Patriot Act

Capitalism and Democracy at Odds

2008-01-01T11:05:00.000-06:00

GreaterDemocracy.org supports the argument made by John Gray that capitalism is a threat to democracy. Jock Gill points us to a quote from Benjamin Barber:

Capitalism has put democracy in trouble, because capitalism has tried to persuade us that being a private consumer is enough. That a citizen is nothing more than a consumer. [Benjamin Barber, Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007]

Being a consumer is not enough. We must speak up, vote, run for office, raise hell. That's the role our Founding Fathers saw for us

Kucinich Wins Virginia Poll

2007-12-28T15:56:00.000-06:00

Dennis Kucinich is plenty electable: you just have to show up and vote for him. OpEdNews.com reports that Kucinich came out on top of the Virginia Dems online straw poll. Results:

Dennis Kucinich 30%
Hillary Rodham Clinton 27%
Barack Obama 14%
John R. Edwards 12%
Bill Richardson 9%
Joe Biden 9%

Now that mighty 30% just need to keep the faith and show up at the polls on Feb. 12 (and work on your neighbors!). Dennis will stick with it; so should we!

Asked about the Democratic Party's poll results, Kucinich volunteer Andrea Miller said what she's been saying for months: "Dennis can win. We just have to vote for him."

There are always possibilities, right, Lowell? Funny he doesn't mention this poll. Could it be because he doesn't like to see his favorite, Clinton, beaten by a man of principle?

Dennis Kucinich: All Smarts, No Smarm

2007-12-18T09:40:00.000-06:00

Dennis Kucinich holds forth intelligently on Iraq, sub-prime mortgages, real universal health care, NAFTA and the decline of American manufacturing, his Catholicism, and being a real Democrat. This man has the answers, and he doesn't get them from a huge pool of staffers briefing him on what people want him to say.

Kucinich: The Constitution Is Everything

2007-12-05T00:35:00.000-06:00

Good press on Dennis Kucinich and why he is the best Dem in the field for President:

I watched and I saw things that I have to admit made me re-think what it is about this country that could make it great. I don't know if it ever truly was as great as Kucinich seems to think it was. I don't even know if he believes it once was so great, but I do know that he thinks it can be great. Not out of some chauvinistic need to be the best, but out of a strong belief that the constitution is a secular document of the highest order that must be obeyed and fulfilled. He is serious about his oath of office that charges him with the duty to defend and protect the constitution. He does not joke about this or use it as a campaign slogan or as a position to give him traction. In fact, his belief in the constitution as a document that takes us to our highest level is what makes him see how we need to behave as moral and legal people in the world. He does not practice Orwellian doublespeak. By defending the constitution he has put his campaign on the line by going after the impeachment of the vice president for lying to this country in order to take us into a war, among many other impeachable offenses listed in the articles of impeachment.

--Deborah Emin, "Civics Lessons for Dummies Like Me or How I Chased After Candidate Kucinich," HuffingtonPost.com, 2007.12.04

If you believe in the Constitution and want a President who does too, then back Dennis.

Kucinich: No Flip-Flopping, No Pretense

2007-11-21T08:58:00.000-06:00

...and the only Dem with the guts to stand up to Bush on Iraq and the PATRIOT Act!

See this good press on Dennis Kucinich in the Concord (NH) Monitor:

Kucinich is far behind in the polls, with the state's primary fast approaching. Just like he was in 2003, when ABC's Ted Koppel, moderating a debate, peppered Kucinich over his decision to remain in the race, without much money or big-name endorsements.
He didn't drop out then, and he won't now.
Instead, he's touring New Hampshire, spreading his liberal views, saying the Bush administration lied about the war in Iraq and calling for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney.
There's no flip flopping. No pretense about who he is. And no hesitation or fumbling of words when an issue arises. He speaks from the heart, and that makes things easier to articulate.
"Health care is a right, education is a right," Kucinich told the crowd. "It shouldn't be based on the ability to pay. It should be something a democratic society provides for its people."
He's a walking balancing act, one part flower child and one part courageous fighter who will answer any question, anytime, from anyone.
He'd work to dismantle all nuclear weapons worldwide, yet he'll go on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, hosted by conservative fireball Bill O'Reilly. Other democratic candidates wouldn't touch O'Reilly with a 10-foot pole.
"I don't agree with him on many things," Kucinich said. "But if you want to be president of the United States, you have to be able to talk to Bill O'Reilly. You have to be able to submit to the O'Reilly test. If you can't do that, how are you going to meet with these other leaders of the world? There's a lot of people out there that you don't agree with" [Ray Duckler, "Kucinich Not Short on Confidence," Concord Monitor, 2007.11.21].

You don't hear honesty like that from Clinton, Edwards, or any of the other corporate-media-anointed "frontrunners." And check out the photo in the article: he buys from the bulk bins at the grocery store! Dennis is the man!

[Photo credit: Kari Collins, Monitor staff]

No Fooling Dennis!

2007-11-12T15:30:00.000-06:00

Think Dennis Kucinich can't win? Listen to this common sense:

Wake up, Dems! Dennis is the man!

Government Priority on Privacy: Definition Control

2007-11-11T09:02:00.001-06:00

When citizen rights and government power come into conflict, how should we respond? Redefine citizen rights to accommodate government power:

A top intelligence official says it is time people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.
Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, a deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people's private communications and financial information.

Kerr's comments come as Congress is taking a second look at the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act. [Pamela Hess, AP, "Definition Changing for People's Privacy," Yahoo News, 2007.11.11]

Newspeak, anyone?

Get Your Homeland Security Dossier

2007-09-29T07:13:00.000-05:00

Want to see what the Department of Homeland Security knows about you? Want to find out what you've done and where you've been that makes Big Brother -- oh, I mean Uncle Sam -- suspicious? Order a copy of your DHS dossier today! The Identity Project provides copies of the forms you need to make it happen.

Latest Victim of Bush's "War on Terror": Religious Freedom

2007-09-10T12:09:00.000-05:00

The Bush Administration puts the "War on Terror" above all other policies and principles, including, apparently and surprisingly, freedom of religion. An administration that wants to turn other social programs over to church groups has decided that prisoners seeking to rehabilitate through religious study can't be trusted with religious books that don't meet the government's approval. According to Laurie Goldstein ("Prisons Purging Books on Faith from Libraries," New York Times, 2007.09.10), the Bureau of Prisons has created the Standardized Chapel Library Project, "lists of up to 150 book titles and 150 multimedia resources for each of 20 religions or religious categories — everything from Bahaism to Yoruba. The lists will be expanded in October, and there will be occasional updates, Ms. [spokeswoman for BoP Traci] Billingsley said. Prayer books and other worship materials are not affected by this process." The Bureau of Prisons created these lists in response to a Justice Department recommendation that prisons take steps "to avoid becoming recruiting grounds for militant Islamic and other religious groups."

One chaplain said the lists from the federal government are unnecessary. "because chaplains routinely reject any materials that incite violence or disparage, and donated materials already had to be approved by prison officials. Prisoners can buy religious books, he added, but few have much money to spend." Instead, the government convenes a panel of experts (who the government says includes chaplains and scholars from the American Academy of Religion, which itself has no knowledge of any formal government consultation with its organization or its members) to dictate the acceptable religious tracts for all prisoners.

The list itself has some arbitrary choices. Goldstein notes that the approved list of Christian readin g includes nine works by CS Lewis -- good stuff! -- but none from other, arguably weightier theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, or Cardinal Avery Dulles. Even well-known pastor and writer Robert H. Schuller hasn't made the approved list. The Bureau of Prisons promises expansions and updates of the list, but right now, prisons are throwing books out of their libraries and not getting money to buy government-approved replacements.

So now the Bush Administration sees freedom of religion as a threat to national security. The Bush Administration apparently doesn't even trust the prison chaplains who know their prisoners, preferring instead a big-government, Big-Brother solution. The Bush Administration is throwing out presumption of innocence for all theological authors; to make the prison reading list, a panel of anonymous and thus unaccountable experts must judge an author's work acceptable.

Well, there go three more American principles I thought our soldiers were fighting for. All the more reason to fly the flag at half-staff tomorrow.

Civil Liberties Weaker, Al-Qaida Stronger

2007-07-19T08:19:00.000-05:00

So al-Qaida is stronger -- gee, does that mean all the patdowns and wiretapping and surveillance and other violations of our civil rights (not to mention our efforts in Iraq) aren't helping catch Osama and destroy terrorist networks? Instead of more of the same, maybe the government should regroup, rethink, and try something new. Forget occupying countries: we need some special forces strike teams to go in, hammer the bad guys, and get out. Train and hire more Arabic specialists and computer guys, find the terrorists, and shut them down, wherever they are. Get back to the old Republican line: no nation-building, no Big Brother at home.

Victor Davis Hanson: "The Real Threat to Civil Liberties"

2007-07-03T06:37:00.000-05:00

Now for a conservative voice: Victor Davis Hanson opines on numerous issues he finds more onerous to civil liberties than the Patriot Act. He justifies the Patriot Act by saying "at least the Patriot Act passed both houses of Congress with wide public support." I find that claim thin -- the passage of the Patriot Act was more about fear than rational support. It passed so quickly that most Congresspeople (and most Americans) had no idea what all was included in the Justice Department's wish list, which it had kept on the shelf since the Oklahoma City bombings, waiting for the right moment of national hysteria to slide it through Congress.

Nonetheless, Hanson's arguments on other dangers to civil liberties -- illegal immigration, prosecutorial malfeasance in the service of political agendae, eminent domain for private profit, and the kerfuffle (somewhat artificial, but it's out there) about reviving the Fairness Doctrine -- bear reading.

American Anxiety: Afraid of the Free Market...

2007-06-30T12:04:00.000-05:00

...and rightly so.

This lazy weekend finds me sitting on the front porch, soaking in sunshine and John Gray's 1998 critique of global capitalism, False Dawn . I picked this book up at the big Kingswood rummage sale in Sioux Falls back in April. It was in a small eclectic collection of books read by a young woman who was selling hot dogs from a big roaster in her garage. She also sold me a copy of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's August 1914, which I just finished reading yesterday. I can now turn my reading attention fully toward Gray's arguments, which I found fascinating from my first browsing between garage sales that sunny April afternoon.

In Chapter 5, Gray addresses "The United States and the Utopia of Global Capitalism." Some utopia -- Gray shows us a society built on a free market myth that tears apart its own social fabric more thoroughly than has occurred in any other Western nation.

[p110] America today is not a society in which an affluent majority looks on with complacent disdain at an underclass mired hopelessly in poverty and exclusion. it is a society in which anxiety pervades the majority. For most Americans, the ledge of security on which they live has not been so narrow since the 1930s.

Gray proceeds to list a number of ways that our mania for the free market has increased our anxiety even while promoting overall on-paper economic growth. Global capitalism has made it easier for companies to pack up and leave for climes with cheaper labor and operating costs, without regard for the impact on the workers and neighborhoods they leave behind. Our free market ideology has dismantled "the protective support of welfare provisions and labour unions" [112] that might soothe the anxiety of workers worried about keeping their jobs or surviving the transition into new jobs. The market pushes families to seek two incomes, then makes demands on workers that "may, and often do, pull partners in directions that are difficult to reconcile" [112] -- i.e., toward less connection, less cooperative and hands-on parenting, and more divorce. Gray makes some important comparisons to other societies we often disdain for their economic failures:

[112] How many American households eat together as families? How many children live in the same neighbourhoods or cities as their parents? If an American becomes unemployed, can he or she find support from an extended family, as can Spaniards and Italians in European countries? American families are more fractured than those of any European country, including Russia, where the extended family has survived over seventy years of communism.

Pointing to the United States' inferiority to Europe in protecting family values, Gray goes on to question even the superiority of our economic outcomes. He notes that US employment figures are often exaggerated, failing to account for millions of workers stuck in part-time work and millions more laboring anxiously in "a contingent labour force of contract workers" [112] who lack benefits and long-term stability. Citing a 1997 Financial Times article [Richard Layard, "Clues to Prosperity," 1997.02.17], Gray says that between 1988 and 1994, unemployment among US males aged 25-55 was 14%, compared with 11% in France, 13% in the UK, and 15% in Germany [113]. The US also achieves low unemployment numbers by throwing ten times as many of its citizens in prison than than the UK does [113]. Gray offers Edward Luttwak's grim portrait of working America:

As entire industries rise and fall much faster than before, as firms expand, shrink, merge, separate, 'downsize' and restructure at an unprecedented pace, their employees at all but the highest levels must o to work one day without knowing whether they will have their job the next. That is true of virtually the entire employed middleclass, professionals included. Lacking the formal safeguards of European employment protection laws or prolonged post-employment benefits, lacking the functioning families on which most of the rest of humanity still relies to survive hard times, lacking the substantial liquid savings of their middleclass counterparts in all other developed countries, most working Americans must rely wholly on their jobs for economic security -- and must therefore now live in conditions of chronic acute insecurity. [Edward Luttwak, "Turbo-Charged Capitalism and Its Consequences," London Review of Books, 1995.11.02, p. 7]

Has Gray here identified the source of the culture-wide anxiety Michael Moore tried to identify in Bowling for Columbine (and which anxiety surely figures in Moore's latest effort, Sicko, which opens this weekend)? What are we so afraid of, Moore asked, that leads us to lock our doors and buy millions of guns?

Maybe we are afraid of our own system. Workers in the lower and middle classes can see very clearly why they are anxious: they aren't getting paid a lot, prices are going up, and they are always one merger, one downsizing, one outsourcing away from unemployment. They can't put down roots, because they have to be ready to move across the state or across the country to keep their current jobs or seek replacement jobs. Everyday working folks know full well what's causing their anxiety: the free market system.

But then they realize they can't blame the free market system, because free market mythos is all wrapped up with American mythos. Jobs and companies come and go; bosses have the freedom to hire and fire as they see fit; the bottom line is all that matters, the Golden Rule (he who has the gold makes the rules) -- to question those free market principles is tantamount to treason, or blasphemy. To suggest that maybe the free market ought to be tempered a bit to provide a little more job security or give people more time with their families does more than risk accusations of socialism. The workers themselves feel their anxiety reveals an infidelity to the American civil religion of capitalism and individualism.

Thus unable publicly or even privately to place the blame for their anxiety on the proper agent (and thus experiencing even more psychic stress), American workers must transfer that blame onto acceptable subjects. The scapegoats we choose: immigrants ("freeloaders sneaking into our country, can't even learn the language!"), minorities ("lazy welfare queens!"), promiscuous women ("if they'd be responsible, this country wouldn't have all these problems!"), homosexuals ("it ain't natural!"), and anyone else we can label as outside the proper bounds of wholesome American behavior, as outside of "us." Never mind that the real threat to that "us" is the free market system, to which the bonds of social cohesion are but one more set of inconvenient obstacles to efficiency and profit. We can't admit it, not without peril to the integrity of our American worldview and our very sanity (if you can call it that). But as Gray points out, the neoconservative devotion to both global free markets and family values are incompatible. If we install the free market as the fundamental organizing principle of society, we must accept the anxiety and disruption of our families and broader social institutions that the free market unbound cannot accommodate.

Best Weapon Against Terrorism: The Constitution

2007-06-23T07:44:00.000-05:00

Real security comes not from guns, fences, or torture; it comes from principle. If the United States abandons its principles out of fear and instead adopts a "whatever it takes" attitude toward fighting terrorism, the fringe radicals and opportunist regimes will recognize our outward swagger as inward trembling and capitalize on our fear and contradictions to win new recruits and supporters and drive wedges between us and our allies. If we declare and live out our adherence to the principles of the Constitution and the rule of law -- i.e., allow all detainees due process, forswear torture, deal fairly and openly with all comers -- we will win the hearts and minds of the vast majority of the world and isolate the radicals at the fringes.

For more on this theme, see Joseph Margulies, "Where Law Reigns, Terror Withers," Christian Science Monitor, 2007.06.22.

Arab Terrorists or Gay Arabic Specialists -- Who's the Greater Threat?

2006-07-28T07:35:00.000-05:00

In "Army Dismisses Gay Arabic Linguist," AP writer Duncan Mansfield reports the discharge of Sergeant Bleu Copas, just another patriotic American who enlisted after September 11 out of a sincere patriotic desire to help this country fight the threat of Islamic terrorism. The article notes a number of interesting facts:

Contrary to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, Copas's superiors asked him directly on three different occasions about his sexuality. (Superiors also asked about the sexuality of his acquaintances and -- here's a kicker -- inquired whether Copas participated in community theater.)

Copas never publicly declared his homosexuality before his discharge.

The military dismissed 726 soldiers under it's anti-homosexual policy in 2005, an 11 percent increase over such discharges in 2004 and the first increase in such discharges since 2001.

Since Bill Clinton imposed the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, the military has dismissed 300 gay and lesbian soldiers with critical language skills, including 55 soldiers proficient in Arabic. (Samuel Freedman, in a 2004 NYT article, cites US Department of Education statistics that in 2003, of 1.8 million graduates of American colleges and universities, 22 took degrees in Arabic. See also this Newsweek article on the difficulty of finding really good Arabic speakers to work for the feds.)

So is the Pentagon telling us that homosexuals are a greater threat to this country than Islamic fundamentalists? Or is the Pentagon telling us that while the President can overlook the portions of laws he doesn't like, or that the feds can ignore the 4th Amendment in searching our phone and library records and even our homes without probable cause or warrants, the military can't make any exceptions to its (unconstitutional) policy on homosexuals in uniform for the sake of national security?

What do you want to fight: terrorism or death?

2005-09-09T04:42:00.000-05:00

Dr. Erica Frank of the Emory University School of Medicine provides a wonderful cost-benefit analysis of the resources we have misdirected to the "war on terror." In reports posted on several news sites this morning, Dr. Frank notes that on September 11, 2001, 1800 more Americans died from common diseases than from the terrorist attacks. And those disease-related deaths have kept happening at that rate every day since 9/11. Yet we ignore the mundane and divert our attention and limited government resources to the spectacular.

Osama vs. Katrina

2005-09-06T06:37:00.000-05:00

While I prefer not to pile onto the bandwagon of blame over whether or not the government has responded to Hurricane Katrina with sufficient speed and determination, one aspect of the government's disaster response has bubbled to my attention this morning. An AP article this morning, "First Responders Warned of Change," notes that since Homeland Security subsumed FEMA in March 2003, a grea deal of the training and equipment provided to emergency personnel has been aimed toward terrorist attacks rather than natural or accidental disasters.

Again, our disaster agencies (and there could be a double meaning in that phrase) need to look at the real threats facing the country. Terrorists have staged three major attacks on American soil in the last 15 years (World Trade Center 1993, one in Oklahoma City 1995, and WTC/DC 2001). On his best day, Osama managed to kill 3000 people and wreck four planes and handful of buildings. Hurricanes have hit the country every year, causing massive evacuations and economic disruption. Katrina has destroyed entire towns and cities, killed thousands who remain to be counted, and pushed us toward a worldwide energy crisis. Which threat poses the greater danger to the US? The numbers and the aftermath suggest hurricanes beat Osama.

If I'm a federal official trying to spend as wisely as possible a finite amount of taxpayers' money, I have to set priorities, and I have to base those priorities on a clear risk analysis. Our disaster responders should prepare for as many dangers as they can, but if they have to make choices about where to spend their money, they should address the biggest, most imminent threats first. The past week appears to show that the biggest threat to our civilization comes not from a few wackos in a cave, but from Mother Nature herself.

Mistakes in London

2005-08-17T09:36:00.000-05:00

Unpleasant news from London: leaked documents and CCTV footage contradict all of the major claims the London police made to justify their July 22 shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. The New York Times and BBC offer coverage. Among key points:

de Menezes was wearing a denim jacket, not the alleged unusually bulky overcoat.
de Menezes walked casually through the station, stopping to pick up a newspaper, and ran only when he saw the next train arriving -- rather typical behavior in any subway.
de Menezes was physically restrained by an officer before being shot.

Also of interest is this Boston Globe article about profiling not by police but by regular citizens on the bus.

Chertoff's Trick Question

2005-08-10T08:48:00.000-05:00

In an interview in today's USA Today, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff defends TSA's information-collection plans with a remarkable false dilemma:

"Would you rather give up your address and date of birth to a secure database and not be pulled aside and questioned," he said, "or would you rather not give it up and have an increased likelihood that you're going to be called out of line and someone's going to do a secondary search of your bag and they're going to ask you a lot of personal questions in the full view of everybody else?"

Neat trick! Set two aspects of our right to privacy against each other so it sounds like we really only have a right to one or the other! You can keep your personal identifiying information to yourself or you can avoid a warrantless search of your bag. I thought we were entitled to both! More sinisterly, it sounds like Chertoff is saying we can either give up our privacy rights the easy way or the hard way. Rather like the police banging on the door and saying "Let us in or we break it down!" Or perhaps the better analogy is from Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, in which the protagonist Rubashov is given a choice by his Soviet interrogators: either he can confess, cooperate in a public show trial, and be executed, or he can maintain his innocence and be shot summarily as an administrative case without any further ado. Some choice.

Thinking like a terrorist

2005-08-05T08:00:00.000-05:00

While I have no experience with trying to blow up mass transit or other civilian targets, a little thought experiment helps illustrate the dangers of the shoot-to-kill policy that police seem ready to adopt against suspected suicide bombers. Imagine you are a committed terrorist, dedicated to the proposition of strapping explosives to yourself and creating maximum mayhem by your glorious martyrdom in some major infidel metropolis. You're not going to grab the nearest stick of dynamite and race nervously down to the bus depot. You're going to prepare for you mission. You're going to check out your targets ahead of time, determine the routines and tactics of security forces and regular passersby in the area, and figure out the best way to sneak your package in. You're going to pay particular attention to the behavior that draws police attention and train yourself not to exhibit that behavior. If you know the police are inclined to stop and frisk (or just up and shoot) young men wearing heavy coats in warm weather, you'll find a way to hide your explosives without wearing a heavy coat, or you'll just wait for cooler weather. If you know police are keeping an eye out for lumpy backpacks with wires sticking out, you'll craft a bomb that fits more neatly into your luggage. You'll be careful not to get chemical burns or stains on your clothes and hands. You'll know where you are going and what time you need to be there so you don't get stuck pacing suspiciously in front of your target waiting for the optimal detonation time. And when a policeman does appear in the area, you won't break out in a sweat; you'll simply smile confidently and keep your finger on the cell-phone trigger, revelling in the knowledge that you will take not only civilian lives but the life of one of the instruments of the infidel State's authority.

Consider that if this casual observer is smart enough to figure out this much about avoiding police suspicion, so is the much more motivated terrorist. Arguably, the only people who will exhibit nervousness and other "suspicious behavior" in front of police will be the following groups:

Sloppy terrorists, who deserve to be shot, but who in their sloppiness are rather likely likely to be caught by sharp police work well before they get to the point of walking downtown with an assembled explosive device;
Innocent bystanders whose suspicious behavior is wholly unrelated to terrorism or the presence of the police;
Innocent bystanders who read the news, know that police are on a hair trigger, and who, on the approach of armed officers, become understandably nervous, knowing that their lives are at risk.

Considering these possibilities, it would seem the shoot-to-kill policy could have greater potential to kill civilians than suicide bombers. (The policy's score so far in England: innocent civilians -- 1, suicide bombers -- 0.)

How not to get shot in the head

2005-08-04T08:11:00.000-05:00

I hate it when my fears are confirmed. Last week I wrote about the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting in London. Today Sari Horwitz of the Washington Post reports that the International Association of Police Chiefs is affirming shoot-to-kill policies for dealing with suspected suicide bombers. Evidently that State is getting ready to justify taking a citizen's life without due process, without even probable cause, but simply in the interest of stopping someone who "fits a certain behavioral profile." According to the IAPC, you can be shot in the head if you exhibit "multiple anomalies":

wearing a heavy coat in warm weather
carrying a briefcase, duffel bag or backpack with protrusions or visible wires [watch where you put your I-Pod]
displaying nervousness
avoiding eye contact [evidently we are always supposed to look cops straight in the eye]
sweating excessively [work out at the gym and cool down completely before stepping outside]
bearing chemical burns on one's clothing or stains on one's hands
mumbling prayers [perhaps you are safe if you shout your prayers? or should you simply keep the Holy Ghost at bay in public places all together?]
pacing back and forth in front of a venue [don't wait for anyone in a public place]

I thought that maybe the United States would take a more Constitutional approach to dealing with suspects in public places than the British police, that maybe we would show a little more restraint and respect for the concept of "innocent until proven guilty." But the Post article offers this grim quote from Miami Police Chief John F. Timoney:

I can guarantee you that if we have, God forbid, a suicide bomber in a big city in the United States, 'shoot to kill' will be the inevitable policy.... It's not a policy we choose lightly, but it's the only policy.

The only policy? I will grant the Scylla-and-Charybdis dilemma police face in dealing with suspected suicide bombers:

"The police standard operating procedure of addressing a suspect and telling them to drop their weapon and put their hands up or freeze is not going to work with a suicide bomber," said Bruce Hoffman, author of "Inside Terrorism" and a terrorist expert at the Rand Corp. "You're signing your own death warrant if you do that."

...but the dilemma is still a di-lemma -- i.e., the police have two choices. Police, like all humans, will always make errors; they must choose which sort of errors they will more likely make. Again, the question boils down to whether police should err on the side of liberty or security.

Let's put the moral dilemma this way: Imagine you are a police officer. Which moral responsibility would you rather bear:

Indirect responsibility for the property damage, injury, and/or death caused by a suicide bomber whom you fail to subdue; or
Direct responsibility for the death of an innocent person whom you mistake for a suicide bomber and shoot dead?

Better yet, put faces on that dilemma: To which parents/spouses/children would you rather have to explain your actions: those of the suicide bomber's victims, or those of the innocent victim of your shoot-to-kill policy?

By the way, for those of you looking for other historical examples to enliven the debate, Page 2 of the Post article does mention Amadou Diallo ("41 Times").

Pinpricks

2005-08-02T08:30:00.000-05:00

From Charley Reese, "Nobody Attacks Civilization," on Antiwar.com:

Terrorist tactics work because we live in a wired world. Ten or 12 people can set off a few bombs in London, and the world turns its electronic eyes on the story and chats, discusses and shows video clips until some other event distracts it. The media attention and the inflated rhetoric of politicians magnify the terrorist act far beyond its actual import.

These attacks – pinpricks, really, in terms of any damage they do to national power – cannot be completely stopped. A few malcontents inspired by someone's rhetoric can get together and set off a bomb or two or shoot some people. Terrorists should be considered criminals, and their acts as ordinary crimes. Physically dealing with terrorists is properly ordinary police work. There is no war involved.

...remember that terrorist attacks are primarily media events. You still have more to fear from the flu or accidents than you do from terrorists.

Perspective: Osama vs. Ford, GM, Toyota, et al.

2005-08-02T08:00:00.000-05:00

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration cheerfully reports that highway fatalities dropped to a 30-year record low last year. In 2004, only 42,636 people died on America's highways. Alcohol played a role in 16,694 of those deaths. Motor vehicles killed 4641 pedestrians.

Let's see, Osama's boys killed 3000 people on September 11, 2001. In response, we went to war with two countries, passed the Patriot Act, and spent ourselves another trillion dollars in the hole (and counting). Yet every month we kill each other faster with our ever-larger motor vehicles without any great hue and cry raised to shut down the highways or at least make everyone ride bicycles. Irresponsible drinking outdoes 9/11 by more than a factor of 5 every year, yet the government doesn't ban alcohol ads or order cruise missile strikes on Milwaukee and St. Louis. My fellow pedestrians face a greater risk of death under the wheels of careless roadhogs than we do from al-Qaeda, but I'll bet the transportation bill just passed by Congress has little funding for increased sidewalk safety.

No, I'm not arguing that we should ban automobiles or even alcohol. But it seems odd that we accept the highway death toll as an unavoidable fact of life in our motorized society, acceptable losses, while a tiny fraction of that death and destruction caused by terrorism warrants military mobilization and revocation of various civil rights.

What am I afraid of?

2005-08-01T21:23:00.000-05:00

This blog is supposed to be a declaration against fear, an exhortation to all citizens to stop being such fraidy-cats and accept the burdens of freedom. Yet I speak regularly of my own fear of government. I guess I'm not saying we should fear nothing (I've always thought those "No Fear" logoes on t-shirts and other junk are silly). Fear is a healthy response to bad things, but only as long as we maintain control of that fear, and only as long as that fear arises in proper proportion to the various dangers that surround us.

So what's out there to inspire fear?

Terrorists? Yes, there are bad dudes* who want to break things and kill people. Thanks to the wonders of science, psychopaths of all inclinations have access to weapons of increasing capacity for destruction.

But what about governments? Bad dudes don't always hide in caves in Afghanistan (or apartments in Miami, London, Madrid, etc.) scheming to get hold of TNT, C-4, anthrax, and plutonium. Some bad dudes, generally those with better people skills, realize they can wreak even greater destruction and enjoy more perks by obtaining public office. A bad president or prime minister can oppress innocents through war, judicial action, taxation, etc.

So why have I chosen to criticize the fear of terrorism while promulgating my fear of governments?

I certainly recognize valid reasons for fearing terrorists. Terrorists can destroy cities and kill millions, at least in theory. The assassin of Archduke Ferdinand was able to spark World War I. On September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden's minions managed to kill 3000 and put a big dent in the American economy (short-term dip in consumer confidence, long-term fiscal reallocation to massive defense and Homeland Security spending).

But in a hundred years, Osama will likely be no more prominent in the history books than the anarchist bomb-throwers of the late 19th and early 20th century. Osama is a featherweight compared to the real demons of history: Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot -- all leaders of governments whose power was not properly checked. Corrupt governments have killed more people, destroyed more wealth, imprisoned and oppressed more innocents than Osama ever will. And in America, Osama can't destroy the Constitution; only our cowardly Congress can pass and extend the "Patriot" Act.

I would thus argue that, dangerous as Osama and other terrorists may be, we have much more at stake in ensuring that our government (along with our citizenry) does not abandon the principles of liberty that make America the greatest achievement of Western civilization. Instead of calling 9-1-1 every time a shady character takes a picture of the Empire State Building, the common citizen does better to direct his vigilance toward voting and otherwise participating in politics to make sure his elected representatives preserve the Constitutional system of checks and balances.

Am I afraid of some psychopath detonating a nuclear bomb in Times Square? Absolutely. Am I afraid of the government revoking the Bill of Rights? Absolutely. The juicy question is, which am I more afraid of? Which are you more afraid of?

Or, at risk of creating a false dilemma, phrase it this way: if you could stop the complete destruction of New York City** by revoking the Bill of Rights, would you do it?

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*Dudettes -- er, women -- don't seem nearly as inclined as men to break things and kill people. Hmmm....
**Replies from Red Sox fans will be viewed as biased. ;-)

Looking different is not probable cause

2005-07-29T09:23:00.000-05:00

For perspective on racial profiling and warrantless searches, see "Black Men Can't Run," an excellent personal narrative from Paul Myers in the UK Guardian. We require police to have warrants for searches for a reason: when we give the State authority to conduct arbitrary searches, we open the door for officers of the State to act on personal and institutional prejudices, which will lead to an increased number of violations of civil rights among people who look or act differently.

Today's history snippet

2005-07-28T08:28:00.000-05:00

Among my summer reading is Joachim C. Fest's biography of Hitler*. Hitler had been Chancellor for a month when, on February 28, 1933, the Reichstag was set ablaze. The fire aggravated fears of possible Communist-sponsored terror and revolution and gave Hitler a pretext for expanding state power with an emergency decree "for the protection of the people and the state." Fest talks about how conservatives who had helped bring Hitler to power, thinking they could use him for their own purposes, facilitated the establishment of Nazi dictatorship:

The decisive factor was that the conservatives made no effort to preserve the rights of habeas corpus. This "fearful gap" meant that henceforth there was no limit to outrages by the state. The police could arbitrarily "arrest and extend the period of detention indefinitely. They could leave relatives without any news concerning the reasons for the arrest and the fate of the person arrested. They could prevent a lawyer or other persons from visiting him or examining the giles on the case. . . . They could crush their prisoner with work, give him the vilest food and shelter, force him to repeat hatead slogans or sing songs. They could torture him. . . . No court would ever find the case in its files. No court had the right to interfere, even if a judge unofficially obtained knowledge of the circumstances."**

Protesters declaring equivalence between Nazi Germany and post-9/11 America go a little too far. Still, one cannot read the history of Hitler's seizure of power without seeing some parallels to actions undertaken by the American government in the name of fighting terrorism. Reading history gives us good examples of how fear can lead democratic republics down the wrong path.

*Joachim C. Fest, Hitler, Verlag Ullstein, 1973. English translation by Richard and Clara Winston, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974.
**Fest, p. 414, quoting Arnold Brecht, Vorspiel zum Schweigen: Das Ende der deutschen Republik, Vienna, 1948.

Jean Charles de Menezes

2005-07-26T17:35:00.000-05:00

The UK is not the US, right? We don't have anything to worry about when British police shoot an innocent man, right?

Consider: British police spot a man wearing a bulky coat in the London Underground. They chase the man into a subway car, pin him to the floor, and shoot him several times. Jean Charles de Menezes, 27-year-old Brazilian, and innocent man, dies. Al-Qaeda is laughing: they no longer have to sacrifice their own operatives to kill innocent people. Western authorities will do it for them.

I don't hate cops. but I live in increasing fear of their power over our lives. Apparently, in response to the July 7 mass transit bombings, London police now can justify killing a subdued suspect (suspected of what? running? bad summer fashion sense?). Do American cops operate under the same rules of engagement? If they do, any citizen who wants to survive a trip outdoors will have to follow these rules:

Don't wear anything unusual.
Don't make any sudden moves.
Don't go anywhere near places under police surveillance (contact your local PD for a complete list of currently surveiled terrorist suspect sites).
Don't look grouchy, nervous, or interested in anything.

There probably is no good policy reform that would have avoided this tragedy. It's not the first time the police have shot an innocent person, and it won't be the last, as long as police have to chase bad dudes and make split-second decisions. But the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes provides a very vivid example of the danger of letting our fears of terrorism rule our daily lives. In the pursuit of terrorists, in their fear of more bombings, London police have killed an innocent man, without trial, without appeal.

Rationale

2005-07-26T16:42:00.000-05:00

Fear threatens free speech and freedom in general. Jihadist cowards, afraid of the possibility that their sons, daughters, and wives might choose the freedom of the Western world over their stifling traditions, attack the softest targets they can find, killing innocents. Trembling citizens, rattled by these attacks and by the propaganda of their governments, acquiesce to increasing restrictions (random searches on the subway, watch lists with no clear due process rights, GPS locators mandated in cell phones, police authorized to shoot to kill suspicious individuals wearing bulky overcoats) in the futile hope that increasingly powerful police and military organizations can ensure that nothing bad will happen ever again.

I feel compelled to act against that fear and the encroachment on freedom. But what is one person to do? Where does one find the lever, the fulcrum, and the Archimedean place to stand to move a fearful populace (and an increasingly fearsome government) back toward the freedoms on which America was founded?

Some might argue blogging is the antithesis of action, or at best a very pale form of action. Speech is action, sacred action, but blogging is not necessarily action. For one thing, there is no guarantee that the blogger's words will be heard. One can speak all one wants, but communication, by definition, is an interaction between sender and receiver. The blogger is sending, but if no one is receiving, no communication takes place. Blogging sounds a lot like a tree falling in the woods while everyone else is at the beach.

So what is the point of a blog with the title, “Patriot, Act!” Does the blog live up to its own title, or is the title nothing more than a play on punctuation?

I offer the following reasons for this blog. You, gentle reader, may evaluate these reasons and the blog as you see fit.

I want to add my voice to what so far seems, much to my distress, to be a minority of Americans who recognize the danger of sacrificing freedom for their own false hopes and the government's false promises of security.
I want to publicize arguments that others may use to justify and promote political action.
I want to organize and expand my own ideas in an attempt to clarify my philosophy, if not for the world, then for myself.
I want to test my First Amendment rights to make sure they are still in effect.
If those rights are not still in effect as they ought to be, I want to provoke a reaction from the powers that be, in hopes of setting the stage for a forum (e.g. public discussion, media attention, court battle) that will offer patriots a chance to re-establish those rights.
I want to promote my vision of the inalienable human rights every person should hold sacred and every social contract should protect.

As a speech teacher, I tell my students that public speaking is a bedrock of civilized democratic society. In forming a society, we have abandoned force as a means of solving problems. Instead, we appeal with our words to the emotion, reason, and moral sense of our fellow citizens. I thus exercise my freedom of speech here in hopes of preserving civilized democratic society.

Where have all the conservatives gone?

2005-07-26T16:33:00.000-05:00

One should not ascribe much credibility to online polls, but consider this distressing result: seeking a little conservative solace at The Weekly Standard, I clicked on their Question of the Week:

Following the terrorist attacks on London earlier this month, police in New York City began conducting random searches of bags at entrances to the subway. Do you believe these searches are constitutional? Do you believe they are necessary?
*Yes to both
*No to both
*They are constitutional but unnecessary
*They are unconstitutional, but they are necessary

I clicked on “No to both” and eagerly awaited some comforting results from my fellow conservatives. Alas, no such results were forthcoming. At the time I participated in the poll (08:30 CDT), the results were as follows:

Yes to both 66%
No to both 10%
They are constitutional but unnecessary 9%
They are unconstitutional, but they are necessary 14%

I thought conservatives stood against this sort of big-government intrusion into our daily lives. Instead, this (again, unscientific) poll suggests that a large majority of conservatives are willing to ignore or wrongly interpret the Constitution to justify random searches of any citizen who has the nerve to poke his head out of his house and try traveling through his country. Remember, “random” means the search is based on nothing remotely resembling probable cause, on nothing at all, really. A random search is the most arbitrary intrusion possible into our daily activities. Where are the conservatives who should bristle at such government behavior?