printYesterday Bush signed “The Military Commissions Act of 2006.” I went in search for a libertarian analysis, but found only a few splenetic screeds. While perfectly understandable, these execrations do nothing to dissect the implications of the Bill for Americans. As I read them, I knew I ought to be furious about torture. However, too little was being said about the erosion of due process, constitutional protections and the accretion of executive power.
Libertarians need to cite chapter and verse in the actual Bill and then logically and calmly explain its implications for Americans. (It is very possible that, because of his visceral contempt for the Constitution as a so-called statist document, the anarchist can’t rise to the occasion. However, he may want to bear in mind that to the extent the Constitution comports with natural law, it’s both laudable and legitimate.)
In any case, right or wrong, to security-crazed Americans, the constant squealing about torture is a signal to switch off, as it conjures the namby-pamby liberal whose concerns are, overwhelmingly, with the “evil doers.” Readers are likelier to be swayed by arguments that address the possibility of detention without trial of US citizens and the sundering of habeas corpus and the separation of powers.
Finally, I found this, which does just that. This piece from Reason offers a gist of the administration’s impetus vis-a-vis the Bill. This next piece, however, is unhelpful. Libertarians will get its Bastiatian thrust, but, bar some left-liberals, the rest will find it smarmy and juvenile. You don’t have to agree with everything Jonathan Turley says to find him inspiring. (I certainly don’t. Contra Turley, America is a republic, not a democracy, and hence not meant to manufacture “majoritarian” outcomes. And France’s centralized system is the truly ugly system.) There’s a precis of a talk he gave here. Or you can listen to him here.
I read on NRO’s The Corner a few weeks ago a post designed to soothe Americans that, paraphrasing, read something like this: “Relax! The bill’s provisions only applies to foreigners and not American citizens’. How foolish I thought. People don’t understand the “slippery slope” argument and/or are apparently unaware that it is a predictable model most of the time. They are also ignorant I guess of the motivations of government as well as the history of government across the board and across the centuries.
Government is like a cancer, that won’t stopped spreading, eating, consuming and KILLING unless forcibly stopped, through physical war or through a system of law designed to stop it. We have a system of law for that purpose and it is being eroded. Without that system of law in place, there is NOTHING to stop the government from moving on to American citizens and suspending their rights next! The precedent is now in place and what is to stop it from applying to Americans? Nothing! The law is weakened and made meaningless through these measures and thus, Americans can’t expect the law to protect them!
People don’t see the danger. Fools!!!
Ilana,
I was wondering when you would get around to this one. Is it just me or does it seem sometimes that the US approach to government is a bit like a bulemic’s approach to diet & exercise? Eat too much, vomit it up and spend two hours on a treadmill.
It’s sort of difficult for a civilized nation to survive without any form of constituted authority less it degenerate into, well, Iraq. But I rather thought the whole point of that little affair in the late 18th century was to ensure that the Powers That Be in the US would forever possess precisely as much power as they need to ensure a stable & prosperous society, no less & certainly no more.
That was the idea, wasn’t it?
To the non-lawyer, most bills are very confusing. So instead of citing chapter and verse, the temptation is to defer to the interpretations of lawyers, and derive our opinions from them.