As president, I took an oath to defend the Constitution, and I have no greater responsibility than to protect our people, our freedom, and our way of life.(full text here)
Nice try, George. No need to mention that this single sentence shows exactly what the problem is:
"to defend the Constitution"
vs.
"I have no greater responsibility"
Bush prefaces his own profession of faith in himself and his unlimited powers with the exact phrase that should check those powers and that faith. The Constitution exists, in case you forgot, to prevent presidents (or anyone else, for that matter) from placing their own opinions of America's safety above, well, the opinions of our Founding Fathers as to what will protect Americans truly and really. Sure, they're still opinions, but we use them for a reason, and they have had over 200 years of review and testing grounded on experience. Not all opinions of America's safety are equal, and we as a nation have made a decision, and lived by that decision, to set the opinions of our Founding Fathers as central to our government, our philosophy, and our political procedures.
And conservatives complain about liberals being relativists.
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