I wrote the following as an email to friends as something of a spontaneous response to this article.
I think the essential rudiments of our Constitutional government are under a strain nearing the breaking point. What was intended to be open and subservient government – as exemplified by the Bill of Rights, is again, under attack by those who find the liberty offered to citizens and the limitations imposed upon power to be distasteful as well as a violation of the natural order of things.
I believe we need a call to return to the original moorings provided by the constitution. I dont mean some fundamentalist ‘original intent’ doctrine by which we are supposedly unable to think a thought that the founders didnt. Rather a wise comprehension of what the constitution represented: An attempt to form a ‘more perfect union’. Not perfect, but laying down the antecedents of liberty and freedom. Specifically the notions of citizen, and power distribution to the lowest level possible, and the tension of opposing voices so there would be a constant check and balance of power.
But what happens when all the supposedly naturally opposing forces that are supposed to organically provide a balance of power all align on the same side? Every system has within it the seeds of its own destruction. Sometimes called unintended consequences, there are fundamental incompatibilities built into every system that will eventually insure its demise.
This flaw in the American constitution is this unintended, indeed, unimaginable condition where Congress would cede its power and charter to oversee the executive to the expediency of position and not having to make hard choices; where the press would be owned, nearly in entirety, by corporations whose interests more closely align with the government and not the imperative to inform the citizenry. Where the notion of citizen itself is subsumed into a more bland, but palatable ‘consumer’ state.
When this combination of factors align in this configuration there is little left of the possibility of government by the people for the people.
And now we have the balancing possibility of the internet and all it represents as a by-pass to the systems of power and communications that have been established. From the point of view of the power systems it is a breach. One that must be staunched.
It is sadly ironic that Lieberman would be the standard bearer for this effort. As recounted below….
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There is a constant tension between the governors and the governed. Who gets to say what, and when, and who decides.
Behind this article, and Lieberman’s efforts, is a very real pressure to abandon the power reduction/sharing structures of the constitution.
It has been there from the beginning, the “ruling class” (ref N.Chomsky) has always chafed at this “experiment” (A.Lincoln)
It has been well said, by Gobbles (there he is again!) as well as being one of the main themes/lessons of 1984, that to keep the population (are we citizens yet, or just population?) under control you need to keep a constant state of low level agitation and fear.
Before we had the Russians. Now we have terrorists. Neither were “true” in the way they have been used.
Now, again, perpetually, the newest means of sustaining liberty – the structure of the internet, which has the potential to fulfill Madison’s(? or was it Jefferson) requirement of a free people to be informed (And as I wrote in a different post, that the government be open and transparent, and the citizenry have rights of privacy… not the other way around); Now that institution/function (of the i/net) is under sever attack.
And now, again, from this (insert many bad words here) piffling little man Lieberman.
It is apparent to me that the deep understanding, hell, shallow understanding, of the nature of information, communication, liberty and free speech et al… is ill understood. And therefore easily abandoned by the population; not citizens… citizens understand these things.
For example: this line here Lieberman defended himself in a response letter, saying, “the peril here is not to legitimate dissent but to our fundamental right of self-defense.” reveals the fundamental breakdown of thinking and more formally the breakdown of the logical/philosophical structures of liberty as erected by the constitution. And again the point and the question is raised: by what measure do you judge an expression to be ‘legitimate’ or not. According to….? You Mr. Lieberman? Maybe Mr. Cheney could decide for us… so we could be relived of the burden of actually having to think…. (I rant. ….)
He thinks you can have liberty by imposing limits. He (nor bushco, nor any of those neocons who hold these pernicious tenants) does not understand the relationship to positive outcome of free speech requires the possibility of bad free speech. Hell, the ACLU gets this, defending neo Nazi’s whom they abhor at the idea level, but whom they are compelled to defend at the level of being able to express those ideas, regardless. (Or… Maybe they do understand .. and that would be a separate line of discussion!)
Understanding, to complete the point, that the battle is not won by suppressing the idea, but by exposing it and having better ones!!
And of course, one of the main reasons trying to have freedom by restricting freedom doesn’t work is because….. who decides? And that re-enjoins the power discussion. And that gets us back to the constitution vs. all the other forms of ‘who gets to decide’. What is proposed here, then, is not simply a “stop the terrorists” but “start the reification of power to me…”
(This is a complex point, of course, with many aspects. But here is one observation I make on these processes: The ruling ideal in the times of creating the constitution was expressed in preamble [ref:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preamble_to_the_United_States_Constitution], was to create a ‘more perfect Union. There was a vitality and a compulsion to make something positive, a looking forward to possibility.
It seems to me that the ruling ‘Zeitgeist’ today is fear. A restriction, a regression, a xenophobia to retreat within. We seem to be at the juncture of making an irrevocable choice whether to proceed to develop our nation, our constitution, our place and relationships in the world on a predicate of fear.
Thus stupid foreign policy adventures like war (and as gore vidal talked about – and orwell predicted – perpetual war for perpetual peace), bush in israel making his standard bland dull witted assertions; and also our commercial adventures; as well as our lemming-like rush to have ’security’ all the while not realizing we are being herded into prison cells. I am referring to the Jane Jacobs division of the commerce and guardian functions…We are funding, for example, Blackwater, to save us. And look how that worked out in NewOrleans, not to mention the horrors of Iraq. Privatizing the guardian function. With hardly an ripple of understanding that this is the first and an essential step toward fascism…. [see how complex and interwoven all this is...!!! The nature of systems. The requirement now is to comb all this out, and hopefully make it more understandable, and actionable.])
[ -- as an aside, I like B/O's take on this in his race speech--- it wasnt perfect in the form finalized at the time, and they knew that. But it was 'more' perfect than before. And -- systemically -- it had the provisions for change embodied within it. And in so doing would continue to become 'More Perfect'. BTW... From a systems perspective this is why it works!!! Also, from a Taoist pov, it also it why it has the potential to fail. Because the machinery for change embedded in it can be hi-jacked by people and forces whose intent is toxic to freedom. The only remedy to this is the congress, and the people. But what if they are complicit? ref Jean-François Revel: How Democracies Perish, and Alexis DeTocqueville. ]
We used to have a jurisprudence that recognized this as well. It was embodied in the form : ‘better to allow some criminals go free than to convict an innocent man.’ The system, if allowed, will correct itself. The true criminal will be exposed, and will be caught. If not this time, then the next, and the innocent man is spared.
We are turning this proposition on its head. Now anyone who seems to have a criminal look, driven by our fears, [reference many Twilight Zones and other movies, books, stories where the "other" is hated just for being different... And 'justice' is meeded out of our fears and reaction not reasoned inquiry ... Another example: The Oxbow Incident.] is taken for ‘questioning’.
And… why would you resist if you have nothing to hide? If you are not guilty? (This line of reasoning and its consequences was fully exposed by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in the work ‘The Gulag Archipelago’. ref:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago).
And then there is the example of how this is played out in our ineffective so called airport security. Ineffective, yes, for the stated purpose. But quite effective at sustaining that low level agitation required…. What, for example, could be more demeaning and therefore controlling than to subject people to stupid and irrelevant little humilities – not quite enough to protest, almost having the feel of reasonableness, but with a niggling sense that this entire apparatus is really not doing anything meaningful at all. And for all that, creating a very real hierarchy of governers/subjects – and to such petty and unthinking trogs as is the common tsa examiner… ‘just doing our job’. All creating an environment of unconscious capitulation to the proposition that “we know better than you do”. Big Bro indeed! (and… referring to other conversations, can you imagine this post being written in Newspeak? Cant be done. Thats the point.)
And you know what happens when you give unthinking people power and a mission to uphold. (ref The Lucifer Effect/Zimbardo. and even more horrifically Hitler’s Willing Executioners”) .
But then, again, this upsets the Constitutional balance of power. We are not supposed to be required to constantly defend our innocence. That is the intent of the 4th Amendment ( .. and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause… ). To extend the point: The government is presumed to have unlimited power and resources which must be restricted from being unleashed on the citizenry. In only well defined ways is this power allowed to be used.
As that restraint to harassment is removed we retreat from not only the ideal, but the actual facts of Constitutional Governance.
What replaces it? Not a better form, that is for sure. It is surely a historical verity that what comes next is a form of totalitarianism, either in tyranny, or fascism, or royalty (in the case of England 1600’s post Cromwell) or some other form we have not seen yet. (But will surely be an amalgam of these astringent forces…Something akin to the world of 1984 if we don’t pay attention.)
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Anyway, I see I have again gotten carried away! It is, I suppose, my morning writing. My original purpose was simply to show you this article and the structural deficiency of the thinking that is increasingly dominating our public square.
Part of my purpose, might be/should be? to assess this issue as well. What is it that we want to save? What is it that we are so intent on changing? And changing into what?
Part of our place in these times of potential opportunity might be to uncage systemic principles in a way that does real work in reclaiming the ground lost to the flood tide of the recent administration’s encroachment on the rudiments of liberty…
