7 posts tagged “civics”

The Supreme Court

I just finished the PBS series on the  history of the Supreme Court tonight. Naturally, I learned way more than I will have time to detail in a vox post (and who would read it anyway?) but I have to say that I have become a fan of the great dissenters of the court ... the people who stand their ground on an issue long enough to get the others and the country to catch up to their way of seeing things. It is also interesting to see how Justices can also cave in to political pressures after enough of it is applied to them.

In some ways, the court serves as a keel, keeping the nation from being blown from port to starboard but ... it cannot serve as an anchor indefinitely. Enough wind will eventually take it right or left with enough time, enough death, and enough resignation. Ironically, just yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled in a close decision that Al Quaeda prisoners on Guantanamo have a right to trial.

Justice Scalia in dissent writes:

"My problem with today’s opinion is more fundamental still: The writ of habeas corpus does not, and never has, run in favor of aliens abroad; the Suspension Clause thus has no application, and the Court’s intervention in this military matter is entirely ultra vires. [Latin for "beyond the powers"].

Scalia blazes on:

"The Court today decrees that no good reason to accept the judgment of the other two branches is “apparent.” Ante, at 40. “The Government,” it declares, “presents no credible arguments that the military
mission at Guantanamo would be compromised if habeas corpus courts had jurisdiction to hear the detainees’
claims.” Id., at 39. What competence does the Court have to second-guess the judgment of Congress and the President on such a point? None whatever. But the Court blunders in nonetheless. Henceforth, as today’s opinion makes unnervingly clear, how to handle enemy prisoners in this war will ultimately lie with the branch that knows least about the national security concerns that the subject entails."

Scalia then carries the mantle of strict Constructionism  with vigor:

"It is nonsensical to interpret those provisions themselves in light of some general“separation-of-powers principles” dreamed up by the Court. Rather, they must be interpreted to mean what they were understood to mean when the people ratified them. . . . What drives today’s decision is neither the meaning of the Suspension Clause, nor the principles of our precedents, but rather an inflated notion of judicial supremacy . . . The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today. I dissent."

Chief Justice John Roberts makes it clear in his dissenting opinion that this decision is a power grab whereby the Judiciary wrests control of the trial of prisoners from the Executive and Legislative branches.

"All that today’s opinion has done is shift responsibility for those sensitive foreign policy and national security decisions from the elected branches to the Federal Judiciary."

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/07pdf/06-1195.pdf

Question for Comment: So ... if I am a prisoner at Guantanamo, I will no doubt be happy about this. the system I may well have been trying to bring down has functioned in such a way as to better protect me. And I understand that it cannot be assumed that a prisoner is, by being taken prisoner, admitting to guilt. Anyone ought to know that being arrested is not synonymous with deserving to be. I guess my question is, if the rights of American citizens can be extended to non-citizens, what rights should non citizens not have that we have? Are there any

A little over a hundred years ago, US President Theodore Roosevelt wrote about HIS feelings about the native American Indians of the West who he watched being "replaced" by American settlers. He writes:

"... looked at from the standpoint of the ultimate result, there was little real difference to the Indian whether the land was taken by treaty or by war. ...No treaty could be satisfactory to the whites, no treaty served the needs of humanity and civilization, unless it gave the land to the Americans as unreservedly as any successful war."

"Whether the whites won the land by treaty, by armed conflict, or, as was actually the case, by a mixture of both, mattered comparatively little so long as the land was won. It was all-important that it should be won, for the benefit of civilization and in the interests of mankind. It is, indeed, a warped, perverse, and silly morality which would forbid a course of conquest that has turned whole continents into the seats of mighty and flourishing civilized nations. ...It is as idle to apply to savages the rules of international morality which obtain between stable and cultured communities, as it would be to judge the fifth-century English conquest of Britain by the standards of to-day."

"The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman. The rude, fierce settler who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind under a debt to him. ...[I]t is of incalculable importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners, and become the heritage of the dominant world races."

Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West: Book IV, 1896

Sigh, it seems like Americans can't learn geography or anthropology without launching a war. It is so interesting to me that in the space of a hundred years, we have come to realize how ignorant he was. Had Americans taken some time to understand a few things that these "savages" knew, we wouldn't be watching movies like Inconvenient Truth today. And yet there is Teddy Roosevelt staring proudly from the rock on Mt. Rushmore next to Lincoln, Washington, and Jefferson.

Should he feel ashamed to be there in that company? Probably not. All three of these men said some things that would get them thrown out of political office today:

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." Abraham Lincoln, Sept 1858

... And who can forget that Thomas Jefferson the slave holder allowed the condemnation of slavery that he wrote into the Declaration of Independence to get deleted out. If you look at the original draft, you will see that he capitalized MEN to make it clear that he included Africans in the terminology "All men are created equal".

According to Wikipedia, Washington was deeply indebted to slave labor for his ability to ride off to win glory in the American Revolution and Constitutional Convention. "

"At the age of ten, he inherited ten slaves; by the time of his death there were 316 slaves at Mount Vernon, including 124 owned by Washington, 40 leased from a neighbor, and an additional 153 "dower" slaves" which were controlled by Washington but were the property of Martha's first husband's estate."

So what do we have at Mount Rushmore but a rogues gallery of men who failed to appreciate the waste of human potential that their administrations tolerated or promoted (And FDR was no Civil Rights leader either). Aim not to be great in your own day but to be great in two hundred years. Thats the point of that sermon in stone. And the best way to do that is to unleash the potential in the people you teach. Best be about the work.

Question for Comment: Are the people around you more likely to achieve their potential because of the work you do? Why? Why not? 

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Novel

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“The thoughts of a prisoner-they are not free, either.  They kept returning to the same things.  A single idea keeps stirring.  Would they feel that piece of bread in the mattress?  Would he have any luck at the dispensary that evening?  Would they put Buinovsky in the cells?  And how did Tzezar get his hands on that warm vest?”p. 32

“Yes, you lived with your feet in the mud and there is no time to be thinking about how you got in or how you are going to get out.” P. 55

“Oh, you mustn't pray for that either, said the Alyosha, horrified.  Why do you want freedom?  In freedom, your last grain of faith will be choked with weeds.  You should rejoice that you are in prison.  Here you have time to think about your soul. “ p. 136

To Alyosha, the Baptist, a mind that is not free to think about the soul, is not free.  Shukhov is in the gulag, and by the time we are done reading this novel, we gather that Shukhov spends 99.9 percent of his mental life focused on the acquisition of his basic needs, the battle for survival. He is not using his time in the gulag thinking about his soul. Surviving the gulag is not a pastime for Shukhov.  It is a business.  And he focuses his mental energies on that business with the same tenacity, persistence, and obsession that a Type A Enron executive might lavish upon his financial empire. He never misses an opportunity to acquire a favor, an extra six ounces of bread, a cigarette.

It occurs to me, that survival in a capitalist economy can be as mentally demanding on one's mental resources as life gulag. There is so much to think about, paying one's taxes, fixing one's car, educating one's children, purchasing a new computer, ad infinitum, we all, at some point in time, simply must delegate to someone else the job of thinking about questions of more importance.

“During his years in prisons and camps, he'd lost the habit of planning for the next day, for a year ahead, for supporting his family.  The authorities did his thinking for him about everything-it was somehow easier that way.” P. 35

It strikes me that Solzhenitsyn, in describing life in the gulags, is also describing life in the wider Soviet Communist system. It may well be that he is describing life in the capitalist west as well, for we too, unlike Alyosha, are absorbed. It would be interesting to write a sequal to this novel: One Day in the Life of Ivan Deisovich's bunkmate, Alyosha.

Question for Comment: do you feel free to think about things that you think are important? in your life, what thoughts are weeds?

AnimalFarm

Today, I have been reading George Orwell's Animal Farm. It occurred to me that in any group, there will be people who will be more capable of manipulating others. Take one layer of exploiters out of the picture and the next level of exploiters emerges. "Among the oppressed are many who would like to oppress" Napoleon once said. Orwell satirizes the process brilliantly. It would be fun to write a sequel to Animal Farm in which the pigs are all killed for fraternizing with the humans and some other species on the farm takes over and starts the process again. Clearly the solution to exploitation is never going to be found in a program of eliminating exploiters because one layer's removal will simply reveal the next. For those at the bottom of the onion, Benjamin the donkey's words are prophetic:

“Windmill or no windmill, [Benjamin] said, life would go on as it always has gone on-that is, badly.”

To distill all humans in the body politic into good and bad ("four legs good. Two legs bad.") is silly. The fact is that societies are salted with good and bad people in all classes, all faith systems, all genders, all ethnicities, all political affiliations, all education levels, etc. There are wheat and tares everywhere. Many of the oppressed class stand ready to fill the boots of the class oppressing them if given the chance. Even labor union members will hope for high returns on the pension funds that demand cheap labor costs in foreign countries.

I loved the excerpt about the titles of the pig, Napoleon.

“Napoleon was never spoken of simply as Napoleon.  He was always referred to in formal style as ‘Our leader, Comrade Napoleon, and the pigs like to invent for him such titles as the ‘Father of All Animals, Terror of Mankind, Protector of the Sheepfold, Ducklings Friend, and the like.’” P. 99

It reminded me of Idi Amin:

"His Excellency President for Life Field Marshal Al Hadji Dr. Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, King of Scotland Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular."

Everyone in leadership should have a title like that.

In conclusion, the following portrayal of that blob we all have come to know as bureaucracy is absolutely classic. I would send it to ever bureaucrat I knew the address of if I didn't think they would take an hour and a half of my tax-payer time to read it and file it.

"Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer-except, of course, for the pigs in the dogs.  Perhaps this was partly because there were so many pigs and so many dogs.  It was not that these creatures did not work, after their fashion.  There was, as Squealer was never tired of explaining, endless work in the supervision and organization of the farm.  Much of this work was of a kind that the other animals were too ignorant to understand.  For example, Squealer told them that the pigs had to expend enormous labors every day upon mysterious things called “files”,” reports”, “minutes”, and “memoranda”.  These were large sheets of paper which had to be closely covered with writing, and as soon as they were so covered, they were burnt in the furnace.  This was of the highest importance for the welfare of the farm, Squealer said.  But still, neither pigs nor dogs produced any food to buy their own labor; and there were many of them, and their appetites were always good.” P. 129

Question for Comment: At what social divide are you most tempted to say "Four legs good. Two legs bad."

Calvin

The following excerpt is from George Orwell's The Politics of the English Language, written over 60 years ago:

"Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases -- bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder -- one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so." Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

"While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement."

The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find -- this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify -- that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship."

"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity". It occurs to me that it would be an interesting assignment to have students read this excerpt and then go looking through political speaches of today to find if things have gotten better or worse. Is there ANYONE running for office anymore who does not believe overtly or covertly that the best course of action involves the cultivation of intentional vagary?

Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans
Way back up in the woods among the evergreens
Stood a log cabin made of earth and wood
Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Good
Who never learned to read or write at all
But he could play the guitar just like ringing a bell

Chuck Berry, Johnny Be Good

Question for Comment: How could your "voice" gain more clarity. Why is it that when I write something, people feel so free to dismiss it? To ignore it? To hear it?

“When Marduk sent me to rule over men, to give the protection of right to the land, I did right and righteousness in . . . , and brought about the well-being of the oppressed.” Code of Hammurabi

It is interesting to note that the FIRST law code in human history is written by someone asserting that he is there to protect the oppressed. But if you actually read the law code, you discover that it protects the right of the aristocratic classes (particularly, the men) to oppress the "oppressed". It just forbids them from oppressing the oppressed TOO MUCH. History rarely repeats itself, but it often rhymes.

In the preamble to Hammurabi's code, he states:

"Then Anu and Bel called by name me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak; so that I should rule over the black-headed people like Shamash, and enlighten the land, to further the well-being of mankind."

It's got it all. Merging of church and state; the separation of populations into the righteous and the "evildoer"; racism; and a justification for global imperialism in the guise of a crusade for human rights.  Not bad for a beginner.

But read the laws closely and you will discover that there are different punishments for different economic classes.  Aristocrats get a certain special treatment.  Peasants get certain handicaps.

See laws 195 to 202:

If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out. [ An eye for an eye ]

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197

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   If he break another man's bone, his bone shall be broken.

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198

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   If he put out the eye of a freed man, or break the bone of a freed man, he shall pay one gold mina.

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199

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   If he put out the eye of a man's slave, or break the bone of a man's slave, he shall pay one-half of its value.

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200

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   If a man knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out. [ A tooth for a tooth ]

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201

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   If he knock out the teeth of a freed man, he shall pay one-third of a gold mina.

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202

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   If any one strike the body of a man higher in rank than he, he shall receive sixty blows with an ox-whip in public.

In one of the special feature interviews in the movie Maxed Out,  I learned that credit reporting companies have special VIP categories that they place influential people in. These people might be judges, politicians, movie stars, or other individuals who could be detrimentally influential to the company's long-term interests. These flagged credit reports are given special attention so that they do not contain the random errors that most common people find so frustratingly difficult to get rid of in THEIR erroneous credit reports. Anu, Bel, Marduk, and Hammurabi would be proud.

RichAndPoor

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