interrogations, and war-making.

Hence, while British conservatives largely oppose a policy merely to allow the Government to detain terrorist suspects for 42 days with no charges, our "conservatives" react with fury over the U.S. Supreme Court's rejection of the President's claimed authority to hold such suspects in Guantanamo for 6 years -- really indefinitely -- without providing them any meaningful process at all. In fact, the Bush administration asserted the right to detain even U.S. citizens, arrested on U.S. soil, indefinitely, with no charges or any contact with the outside world, for years, and they proceeded to do so, with virtually no opposition of any kind from our self-proclaimed right-wing defenders of individual liberty or limited government..."