Myopia (mine)

[pecunium]

Bertie has (though I forget it sometimes... I am not free of tunnel vision) a more damning statement than the torture paragrapgh.

He thinks the President is the law.

Ponder that.

It's a staggering claim, the authority to set aside the laws is "inherent in the president."

Inherent. Part and parcel of the office is the ability to set aside the laws. If the President says do it, it isn't a crime. If the law says do it, and the President says don't, that isn't a crime either.

Forget Nuremburg. Forget Nixon (though he tried that gambit) forget the Rule of Law (how can one who is able to set a law aside, break one? The don't apply). Forget the consent of the governed. Forget the Magna Carta.

The President is above, nay, beyond the law. He defines it. He is the same, in effect, as Louis XIV. "L'Etat, C'est Moi"

Everyone should recoil. Republicans should be apalled. Democrats should be disgusted. Libertarians should tremble with righteous indignation.

But all of us should step back and think on it.

The proposed head of law enforcement for the United States has said that his boss answers to nothing but his sense of right and wrong.

I recall a previous leader of the people of America who thought that. His name too was George; George III.

Comments

[ammitbeast.livejournal.com]

It's a staggering claim, the authority to set aside the laws is "inherent in the president."

Inherent. Part and parcel of the office is the ability to set aside the laws. If the President says do it, it isn't a crime. If the law says do it, and the President says don't, that isn't a crime either.

Consider that since Dubya and many of his followers believe he's God's messenger (a modern Moses, perhaps?), then he can ignore the "laws of men" and lay out God's law.

Of course, with that kind of thinking, then the law can be anything Georgie says it will be.

Scary.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Wow. True dictatorial imperium. Not even a Roman consul had that kind of imperium, and a consul had more authority to interpret the law than a US president has. Of course Roman emperors claimed the imperium maius but they were, y'know, Roman emperors. I wonder if AlGon wants to assign 24 lictors to preceed GWB with axes bundled into their fasces?

OK, so he probably doesn't, and most likely wouldn't know what I'm talking about. But I'm beginning to wonder if Gary Trudeau hasn't been exaggerating all that much in Doonsbury lately.

There are three ethical grenades he's got going in the air

[bellatrys.livejournal.com]

1. He thinks Torture is okay in itself.
--This being the obvious one that has the effect of being hit in the face with an iceball, regardless of it being in the news, on most genuinely decent people, the one causing the most disbelief that "I won't do it any more, promise!" is considered okay in America today.

2. He thinks that it's okay to execute the possibly-innocent.
--This the buried past which shows *why* he was chosen for his Henching promotion, and equally as heinous as #1, though perhaps not to our capital-punishment fandom culture.

3. He thinks whatever the Great Eye wants is automatically okay.
--I strongly suspect, but have not hard evidence in word or deed of his, that it is not a *personal* loyalty, the misguided loyalty to a friend such as finds people torn over whether or not to turn in little bro the serial killer, but rather a loyalty to the uniform of power, saluting whoever happens to be wearing it. That is, if it were any other member of House Bush, he would be no less servile; if it were a different house of the Plutocracy - a DeVos or a Cabot - he would be equally facilitating.


How all these things relate to each other is - a mess. Did he suppress his natural revulsion against the idea of mistakenly killing innocent citizens because his Master was for it, and thus corrupt himself to the point where all laws are nothing, and no human behavior is to heinous (because most people do, and always have, seen something particularly inhuman in torturing people either apart from or as part of, an execution) to be endorsed in the service of the Dark Tower?

Or did it go the other way - was there ever any of that "natural revulsion" which is actually not as common as all that, against hurting the helpless, or did he rather gravitate towards those amoral and powerful who elevated Bush II and rise because he was *exactly* the sort of person who would not experience any of the moral qualms that make honorable, loyal advisors say "Hey! Stop! Can't *do* that, sire!" even if their consciences are ultimately their political downfall--?

Again, I have no proof but watching and hearing his voice and reading his words and those of the people around him. But I think it's the second option.

But when people say "he's not so dangerous, he's not as crazy as Ashcroft, they could nominate someone worse" - frankly, I don't see how. Another smiling power-worshipping villain with no conscience, no honor, no regard even for his former fellow-servicemen and women, who can nevertheless pass as a civilized mensch - Orcs in tuxes still orcses and more dangerous for seeming decent chaps.

[pnh.livejournal.com]

I don't think George III thought any such thing. What do you base that on?

most Americans believe the mythology of the Revolution

[bellatrys.livejournal.com]

just as they tend to accept that Monarchy = Bad King John out of the Errol Flynn Robin Hood, and the Middle Ages were the Dark Ages. It's more cultural shorthand than anything else

And the rhetoric of the Founding Fathers does rather lend itself to that, and we've lost the context of the hyperbole that would have been there in the day - when a future historian reads us, will they think that Cheney really ate babies and had improper relations with goats? Will more sophisticated ones think that we really believed it ourselves?

I mean, I seriously doubt, based on what I've read, that quartering in Boston was more onerous than the Ottoman Empire's treatment of its outlying provinces in the 1700s...

But the "Read the Declaration" meme as a way of protest, and speaking past the Moral Values rhetoric on a level that Joe Smoe can grasp, is one I've seen more and more recently, and despite the source polemic's exaggerations, inaccuracies, and the dilemma of working with rather than correcting its rhetoric, I think it a good one.

Re: most Americans believe the mythology of the Revolution

[pnh.livejournal.com]

All revolutions have mythologies. Making good use of them is part of effective politics. I'm not remotely disputing that.

My point is that not even George III, bogeyman of the mythology of the American Revolution, professed the level of absolutism claimed by Alberto Gonzales on behalf of the head of state.

Yes, the eighteenth century did see some last-ditch attempts by European rulers to claim pharaonic power. Like the Bush Administration, these were outliers in the general scheme of things. By and large, the history of Western Europe is a history of executive authority being constantly checked, first by the demands of feudalism, then by such agreements as the Magna Carta. Mostly, our culture doesn't go for unfettered god-kings. That's how alien the ideology of the Bush Administration is. As The Poor Man observed, Alberto Gonzales thinks the Magna Carta is liberal pablum. These people think feudalism is suspiciously left-wing. (Feudal lords, after all, have obligations to those sworn to them.)

Re: most Americans believe the mythology of the Revolution

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

It was hyperbolic. It was, as bellatrys points out, a use of the revolution mythology to make a point.

I don't think George III actually believed he had that level of power (the last British monarch to attempt even a version of that claim was probably Charles I, and he didn't come to a great end either, but not many will immediately bring said end to mind if I mention him... and it lacks punch).

George III certainly thought the colonies had fewer appeals to process than home counties.

TK

[texaslawchick.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised more lawyers aren't troubled for the anti-legal stance that this country seems to be taking. The DeLay rule. Attacks against trial lawyers. Attacks against so called "activist judges." The Gonzales memos regarding the Geneva convention's triteness. What you just posted above. It's very troubling to me that people want to erode the rule of law in this country, because I believe that is the only thing that rules us. They serve at the pleasure of the Constitution, not the other way around.

Point of detail?

[dafydd.livejournal.com]

Would you mind posting a link to that quote?

Re: Point of detail?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Which quotation?

The inherent power of the president to set aside the law, should he disagree with it?

It's in the torture memo, and it was the principle basis on which the use of more strenous methods was justified (that and the amusing fictions, and circumstances, of our possession of Guantanamo.

I'm not at home, so my archiving is less available, Phil Carter, of Intel Dump did a piece on the sentence. Intel Dump June 07, 2004

TK

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I hate being an Old Fogy, but guess that's what I am. It didn't use to be that any significant number of Americans would agree the The President is Above the Law, or that torturing anyone was acceptable behavior for Americans. Nor would any Government Official have even thought of asking Congress to establish and fund prisons intended to detain, indefinitely and without a jury trial, people who were merely suspected of criminal activity. Now... I don't think the majority will agree to these horrible and un-American ideas, but it looks as though quite a few will, and a majority of the voters seem to have elected a President who supports them. My world has been turned topsy-turvy, and I'm suddenly feeling too old to cope with this kind of thing.