There is an important difference between being conservative, and slipping into the kind of pathological bashing and exploitation of government that George W. Bush exemplifies.

Why have so many cops and soldiers crossed this line to follow Bush?

It appears that in today's world, certain forces are able to turn conservatism toxic.

We live in such a media-centric, globalized world that nearly everybody in it is made to feel a certain personal smallness and insignificance, in comparison to the prevailing gigantism of scale.

Few of us really understand the source of this feeling.  The result is that we fixate on things that we believe will make us feel more significant--huge trucks, enormous homes, and so forth--while still harboring the same gnawing sensations of not amounting to much.

If the world view in which we operate constantly holds up business enterprise as the activity that matters most of all in life, and we ourselves haven't launched a business, or even held a significant job in one, it can be all too easy to make an implicit connection between our sense of smallness and our shortage of braggable economic accomplishment.

In a context such as this, it appears that honorable men who have devoted their lives to a career of courageous public service can end up with troubling (if mostly unacknowledged) feelings of unworthiness.

When anyone harbors such a view of himself, George W. Bush seems to have all he needs to create a sense of emotional connection.