I am having trouble finding my own voice as of late. Fortunately, many underrated thinkers have already said much of what is on my heart and mind.
“Poor, wretched, and stupid peoples, nations determined on your own misfortune and blind to your own good! You let yourselves be deprived before your own eyes of the best part of your revenues; your fields are plundered, your homes robbed, your family heirlooms taken away. You live in such a way that you cannot claim a single thing as your own; and it would seem that you consider yourselves lucky to be loaned your property, your families, and your very lives. All this havoc, this misfortune, this ruin, descends upon you not from alien foes, but from the one enemy whom you yourselves render as powerful as he is, for whom you go bravely to war, for whose greatness you do not refuse to offer your own bodies unto death. He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite numbers dwelling in your cities; he has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you. Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had no cooperation from you? What could he do to you if you yourselves did not connive with the thief who plunders you, if you were not accomplices of the murderer who kills you, if you were not traitors to yourselves?”
-Etienne de la Boetie (1552)
Boetie is clearly referring to the despotic grasp of the monarchical establishment. However, as I read through this particular passage, it reminded me a lot of our current political system. The author was quite prophetic in his assessment of what was as applied to what is now.
“Predatory capitalism created a complex industrial system and an advanced technology; it permitted a considerable extension of democratic practice and fostered certain liberal values, but within limits that are now being pressed and must be overcome. It is not a fit system for the mid-twentieth century. It is incapable of meeting human needs that can be expressed only in collective terms, and its concept of competitive man who seeks only to maximize wealth and power, who subjects himself to market relationships, to exploitation and external authority, is antihuman and intolerable in the deepest sense. An autocratic state is no acceptable substitute; nor can the militarized state capitalism evolving in the United States or the bureaucratized, centralized welfare state be accepted as the goal of human existence. The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival. Modern science and technology can relieve men of the necessity for specialized, imbecile labor. They may, in principle, provide the basis for a rational social order based on free association and democratic control, if we have the will to create it.”
- Noam Chomsky, “Language and Freedom” (1970)
The Obama administration has just released the Bush OLC Memos justifying the use of torture. Read them.
ACLU has them here.
This is really happening.
Whoops. In the words of Urkel, “Did I do that?”
A particularly pertinent and poignant pontification.
Jane Mayer wrote a brilliant article in the New Yorker. Here it is.
here.
I have mixed feelings about this proposed approach. People should never be allowed to break laws and not answer for it. If no laws were broken, let Bush et al be exonerated. But if laws were broken and nothing is done, what assurance is there that the same things won’t happen again. None. Just trust in government. Blind faith. On the other hand, maybe we do just need to find out what happened. I think I’m afraid that as soon as I find out what was actually happening, I will immediately regret exchanging immunity for the truth. It just seems like another principle being sacrificed at the fantastical altar of emergency. We keep allowing things to happen which should not happen because the severity of the moment requires it. Bailouts, immunities, torture, on and on and on: all retroactively justified by the necessity of emergency. There has to be a line somewhere. Otherwise our laws are meaningless; the constitution is meaningless.
“In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” This was said by Thomas Jefferson in his proposal of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798.
Update: Jack Balkin does a good job discussing and convincing here. Many of my concerns still stand, however. His is a very pragmatic outlook. Maybe I am being driven by bitterness. I find it hard to accept that people serve jail time for smoking marijuana but no jail time is served by those who may have intentionally tortured knowing it was illegal. Yes, it may be hard to prosecute such crimes, but is that a reason not to? If you are pragmatic, it is. If you are a hardline believer in the letter of the law, it is not. I’m not sure which philosophy I adhere to.
Update 2: Glenn Greenwald responds, indirectly, to Jack Balkin et al.
Glenn Greenwald has this one pretty much covered.
This is scary. Let’s not simply defer to Obama. Let’s question him. The office of president is not a hot-house of aristocracy. He is a civil servant. He has to answer to us.
Update: Scott Horton wrote about it this morning.
Wall Street Journal houses Mukasey’s response to the recent federal court order to release 5 detainees (see previous post.)
EFF explains the story here. Techdirt catches on.
It seems as though parody servicing the bread and circus agenda is “fair use” while parody attempting to educate is less fair.
