When I started blogging six years or so ago, I wrote a lot about the new right wing, trying to describe what I was seeing and hoping to understand what had happened to the mainstream conservatism I had grown up with and thought I knew. Until I came across Dave Neiwert's blog Orcinus, I didn't even know there was a word for it. Once I read his long posts called "Rush, Newspeak and Fascism," I did. It's called "eliminationism," which Neiwert defines as "a politics and a culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas in favor of the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through suppression, exile, and ejection, or extermination." This new strain of conservatism, then, wasn't actually conservatism at all, but a hearkening back to old radical strains of American tribalism and some very unpleasant 20th century European political movements ---which all focused on completely annihilating perceived internal enemies. One would have thought that notions of expelling racial groups or committing genocide had been purged from the American body politic sometime around the turn of the last century. But here it was again, all mixed in with white supremacy, fundamantalist religion, nationalism, chauvanism and paranoia --- and it was being absorbed into the mainstream of one of the two American political parties.

Ours is a time of great political disaffection, and I understand it, because so far in this new century, we have failed the people of this country. We’ve got a lot of damage to repair. There are no magic bullets. Future generations will look back on this period as a very dark one if we fail. But heaven help us if we don’t try.” Harry Reid, The Good Fight: Hard Lessons From Searchlight To Washington.

As you well informed blog readers all know by now, last week ABC broke an interesting little story. It was about how Condi Rice, Alberto Gonzales, Colin Powell, George Tenent, John Ashcroft and other members of the Bush's "Principals" all gathered in regular meeting in the white house to discuss and approve of the various torture methods being used again prisoners held by the United States in the War On Terror. Attorney General John Ashcroft warned them that by doing such things, right in the White House, "history would not be kind." But they did it. The president approved it. ABC reported it. And nobody else in the media cares.

(Welcome in the comments author Greg Anrig, author of The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing, and today's moderator Digby - jh) A few years back a very smart friend of mine mused over coffee, "I wonder what it's like to be William F. Buckley today? He got everything he ever wanted." He sure did.

(Today we welcome Robert Frank, author of “Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class." Please join us in the comments -- jh) We hear a lot about income inequality these days and if you're like me, you probably wonder, other than the fundamental unfairness of it all, why this matters.

(Please welcome Salon blogger and author Glenn Greenwald who is here to discuss his book A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency. You can read an excerpt here -- JH)After 9/11, I remember being quite surprised that the US government would so freely use the phrase "good and evil" when our attackers had been extreme religious fanatics.