The Amazingly Fantastic Freedom Institute and Technicolor Political Dream Machine

Even in retirement, George W. B**h (I refuse to write his name any longer) and his retinue of sycophants cannot stop from being disruptive and culturally, as well as ethically, disconnected from reality. The Crawford Cowboys have picked a fight with Southern Methodist University in Dallas over a think tank that is to be a part of the B**h library. In an interview with journalist Robert Draper, B**h referred to it as a "fantastic freedom institute." Obviously, with the B**h imprimatur hanging over research conducted there it will likely have little to do with freedom. Unlike most presidential libraries, neither B**h nor his friend Don Evans, who is presently administering the facility, plans on having the library or the "institute" seek approval of faculty or administrators of host SMU.

As SMU struggles with the notion of being associated with the most profoundly failed president in American history, Mr. B**h's friend Karen Hughes is talking about classes that might be taught at the Freedom Institute. What kind of classes? Cooking classes? How to cook intelligence. Waterboarding 101. What kind of recipes, Karen? Take a pinch of distortion and puree all the facts and mix in a large fruit bowl of lies and stir until the world is on fire?

The actuality of what the B**h gang hopes to achieve on the SMU campus is a kind of legacy campaign. They are creating a new facet of what Sidney Blumenthal described as "the permanent campaign." After leaving office, the president's next campaign is to exert control of how history will judge his time in office. There seems to be little doubt that the "Freedom Institute" will be working to change how history and time view B**h. What we are going to have back in the Lone Star state is a kind of academic version of both Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans or the White House Iraq Group. Both of these facilitated the Iraq War by cherry picking intelligence and then spinning it out in webs of fear. The Freedom Institute will be designed, however, not to "cook" intelligence but to "cook" history.

Who's going to want this job, though, of running this institution? W is sort of the 16 year-old whose daddy bought him a hot new car and he has lots of friends until he totals it and they all decide he's not worth hanging out with unless he's got wheels. B**h continues to insist that history will judge him differently years after he and his constituents have slipped away into the ether of mortality. He's wrong, however, because there simply is no contradictory evidence to be exhumed that he isn't history's most profoundly failed of presidents. In their search for someone to lead the "Fantastic Freedom Institute" the B**h believers will likely have to settle for someone like Alberto Gonzales, the persistently unemployed former attorney general whose memo insisting the Geneva Conventions against torture were "quaint." His analysis sent American policy into a moral spiral, which is a perfect resume' for the Freedom Institute.

Even people without the slightest sense of irony have to be giggling about the idea that the W gang is going to be pursuing the truth on the campus of an institution of higher learning. The currency in the marketplace of ideas at SMU is about to be devalued by the B**h attempts to prove he was right and the rest of the world was wrong. SMU cannot expect any more free thinking from that B**h institution than was ever proffered while he was in the White House. If, however, any independent scholarly work were ever to be conducted at the B**h Library or Freedom Institute, my suggestion for the most worthy project might be a thesis on how people arrive at a willingness to sacrifice their country's economic and political vitality for the sake of their own power and vanity? Not a new story, of course, but one still worth understanding.

The B**h team is insisting that SMU, the university which is going to house the library and institute, have no administrative approval on curricula or any projects to be conducted as part of the Freedom Institute's function. This condition contravenes the relationships between presidential libraries and other universities, which historically have given free access to scholars and researchers and allowed them to reach their own conclusions. While these protocols might be exercised at the Bush library, the Freedom Institute to be associated with the library has no intention of adhering to any university controls or guidelines.

The donors and the founders of the Freedom Institute seem to have no compromise in them with regard to SMU's standards for rigorous academic research. Their unrelenting approach on this means the Freedom Institute is a tacit admission by B**h and his people that they got it wrong and there are years of work ahead of them in trying to create documents and theses to offer alternative interpretations of their many failures. They are going to try to "cook" history precisely the same way they cooked intelligence to launch a war in Iraq and the way they cooked it to deny global warming and.......

Bush needs to return to his ranch and concentrate on chopping down cedar trees instead of the truth.

Also at http://www.moorethink.com

Comments

[SENKOSAM]

hubris - def.
"Overweening pride or insolence that results in the misfortune of the protagonist in a tragedy. Hubris leads the protagonist to break a moral law, attempt vainly to transcend normal limitations, or ignore a divine warning with calamitous results."

Rather than 'library', it should be called the Institute of Hubris. The cast of administration characters number in the hundreds; the victims of their acts number in the MILLIONS!

The only possible sliver of credibility the 'institution' might strive for is if a few mea culpas occur as footnotes personally added by GW for at least some of the calamities he fostered. Unfortunately, the only definition of the man that discounts any accountability is the term hubris. He was in good company.

[LynnW49]

“Former presidents have a unique platform to get people to come together and think about bigger ideas that transcend the partisan debate.” -- Mark Langdale, president of the George W. Bush Foundation.

Anyone who uses the expression "bigger ideas" when speaking of the irresponsible, indeed criminal, and intellectually challenged former president is seriously deranged.

"the Freedom Institute to be associated with the library has no intention of adhering to any university controls or guidelines­."

And, once again B**sh shows that he hasn't a clue about what "Freedom" is.

[mtdem4ever]

SMU will never rebuff W., nor limit his plans in any way. Reason? Laura is currently a Trustee and Cheney was a Trustee. Laura is an alumna. The Bush family is so intertwined with SMU one could make a good argument that many of SMU's recent problems with morality parallel those that W has.

[rckayla]

Great post!! Thanks for writing it! However, believe it or not, there are still some people who think GWB kept Americans safe after 9/11; they forget that GWB "lied" about the reason to invade Iraq rather than getting osama bin laden "Dead or Alive!" (as GWB himself said right after 9/11). And there are still some who forget what GWB did to our country to gain his power. Yes those Americans who FORGET what an awful job GWB did are all Republicans, conservative or not...

[GreatNews27]

Bush is a 19 year old frat boy. SMU has sold it's integrity. They fit perfectly. And don't worry, the ROM(Republican Owned Media) will give all the help it can so Bush can rewrite history. Keeping America perpetually ignorant will help and eventually, Bush Jr. will be the hero he always dreamed he was. And then another Bush will win.......­..........­..........

[rckayla]

Let's pray another Bush does NOT win!!!

[Ishmael1]

Considering the new revelations of Cheney's Death Squad and the OLC memos justifying dictatorship, perhaps we should sue SMU to change the name to the following:

The George W. Bush DICTATORIAL Library and Tyranny Institute

Sort of a "Truth In Advertising" suit.

It reminds me of this old Bruce Cockburn song. Still true after 23 years:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53JkTgdTKd0

[johnie2xs]

Second attempt;

If anything has, this to me makes the case for the prosecution of GWB for "Crimes against Humanity", or "War Crimes, however you want to couch it.

Now regarding this whole " Freedom Institute" idea. Anything coming out of this "Faux Fact Factory", should be looked at in the same light as any unlicensed practitioner of any other discipline. SMU, using the parameters as you stated in this article concerning other Presidential Libraries and how they function, should just boot them the hell off their campus. They should site the irreparable damage that could be inflicted on them by allowing such a non-academic approach to be allowed within the University structure.
I'm sure their board of regents has a vote on this matter; exercise it. It won't be the first time a Texas University rebuffed the will of GWB. The University did not accept him into its post graduate MBA program. He was forced to have his POP pull Ivy League strings to get him into Harvard. I'm sure Harvard is so proud, now.

[magen]

Bush isn't gonna have a library.

A library is where you go for facts, information, and truth.

Bush is gonna have a LIE-BURY.

A place to bury and spin his lies.

The George W. Bush Presidential LIE-BURY.

[rolodex]

The SMU board of Regents did have a say in this decision and they jumped on it like a chicken on a june bug. Can you say "follow the money".
The South Central Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church also had a say it it as well since they own SMU. At first the College of Bishops did likewise, they 'followed the money' and I think are just plain naive.

A very large petition effort was started to try to pressure the SCJ to can the deal. The General Conference of the United Methodist Church (every 4 year world conference) was held in Fort Worth in 2008 and they voted it down by 844-20, although they had no official power over the matter, but it just showed the general disdain for the institute being at SMU.

Finally the SJC held their conference in June '08 and they approved the whole project, ignoring the groundswell of sentiment against it. They naively think they will have some influence on the library and institute and , as stated in a SJC resolution, "the South Central Jurisdiction expects the institute to function in a manner that protects the integrity of both Southern Methodist University and the South Central Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church".

I expect them to be sorely disappointed.

This decision, along with several other church issues, contributed to why I had to take my humanistic leanings elsewhere and mark the church off my list of acceptable organizations to associate with.

[Fremon]

This library will not be used by historians as the seminal source of information regarding the Bush 2 years. There is too much information now that is readily available from other sources that will get the real information which in total will reflect the Bush years. The best that could be said will some author will use the information and show what the Bush years were like as defined by that information and possibly counter in that book's second section as to what other information supports or denies.
It will also be a good place for the Bush admin people like Gonzo/Rice­/Cheney/Me­iers/and all the other hacks and people like the Fox team/coult­er/limbaug­h etc to reunite periodically and remember the "good years "about the admin's accomplishments. I guess that will be about the best we can hope for.

[surfcitysteven]

SMU is the poster child of corrupt athletics. I believe they are the only school that was given the death penalty for violations and their football team was disbanded for years. That they would agree to host this most corrupt of men shows they haven't learned much since then. Think SMU, think corrupt.

[lisakaz2]

Permanent campaign is correct. But so long as I teach history, I sure won't be fooled by this nonsense. And I plan on outliving these jokers. I like Rumples' suggestion: it IS planning to be the B*S* library.

[JYork]

...
You all keep taking Presidential Libraries all wrong. They are the tool, or, the method through which corporations who have benefited from the President's graft and corruption pay him.

It is a "donation" to a "library". And, it is a tax write off too. And it is un-taxable to Bush or Clinton too. Once the "donation" goes into the "Library Foundation" it is available to pay Bush a salary, fees, travel expenses, Karen Hughes's fees and a salary too. It is a scam.

Stop paying attention to it as a legitimate "library" and pay attention to it as a scam to get graft payments to the president for his having participated in his part of the big payoff program.
.

[Fremon]

Library is only a name and really has little meaning. I have a library in my den but mostly filled with old Playboy issues. As Maher would say "I kid you". Any repository of books, papers, videos. etc is a library.

[johnie2xs]

If anything has, this to me makes the case for the prosecution of GWB for "Crimes against Humanity", or "War Crimes, however you want to couch it.

Now regarding this whole " Freedom Institute" idea. Anything coming out of this "Faux Fact Factory", should be looked at in the same light as any unlicensed practitioner of any other discipline. SMU, using the parameters as you stated in this article concerning other Presidential Libraries and how they function, should just boot them the hell off their campus. They should site the irreparable damage that could be inflicted on them by allowing such a non-academic approach to be allowed within the University structure.
I'm sure their board of regents has a vote on this matter; exercise it. It won't be the first time a Texas University rebuffed the will of GWB. The University did not accept him into its post graduate MBA program. He was forced to have his POP pull Ivy League strings to get him into Harvard. I'm sure Harvard is so proud, now.

[newpantaloons]

The Bush Dynasty got what it wanted. They got Junior installed as the President of the free world, and their objective was to loot the United States Treasury. It's hard to steal billions and trillions of dollars, so, hence, the dereulation of the financial industry and the Iraq War. I am not a conspiracy advocate, but it really is hard to see how they could have accomplished all this without 9/11. But, for the Bush Dynasty, it was "Mission Accomplished!" Only one small problem, along the way, they trashed the Bush name and legacy. This not only includes George W. and Dick Cheney (Halliburton is a partner with Dresser Industries, owned by the Bush Crime Family), but it also trashed the names of ALL the Bushes', the James Bakers', the Wolfowitzs', the Rumsfelds', etc., etc.,, and all the members of the Republican Party. Of course, they have OUR trilliions of dollars to keep warm and the wolf from the door.

This Gang of Thieves should be tried and convicted and sent to prison for life!!

[rckayla]

Forget about The Gang of Thieves getting tried and convicted and sent to prison for life, because it ain't going to happen with President Obama wanting to forget the past and just moving forward to a bright new future for America.