Essentially Contested America

This summer, I spent a lot of time engaged in one of my guilty pleasures, reading about King Henry VIII and his wives. It’s fun to read about the pageantry, and the drama and intrigue of the British court. In reading about how the monarchy used to function, I can’t help but be reminded about how great it is to live in a democracy and be protected against the arbitrariness of our leaders by our due process clause and other constitutional protections.

If the King got mad at you, he could put you in prison without leveling any charges against you, and you could rot away there for years, even die, without ever having a chance to defend yourself. Today we are protected from being imprisoned without being charged by the due process clause and the Great Writ of habeas corpus.[1]

In jolly old England, the King governed in secret, and no one but his closest advisors knew how he made his decisions or with whom he consulted while making them. In our democracy, government is transparent and leaders are held accountable for their actions.[2]

It used to be that if you made the King angry, he could fire you, and anyone else who refused to follow his orders. In today’s democracy, we require our leaders to articulate good reasons for their actions, and retaliating against our enemies is not a good enough reason.[3]

It used to be that in order to get a good position in the government, you had to make the King happy and tell him what he wanted to hear. Today, our Constitution requires our leaders not to discriminate on the basis of viewpoint.[4]

Back in the day, you didn’t have any right to criticize the King, and if you did, he would send out his soldiers to subdue you with force. Today, the First Amendment protects our right to dissent.[5]

Reading about King Henry VIII reminds me that the Constitution is not just a paper document that is interpreted by courts. It is the foundation of our government and our individual rights. We The People are protected by the Constitution, and it is our responsibility, not just the responsibility of the Courts, to insure that our leaders comply with it.

So, three cheers for Due Process and the Constitution. Thank goodness we live in a democracy, where our leaders are required to respect the Constitution. Let’s do what we can to make them fulfill this promise.

---

[1] Unless you are in Guantanamo Bay Prison, of course .Counter Terror with Justice[2] Unless you are the vice president.Watchdog group sues Cheney over records

[3] Unless you are the governor of Alaska.
Another Controversy for Sarah Palin
Palin Focus of Probe In Police Chief’s Firing
Mayor Palin: A Rough Record

[4] Well, except when you want to be a US attorney. See

White House Backed U.S. Attorney Firings, Officials Say

[5] Unless you are protesting at the Republican National Convention.

Republican Convention protests turn violent as 250 arrested

Daniel Ellsberg has taken a stand on the impending attack on Iran. “Ellsberg pointed to actions taken by Bush that he said violate the law, including endorsing warrantless surveillance and lying to Congress about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. At the same time, he was quick to chastise the Democrats in Congress, saying that by going along with Bush’s war they’ve failed their duty to uphold the Constitution. He said the Senate resolution passed Wednesday declaring Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization is an invitation for Bush to declare war on Iran. Ellsberg compared Wednesday’s resolution to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, passed Aug. 7, 1964, that gave Johnson a virtually blank check for combat in North Vietnam. He laid out a scenario of $200 a barrel for oil, the possibility of retaliatory attacks against the U.S. and the president keeping open the ‘nuclear option’ to attack Iran. He said he is asking people in government who have information that could stop such a war before it happens to not do what he did by releasing the Pentagon Papers after the war started. He said they should do what he didn’t do – release the information before a disaster happens. ‘Don’t wait till the war has started,’ Ellsberg told the audience. ‘Don’t wait till the bombs are falling or thousands more have died.’” That so many Americans have been paralyzed by a lawless president is quite astonishing and bewildering. What can be done to obstruct the illegal and immoral activities of a man who lacks the introspective and self-reflective capacities to appreciate his own follies and how these follies are responsible for the unnecessary deaths of so many people.

The summer of 1967 marks the coming of age–sexually, politically, and socially–of a generation. Perhaps, more than any year in that turbulent decade, the summer of love suggested a novel, more authentic, way of interacting with others. Sexuality became a common–some say promiscuous–form of interaction, sans marriage, sans love, sans commitment. Of course, sexuality could be included in these practices, but, according to “the new explanation,” none of them are required for sexual relations to be appropriate. The first blow at calcified social traditions was to identify sexual repression. Once doing so, peculiar, Victorian “hang-ups” about sexuality could then be abandoned. A freer, more open, view toward sexuality served as a paradigm for dealing with other calcified traditions having little to do with sexuality. If sexuality can be re-evaluated rationally, so could everything else. And this rationality included, but was not exhausted by, deductive reasoning. It was more the rationality of reflective and pragmatic commonsense.

During the sixties a much greater imperative lay beyond the freedom of sexual gratification. In addition to its primary commitment to end the war in Vietnam, the sixties’ nation shown the light of revelation on the ubiquitous darkness of excluded and marginalized people living and suffering among us. How can the richest nation in the world–ostensibly dedicated to freedom and equality–ignore the well-being of so many of its own citizens? (”Whatever you did to the least of my brethren, you did it to me.”) Focusing on these people became, for the sixties’ nation, both personal and a political imperatives. As Edward P. Morgan put it, “Sixties movements, were grounded in a democratic vision that is as compelling today as it was then: a belief that all people should be included as full members of society, that individuals become empowered through meaningful social participation, and that politics ought to be grounded on respect and compassion for the individual person.” In short, the sixties’ imperative was the expansion of the moral and political community in order to include those deliberately and subliminally excluded. After the drudgery of the 1950s, 1967 was the time when the sixties reached its most hopeful pinnacle and an explosion of colorful possibilities in social and personal development burst on to the American landscape. Underlying Haight-Asbury and the hippie-yippie generation lay the imperative to take others–African-Americans, women, gays–seriously, playfully seriously, but seriously nonetheless. Freedom too was embraced as both a personal and political goal. It was something to be to be practiced daily. It was, as they say, “the age of great dreams,” though some of these great dreams, as might have been expected, for some people became nightmares.

Reactionary commentators, chief among them Robert Bork, tar the sixties as a time when permissively raised, rich and middle class kids engaged in greedy hedonism and nothing more. More insidiously, these commentators delight in tarring the period as filled with violent weather-underground radicals, the Port Huron statement, and Chicago Seven, in an attempt to hide from sight the essence of an ennobling process. Sure there was excess, but often in cultural revolution excess plays mid-wife to creativity and nobility that harkens back to our constitutional founding. Blaming “liberalism” for America’s decline is right on the money, but only if you select the right liberalism. Trying to expand the actual moral community to include the excluded is not the culprit. Rather, it is the materialist, radically individualistic culture that deadens American values. Moreover, blame lies equally with such critics as Bork who believe in dedicated social structures, ones that should resist change. This “dedicatedness” flies in the faith of the Jeffersonian commitment to deliberation, reflection, and change. Jeffersonian, and even Madisonian, constitutionalism is as antithetical to Bork’s cartoon depiction of American constitutionalism as simple majoritarianism. Yet, dedicated constitutionalism would prevent from taking seriously the question Hamilton puts to his contemporaries in Federalist No. 1 and to all succeeding generations of American about the possibility of self government: “It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, to decide by their conduct and example, the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” Hamilton might have add to “accident and force” a third element in dedicated cultures “unreflective customs or traditions.” Judge Bork is thus out of step with Madison, Jefferson, and Hamilton. It’s difficult to identify which founder, if any, reflects Judge Bork’s conception of constitutionalism. Majoritarianism was never even considered at the constitutional convention. So Judge Bork’s conception of original meaning seems to preclude the theory of democracy he so willingly embraces.

Indeed, the sixties represent a social and political revolution virtually synchronized with the most progressive period of constitutional change in the nation’s history. In brief, what’s typically lost about the sixties was the underlying deliberative attitude which finds its source in the Founding. To locate this attitude one should steer clear of hippidom or yippidom. Look instead into the lives of young intellectuals and reflective people who, in the sixties, sought to be the source of change, a new “founding,” if you will. An old approach to practical reasoning–forgotten after War II–was revivified. Deliberation captured the imagination of the young. This underlying attitude embraced the tradition of providing reasoned arguments, not merely an appeal to unreflective customs no matter how entrenched, for personal, political, and social policy. Moreover, the reasons given in these arguments could not ultimately be idiosyncratic. For my reasons to convince you, they must touch you and affect and influence your ratiocinative powers. When I insist that you abide by my reasons whether you’re convinced or not, I impose my reasons on you and I violate one of the basic conditions of rationality. I consider my reason to be beyond deliberation; its truth is absolute and uncompromising. I’m duped to thinking that imposing my reasoning upon you is not only justified, but required. If you cannot apprehend absolute truth for yourself, concern for you, if not respect, requires making sure that absolute truth controls you life whether you want it to or not. Moreover, you violate one of the basic conditions of deliberative rationality when you acknowledge that my reasons have some merit but ultimately should be rejected even when you have nothing better with which to replace it. Accordingly, deliberative rationality includes reciprocity or mutuality. We must seek reasons together–all the while arguing respectfully with one another–until we find a reflective consensus or realize that such a consensus, at least at this time, is not possible.

On a personal note, the summer of love, 1967, is responsible, at least in part, for forging intellectually, the person, for good or ill, I later became. My one regret is that I believed, at that time, that although progress toward a more rational and reasonable society might come temporarily to a halt, the gains made would be permanent. That is, there would be no political or social backsliding. In that conviction I was probably mistaken. The sixties’ nation made promises it couldn’t be kept. What prevented the sixties’ nation from keeping these promises is a critically important question. Perhaps, social and economic circumstances prevented their fulfillment. Subsequent and especially current, developments prove that political and social back sliding is inevitable. We just can’t seem retain political and social advances without cultural changes that support these advances. But perhaps our culture has changed significantly and permanently. We no longer think it permissible to harbor racial prejudice. Our views about sexuality have changed permanently perhaps. Even political conservatives, in committed relationships, opposed to most of the promises made by the sixties’ generation, think nothing of cohabiting without marriage. (They have the sixties’ nation to thank for that.) Women no longer are excluded from entering the professions, academia, and just about whatever avocation they desire. Gays and lesbians, for decades made invisible by mainstream society, now publicly seek to enter mainstream society through the institution of marriage. Each one of these cultural changes finds its source in the sixties. So perhaps the gains made during that fecund, if turbulent, era have become part of America’s cultural heritage.

However, in contrast to these achievements, we have become a more cynical society where our domestic opponents are viewed not merely as respected adversaries, but rather as hateful enemies. Unfortunately, the past seven years have provided a pellucid demonstration that republican democracy does in fact have domestic enemies, usually just those public officials and pundits who are busiest trying to demonize their opponents. Not since Watergate have we seen an administration so clearly opposed to American constitutional values. It’s difficult to appreciate just what the antidote to our impoverished politics might be. Perhaps, the current cynicism will cause an even greater fragmentation in the body politic. Or maybe, a new wave of realistic optimism will wash the slate clean. As with many other elements in the evolution of the American republic and the culture that supports it, only an intelligent, determined, tough, and idealistic new generation of young people can begin this cleansing. Only when such a generation arises will social hope of the intoxicating sort experienced during the summer of love be a possibility.

What will history’s verdict be on United States citizens and their governmental representatives in Congress if we do not at least try to remove Bush-Cheney from office? Two fundamentally important reasons exist for impeaching Bush-Cheney and removing them from office. The first reason emphasizes the importance of getting Messrs. Bush and Cheney, in Keith Olbermann’s words “two men who are now perilous to our Democracy, away from its helm.” The second reason favors impeachment because only by doing so do we preserve (or reclaim) the moral integrity of the American character. Now, with a majority of Americans in favor of impeaching Mr. Cheney and a virtual tie between those who favor impeaching Mr. Bush and those opposed, it is time for the Democrats to act.

Impeachment is not merely a political means of saving this country from over 500 more days of the worst executive branch in American history; it is a moral imperative if citizens of other nations and more important, future generations of Americans are to take this current generation of Americans seriously. Our integrity–the very moral fabric of present day Americans–is on the line. We must reclaim our character for its own sake and because if we naively demur, attacking Iran is almost certain. Seeking accountability from the President and Vice-President will prevent such an attack from taking place. But moreover, it will show that the United States Constitution provides mechanisms for ridding the country of incompetent, dangerous, and malevolent “leaders.” The Constitution’s impeachment provision will prove to be completely vacuous unless we at least try to impeach Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney.

Iraqi officials are already advising their constituents to arm themselves for fear American troops will bring the troops home sooner than anyone thought. With the writing clearly on the wall that the United States will leave Iraq worse off than under a brutal, sociopathic dictator, Saddam Hussein, it is simply heart-breaking to learn of the deaths of more American soldiers for the sake of an egregiously reckless, immoral venture. Let’s honor those soldiers who have made the ultimate sacrifice by beginning to redeploy those still living. Lets take them from harm’s way in the winless context of urban fighting and move them to the borders of the fractured nation and to the oil fields. And let’s do so while holding impeachment hearings to determine the truth about those who orchestrated this debacle.

How can Congress impeach Mr. Clinton and not Mr. Bush? Mr. Clinton perjured himself; thereby weakening our system of justice. By contrast, Mr. Bush’s crimes are qualitatively different. He has lied (or has been reckless) about the reasons for invading and occupying Iraq. He has issued signing statements at a dizzying rate alerting Congress and the electorate that if he chooses he will not enforce various laws or provisions of laws he himself signed. Mr. Bush has advocated a conception of the executive branch in which the President and Vice-President are above the law. Together with the Vice-President, Mr. Bush poses the greatest threat to civil liberties since the McCarthy era? What will future generations of Americans say–how will they judge us–when from their distant perspective they look back on the period 1992-2008 and try to figure out why one president was impeached and the other was not. My point is not that Mr. Clinton should not have been impeached. Rather, it’s simply this. If Mr. Clinton should have been impeached for his crimes, why should Mr. Bush escape impeachment for his qualitatively more dangerous crimes which still threaten the legitimacy of the republic?

ADDENDUM: Mr. Bush commuted Mr. I. Lewis Libby’s 21/2 year sentence for obstructing justice. Posted by RJL at 7:30 PM, 2 July 2007.

House Democrats passed a bill increasing the funding of Mr. Bush’s war that has one salient, but unstated, feature. The bill provides political cover for Democrats who want to say they tried to do something about Mr. Bush’s War. But in true Democratic fashion, the House bill contributes one hundred billion dollars to an unprecedented escalation of the war bringing the war’s total cost to over five hundred billion dollars. It postpones withdrawal from Iraq until 31 August 2008–quite a far cry from bringing the troops home now. Additionally, it says nothing about requiring congressional authorization for attacking Iran. Democrats cannot counter by saying that any stronger bill would not stand a chance of becoming law, because they know no bill attempting to limit Bush’s war will be allowed. Vice-President Cheney has said as much. Consequently, we’re talking about a bill that will be a statement of principle. That’s all. The statement of principle the Democrats urge is in effect no principle at all.

Perhaps it is understandable why anti-war Democrats capitulated to Pelosi & Co. and voted for the escalation of the war. But it is unfathomable why MoveOn.org joined this betrayal of the peace movement. Those Americans contributing to MoveOn.org for its anti-war position against Mr. Bush’s war can only be dispirited by MoveOn.org’s capitulation. As Howard Zinn writes:

When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not to fall in meekly behind them. We who protest the war are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable, in a shamefully timorous Congress.” . . . .We are not politicians, but citizens. We have no office to hold on to, only our consciences, which insist on telling the truth. That, history suggests, is the most realistic thing a citizen can do.

The relationship between movements and legislators should be one in which the former keeps the latter honest. The movement should keep politicians focused on the movement’s goals. Legislators might be attracted to “first steps,” but movements should not. What good is it for MoveOn.org to announce support for a bill which makes its supporters complicit with Mr. Bush & Co? The leaders of MoveOn.org should ask themselves the question John Kerry asked about the Vietnam debacle. “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” In this case, how do you ask a man or woman to be the last person to die in a war which you have opposed but nonetheless consented to finish? By signing on to the Democrats craven approval of Mr. Bush’s war, how many more Americans and Iraqis need die because MoveOn.org lacks the courage of its convictions? This war is now Mr. Bush’s, the House Democrats’ war, and MoveOn.org’s war. The leaders of MoveOn.org disgraced themselves and betrayed their supporters by becoming a party to this catastrophe.

Perhaps this reflects the problem with progressive political movements. When they become strong, they inevitably move to the center. We have become inured to craven cowardice of the Democrats, but many of us, who should know better, are shocked by MoveOn.org’s betrayal of the anti-war movement and of the November 2006 elections. No rationalization can excuse MoreOrg.org’s for forgetting the people who support it. We passionately want this war top end now. The only solutions–an unfortunate one of course–is to refuse any further support of MoveOn.org.

Yesterday, a diverse coalition of leftist, anti-war activists met in Washington, DC. for the purpose of protesting the United States’ involvement in Iraq. As we begin the fifth year of our war in Iraq, Americans face a moral dilemma. Are we with Mr. Bush or are we against him? The latter course is a noble, honorable, and historically critical moral choice. Even if demonstrations won’t hasten our extrication from Mr. Bush’s war, anti-war Americans must speak up in whatever forum is available. I participated in demonstrations a few decades ago, but I was never comfortable shouting and chanting. I mean no disrespect to the brave souls petitioning the government to redress the folly in Iraq. Indeed, I sincerely admire them. They are preserving the conscience of this great nation. And while I agree with much of their politics, the overall eclectic character of the complaints detracts from the urgency of their message: The war must end now.

Sure, the United Stated States’ militarism and imperialism must also be addressed. Equally dangerous are such domestic problems as the xenophobia against undocumented workers, an eviscerated system of public education, systemic poverty, a broken health care system, a legal system designed to protect the super-rich against ordinary citizens, and countless other obstacles to dignity and justice. But must all these problems be addressed at the same time and on the same day? Since the demonstration was billed as an anti-war protest, why couldn’t the demonstrators stick to the moral imperative of demanding an end to the war now?

Had the demonstration focused on protesting the escalation and continued criminal involvement in this awful war, it might have played better with those sincerely anti-war folks who are reluctant to condemn structural features of American politics and economics. It might be gratifying to join together to protest capitalism, imperialism, and the military-industrial complex, but surely any political movement must acknowledge that marketing its complaint is just as important as the complaint itself. A large number of Americans can’t deal with some of the more esoteric structural complaints against American government. But they are willing to stridently protest this war. Sticking to this theme would have protected the demonstration from being marginalized. We are entering an auspicious
historical moment. Many moderate Americans are decidedly against the war. Let’s not lose their support by praising President Chavez’s gifts to Haiti or even the United States’ malevolent contribution to the oppression of people in all parts of the world. In an ideal world, American citizens would have the time, patience, and understanding to deal with and remedy all the destruction this administration has caused or exacerbated. But in an ideal world, no such administration would have been elected (selected) in the first place. The rule should be one complaint at a time. This rule would better serve the Left until that moment when a broader based populace exists and is strong enough to confront a constitutional system that has been co-opted by those lusting after wealth and power. The anti-war movement would be more creditable and therefore more effective if it targets only the war in Iraq, including, of course, those direct and discreet problems this catastrophic war has spawned.

C-Span’s coverage of the peace demonstration in Washington, D.C. yesterday was preceded by a conference on conservativism sponsored by the National Review. A woman in the audience, Suzanne McNeil, from Chicago, rose to speak and by doing so revealed all that is wrong with the administration’s support of the war. Ms. McNeil’s intoned: “What we are trying to do in Iraq is to enact a revolution. This is the first time in 1300 years that we are trying to push for a democracy–a true democracy–in a Muslim country in the heart of the Middle East.” This is a goal, Ms. McNeil insisted, that is worthy of respect.

Apparently, lost to Ms. McNeil and to the audience was the necessity of providing an answer to a simple question: What authorizes the United States to “enact a revolution” or “to push for a democracy” in a Muslim country? How do we respect the Iraqi people by telling them how they should be governed? The arrogance, intolerance, and self-righteousness in the room were palpable. Totally divorced from reality, Ms. McNeil’s question illustrates the inability to escape imperialistic commitments. For some, I suppose, this commitment is subliminal capable of remaining hidden from sight. The consequence of this lack of self-reflection and introspection is to cast our mission in Iraq as noble because democracy is noble. And noble democracy surely is, but not when imposed at gunpoint. What makes Ms. McNeil unable to see just how unjustified her appeal to democracy is? Some conservatives fear the demise of conservatism. But is this conservatism? Nation building at tremendous cost in life and treasure and by manifestly increasing the size of government is not a conservative commitment. It’s certainly not the conservatism of William F. Buckley. No it’s the commitment of any political perspective championed by individuals constitutionally unable to distinguish their own sincerely held beliefs and values with objective truth. And even if the same, John Stuart Mill argued persuasively that objective truth must be realized by the individual herself, not by being imposed upon her. Ms. McNeil’s attitude, after the noble garb of democracy is shorn from it, is little more than Thrasymachus’ dogma that “justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger.” Is that how cynical American contemporary “conservativism” has become?

Posted: 5:22 AM

After five years of fighting, there are disturbing signs in Afghanistan that the Taliban is not only beginning to turn the tide of military battle, but, what’s worse, it’s gaining recognition as a legitimate member of Afghan society. In one district of the Helmand Province the Afghan government brokered a truce requiring the Taliban, on the one side, and British troops and police, on the other, to withdraw from the district. The truce permits the Taliban, responsibile for many recent assassinations, to retain areas of the district which the police are not allowed to enter. The overall deal benefits the Taliban, permits them to get stronger, and perhaps, will encourage them to become bolder even perhaps to consider ovethrowing the district’s elders, the government’s partners in brokering the agreement.

The situation in Afganistan is rapidly deteriorating. If this trend continues in five years we might see the reemergence of the Taliban as a major player in Afghanistan or even strong enough to overthrow the Hamid Karzai government itself. This turnabout represents additional evidence of Mr. Bush’s incompetence as a wartime president. All the talk of “stay the course” in Iraq has turned out to be a ruse (as if we didn’t know that already). Indeed, Donald Rumsfeld insistence that we are winning the war in Iraq has now been contradicted by his own words. It is now reported that Mr. Rumsfeld sent a memo to the White House two days before submitting his resignation admitting that our effort in Iraq was a failure (not working”) and recommending major revisions in our policies there.

Instead of concentrating our efforts in Afghanistan, arguably a just cause, Mr. Bush’s White House squandered our chances there by invading Iraq. Will the American people continue to acquiesce to such monumental blunders or will they take action to stop it now? Only a major nonviolent protest movement, prepared to spend millions of dollars and risk the imprisonment of its members, has any hope of succeeding before the next President is sworn in and maybe not even then. We should not toelrate vague talk about departing from Iraq. We should insist that we demand that our leaders provide a detailed schedule about how and when we will depart. If that requires reverting back to the practice–common at the time of our War for Independence–of using “crowds” to pressure our leaders to heed the decided wishes of the people, then so be it.