Showing posts with label dissent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dissent. Show all posts

Sunday, January 13, 2013

On Liberty: More Relevant Than Ever

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

John Stuart Mill's classic essay "On Liberty" deals with the issue of "civil liberties" not the metaphysical issue of "free will". In context, it would appear that most attacks on civil liberties originate from within the right wing and, more specifically, tyrannical police states and/or aristocratic rule. Mill addresses threats against liberty from within the institutions of democracy. The issue is especially relevant when widespread domestic wiretapping and Government ordered surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Early 'libertarians' sought to limit the power 'rulers' over those governed. While many believed that rule by a popularly elected government addressed the issue, Mill, however, identified a need to limit the power of elected governments and officials as well. In 'On Liberty', Mill raises basic issues: "who should rule?" What are the limits of government power"? How may the people establish limits on the power that government may exercise over minorities and individuals? His work is more relevant now than ever.

Mill argues that, as an ideal, "government of the people" is often not the case in fact. Those asserting the power of the government -elected officials, bureaucrats, the judiciary -often develop their own interests, influenced as they often are by 'constituencies' at odds with the general interests of 'the people' and, in particular, the legitimate interests of individuals.

Mill makes no distinction between a tyranny of one and a tyranny of many. A tyrannical majority running roughshod over the rights of individuals and minorities is no less a tyrant simply because it is a majority or because it is elected, or because it is elected by a majority.

Mill believed that while society may not tolerate criminal behavior, for example, society may not legitimately interfere with or suppress non-conforming behaviors indiscriminately or simply because a majority may not approve. What then are the powers that society may legitimately exercise over the individual? Mill answers:
"The only purpose for which power can be rightly exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."

-J.S. Mill, On Liberty
James Madison -called the "Father of the Constitution" -may have anticipated Mill's ideas in his draft of the Bill of Rights --the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Implicit in the Bill of Rights is the recognition that the power of the state must be limited! A majority --unchecked --is frequently a blunt instrument capable of oppressing and repressing the rights of individuals and minority groups alike. The Bill of Rights addresses this issue by guaranteeing "due process of law", limiting state power over individuals and groups, guaranteeing that groups and individuals may speak freely, worship freely.

The Fourth Amendment specifically is a promise that our government made to us in its very founding:
"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."

---Fourth Amendment, Bill of Rights, U.S. Constitution
Let's make something abundantly clear: there are no "inherent powers", "implicit authorizations" that would, in any way, overturn, limit, or repeal the Fourth Amendment. Some politicians, perhaps many, are wrong about that; some may have deliberately lied. Moreover, Congress may not overrule the Fourth Amendment with statutory law. Constitutional Law is supreme and provisions in the Bill of Right are valid until amended as stated in the Constitution itself. Widespread domestic surveillance is illegal whatever may be done by Congress ex post facto. Until the Constitution is amended, such warrantless surveillance will remain illegal. At last, ex post facto laws, themselves, are expressly forbidden by the Constitution.

Mill is all the more remarkable for his insight into issues that remain contemporary. In every literate criticism of "special interest groups", PAC's, the gun lobby, the tobacco lobby, the Military/Industrial Complex, one sees the lasting influence of John Mill.

On Liberty is essential reading for anyone interested in law, the principles of government, political science, political philosophy, indeed, freedom itself. It is also essential reading for anyone interested in learning about the intellectual underpinnings of Anglo-American civil liberties.

Monday, July 07, 2008

Bush: Three Generations of Betrayal and High Treason

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

When every other remedy is repressed, quashed or made illegal, guerrilla tactics are all we have left! Thomas Jefferson said that guerrilla tactics are justified in cases of tyranny. We have a 'right', Jefferson said, to 'abolish' a government that has become, like that of Bush, tyrannical. The revolutionary spirit of Jefferson was with those who protested Bush at Monticello! The spirit of Jefferson is 'anti-Bush'.

A defender of Bush's shameful and smirk-filled presence at Monticello said that 'fighting words' are not protected speech. Yet --our Declaration of Independence itself was made of 'fighting words'. King George III thought so. Bush himself resorted to 'fighting words' to rally a stunned populace into supporting his wars of aggression and other war crimes. 'Bring it on', he said! A fat lot of good his fighting words have done us!
"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."

--H. L. Mencken
Bush has been more successful at suppressing dissent at home and than he has been at fighting real 'terrorists' abroad. Armed with an Orwellian 'Patriot Act', Bush need only 'deem' you a 'terrorist' and you can be incarcerated in a hell-hole in violation of every principle put forward by real statesmen like Thomas Jefferson or James Madison. Bluntly -- you are living under the absolute rule of a tyrant! Thomas Jefferson would have supported efforts to remove Bush and would most certainly be called 'radical' or 'liberal' or even 'conspiracy theorist' if he were alive today.
"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 to 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"

--Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence
Che Guevara said essentially the same thing in his classic treatise on guerrilla warfare.
"When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken."

--Che Guevara, Chapter I: General Principles of Guerrilla Warfare
Che might have been prescient. Certainly --the 'forces of oppression' maintain themselves in power 'against established law'. In fact, Bush has personally ordered the illegal and treasonous dismantling of 'established' Constitutional law, which he dismissed with a smirk: "The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper"! Bush broke the law, subverted the law, ordered the law changed to suit him, and re-written the law --on the fly --with signing statements. He has ordered his attorneys to render opinions that tell him what he wants to hear, i.e, that the crimes he's already committed are made legal after he had already committed them. Many of those broken laws are found in the supreme law of the land --the Constitution.

Altering or abolishing this government is precisely what 'we' have in mind. It is precisely what had been foreseen by the founders and by the man who occupied Monticello.

David Hume wrote:
"When we inquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find that, as force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments as well as to the most free and most popular."

--David Hume, Of the First Principles of Government
Bush has taken to new heights nefarious efforts to shut up his opposition. Due to right wing policies and media consolidation throughout the regimes of Reagan and Bush Sr, the media is but a right wing echo chamber. No one can, therefore, reasonably deny a voice to folk for whom Thomas Jefferson's Monticello is symbolic of free speech and a revolution in support of it!

Bush may have been within the letter of the law to quash 'free speech' at Monticello, but to do so on Jefferson's soil, is a poke in the eye! The downside for Bush is that it tips his hand. It betrays his anti-Jefferson mindset, his anti-Democratic, dictatorial, fascist bent.

It was Mr. Bumble in Dicken's David Copperfield who said "If that is the law, sir, then the law is a ass!" I'm with Jefferson, Che, Hume, and Mr. Bumble. I say RIGHT ON to the protesters! What passes for law under Bush is --indeed --'a ass'! I denounce the war criminal Bush for having soiled the ground Jefferson walked on. I accuse Bush of war crimes, high treason, graft, and other capital crimes as stated succinctly in US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441 --significantly the very portion that Bush has worked so assiduously to rewrite but only after he had already earned himself a death penalty upon conviction.

If the US is to survive, the people must restore the rule of law. Clearly --the rule of law will never be restored as long as Bush occupies the White House. Clearly --the rule of law will forever be subverted if exceptions are made for Bush! The rule of law will never be restored as long as Bush is allowed to make it all up as he goes along, ruling by decrees called 'signing statement', an unconstitutional procedure, perhaps a crime in context. There is absolutely no authorization for this Bush 'invention' to be found anywhere in the US Constitution, just as there is absolutely no Constitutional basis whatsoever for 'executive privilege'.

Over the years, I met and interviewed numerous famous folk --politicians, some world leaders, including Ehud Olmert, Bush Sr, Ronald Reagan, Deng Xio Peng, Nelson Rockefeller, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, et al. My interviews with Ford, Bush and Reagan always left me quietly alarmed. I can best describe these personalities with words Ada Louise Huxtable used to describe Los Angeles: 'there is no there, there!' I often left an interview feeling like the character so memorably portrayed by Kevin McCarthy in the "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". Bush Sr in particular left me fighting the urge to run into the streets shouting: "Look, you fools. You're in danger. Can't you see? They're after you. They're after all of us. Our wives, our children, everyone. They're here already. YOU'RE NEXT!!


Bush's Grandfather --Prescott Bush --commits treason

It has become clear that Bush family efforts to create a fascist dictatorship in America did not end with Prescott Bush. Nor did it merely resume with Bush Jr, the lesser Shrub. The Senior Bush's efforts in China must be re-examined! I have always suspected that the Chinese outsmarted the idiots of the Bush clan. At the time of Nixon's visit, the US still had a car industry, still had steel industry, still had an electronics industry! People had real jobs. And there were no Wal-Marts!

Bush Sr went to China in advance of Nixon's famous visit. Back in the USA, the Senior Bush, in a meeting room of the downtown Hyatt Regency Hotel in Houston, TX, told me that he ate 'aromatic meats' ['Lip of the dog'] at a diplomatic dinner in the Forbidden City in Beijing. [It was much later --1992 -- that Bush actually vomitted at an official dinner, perhaps on the Prime Minister of Japan] What Bush would not tell me were the details of the Faustian bargain that he set up in China, the 'deal' that was later agreed to by Nixon and his criminal counterparts inside the Chinese regime. Bush Sr's flat, slightly nasal monotone was enough to give you chills --especially when he talked of the New World Order!

The decline and fall of the US economy can be traced to Bush Sr's trip to China where the Senior Bush laid the groundwork for Nixon's 'operatic' visit there. It was a sell-out, a Faustian bargain, a betrayal of American labor. Later, Carter was reviled but he had but four years to plug the hole in the dike! Ronald Reagan's regime must be remembered as years of 'decline and fall', specifically the decline of US manufacturing and the fall of the American labor movement.

In his 'Decline and Fall of the American Empire, Gore Vidal dates America's demise to that date in the 1980s when the US became a net debtor nation. It is no coincidence that US currency has declined vis a vis the Yuan ever since. As the years pass, as the American sun has set and that of China rises, I am increasingly curious about what Bush Sr discussed (other than eating dog meat) with his Chinese hosts over dinner in the Forbidden City.

I've always wanted to know what deals were cut! What were the specific clauses with which the Bush crime family --in service to Richard Nixon --betrayed the people of America!


Bush Pukes and Dana Carvey (?) Does an Impressive Impression