The English-speaking culture of England and the United States has a long history of satire, one of the premier examples is the essay “A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick” by Jonathan Swift.

I had been contemplating writing a satire along the lines of “A Modest Proposal” in the context of the reaction to the attacks of September 11, 2001, but events have surpassed what I once thought would be too exaggerated even for satire.

What is the straw that broke this particular camel’s back?

Army Manual to Skip Geneva Detainee Rule
The Pentagon’s move to omit a ban on prisoner humiliation from the basic guide to soldier conduct faces strong State Dept. opposition.
By Julian E. Barnes, Times Staff Writer
June 5, 2006

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans “humiliating and degrading treatment,” according to knowledgeable military officials, a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.

The decision could culminate a lengthy debate within the Defense Department but will not become final until the Pentagon makes new guidelines public, a step that has been delayed. However, the State Department fiercely opposes the military’s decision to exclude Geneva Convention protections and has been pushing for the Pentagon and White House to reconsider, the Defense Department officials acknowledged.

—

President Bush’s critics and supporters have debated whether it is possible to prove a direct link between administration declarations that it will not be bound by Geneva and events such as the abuses at Abu Ghraib or the killings of Iraqi civilians last year in Haditha, allegedly by Marines.

But the exclusion of the Geneva provisions may make it more difficult for the administration to portray such incidents as aberrations. And it undercuts contentions that U.S. forces follow the strictest, most broadly accepted standards when fighting wars.

“The rest of the world is completely convinced that we are busy torturing people,” said Oona A. Hathaway, an expert in international law at Yale Law School. “Whether that is true or not, the fact we keep refusing to provide these protections in our formal directives puts a lot of fuel on the fire.”

—

For decades, it had been the official policy of the U.S. military to follow the minimum standards for treating all detainees as laid out in the Geneva Convention. But, in 2002, Bush suspended portions of the Geneva Convention for captured Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Bush’s order superseded military policy at the time, touching off a wide debate over U.S. obligations under the Geneva accord, a debate that intensified after reports of detainee abuses at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

Among the directives being rewritten following Bush’s 2002 order is one governing U.S. detention operations. Military lawyers and other defense officials wanted the redrawn version of the document known as DoD Directive 2310, to again embrace Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.

That provision — known as a “common” article because it is part of each of the four Geneva pacts approved in 1949 — bans torture and cruel treatment. Unlike other Geneva provisions, Article 3 covers all detainees — whether they are held as unlawful combatants or traditional prisoners of war. The protections for detainees in Article 3 go beyond the McCain amendment by specifically prohibiting humiliation, treatment that falls short of cruelty or torture.

The move to restore U.S. adherence to Article 3 was opposed by officials from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and by the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, government sources said. David S. Addington, Cheney’s chief of staff, and Stephen A. Cambone, Defense undersecretary for intelligence, said it would restrict the United States’ ability to question detainees.

The Pentagon tried to satisfy some of the military lawyers’ concerns by including some protections of Article 3 in the new policy, most notably a ban on inhumane treatment, but refused to embrace the actual Geneva standard in the directive it planned to issue.

The military lawyers, known as judge advocates general, or JAGs, have concluded that they will have to wait for a new administration before mounting another push to link Pentagon policy to the standards of Geneva.

“The JAGs came to the conclusion that this was the best they can get,” said one participant familiar with the Defense Department debate who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the protracted controversy. “But it was a massive mistake to have withdrawn from Geneva. By backing away, you weaken the proposition that this is the baseline provision that is binding to all nations.”

Derek P. Jinks, an assistant professor at the University of Texas School of Law and the author of a forthcoming book on Geneva called “The Rules of War,” said the decision to remove the Geneva reference from the directive showed the administration still intended to push the envelope on interrogation.

“We are walking the line on the prohibition on cruel treatment,” Jinks said. “But are we really in search of the boundary between the cruel and the acceptable?”

The military has long applied Article 3 to conflicts — including civil wars — using it as a minimum standard of conduct, even during peacekeeping operations. The old version of the U.S. directive on detainees says the military will “comply with the principles, spirit and intent” of the Geneva Convention.

There is more at the original article, and it does not get any better.

So, there it is. I cannot write satire that encompasses this.

The reason why this change in the manual is so important? Here is a case study:

Fort Hood, Texas, Summer 1995:

Private Ericsson was the blond-haired blue-eyed epitome of American youth. A little older than his peers at 22, he was often the first to speak up when I called for a response. In this case I had just put forward the question, “What would you do?� to a hypothetical situation in which several prisoners had been captured who may, or may not, know about an ambush the enemy had emplaced for our unit some distance away. The prisoners appeared to be civilians, taken in a village from which we had, in this notional scenario, recently taken fire.

“I’d shoot one of them sir, to see if it got the next one to talk,� said Ericsson with a perfectly straight face. The room remained silent.

“WHAT?!� It was not my calmest reply because I was, frankly, stunned. Standing at the front of the room I looked around at the assembled men seated before me. Nobody was leaping to contradict his comment. Their attention was split between us.

Ericsson repeated his response, looking me straight in the eye. “I’d shoot one of them sir. And then, if that didn’t get the next guy to talk, I’d shoot another.�

Jesus.

“Ericsson…� I started to reply, about to tell him how wrong that was, to lecture him and explain about not only the laws of land warfare but how this would additionally be entirely counterproductive in addition to being illegal and immoral, but I stopped myself. If Ericsson thinks this way…

“No, wait…OK, how many of you think that this is the correct response?â€? Now I was addressing the whole group, most of my company in fact. After a few seconds almost half of the hands went up.

One of the fundamental tenets of civilization is the rule of law, and even in our wars, we have imposed laws which are not to be violated.

Laws that apply to everyone, in every circumstance.

Throwing those laws out because our enemies do so does not enable our victory, instead it gives our enemy a win because they have caused us to reject the main thing that differentiates us from them.

Think about it.

Think about it when you watch any torture scene in any movie, especially when the nominal “hero” is being tortured. What makes the “villain” evil? Is it his goals or is it his methods? Do his methods merely illustrate his evil, or do they arise out of the misguided goals?

If the “hero” uses the same methods, does it sully his goals?

What are our legends, what informs our culture, what stories do we use to teach our children and illustrate our fundamental values?

How do the heroes behave in those stories?

How are we as a society behaving now? What acts are we explicitly or implicitly condoning? Are these acts consistent with our heritage of legends and culture?

Are you comfortable with the answers to these questions?

So, how are we different from our enemies? In the days of the Cold War it seemed so clear, we wouldn’t spy on our own citizens, we wouldn’t imprison people indefinitely without trial, we wouldn’t torture those in our power.

Those acts were the characteristics of our enemy, the Soviet Union, the Evil Empire as labelled by President Ronald Reagan.

What will we not do now?

Technorati Tags: commentary, current events, ethics, fundamentals, torture

You may be able to shout, but if what you have to say is crap, the volume isn’t much of an asset.
   -Max Sawicky

—

There was a sense, as recently as the 1980s, that once the election was over, it was time to govern. Presidents who won elections were entitled to a honeymoon period and preparations for the next election were on the back burner. In recent years, though, the losing party immediately sought to undermine the legitimacy of the winner and brought out all the tools at their disposal to obstruct.

The win at all costs model, which is bipartisan, leads to politics being a sport where you merely root for whoever happens to be wearing the team colors at the moment. Ordinary voters are more likely to be turned off by the rancorous atmosphere and the core electorate will likely be more energized than ever to make sure that the “bad guys” lose.
   -James H. Joyner Jr.

—

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence indeed, will dictate, that Governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.
   -Thomas Jefferson, et al.

—

I hear the voices and I read the front page and I know the speculation. But I’m the decider and I decide what’s best.
   -George W. Bush

President George W. Bush repeatedly says that he wants to “bring the terrorists to justice,” yet the extra-legal prison at Guantanamo by its very existence denies his statements.

Yes, I am being deliberately provocative, but before you tune out, think for a moment about what constitutes “justice” by any conventionally accepted definition.

Justice is intimately related to the rule of law, and an established order of courts to administer those laws.

If you dispute that the prison at Guantanamo Bay was built specifically to be outside of the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States, your views are not worthy of a serious discussion, so please stop wasting your and my time and cease reading now.

For those of you who acknowledge reality, where exactly is “bringing terrorists to justice” in holding those who have been accused of being terrorists in a prison constructed explicitly to be extra-legal?

I write “those who have been accused of being terrorists” rather than using the administration-preferred terminology of “those who have been caught in combat against the United States” because it can be easily shown that many (if not most) of those now in the prison at Guantanamo were NOT caught on some battlefield but instead brought to US forces to gain some kind of reward, monetary or otherwise. Note the silence of those on the right-wing who have requested a “blogswarm” to analyze the recently released transcripts of the “tribunals” held to determine the status of the prisoners, proceedings where the accused were not allowed to confront accusers, and often where the accused were not even allowed to know what supposed “evidence” existed against them.

This is justice?

If you agree it is, then I am curious how you yourself would fare in such a system, especially if you had done something to piss off your neighbors.

Wasn’t this kind of governmental arbitrariness when it comes to the rule of law exactly what we were in opposition to in the Cold War? That is what I recall…

I am not arguing some partisan point of view, because if the Democrats were worth anything, they would have pursued this issue (among others) far more vigorously using arguments based upon fundamental principals rather than the weak, partisan attacks they have used to date.

The Democrats are just as morally bankrupt as the party in power, but neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are as impoverished in principles as the administration itself, which has rejected anything associated with what I understood the Republican Party to stand for.

Many who wish to prove a point like to say “we are at war!”

Many who wish to gain some kind of political advantage construct arguments upon foundations of straw (as in straw-men they construct to knock down).

If we are at war, by our actions in this war we define who we are as a culture and a society.

Are you proud of the actions we have taken so far?

Abu Ghirab…

Guantanamo…

Extraordinary rendition to prisons used by the former Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact satellite states…

This is what the rest of the world sees.

Are we truly seeking justice, or vengeance?

Recall the old proverb, if you seek vengeance, first dig two graves.

Who writes the history?

The winners of the conflicts.

Who won the Cold War?

The US, a nation that held to certain standards despite staring in the face of complete annihilation.

Now, we are confronted by forces which are mosquitos in comparison with those we fought in the Second World War, much less those of the former USSR.

Yet we shit in our pants every time a conflict arises between essential liberty and security, quaking in our boots until security wins out over that liberty, proving we deserve neither.

Are we out for justice, or for vengeance?

The answer to that question will help determine who we truly are in this War of Definition.

Technorati Tags: commentary, fundamentals, opinion

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

—

Resolved … that it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism— free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence.

—

Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

—

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate which would be oppression.

—

I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offence against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? And are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason.

—

A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.

   -Thomas Jefferson

Technorati Tags: commentary, quotes

There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation.

—

A people armed and free forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition and is a bulwark for the nation against foreign invasion and domestic oppression.

—

Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents.

—

History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance.

—

To the press alone, chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

—

A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

   -James Madison

Technorati Tags: quotes, commentary

Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradually induced, by a like motive to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful.

—

If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws — the first growing out of the last… A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.

—

Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals, for the most part governed by the impulse of passion.

—

Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others.

—

The history of human conduct does not warrant that exalted opinion of human virtue which would make it wise in a nation to commit interests of so delicate and momentous a kind as those which concern its intercourse with the rest of the world to the sole disposal of a magistrate, created and circumstanced, as would be a President of the United States.

   -Alexander Hamilton

Technorati Tags: quotes, commentary

Regular readers of Random Fate have doubtless noticed I tend not to link to many other weblogs. This is not because I find little that is thought provoking out in blogworld. When I get past the usual suspects with their usually suspect opinions, there is an amazing number of posts that can provoke and fertilize thought.

Unfortunately, after an hour of reading the various opinions and thinking about the ramifications, I lose track of the 20 or 30 plus weblogs that prompt me to examine a topic and stimulate my thoughts upon it.

Also, a list of 20 or 30 links makes for unexciting reading at best.

In addition, often my thoughts are directed by music I happen to be listening to at the time I am reading and thinking. In this case, the U2 song The Hands That Built America,written for the movie “Gangs of New York”,caused me to consider many different topics, some that were themes of that movie and others related but only indirectly addressed in the film.

It is difficult to write upon the topic of America as an idea and an ideal without creating something that is book-length that would be read by few if any, despite the importance the subject deserves. I am forced to appeal to artists who condense a wealth of feelings into short phrases underscored by music that convey feelings so much more than volumes of mere words could ever deliver, musicians who are not even from our nation, but who illustrate what America meant to the world at large until recently:

Oh my love, it’s a long way we’ve come
From the freckled hills, to the steel and glass canyons
From the stony fields, to hanging steel from the sky
From digging in our pockets for a reason not to say goodbye

These are the hands that built America
(Russian, Sioux, Dutch, Hindu)
Oh, oh oh, America
(Polish, Irish, German, Italian)

Last saw your face in a watercolour sky
As sea birds argue, a long goodbye
I took your kiss, on the spray of the new land star
You gotta live with your dreams, don’t make them so hard

And these are the hands, that built America
(The Irish, the Blacks, the Chinese, the Jews)
Ah, ah ah, America
(Korean, Hispanic, Muslim, Indian)

Of all of the promises, is this one we could keep
Of all of the dreams, is this one still out of reach

Halle, ole
(Dream-oh-yeah)
(Oh oh-dream, oh love)

It’s early fall, there’s a cloud on the New York skyline
Innocence, dragged across a yellow line

These are the hands that built America
These are the hands that built America
Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah America

Is there any doubt that the lines, “It’s early fall, there’s a cloud on the New York skyline, Innocence, dragged across a yellow line,” refer to September 11, 2001?

Yet those are not the most important lyrics; there is far more to this song just as there is far more to America than the simplistic jingoism we have been presented with in the past half-decade by those who claim to be “leaders”.

Before that terrible day of September 11, 2001, America represented freedom and liberty both as ideas and ideals to the world, and our reactions to that day have revealed to the world the feet of clay that ideals inevitably show, yet the ideas underlying the ideals have not yet been destroyed and will not be if we choose to stand up for those ideas.

There are few things in this world in which I firmly believe, and even fewer that I am willing to stand up for. The ideas of freedom and democracy are among those precious few.

There is a critical difference between ideals and ideas.

The ideal of America has been murdered in the past five years by the actions of the government of the United States, but the ideas underlying America have not yet been destroyed.

The ideas of freedom and democracy are what I believe in. What are the gravest threats to these ideas, an external threat of terrorist organizations who kill people to get headlines, or those who claim the world changed on September 11, 2001 and say that to protect our “freedom” we must push aside the ideas of civil liberties in order to provide safety against terrorist threats?

In other words, there are those who say that we must kill the patient in order to “cure” the disease. This is a solution that appeals to the simple-minded, but not to those who truly understand the fundamentals underlying our Constitution.

What is clear to me is that which is the true threat, and that threat is NOT the one commonly perceived.

It is often quoted, by me as much as by others, something that was written by one of my heroes, Benjamin Franklin, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Those who proclaim “the world changed on 9/11″ as an argument towards undermining the freedoms we had against government surveillance of our lives understand neither the nature of the world before September 11, 2001, nor do they understand the foundations underlying our Constitution.

These misunderstandings are so basic that I must question whether either these people did not have the Civics class that was required of all 9th-graders when I went to school, or they deliberately choose to ignore our fundamental ideals in a quest to claim and proclaim approval for the actions of the current administration, which are questionable at best on Constitutional grounds, even if supposed good intentions are included in the calculus.

What are the fundamentals?

The Founders had recently overcome, at the time they wrote our Constitution, through actions that included secret meetings and covert actions against the legitimate government of their lands, a government that claimed to have the power to inspect any private home or other property without any restraint. Abuse of this power was the rationale behind the requirement to have judicial review and approval of search warrants.

Yet, somehow, after more than 200 years of survival, the actions of a few fanatics on September 11, 2001, are a justification to many, not solely members of the current Bush administration but apparently including many in America as a whole if comments are to be relied upon, that the philosophy that has survived 200-plus years should be cast aside because “the world changed on 9/11.”

As I have written before, many times, the world did not change on 9/11/2001, only our perception of the world changed.

We, the United States, had been attacked several times before 9/11/2001, but we didn’t notice because either the attacks did not succeed (the earlier attempts to bring down the World Trade Center in New York by truck-bombs in the parking garage), or only foreigners were killed (the car-bomb attacks on embassies in Africa).

We only panicked when the deaths were those in the United States itself. Now in the “land of the free and the home of the brave” as we so proudly proclaim in our national anthem we shit in our pants and give up yet another essential liberty every time the administration cries “terrorist” or bin Laden issues another taped proclamation.

Do your own math, but it easily comes out to this: So much for being brave OR free…

Actions speak louder than words.

Through our actions we show who we really are, regardless of any ideas we claim to follow.

One could easily cry “hypocrisy” when we have no care for those who die in our attacks on al-Qaida targets in other nations such as Pakistan where foreigners are killed, because we can ease our conscience by saying “they must have been supporters of the terrorists because they were nearby,” neglecting the truth that we have no idea what our own next-door neighbors do (the “he was such an ordinary person” comments of the neighbors of serial killers should give us SOME kind of clue you would think…).

America was once the ideal of the world when it came to freedom. As a result of the actions of the government of the United States in the past five years, we have shown our feet of clay, whether in “extraordinary rendition” or the scandals of Abu Ghirab and Guantanamo or the warrantless wiretaps recently come to light.

Apologists of the current administration like to claim that the views of the world outside America do not matter.

They are wrong.

Once is happenstance.

Twice is coincidence.

Three times…

…perhaps a closer look is required.

The United States of America won the Cold War mainly because it stood as an ideal to the rest of the world for freedom and democracy.

Our reaction to the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the ephemeral, non-existential threat they pose illustrate in no uncertain terms how hollow that ideal is, showing the feet of clay that any hero ultimately reveals.

However, America still represents the idea of freedom, unless we squander that legacy as well.

It is up to us to see whether we keep alive the idea after, through our actions, we have destroyed the image of America as the ideal.

A preface is needed:

One month ago I was in France, sleeping in a hotel room after my possessions had been moved from my apartment in downtown Grenoble had been packed and loaded for shipping to the US.

Two weeks and one day ago I arrived in Memphis to visit my parents for Christmas, with the hope of helping my father regain enough strength for a new round of chemotherapy to combat his recurrent cancer.

One week and three days ago I was in an overnight vigil in a hospital room with my brother watching and acting according to what we thought were my father’s wishes as his body slowly failed.

Five days ago I walked away alone from the gathering that was preparing to depart after the graveside ceremony of the funeral, to place the flower that had been on my lapel, signifying that I was a pallbearer, on the head of my father’s coffin, the sole flower at that end for the other pallbearers’ flowers were at the foot.

In the days since I have been sitting at my father’s desk, going through his financial papers and occasionally encountering a printout of an email from me or a transcript of an instant message conversation we had, and at one point a post I had written that I told him in an email described how much I respected him. Even at the last he said, “Thank you,” when I said, “I love you.” These printouts are the visible proof of the feelings he couldn’t speak about.

To say that I have had some other priorities than blogworld in the past weeks would be putting it mildly.

With that explanation regarding the basis of my thoughts, here are those thoughts:

I have been told by many people, both those who know me in person and those who only know what I write, that I do not suffer fools gladly. After taking a short break today to read the various blogs on my list I find little other than breathtaking inanity. I do not know if it is a manifestation of my grief or a stirring of the rage that created so much of my personality, an anger at the idiocy I saw in the world that I thought I had long ago resolved, but I now refuse to suffer fools at all.

Unfortunately, the fools far outnumber those who are willing to put in the hard work needed to think.

The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, & what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusetts? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, & always, well informed. The past which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive; if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13 states independent 11 years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & What country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure.
   -Thomas Jefferson

September 11, 2001 did not change the world, it merely changed our view of the world.

Some reacted with fear that was far out of proportion to the event.

Unfortunately, they continue to overreact.

Far too many are saying, “I have nothing to fear from government intrusion in my life if I am doing nothing wrong.”

Far too many have no conception of the foundations of our Constitution, of the very reasons for the rebellion against the legitimate government that Great Britain held over the American Colonies in the 18th Century.

It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties which make the defense of our nation worthwhile.
   -Earl Warren

The Cold War ended over a decade ago, but it is less than two decades past, have we so soon forgotten the existential threat we faced then?

Compared to the nuclear annihilation that was the underpinning of the aptly acronymed Mutual Assured Destruction how can any terrorist attack cause the overweening fear that prompts agreement to measures that were unthinkable when we lived in the shadow of the balance of terror of complete ruin?

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
   -Edmund Burke

The atmosphere surrounding the events of September 11, 2001 was further obscured with a veil of fear because of the anthrax mailings, a crime of terror that is still unsolved.

Yet, in total, how many people were affected? Less than 3,500 for all the events in the last months of 2001.

Going by simple odds, you have a larger chance of being directly affected by slipping on the soap in your shower than being in a terrorist attack, even before the United States was on alert against Islamist-based groups using terrorism as a tactic.

For that is what terrorism is, a tactic, and every time we react with fear, every time we change a law to reduce a freedom because we fear another assault, every time we react instead of think, we hand a victory to those using that tactic of terror.

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear—fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants beyond everything else is safety.
   -H. L. Mencken

Each year approximately 40,000 people die in automobile accidents with over 2 million associated permanent injuries.

Need I point out this is more than 10 times the number who died in the terrorist attacks of 2001? Yet I see no “War on Bad Driving” to combat this parade of death.

Every year, more than 20,000 die from the flu or complications thereof, and more than 15,000 people are murdered.

Where are we spending our money, and where are we focusing our fears?

“But the terrorists are trying to get a nuclear weapon, and if they succeed they will kill millions!”

Back up a step, boys and girls, it took the infrastructure of entire nations to build enough nuclear weapons to kill millions at once. It is a valid point that terrorist organizations are trying to get nuclear weapons, and unfortunately our policies towards North Korea and Iran are making that possibility more of a probability, but it is an equally valid point to look at cost versus benefit.

Suppose that in 2011 terrorists get a nuclear weapon, and they get another in 2021, and each weapon kills approximately 100,000 (based upon the crude bombs used at the end of World War II), and suppose we spend the amount of money that we are spending (and wasting) on pointless anti-terrorism measures to reduce the automobile accident death rate by 50%. After 10 years, we would have saved 200,000 people from dying in auto accidents, versus 100,000 dying in a nuclear explosion that our current countermeasures are not addressing in the first place.

Do not confuse the appearance of increasing security with an actual increase in safety.

Do not confuse the infringement of freedoms with an actual increase in effectiveness of countermeasures against true enemies.

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
   -William Pitt

There are those who claim we are in a “new kind of war” and need to change our very way of life to combat this new threat.

They do not recall their history, for terrorist tactics have long existed in the United States, sometimes practiced by corporations against strikers, sometimes practiced by unions against those not in the union, sometimes practiced by anarchists with no agenda but violence. President McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist, a follower of a belief that does not seem too far removed from the radical Islamist nihilists.

“Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty” used to mean we watched the government — not the other way around.
   -Bill Stewart

The attitude I see from many in their support, or at best lack of objection, to the attitudes of the current administration when it claims that a mere act of Congress authorizing the war in Afghanistan covers any and all warrantless wiretapping and other activities that are contrary to both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution would be heartbreaking if my heart were intact.

A useful illustration of what we are forgetting from the recent past, something we fought for half a century, but something that is now on the path of fear we now trod, from the movie The Hunt for Red October, which for those who are not familiar with it or the book is about a Soviet submarine commander who has set up a scheme to defect with several officers because the Soviet Union has created a ballistic missile submarine whose sole purpose is for a first-strike nuclear attack:

“You can travel all over the United States?” the First Officer asks.

“Yes.” Captain Ramius replies.

“No papers?”

“No papers…”

Was it so long ago that we recognized and treasured the freedoms we protected despite the terrors of the “fifth column” of Communism, freedoms that we pointed out were denied in the Soviet Union, so long ago that we have forgotten them?

Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.
   -Benjamin Franklin

If it were warrantless wiretaps alone, that would be reason enough to be alarmed, but there are other assaults upon the way of life that our leaders claim they are defending, whether it is detention because “you ain’t from ’round here” to declarations that US citizens are enemy combatants with no appeal, and gaming the court system when those declarations are questioned in a venue not under control of the executive.

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
   -Thomas Paine

Note, Thomas Paine said that we must guard even our enemies from oppression, otherwise we establish a precedent that will expand to reach to those of us who are not enemies of our traditions but perceived as enemies of those who are in power, for governments and power inevitably expand, corrupt, and in the end destroy freedoms unless the governed are continually on guard against that expansion, corruption, and destruction.

Our founders managed to leave us with a system of government that has swayed like a pendulum, too far to one side or the other between anarchic freedoms and overly-regulated lives, but self-correcting for over 200 years. We cannot be complacent about that self-correction, because despite the nomenclature, the “self” in the correction is our responsibility.

Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.
   -Sam Rayburn

Sadly, there are a lot of jackasses in the world with few carpenters, and that is painfully obvious when one takes a casual perusal of the politically oriented weblogs on both the right-wing and the left.

The first line in a recent post at Bloggledygook (the author of said blog is a carpenter, not a jackass) was, “What is one to do when one lives in a sewer of self-delusion and religious psychosis?” Often, although the author of that line was referring to a climate of radical, fundamentalist Islam, I feel that it applies equally well to certain groups in the United States (Pat Robertson or the Daily Kos, anyone?).

So, what is one to do?

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
   -Theodore Roosevelt

In the past weeks, with all the turmoil in my life, I have been tempted to say, “to Hell with it,” and give up this weblog. The new urgency of priorities always present but formerly held in abeyance because there was a perception of time available forces changes in perspective.

In the end, though, what are the priorities?

The most important lesson I received from my father is similar to that my brother spoke of at the funeral, leave the world a better place than you found it.

I am only one, but I am still one; I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
   -Edward Everett Hale

What is better than ensuring that the freedoms we inherited are preserved and passed on? A man who has become idolized to the point of becoming an icon to some had a few words on that question:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
   -Ronald Reagan

Yet the lesson of the goal alone is useless without some knowledge of the “how” to accomplish it. Fortunately for me, I was also taught the “how” by my father, a lesson that took, even if it makes for me being unpleasant company at times:

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning.
   -Albert Einstein

I will not stop questioning.

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