Anyone who rationalizes George W. Bush's illegal use of secret, warrantless wiretaps against American citizens is no friend of democracy. They may call themselves "conservatives." But they might with equal accuracy dub themselves Martians or Zoroastrians.

In reality, they're radical ideologues who place party over country, enemies of the Constitution and its freedoms. There's evidently no outrage they won't rationalize so long as a Republican's doing it. For reasons best left to historians, the Republican right has made itself captive to a brand of callow authoritarianism that's found its hero in this swaggering mediocrity that is Bush, who himself appears invariably to draw the wrong lessons from what few scraps of history he knows.

The last time no-warrant, presidentially authorized wiretaps came before the Supreme Court was 1972, courtesy of President Richard M. Nixon, who used the FBI to spy on political foes and famously decreed that "when the President does it, that means it's not illegal." The court voted 8-0 against Nixonian presumption. In his concurring opinion, Justice William O. Douglas quoted his illustrious predecessor, Justice Brandeis: "Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty."

Here's the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Take a good look, because if Bush's latest power grab stands, it may as well be repealed. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Bush and his legal enablers hold an extremist interpretation of the "commander-in-chief" clause of the U.S. Constitution that would give him virtually unlimited executive powers in times of war--even a "war on terror," a metaphorical struggle against an abstract noun which could theoretically go on forever.

It's an absurd argument. The president commands the armed forces, not the United States. The Founding Fathers meant to assure civilian control of the military, not establish a wartime strongman.

It's not much of an exaggeration to say that Bush is claiming powers surrendered by the English monarchy in the Magna Carta of 1215. (Although medieval monarchs regained them.). In a nation of laws, not men, warrantless surveillance should be seen as the recipe for a police state.

Bush asks us to trust him, our wise and benevolent leader. To Republicans inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, I offer this rebuttal: "President Hillary Rodham Clinton." No, I don't think she can be elected either. But would you stake your liberty on it? Because at the rate the Iraq war is spawning Islamic extremists, the "war on terror" won't end in your lifetime or mine.

If warrantless surveillance is such a swell idea, why has Bush been lying about it? "(A)ny time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires--a wiretap requires a court order," he said on April 20, 2004. "Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."

Does anybody think terrorists don't know their phones and e-mails might be monitored? It's not as if warrants are hard to get. Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, the government has three days after initiating a wiretap to notify a secret court that meets on demand at the Justice Department. Thousands of warrants have been issued, a tiny handful denied.

But Bush evidently doesn't want even a secret court to know who's being spied on. He may have good reason. NBC News reported that the Pentagon's up to old tricks: investigating Quaker meetings and hippie pacifist organizations. Papers obtained by the ACLU show the FBI probing a "Vegan Community Project," People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Greenpeace and the Catholic Workers, groups as likely to launch a terrorist attack as my basset hound, Fred.

Worse, police states don't even work. As one-time Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky explained in a recent Washington Post column about torture, lawlessness drives out talented investigators and floods the system with bad information. "In its heyday," he wrote "Joseph Stalin's notorious NKVD (the Soviet secret police) became nothing more than an army of butchers terrorizing the whole country, but incapable of solving the simplest of crimes."

I'm with Ben Franklin: "Those that would give up essential liberty in pursuit of a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security."

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons is a national magazine award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at genelyons2@sbcglobal.net.