Conservatives — in the executive branch and on the courts — have sought to create unprecedented, unchecked executive power, including the power to torture and detain individuals indefinitely without a trial or even due process. They have sought to obliterate the long-standing wall separating church and state, allowing the government almost unlimited authority to support religion and to make religion a part of government activities. They have sought to abolish any constitutional protection for privacy and, most of all, to eliminate constitutional protections for abortions. They have sought to greatly reduce constitutional protections for criminal defendants, including their ability to ask a federal court for protection from unconstitutional state procedures or results. They have worked to eliminate all affirmative action and to institute a vision of the Constitution that will perpetuate deep racial inequalities in American society. Most successfully, they have closed the courthouse doors, especially to people bringing civil rights claims.
In some areas, the story starts with the Republican platform of 1964. Ideas that then seemed extreme and unthinkable were later adopted and become the official orthodoxy of Republican presidents. In most areas, the policies trace back to Richard Nixon or at least to Ronald Reagan. Some of the key players — such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld — united this story as they were integral parts of several Republican administrations. Young lawyers who served in the Reagan administration and were deeply committed to its conservative agenda, such as John Roberts Jr. and Samuel Alito, came to be U.S. Supreme Court justices. It is a mistake to see the policies of the Bush administration or the Roberts Court in isolation from a larger conservative movement that has sought to alter basic precepts of constitutional law — and in many areas succeeded in doing so.
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