From where I'm standing, overseas, the pro-amnesty right looked like the hardlinder neocon right to me, which is not a, uhm, the classic way of being "rightwing" (but rather the nutcase way).

As I tried to indicate with my range of examples, from the Alien and Sedition Acts onward, the pro-amnesty right may be nutcase, but nutcase is "the classic way of being 'rightwing'" in America--if not the world.

Rule of law had not made it into my definition of what US left and right were. Until now. (Sadly.)

One reason for this, I believe, is simply the lengths and depth of center-left dominance. We hadn't had a conservative trifecta (President, Congress, Supreme Court) in power for almost 70 years (1933-2000), and thus rightwing positions were still largely reacting to an environment shaped by liberal-to-moderate assumptions. It didn't take long for the shift to full-throated rightwing ideology to kick in, but there's a good reason why folks don't really have a clear grasp of what the right wing is all about--those folks have not been running things for a very, very long time, and most folks simply have no living memory of what that was like. Perhaps folks would do well to remember the Bonus Marchers, a band of WWI veterans--30,000+ strong at their peak--who marched on Washington for early payment of their benefits, which would not mature under existing law until 1945.

Wikipedia notes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army

After the defeat of the bill, Congress appropriated funds to pay for the marchers' return home, which some marchers accepted. On July 28, Washington police attempted to remove some remaining Bonus Army protesters from a federal construction site. After police fatally shot two veterans, the protesters assaulted the police with blunt weapons, wounding several of them. After the police retreated, the District of Columbia commissioners informed President Herbert Hoover that they could no longer maintain the peace, whereupon Hoover ordered federal troops to remove the marchers from the general area.

Intervention of the military

The marchers were cleared and their camps were destroyed by the 12th Infantry Regiment from Fort Howard, Maryland, and the 3rd Cavalry Regiment under the command of MAJ. George S. Patton from Fort Myer, Virginia, under the overall command of General Douglas MacArthur. The Posse Comitatus Act, prohibiting the U.S. military from being used for general law enforcement purposes in most instances, did not apply to Washington, DC, because it is one of several pieces of federal property under the direct governance of the U.S. Congress (United States Constitution, Article I. Section 8). Dwight D. Eisenhower, as a member of MacArthur's staff, had strong reservations about the operation. Troops carrying rifles with unsheathed bayonets and tear gas were sent into the Bonus Army's camps. President Hoover did not want the army to march across the Anacostia River into the protesters' largest encampment, but Douglas MacArthur felt this was a communist attempt to overthrow the government and thus exceeded his authority. Hundreds of veterans were injured, several were killed, including William Hushka and Eric Carlson; a wife of a veteran miscarried, and other casualties were inflicted. The visual image of U.S. armed soldiers confronting poor veterans of the recent Great War set the stage for Veteran relief and eventually the Veterans Administration.

By the end of the rout:

* Two veterans were shot and killed.
* An 11 week old baby was in critical condition resulting from shock from gas exposure.
* Two infants died from gas asphyxiation.
* An 11 year old boy was partially blinded by tear gas.
* One bystander was shot in the shoulder.
* One veteran's ear was severed by a Cavalry saber.
* One veteran was stabbed in the hip with a bayonet.
* At least twelve police were injured by the veterans.
* Over 1,000 men, women, and children were exposed to the tear gas, including police, reporters, residents of Washington D.C., and ambulance drivers.

The army burned down the Bonus Army's tents and shacks, although some reports claim that to spite the government, which had provided much of the shelter in the camp, some veterans torched their own camp dwellings before the troops could set upon the camp. Reports of U.S. soldiers marching against their peers did not help Hoover's re-election efforts; neither did his open opposition to the Bonus Bill due to financial concerns. After the inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, some of the Bonus Army regrouped in Washington to restate its claims to the new President.

Of course, Roosevelt opposed the veterans' request as well. It's not well remembered, but Roosevelt held dear to balanced budget dogma, regarding deficit spending as a necessary evil, until his efforts to slash the deficit in 1937 lead to a recession. So he wanted to give them work, not an early call on government funds. But Roosevelt didn't treat them with callous contempt, either.

Pedinska:

Agreed, sadly. But Nuremberg happened with the support of the most powerful country in the world at the time (us). Who in the world has the power to force such an accounting now against the most powerful country in the world (us)?

Yankee. Time travel. England. Whatever.