There is a very mean-spirited wind blowing across this “Front Porch” these days. You may recognize it as I describe some of its qualities.

I have located its source: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. There are three primary controllers of the mean-spirited wind machine: George Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. This wind has real power behind it. Indeed, it has enough power to transform – even revolutionize – the political, social, economic and judicial landscape as we know it. This is very serious stuff. All spin aside, and there is much of that masquerading as reality, the Bush administration is seeking nothing less than reversing more than 60 years of our common history.

I am writing this as the Senate just confirmed Priscilla Owen to the federal bench. The “nuclear option,” which would have silenced the minority and ended more than 200 hundred years of Senate practice, was narrowly adverted. Bush began his second term proposing bipartisan cooperation. He immediately posted the names of judges who were decidedly unacceptable to the Senate Democrats; they had been filibustered in the last session. He missed a real opportunity to signal to the minority a willingness to work in a bipartisan way.

This was no accident. Bush does not want a bipartisan approach. He wants it all. “My way or the highway,” will be his legacy. This is about a revolutionary transformation of the way we do business. But it is much more than that. Bush wants to stack the federal benches with very conservative justices. Justice Owen, for example, was berated for being an activist judge by her colleague Alberto Gonzales, now U.S. attorney general, when they served on the Texas Supreme Court together. He is not noted to be a raving liberal.

The truth is that while Bush and his associates rail against activist judges who make law from the bench, in fact what they want to do is fill those benches with activist judges who will make law by systematically reversing the New Deal legacy, Roe vs. Wade, environmental protection and government programs that address the needs of the most vulnerable.

Be sure that you understand that this is not just about federal judges. This is all about appointments to the Supreme Court, of which Bush could have as many as three. He wants to make the Supreme Court an extension of his very conservative agenda – less government support for the less fortunate, rulings which favor his rich friends, reduction of governments responsibility to improve the environment and regulate commerce to serve the best interests of the people as a whole. This is all about a revolution, as sure as it would be if Bush, Cheney and Rove stormed the citadel of government with AK-47s, which they have legalized.

They want to fill the federal benches and the Supreme Court with activist judges who will legislate from the bench by reversing our historical heritage of government having a responsibility to improve the lives of citizens. How did we get here?

You might be saying about now, “Carignan is making a mountain of a molehill, this is just politics. There is nothing mean-spirited about it.” I submit that it is mean-spirited in many ways. Let me just cite a few.

Look at the environment. Bush calls it his “Clear Skies” program. We know that it is all about rolling back the Clean Air standards and creating more polluted skies. In Maine, mercury emissions will continue at higher than reasonable levels, poisoning our lakes and ponds and putting unborn children at risk. I guess the president’s “right-to-life” rhetoric does not apply if it means costs for his energy industry friends. You know, the big lie is difficult to fathom, and Bush’s position on the environment is a big lie. He says one thing rhetorically, but his policies move in the opposite direction. Some call this cognitive dissonance or disinformation. I call it misrepresentation.

Bush will push for a big cut in Medicaid that will represent a direct loss to Maine residents. This is most mean-spirited and it is cloaked in the rhetoric of “ownership society,” “rugged individualism” and “government is best when it gets off our backs.” Hubert Humphrey said, in a remarkable speech on the Senate floor, ” the mark of any great society is what it does for the young, at the beginning of life, and what it does for the elderly in the evening of life.” Bushworld is not a great society. It is pathetic in its lack of compassion and downright mean-spirited quality.

Speaking of the young at the beginning of life, we have No Child Left Behind, a noble idea. Even the concept of accountability has merit, albeit in a very different way than Bush has established it. But what Bush has done is require high educational goals and withhold the capacity-building resources that he promised to provide. Our children and our teachers suffer. How in this world does he get away with it?

We all know somebody who lives with a serious, debilitating, chronic disease. The medical research area that has the greatest promise is stem cell research. Bush has almost closed it down because he needs to keep the faith with his conservative base. Our friends suffer because Bush will not allow this research to go forward with the resources that are needed. Did he run as a compassionate conservative once?

The privatization of Social Security is a mainstay of this revolutionary movement. If Bush can destroy the most significant New Deal program, he will have really scored with his reactionary base. He will also put the middle class at risk in the “evening of life.” There are multiple ways to save Social Security. The Bush administration does not want to save it, they want to demolish it. This is another example of the big lie.

As I said at the beginning, this is big stuff. There has never been anything bigger in my considerable time.

Jim Carignan is a retired educator who lives in Harpswell. His e-mail address is [email protected].