Perhaps we should begin by remembering what America is or was designed to be. The European nation-states from which the US derived were based on organic communities of blood, language and culture--in sum ethnicities. As such, to defend a France or an Austria is to defend its people. Protect the community from harm and you defend the nation in its essence. Things are not so simple, I would submit, for the US. The US is founded on a set of ideas, summarized in the phrase Liberal Democracy, and encoded in a series of documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers. To defend the US is not only to defend its people, it is also to defend its ideas, its guiding principles. What defending America is not is the defense of a people at the expense of the defining national ideal. That tack would be much closer to the European model. Dick Cheney doesn't get this noti0n at all, which is why he defends torture in terms of bodies saved and ignores the corresponding damage to the body politic. Obama seems, sometimes, to understand the imperative articulated here; he frequently holds, for example, that we can protect our people while remaining true to our values. But when these two goals conflict, he proves to be little different on this issue than Cheney or Bush. The protection of the people justifies the institution of preventative detention, a repudiation of our founding principles less lurid but no less certain than torture.
Cheney and Obama alike rely in the end on a consequentialist form of moral reasoning. Actions, even seemingly horrific actions, can be defended if they safeguard us against still worse outcomes. An appropriate mode of moral reasoning for a nation based on ethnicity, on the bodies of the people. But for a nation based on ideas, we need a moral reasoning grounded on first principles, i. e. we need a deontological form of moral reasoning of the kind a Plate or a Kant would approve. That deontology begins with a categorical imperative: do not violate the human rights tenets of your legal and political tradition, such as Habeus Corpus, the Geneva Convention etc.; do not violate the civil rights tenets of the Constitution.
In this manner, we can assure the safety of our values. Does that put us at risk of violence, subversion, insurrection etc? Of course. But it has always been so with a properly maintained democracy. Democracy, to paraphrase Bette Davis, ain't for sissies. The peculiar courage it requires to vigilantly defend a democracy, to vigilantly defend America, involves the voluntary entertainment of risk in the service of political righteousness (to invert Mr. Cheney).
Remember the aftermath of 9/11 when political commentators scrambled to address the question, why do they hate us? One of the more popular answers was, "they envy our freedom." Well with Obama's policy of preventative detention, which can be applied to anyone deemed a threat to the country (or the government), there is a little bit less to envy, just as there was a little bit less with Bush's wiretapping scheme. If they envy our freedoms, they hate us for our guiding principles, our ideas. And if this is the case, every time we protect our bodies by sacrificing our ideas, the "bad guys" win more of the ground they desire. They do so because they fight from principle, however perverted, and we fight to consequence. They do so because in saying "they wouldn't worry about torture, why should we," we agree to fight them on their terms rather than their own. They do so finally because we fail to recognize what it really means to defend "America" and to accept courageously the risks such a defense entails.
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doloresflores_d
Lainey
Natalie Not Pedantic
Rick Lucke
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Kent Pitman
Salon.com
Comments
I agree with your basic thesis. My problem is not with the idea that we are a country of ideals, including the fundamental issue of the rule of law. We are. In fact, either we are a nation of laws, or we are not.
What is deeply problematic for me is that I did several posts last fall about the likely disenchantment of the far left who assumed that Obama held their positions because he was fundamentally a left center pragmatist. What I did not foresee at all was that he would so thoroughly trash fundamentally sound democratic principles in such areas of FISA, torture, unlawful detention, rendition, gitmo, trading Iraq for Afghanistan and closing out neither, and even giving the Wall Street bailouts to the very people who caused the problem. And there are a dozen more.
Pragmatism is one thing when dealing with the possible in trying to get bills passed and compromising on specific issues to move something off a stalemate. Bbut pragmatism at the expense of our ideals and principles is not pragmatism, it is an unforgivable lack of a fundamental moral compass as to what it means to be a nation that holds certain ideals to be more sacred than the power of the one who happens to occupy the Presidency.
This is starting to look like the Imperial Presidency writ large. And it is potentially far more dangerous than the bumbling fumbling dolt that Bush was. It is more dangerous because Obama has a silver tongue and the things we talk about here are going right over the head of the basic electorate.
These issues do NOT make the papers or even enter into the minds of the people here in rural America, and likely in most of working and middle class America as well, urban as well as rural.
I think that the President has managed to frame the issues in such a way that he sounds reasonable, and very few in the general public are going to parse those words and realize what he is really doing.
What inevitably happens is that issues of fundamental ethics and morality get transformed into a political arguments.
That these issues rise above politics is not well understood, even here on OS where many are saying that we are disloyal to Obama if we raise these issues. "Give him time" is argued as the right response to these issues. But "time" is never relevant when fundamental principles are on the line. Any time is the right time to call out those who would trash those principles.
Good post.
Monte
Monte, I entirely agree with your comment, though I do not think the issue of civil liberties is or should be the province of the left, let alone the far left. Small government conservatives, libertarians, liberals and I think centrists, even pragmatists, should be able to see core principles of human rights and constitutional liberties as the bedrock mandate of a democratic society and the only dependable stay against tyranny. Barry Goldwater, in my view, would be as repelled by the policies of the Bush-Cheney-Obama axis as Rachel Maddow.
I was very hopeful when Obama was elected. While I think he's a lesser evil than Bush or Cheney, I'm certainly not as hopeful as I was during the election.
now they're tryig to borrowing a page from the Obama playbook. But the problem is with Cheney's argument is that it exposes him as the cold lizard he always was. The very best argument he could have used was that he committed crimes of passion to (attempt to)defend America...but Cheney won't use this as his defense. He's going to go on record (after being part of an administration that scoffed all science...that had contempt for 'reality based thinkers') as saying he did everything he did strategically? Premeditatively? Coldly?
He may bedigging himself in deeper. But he and Bush both have that magic and so does anyone on the right of saying whatever they want, and getting equal air time. So it almost doesn't pay to bother with a single word he says. He'll keep filling the airwaves while he has breath. That's what he'll do.
Them 'Merricans don't want no sissy citizenship, they prefer to think of it as "convenient."
I'd wager most Americans take those fundamental concepts of rights and rule of law as givens; part of the way we like to think of ourselves.
The "Great Outside Threat" concept outweighs that first story we like to believe. The post WW2 GOP is built on the GOT, and was happy to have it back after "winning the Cold War" left them out of power.
Obama gains no advantage of power by indeterminate detentions, other than short circuiting the GOP fear game. I don't see a dark Obamanian conspiracy for our Indeterminate Solution, but I do see opportunities for that in the future.
So, politically stinking, Obama and the Dems once again react to the Repub issue framing by capitulating to it. After at least 15 years of seeing this happen repeatedly, I'm no longer shocked or pissed off. It's like watching a Seinfeld episode for the umpteenth time, sans the occasional chuckle.
You write, “Dick Cheyney […] defends torture in terms of bodies saved and ignores the corresponding damage to the body politic.”
While this is true, the obvious problem with HIS logic (or lack thereof) is that he offers no proof of bodies saved. His saying so doesn’t make it so. Should Americans be willing to subvert national ideals for this baseless claim?
What we DO KNOW for certain is how much death and destruction his perspective HAS CAUSED. That much is irrefutable; the only debatable point being how many deaths and how much destruction he’s cause for which we can’t account.
RATED
when these things were being violated by bush at cheney's behest i understood why. i didn't like it, i knew it was wrong, but i understood why. when obama continues the same violations, when he doesn't fully repudiate them, i don't understand why, besides expediency, he does so. i hate to say it, but in some ways this administration's starting to look like Bush/Cheney Lite instead of a new thing entirely, and that sucks.
BBE might want to look a little farther back in history than the Veitnam war, however. Say to about 1776 or even earlier. Just to start with your eyes will surely open wide as dinner plates if you check our just why Japan attacked the 7th fleet at Pearl Harour, Dec. 7, 1941. And NO Virginia, it wasn't because they were just a bunch of "bad guys" who just liked getting into a war they knew they could not win.
Start with finding out WHY the majority of America's sea power was all gathered together in that one particular part of the world, and how long it had been there, and what its activities were while there.
Love you 'Merikans a whole lot but lordy, lordy y'all are dumb as bricks sometimes.
The best way in the world to 'defend' America is to make it a successful, honourable, decent nation. One that is "respected" for its good qualities rather than "feared" for its bad.
A nation of laws it is. The problem is that governments of all stripes have ignored, subverted, and "applied judiciously" the law of the land, with impugnity for pretty much your whole history. The difference today is that it is being done (has been done since Vietnam) in blatant disregard of all moral and ethical principles; and done right out in the open for all to see.
Many Americans take an attitude of "my country - right or wrong". This allows governments/politicians to get your nation into the most outrageous situations. Unfortunately your last few governments have begun to use this kind of thinking in their dealings with American citizens as well as with other nations. Not a good move.
Americans are waking up now, not the number necessary, but much more than in the 1930s; the '50s; the 70s, and the recent invasion of Iraq. You now know that the government will not hesitate to lie, cheat, obfuscate, demean your honour, and do to its own citizens those things for which it has always criticized other countries.
That there water you're in must be getting a tad warm just about now.
Spoken like a true 'Merikan ;0]
Well if you set aside Stalinist Russia and Hitler's Germany, the British Empire may have been the greatest and most ruthless force for evil in the modern world. Certainly, my Irish ancestors had every reason to think so. And yet Britain prided itself, sincerely if spuriously, on being a "nation of laws." You seem to think American citizenship is itself some sort of moral failing. I would never say the same thing about subjects of the queen, like yourself, but neither do I regard you all as possessing any particular moral authority when it comes to world affairs or any special capacity for ethical or geo-political judgment. Great powers tend to preserve their influence by perpetrating great ills as well as accomplishing great things. It was true of the great power of Britain and its partners in Empire and has been true of the US.
There is however a distinction between taking action at variance with one's avowed legal principles, as the Vietnam campaign surely involved, and altering one's legal framework in violation and to the destruction of its underlying principles, as the present war on civil liberties entails. Suggesting that what is occurring at this moment is profoundly continuous with past failings or crimes is to misrecognize and underestimate the highly specific nature of the present danger.
Comments on comments:
"Obama was a left center pragmatist": as a senator, he was never left of center: he campaigned for Joe Lieberman when Lieberman lost the CT primary to Ned LaMont, an anti-war Democrat. That was in 2006. His economic team as a candidate included the man who pushed for the repeal of Glass-Steagall, Robert Rubin, a member of the Goldman Sachs mafia. He voted in favor of the FISA bill that decimated the 4th Amendment and gave immunity to the telecom industry—after saying he would filibuster it.
As for being a pragmatist:
"* A movement consisting of varying but associated theories, originally developed by Charles S. Peirce and William James and distinguished by the doctrine that the meaning of an idea or a proposition lies in its observable practical consequences.
* A practical, matter-of-fact way of approaching or assessing situations or of solving problems."
I assume the 2nd definition is the one we're talking about here, but even that isn't true of how pragmatist is used anymore. Functionally, it seems to mean using self-fulfilling prophecy to avoid doing things you don't want to do anyway: "I'd like to follow our 'American values,' but these people are too dangerous to allow that." "I want to have a public option for health care, but Congress just won't pass it." Whatever ... that way, the "pragmatist" doesn't actually have to make a case for the thing he doesn't want but wants you to think he wants.
"They tortured because they were fighting evil.": They tortured because they wanted someone to say there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
"an evil empire since Vietnam" I refer you to Smedley Butler (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler): "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
Your interpretation of what I was saying, i.e. ""You seem to think American citizenship is itself some sort of moral failing."" is one that I do not agree with. The first reason for that is that it is not one I hold.
I will not, of course, answer for your interpretation of my comments. I will answer for any comment I make, provided it is not taken out of context. Nothing more.
Nor will I attempt to answer for anyting done by the British at any time, up to and including, now. I am Canadian, not British.
The similarities between Canadian and American people is so strong that every use of the term "American" could usually be written as "Canadian" (substitute 'Harper' for 'Obama') or as North American.
Your American sheeple are one flesh with ours. As are your outrageously greedy 'elite' and their political side-kicks.
You further said, ""Suggesting that what is occurring at this moment is profoundly continuous with past failings or crimes is to misrecognize and underestimate the highly specific nature of the present danger.
Your description of America I would have to disagree with here as being overly romanticized. Smedley Butler's quote that Bill M. cites is right on point. There is the rhetoric and then there's the reality. The reason the reality keeps showing up is because there are sharp limitations within the rhetoric of what these ideals are really about.
The US is the greatest nation anyone ever stole - from the Native Americans who were slaughtered and the Africans who were enslaved and killed without nary a thought to the over one million Iraqis who have so far died due to our invasion and occupation.
The battle for the conscience of America that you are describing here and that Monte describes in his comment and his latest posting is real. It is knocking on the doors of every American today, whether they are hearing that knock or not (Monte points out that many don't). The majority of Americans do not want to carry out atrocities for their way of life. A distinct portion of America is fine with atrocities as long as they can have their lifestyles. The direction of where we will go is in the balance.
Every individual situation is "an event unto itself". Yet a series of events adds up to a pattern. A careful look at the actions of "North Americans" will show that we, along with the USSR, and the Brits, have been playing the same power games as they did. Each instance 'specific' to its time, but part of the same pattern.
Where the US differs from Canada is that it loudly proclaimed (proclaims still?) its dedication to certain principles which it is not only not adhering to, but NEVER HAS adhered to, in reality.
It would be great to see this change. It is, at this time in history, perhaps, ONLY the USA that can pull its ass out of the moras of illegality, and disrespect for human rights into which it has fallen. Doing so would earn the high regard it has lost in the eyes of the world. It would also set an exaample of what can be done by a decent and dedicated population of fine people.
I cannot tell you how the world hungers for us to light the path to liberty and honour. It is, certainly, asking a lot for us to do this. Yet.... who else is in a position to do so? And make no mistake, I used the word "us" deliberately, for we are with you every step of the way and have as much to correct in our behaviour as you.
Both of you believe that the US is coextensive with its history, a history that begins with the genocidal expropriation of the American Indians, continues through the neo-colonial depredations of Central and South American peoples, culminates in support for ruthless dictatorships all over the world in the name of cold war realism, descends to state sponsored terrorism in places like Vietnam, concludes (for now) with the spectacle of rendition and torture. I trust I have not romanticized that history too much. And I think it is fair to define the US in historical terms.
I choose to define the US in terms of its avowed and founding ideals, whether or not it has ever lived up to them. If one is to challenge the conscience of America, one needs first to take that conscience as an authentic faculty, a core component of the American self-image, rather than a cynical pose, an image it claims for merely strategic purposes. The ethical philosopher Bernard Williams once said that the one thing an ethicist can never do is provide logical reasons why a given subject should take account of ethics in the first place; if they are not already playing or willing to play the ethical game, there is no convincing them to do so. My approach, accordingly, is to assume the ethical bona fides of people or nations, to credit their claims of espousing worthy values or ideals, allowing them that self-definition, and then holding them to those claims and that self-conception. The overriding value of a nation calling itself a "nation of laws" is not that it always acts that way but that it can be held to account to that principle when it doesn't. And that's what I think is needed now with Obama--a holding account to first principles of what it means to defend America. It doesn't mean defending the history of America's actions; it means defending the ideals America loves to affirm, and defending them precisely so future histroy will look different.
@Larry Lawson, I never said or imagined you were British. I said you are a subject of the British monarchy, which as a citizen of a Commonwealth Realm, you are.
Thanks for your reply to my comment. You have clearly thought about your stance a great deal. As a kind of concentrated reply to you, see the following:
“We know today that this realm of reason [ushered in by the Enlightenment] was nothing more than the idealized realm of the bourgeoisie; that eternal justice found its realization in bourgeois justice; that equality reduced itself to bourgeois equality before the law; that bourgeois property was proclaimed as one of the most essential rights of man; and that the government of reason, Rousseau’s social contract, came into being, and could only come into being, as a bourgeois democratic republic.”
This is Frederick Engels’ very concentrated critique of the Enlightenment in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. He isn’t saying that reason in itself was a bad thing, it was an excellent thing, but that the bourgeoisie who heralded these things – reason, equality, justice, “rights of man,” etc. – constrained these slogans to remain within the strict confines of bourgeois society. Equality, for example, isn’t yet true equality since it operates still within the framework of economic, social and politically inequality based on property/wealth. Reason still operates within the limitations of a bourgeois democratic republic. Engels makes the argument that the rise of bourgeois society was, on the one hand, an historical advance in human affairs, but that it too, like those systems that preceded it, is bound by the limitations that mark its class-stratified nature.
What follows from this? What does this mean then if and when people who are in opposition to the state raise the slogans of equality and justice? Does this slogan represent a true break from bourgeois society? Or must those who are resisting the bourgeois state raise a more thoroughgoing critique than raising the slogan of equality and justice in which the economic underpinnings of bourgeois equality and bourgeois justice are superseded by demands for, and the concrete implementation of, uprooting the extraordinary material gaps between the rich and the rest, especially the poor?
Let’s consider, for instance, free speech and assembly, guaranteed by the First Amendment. This is a civil liberty that represents a very important right won through struggle – the Amendments, after all, were amendments not included in the original Constitution. How meaningful can this right be if it is daily, hourly and minute by minute undermined by the sheer power and reach of those who own the presses and broadcast stations? The anti-war movement fought hard to get the word out to people before the 2003 invasion of Iraq that the justifications for this war were lies and that attacking a country that has not attacked you first is the supreme war crime. Yet despite those efforts, the New York Times et al promoted the lies that justified the war.
If our work is based solely on the demand that the ideal of free speech and assembly be honored and implemented, but do nothing about the lopsidedness of economic power, then how far will those efforts actually go? Isn’t it necessary to make a deeper critique and base our actions on that analysis?
This goes against our constitution and we need to stop it now, before we are behind barbed wire fences. Rated.
but i can see how dangerous it is to move in pieces from a nation of laws to a nation of men. that was my major objection when obama voted last summer to support fisa, with the rationale that if he was president, he would enforce it properly.
that's exactly what our founding fathers feared and worked against. if the law won't work without a particular guy in charge, then it's not a law i want on the books. the law needs to be the same for all of us.
@ osage
you're right, this is a republic. so is the people's republic of china.
how can we tell which is which? is there a reason you live in one rather than the other?