Truth and Power

Politicians are afraid of the truth. Truth is an absolute, something which does not sway in the wind, something that can not be possessed or subverted to private purpose. Politicians deal in perception which can be manipulated, twisted, changed; used as a shield, e.g. "wrapping themselves in the flag" or as a weapon, e.g. "Saddam has WMDs" or McCarthyisms "Better dead than Red".

The most a politician can do with Truth is to reveal or conceal it which includes half-truths and such. Truth becomes like the rock upon which a lighthouse is built. We could tell a story about politicians and Truth.

A long time ago on a long forgotten coastline, there was a dangerous outcropping of rock near a small fishing village. Many ships, loaded with their catch bound for the sailors families, had been sunk coming back from their time at sea. The village can ill-afford building a lighthouse to warn sailors of the dangerous rocks but reject the notion of risking more ships on a known danger. And so the lighthouse is built. The people are proud of their accomplishment, they've made their world a better, safer place.

Nature, having setup the rocks as a deadly game of chance between incoming ships and the rocks, sees the completed lighthouse and feels thwarted by the puny men; cheated of the spoils of it's "game". Angry now, Nature decides to strike back against the hubris of men, sending rain, wind, and waves to batter the lighthouse, to blind the revealing light and tear down the tower that deigns to signal danger to the unwary. The lighthouse, being a product of man, cannot withstand the relentless attack of the elements and falls, its light no longer shining, its building no longer standing guard.

The rocks remain, ships continue to sink, the widows continue to weep, the people continue to lament their losses. Nature continues to enjoy the offerings of the village, safe in the knowledge that its capricious nature is again safe from the light of the truth.

To those who seek power, that which does not empower them further is an obstacle to further power whether by being a hindrance directly or by being a distraction indirectly; thus Truth which does not support is concealed to guard against being used as a weapon against the power-seeker. Perception is the currency of power and a people distracted by a tangential Truth is a threat to those to covet the power of crowds willing to believe and follow. The lighthouse is not the Truth but only the marker of it. Nature may be able to destroy the marker but the rocks, like the Truth, remain.

Dick Cheney is a Statist

What does it mean to call someone a Statist? A Statist is someone who believes that the individual citizen is a component of a State where the interests of the State override the interest of the individual. This directly contradicts Lincoln's legacy, "government of the people, by the people, for the people" which recognizes that government is a servant of the people, not the other way around.

Here are some questions to help determine whether someone is a Statist.

Which is more important, the liberty of the individual or the liberty of the State?
Let's define liberty as the freedom to act
Does the liberty of the citizen contribute to the liberty of the State?
Does the liberty of the State contribute to the liberty of the citizen?
Would the increase in the liberty of the State ever cause or involve the decreased liberty of the citizen?
Would the increase in the liberty of the citizen ever cause or involve the decreased liberty of the State?

Is a State responsibile for the liberty of its citizens?
Is a citizen (or citizens) responsible for the liberty of the State?

Epilogue - how do we feel about a Vice President who feels that it is ok for a State to torture it's own citizens "in the name of war" but when it comes to using the power of government for the direct benefit of citizens his tune becomes,

"I worry a lot," he told King, "that they're using the current set of economic difficulties to try to justify a massive expansion in the government, and much more authority for the government over the private sector. I don't think that's good. I don't think that's going to solve the problem."

Maybe the best way to explain it is that the Bush administration didn't lack in ethics, because they redefined that word to their own liking, but they lacked a sense of shame. Why there hasn't been an expression of shame over the Yoo documents is almost totally beyond me. All I can comprehend is their total faith in their own decisions and the inability to look backwards and reflect. "We did what had to be done" is a self-comforting way of avoiding admitting mistakes but it should not hold us back from expressing our sense of shame over their actions.

Here is a question with which to leave you.

Would you rather,
a) live in a country that allows the torture, secret surveilance, indefinite detention, and extra-judicial arrests but have a secure feeling that you aren't going to be attacked tomorrow;
OR
b) live in a country that does not allow torture, requires warrants for wiretaps and arrests, guarantees the accused a day in court to show why they are innocent, in return for the mature and rational realization that no government can keep you safe 100% of the time.

To Appoint or Not To Appoint? That is the question.

Gubernatorial appointments to the Senate have not gone very smoothly as of late. Anyone who has paid a modicum amount of attention to the news over the past four months is well versed in the sad displays surrounding the appointment of Rolland Burris to the Senate by then-Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and the short-lived bid of Caroline Kennedy to take Hillary Clinton's New York Senate seat. These pathetic spectacles would be comical if the issue were not so serious. They surely do not bring dignity or legitimacy to the United States Senate!

To correct a process that is so obviously broken, California Senator Russ Feingold has introduced a proposed constitutional amendment that would mandate special elections to fill open Senate seats. This would bring the filling of Senate vacancies into line with the process ordained by the original Constitution for the filling of House vacancies and remove any doubt or question around senatorial successions. Where the people vote in open, free and fair elections, there is no question regarding who their legitimate representatives are.

If you haven't noticed by now, one of my hobbies is to consider the pros and cons of proposed amendments. Since the Senate and House Judiciary subcommittees will hold a joint hearing on this proposed amendment today, now seems as good a time as any to evaluate this amendment.

Feingold's proposed constitutional amendment reads as follows:

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

January 29, 2009

Mr. FEINGOLD (for himself, Mr. BEGICH, and Mr. MCCAIN) introduced the following joint resolution; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

JOINT RESOLUTION

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to the election of Senators.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission by the Congress:

`Article --

`Section 1. No person shall be a Senator from a State unless such person has been elected by the people thereof. When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies.

`Section 2. This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as a part of the Constitution.'.

I have stated a preference for repealing the Seventeenth Amendment and going back to the original constitutional design where State Legislatures filled their State's two Senate seats. My support for a constitutional change to mandate special elections to fill open Senate seats might seem contradictory to this stated preference, but I also realize we live in a world in which the Seventeenth Amendment will not be repealed any time soon. Elections are the ultimate process that governs our country, and of all of our governing institutions, elections are, next to the Constitution itself, the most foundational and legitimate.

In addition, appointment by one man (the Governor) as opposed to appointment by a State's Legislature is a difference of kind and hardly comparable. The original constitutional senatorial selection mechanism was part of a broader scheme of federalism that the Founders put in place (the other components of federalism being the electoral college, state militias, the Second Amendment, juries, courts, and the constitutional convention process). When all of these parts worked together, they served to maintain a federal / state balance. Many of these components of the Founders' federalism have either vanished or fundamentally changed however, and senatorial appointments by Governors do nothing to move us towards a federalism re-balance.

The most prolific objection I have heard against Feingold's proposed amendment is the terrorism question - "What if terrorism or some other calamity killed every member of Congress? At least Senators could currently be appointed, but Representatives have to be elected. Mandating senatorial special elections would make it impossible to quickly reconstitute the Senate, just as it is currently impossible to reconstitute the House."

Honestly, if this is the best the opposition has, then this amendment should easily pass. In over 200 years of history, a desperate Revolutionary War that the Congress led, a War with the British that saw Washington D.C. burned to the ground, a devastating Civil War that tore the country apart, two World Wars, multiple economic crises, a Cold War fraught with the very real possibility of nuclear annihilation, and the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001, are we *so* afraid of some theoretical event that has very little real chance of succeeding in the first place? Do we design our normative, fundamental constitutional principles around the most extreme of statistical possibilities?

Even in the unlikely event that such an attack did take place *and* was successful in completely destroying the Congress, special elections could be held within two to three months and voila la! You suddenly have a reconstituted Congress that is untainted by questions of legitimacy and free of suspicion over who it speaks for - special interests or the People. Even in the most dire of circumstances that threatened our nation's survival, President Lincoln prosecuted the War against the Confederacy for months before Congress convened in the summer of 1861. Elections are *not* a luxury that we suddenly throw out the window when we think they are no longer convenient. They help define who we are as a people and how we come together in consensus, particularly in tough times. If we want efficiency to inform our fundamental design of governance, might I suggest Machiavelli's The Prince?

So Feingold's constitutional amendment is a much needed corrective to a major defect in the Seventeenth Amendment. If we are going to keep direct elections of Senators as our preferred method of selection, we are better off applying that method in all cases, especially where emergencies are concerned.

The Moral Instinct

The Moral Instinct is an intriguing article in The Times Magazine from back in January. The author argues that studying the "moral sense" of human beings can help us "see through the illusions that evolution and culture have saddled us with and to focus on goals we can share and defend." While there is much for me to quibble with in this article, it does bring out some helpful perspectives that would advance societal debates and relations in this country, along with how Americans see other cultures around the world.

For all the different moral concerns and perspectives found around the world, the article argues there are five themes that are common across all cultures: harm, fairness, community (or group loyalty), authority and purity. The differences in morality can be reduced to the emphasis placed on each of these themes by each culture.

The five moral spheres are universal, a legacy of evolution. But how they are ranked in importance, and which is brought in to moralize which area of social life — sex, government, commerce, religion, diet and so on — depends on the culture. Many of the flabbergasting practices in faraway places become more intelligible when you recognize that the same moralizing impulse that Western elites channel toward violations of harm and fairness (our moral obsessions) is channeled elsewhere to violations in the other spheres. Think of the Japanese fear of nonconformity (community), the holy ablutions and dietary restrictions of Hindus and Orthodox Jews (purity), the outrage at insulting the Prophet among Muslims (authority). In the West, we believe that in business and government, fairness should trump community and try to root out nepotism and cronyism. In other parts of the world this is incomprehensible — what heartless creep would favor a perfect stranger over his own brother?

Of course, harm and fairness are the moral themes that dominate the United States: both historically and in the present day. While we don't completely ignore the other three (indeed, community, authority, and purity are much more important themes among more conservative-leaning and religious Americans), these two themes inform our collective sense of morality to the point that they guide our sense of Government's role in our lives, i.e., that the Government should enforce laws equally (fairness) and defend us from attack (harm). These are also the competing themes that tear us apart in the abortion debate: protecting innocent life from harm versus treating women fairly. If we don't realize this, it is all too easy to see "the Opposition" as amoral and unprincipled.

We wrote the Governance Imperative thesis three years ago, and our moral categorization (what is right vs. what is fair) differs from that of this article. However, the important distinction is present in both categorizations. There are competing moral themes that we must consider as we approach any major societal question, and the Founders were well aware of these competing moral themes when they wrote the Constitution.

Who Guards the Guards?

The 'Yoo Debacle' provides a clear example for why transparency is important in the Executive branch. I would think that 'secret' laws would be unconstitutional, why then would we allow a 'secret' legal basis for the execution of our laws? The Bush administration's refusal to provide Congress with the legal basis for the Executive branch's behavior is tantamount to saying "It's legal because we say so!"

Bush Administration's legal basis for torture, warrantless searches, etc.

Here is a good excerpt:

=== begin excerpt ===

As Bradbury makes clear, the legal analysis in these memos, time and again, was just plain bad legal argument. Some of the arguments veer into the bizarre. Consider this concluding passage from a Yoo-Delahunty memo arguing that the president can order warrantless searches (case citations deleted):

The courts have observed that even the use of deadly force is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment if used in self-defense or to protect others. Here, for Fourth Amendment purposes, the right to self-defense is not that of an individual, but that of the nation and of its citizens. If the government’s heightened interest in self defense justifies the use of deadly force, then it would certainly also justify warrantless searches.

Huh? The reasoning goes like this:

Individuals can use deadly force to defend against a deadly attack;

The government can use deadly force to defend the nation against an attack;

Therefore: the government can engage in warrantless searches.

=== end excerpt ===

Throwing the First Stone

This article about the influence of the physical world and the structure of moral perception [www.sciam.com] was very interesting.

Is this a case of "Thou doth protest too much"? What can we take from this study and apply to our search for better government?

What possibility is there that those who relish the role of morality police have secrets of their own which make them judge others more harshly?

Would you notice a difference in the sermon at your church if the pastor ritually cleansed him or herself before speaking?

The Truth is so Bright I Gotta Wear Shades

Truth and Politics. Normally the truth is black or white. I'm beginning to wonder if politics is the art of not stating the obvious. The current economic crisis provides for an easy example. Economists are saying that nationalizing the banks is a valid remedy for a failing banking system. The Secretary of the Treasury is avoiding mentioning the term even off the record. If asked point blank, it is a good bet that he would not admit that it is a potential action worth exploring. Here is where the political truth comes in. If you asked him why he won't discuss it, he will actively avoid admitting that the political cost is too high. Not giving the opposition a chance to score points then becomes the elephant in the room.

Everyone knows why we don't talk about the solution openly, making it ever so difficult to face our problems, hog-tying ourselves for the sake of political strategy.

The Illusion of Control and the Hidden Costs Thereof

Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Tuesday, March 3, 2009; Northeast section, page 6B (The title of this post links to the full article):

"Bill would move sex ed away from abstinence-only" - Kelley Shannon (AP)
Austin - Texas's sex education curriculum, which now teaches abstinence as the only form of birth control, would include more medical information about contraception and disease prevention under a bill proposed Monday by Democratic lawmakers.

"The status quo is not working," Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, said. "Only through honest information will teens have the tools they need for responsible decision making and disease prevention."

A bill proposed by Ellis and Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, would give teenagers access to "complete, medically accurate and age-appropriate" sexual health information at school with the aim of reducing teen pregnancy and infections, the legislators said.

The current abstinence-only sex education system has been in place since the mid-1990s when George W. Bush was governor. Republican Gov. Rick Perry will review the new proposal but "is comfortable with current law and supports abstinence programs," his spokeswoman, Allison Castle, said.

The conservative Texas Eagle Forum views the Democrats' proposal as trying to cover up immoral behavior by men and doing the bidding of abortion providers, Cathie Adams, president of the organization, said.

"I see this as a very anti-woman, anti-girl attempt," Adams said.

"It's putting immorality off on children."

Commentary

Was Mrs. Adams the best spokesperson for the opposing viewpoint? Does she really think that telling teenagers how diseases spread is promoting immorality? It's one thing to argue that sex-education condones sex or should be left to parents but the reality is I don't want my daughter to make life-altering decisions based on ignorance or naivety. Think of the stakes! Do I want to risk my daughters health on the assumption that she'll always obey her parents? Or do I educate her on how easy it is to get a incurable or even life-threatening disease? Limiting the discussion to "As long as you do as I say, everything will be fine" works only as long as your child doesn't contemplate disobedience. Even if they abstain until they get married, what about their partner? Whatever control you may have over your children's decisions about having sex, you have absolutely zero control over their potential partners.

Is the Star-Telegram just baiting us with Mrs. Adams? I'm having a hard time understanding how sex education is limited to being anti-girl? Why not anti-boy? Does she suggest that the way to protect girls is by keeping them ignorant? Does it mean that it's always the girl's fault? Do boys have no responsibility when it comes to sex? Is it so hard to remember just how easily hormones influence teenagers?

This whole discussion reminds me of the driver who refuses to yield to the large truck who just ran a stop sign. Yes you have the right of way, yes, the other driver should have stopped, yes the law is on your side, yes the other driver is at fault, yes, yes, yes, you are right; but you're also dead.

Do you want to be "Dead Right" with your childrens health?