Rad Geek People's Daily

It's been a rough century for the Bill of Rights. It started out with Woodrow Wilson's totalitarian Espionage and Sedition Acts, proceeded through Franklin Roosevelt's mass jailing of dissidents and the Vietnam era's brutal COINTELPRO, and has ended up with Bush Jr.'s USA PATRIOT Act, suspension of habeas corpus, and periodic attempts to push through even more totalitarian surveillance legislation. My intent, however, is not to retell the rather disgusting tale of assaults on civil liberties during wartime (that tale is retold nicely enough by Justin Raimondo, in the context of the John Walker Lindh trial). Rather, I want to wish a belated happy birthday to that good old parchment barricade against tyranny. December 15, 2003 was the 212^th anniversary of the passage of the first ten Amendments to the Constitution.

The Executive Branch has not been very kind to the Birthday Bill. Consider, for example, that most famous of amendments:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

And another Amendment, less frequently cited but no less important, which the Founders considered absolutely essential to preventing monarchial tyranny from the Executive:

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Consider, on the other hand, the conduct of the FBI -- and not just the conduct, but the overwhelming sense of entitlement -- in pissing all over both of these barricades for liberty:

What a completely surreal evening I had last night. As I'd mentioned, I reluctantly dropped John off at the airport around 4pm or so. I went with him to the baggage counter and waited while he filled out the paperwork to declare his firearms, walked with him to the security line, and kissed him goodbye. I thought I might need some distraction, so I had agreed to meet some friends for dinner at 7pm. I went home, changed, and then headed to the restaurant. Just as I pulled into the parking lot, my cell phone rang.

I said hello, and a polite stranger asked if I was [my name], identified himself as a police officer, then asked if I was safe and okay. My forehead wrinkled, and I said I was. The officer then asked if I knew John, and whether he had (a) been staying with me this past week and (b) brought firearms with him for the purpose of shooting at the local range. I said yes to both, and jumped to the conclusion that John must've not cleared each and every gun -- I know I'm obsessive about checking mine when I travel -- it wouldn't be unreasonable for him to have left one magazine in when dealing with the number of guns he brought with him. So the officer then asked if I'd mind coming to the airport to talk to him.

. . .

They told me that John was in a little trouble. They dodged my questions at first, and then said he had brought a firearm with him that he had not declared. The way in which they said it implied that he had a gun I hadn't seen, that it was loaded, and that it was on his person. They didn't outright say any of those things -- but they very adroitly led me right to that conclusion. Then they started asking me questions. Who was I, how did I meet John, what were our political views, did we meet with others who might have similar political views on his visit... lots of things that were clearly leading right to the idea that he was some sort of militia nut who was here on a recruiting mission or some such.

They started out treating me like some poor stupid femme who'd been unknowingly lured into some sort of illicit affair with a Very Dangerous Fellow. On top of that, both were extremely flirty. They seemed to think that I didn't know John had any guns with him. When I said I did, they wanted to know how many and what types. Then whether I knew that he had illegal high capacity magazines with him. I said that so far as I knew, all of his high-cap mags were pre-ban and thus not illegal. They asked if I knew he'd made modifications to his guns. I said sure, he'd put a new trigger in his Glock while he was here. Stupid, stupid questions calculated to make me think he was some sort of maniac.

Then they moved on and asked me if I knew what kind of literature he had with him.

Fortunately, this is not just a jeremiad about the decline and fall of civil liberties in America. The Executive branch is not the only branch of government there is (gee, it's almost like they designed the Constitution with this sort of thing in mind...), and the news is not all doom and gloom. In particular, two federal courts have given the Bill of Rights a belated birthday present, by striking down the Bush administration's assaults on habeas corpus and the Fourth Amendment in the case of Abdullah al-Mujahir (nee José Padilla) and the internment camp at Guantanamo Bay.

The Bush administration, of course, is not about to take this lying down, and they are planning to appeal this up to the Supreme Court if they have to. Good -- let the battle be joined, just in time for an election year when the Left and civil libertarians need to mobilize. In the meantime, take a moment to celebrate. Give the Bill of Rights a reading, and say a thank you to the Second and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals. Happy birthday Bill of Rights -- and here's hoping for many happy returns.

For further reading:

• GT 2002-08-10: Judge Doumar has made his ruling; now let him enforce it.
• GT 2002-06-11: An Important Update from the War Information Council

Blogging today has been postponted. Also sidelined have been academic concerns (revising an essay on Hume) and even the important task of getting the apartment cleaned up into a livable condition. Why?

I'm going to Trilogy Tuesday.

Yes, L. and I got advance tickets--I called ahead, to avoid the lines and the campers--and we will be spending the next 14 hours or so reveling in Tolkien goodness, rendered in marvellous Peter Jackson spectacle.

I love the world.

The global jubilation at capture of Saddam Hussein has brought out the predictable party crashers: no sooner had the cheers died down than the bloviating from triumphalist Right-wing pundits began. David Frum, for example, opines that what the capture shows us is that — and I quote:

... it's becoming increasingy difficult to doubt that God wants President Bush re-elected.

Turning from theodicy to more mundane politics, Jim Geraghty argues that Saddam Hussein's capture may finally succed in shutting up the whining of the antiwar Left, by proving the war a success and knocking down their last argument to the contrary:

Since about April 2003, this question has been the cheapest, easiest way to take a shot at the Bush administration:

So why haven't we captured or killed Saddam Hussein?

...

You see, once that question is asked, the issue is no longer the broad goals of the war on terror, or bringing new ideas and human rights to the Arab world, or confronting evil head-on instead of coming up with excuses not to. The question confuses the difference between a goal not yet accomplished and a failure. It declares the efforts of the United States and its allies a failure. And it's about painting President Bush as, to use Richard Gephardt's favorite words, a miserable failure.

(Our sources, incidentally, offer no word on whether it will shut up the antiwar Right or Libertarians.)

One of the common conceits behind all of these is that the capture of Saddam Hussein proves, after these long months in the wilderness of despair, that the war really was righteous after all, that the neo-cons had it right all along and the whiny peaceniks just refused to see how evil could be defeated. Part and parcel of this is a stirring little moral fable, which goes something like this: the United States went into Iraq to bring peace and prosperity to the whole world by rooting out the terrorists and tyrants who hate our freedom. First we threw Saddam out of Baghdad and liberated Iraq from is ghastly Ba'athist regime; then we worked to build democracy and defend it against terrorist remnants that long for the old order; and finally, now that we've got our hands on the old snake himself, the Iraqi people will be able to bring their tormentor to justice. God Bless America.

The conceit behind all discussions of this sort — whether in the rarefied air of know-it-all punditry or in the popular cant of Getting Saddam — is that the ends of the State can be carried out without any particular means: as if there were some trap door that the CIA installed underneath Saddam Hussein, so that all the President needed to do was "take action" by pressing a button somewhere, and then evil would be vanquished. In reality, of course, very few people other than the Ba'athists themselves thought that Saddam Hussein ought to remain in power; the question was one of means - a question that the War Party systematically likes to blank out. Ludwig von Mises skewered this fallacy in the realm of domestic legislation when he wrote, in Human Action:

It is important to remember that government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action. The funds that a government spends for whatever purposes are levied by taxation. And taxes are paid because the taxpayers are afraid of offering resistance to the tax gatherers. They know that any disobedience or resistance is hopeless. As long as this is the state of affairs, the government is able to collect the money that it wants to spend. Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.

An updated version of von Mises's formulation is called for, since the 20th and early 21st century have seen this fallacy brought into service, for a gruesome series of "humanitarian" wars. In a nice bit of synchronicity, an article from Publio delievered just such an updated version to my mailbox today:

It is needless to say that a move towards open and pluralistic democracy is a welcome change by any rational citizen, but if change means invasion, occupation by foreign forces, tragic deaths of innocents by the thousands (called "collateral damage" in the American lexicon), burning national libraries, looting museums, pillaging government buildings, destroying documents and national records, sending the army and police officers home packing, leaving scores of civilians defenseless against robbery, crime and rape, losing electricity and running water, threatening territorial integrity, installing a puppet ruling council with mandate from the occupation force, coping with daily car bombs, and in short, single-handedly canceling one's country only to invite large foreign corporations to rebuild it later, then it is not evident what kind of a rational citizen would want to bring this calamity on herself.

I agree whole-heartedly with Jim Geraghty that we need to look at the whole context of the war, rather than just insipidly focusing on Saddam Hussien. I recommend this course of action to the Right as well as to the Left; and I only wish that Jim Geraghty would look up from his neo-con talking points and consider the real costs that Mr. Bush's crusade has inflicted on the people he claimed to be liberating — costs that were collected, not in dollars or dinars, but in pounds of flesh.

Oh, by the way, some dude in Pakistan was almost killed and the Taliban is back in Afghanistan. Congratulations to President Bush on his stirring progress in the war on terror.

(Minor updates to fix typos)

Beyond all hope—what a joy it is to see Saddam Hussein, one of recent history's most ghastly tyrants, captured and awaiting punishment for his crimes. What is, perhaps, most appropriate is that this self-styled King of Babylon was found out and captured in stuck in a hole he had dug in the ground in his efforts to flee. If a bit of Scripture is in order, I would like to suggest:

4. That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!
5. The LORD hath broken the staff of the wicked, and the sceptre of the rulers.
6. He who smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke, he that ruled the nations in anger, is persecuted, and none hindereth.
7. The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet: they break forth into singing. ...
12. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
13. For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
14. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
15. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

(Isaiah 14, King James Version)

For the people of Iraq — who are wary of claims from The Officials but celebrating in the streets in the hope that it's true — I can only offer my hope that it is true, and add my voice to the celebration.

But like the Iraqi people, I am wary. Not so much that what the officials are saying about the capture is false. Although I'm sure that a predictable cast of conspiracy theorists will trot out a predictable micro-analysis of one crucial photograph that they are sure must be fake, I don't think there is that much reason to doubt the reports. It's not that I don't think the people presently in power aren't capable of just making shit up for their own political ends, but rather that the consistent body of evidence here seems to be pretty clear.

But what we will no doubt see, thundering down the echoing halls of television punditry, and coming forth from the bully pulpit that the President is going to assume in an hour or so, is very likely to be a threefold disaster.

First, we are likely to see the same sort of hollow triumphalism with which Caesar celebrated his defeat of Pompey. If any man is prepared to gloat over the stench of carrion that his putative victory cost, it is this man.

Second, and closely connected, we are likely to be told that the capture of Saddam Hussein is proof positive that we were justified in this gruesome joke of a war. Of course it doesn't — but unfortunately this tacitc may go over well for a while. If there's anything that the American people love, it's a winner — and sometimes this blanks out important truths.

Third, the warhawks have already begun to take this (as the neo-conservatives, in particular, take everything) as proof positive of their fanciful dreams. That's what happens when you confuse your own PR echo chamber for reality; and it's already on display. For example, consider the fanciful dreams of the U.S. military establishment and their sympathetic commentariat:

Hussein's capture will be an immediate and devastating body blow to the anti-American resistance in Iraq. ...

Within Iraq, the American commanders and their allies hope that the capture of Hussein will break the back of the anti-American resistance. Most of that resistance has come from former forces of Hussein located in the so-called Sunni Triangle in the middle of Iraq, around Baghdad.

So let's take a moment to review the facts as we know them.

In spite of the Defense Department spin, the insurgency against American troops is not all burned-out Ba'athists. Ordinary Iraqis are mad as hell at the increasingly draconian occupation. And as renewed terrorist activity all around the world indicates, international jihadis have taken up Mr. Bush's war on Arabs as their own cause celebre. Ba'athist remnants may have reason to be discouraged, but those who revile both Saddam and the Americans (whether from the just aspirations of the Iraqi people, or from the insane fantasies of radical Islamism) are still going strong. As General Sanchez admits (even military commanders have to have more contact with reality than chickenhawk commentators), the deaths will continue - indeed, retaliation may even increase.

Further, Saddam's capture does not invalidate a single one of the many arguments against the war. No-one doubted that the war would mean a dramatic end to the Ba'athist reign of terror, and that Iraq would be better off for that. What we doubted was that the ends could justify the means--that it was likely or even possible for a U.S. bombing, invasion, and occupation to bring peace and freedom to Iraq. We pointed out that the administration's evidence for WMD and connections to terrorism was awfully flimsy at best; we predicted massacres of civilians; we predicted a humanitarian and cultural catastrophe; we predicted a hopeless and bloody occupation; we predicted gruesome urban warfare with guerillas. The warhawks said the administration was telling us the Gospel truth, predicted a bloodless victory, where American troops would be greeted with flowers. And here are the facts as we know them: the administration distorted and knowingly lied about pre-war intelligence; civilians were needlessly murdered during the war; the infrastructure and historical heritage of Iraq suffered appalling destruction; the anger and hatred of the occupation is not about to go away; and terrorist attacks continue to kill American soldiers and Iraqi civilians.

Be that as it may, realism is no excuse for cynicism. Take some time today to be at peace, and to to sing with the people of Iraq. Then take some time to think about how we can make this day sweeter for them. The whole world should rejoice that Saddam Hussein, like the old kings of Babylon the Great, has fallen into ruin. But we also should not forget that Babylon was conquered by the Persians — in the course of creating a mighty empire that was no less tyrannical and no less bloodsoaked than old Chaldaea. It might profit us a bit if we said to ourselves: Rejoice that Balshazzar has fallen! ... Now what are we going to do about Cyrus?

If you believe the corporate newsmedia, we are supposed to feel warm fuzzies about President Bush's surprise visit to Baghdad. Why are we supposed to feel good about it? Because he made a very public and very scripted show of supporting the troops which consisted of a whopping three hours with 600 (no doubt carefully selected) troops? Or perhaps because his conduct of a bloody, senseless war and a bloody, pointless occupation has turned the Iraqi people against him so much that he has to sneak into Baghdad like a thief in the night?

Or, perhaps, that it turns out that the White House lied about it in an attempt to spice up the story - and when called on it, they lied about it again?

You might think that my cynicism about George Bush's personality is getting the better of me: these lies, for example, are ultimately quite inconsequential bits of venality on the White House story-tellers. Isn't it kind of petty to harp on them, especially when Bush's bigger lies led us into an unjustified and illegal war?

Well, in one sense this sort of thing is venal and inconsequential. But in another sense, it goes right to the rotten heart of the Bush administration—that is, a man who is essentially petty and venal at his own core. Bush is, after all, the same man who evidently delights in hollow Caesarian triumphs like the landing on the U.S.S. Lincoln back in May, parades around in the bomber jacket that he earned by going AWOL on a cushy Air National Guard post during Vietnam, and who continues to set new standards for contemptuous official secrecy and scripting of press conferences. It has become common on the Left to see George Bush as the diabolical figurehead of a neferious Right-wing conspiracy against truth, justice, and the American way, with resources bordering on the limitless and motives bordering on the Satanic. But he is nowhere near as grandiose in his wickedness as all that (very few evil people actually are — Dante was closer to the truth about the Devil than Milton). Bush is, ultimately, a sad little man with sad little pretensions to the alleged glory of power. If the Bush administration seems like a political Leviathan at the moment, it's only because it is bloated up with a lot of gas: the best way to deal with it is not to assail it with apocalyptic rhetoric but rather to deflate it, and show it up for the sorry mistake that it is.