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Wednesday, August 07, 2002 |
Post Constitutional America
Unlimited Presidential Powers. The Bush administration seems to be trying to establish the principle that any American citizen alleged to be an enemy combatant could be detained indefinitely without charges or counsel. [New York Times: Opinion]
Hmm. Maybe if we weren't so busy posting the 10 Commandments, we could get back to the founding documents of this country, like these two small items:
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private propertIny be taken for public use, without just compensation.
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
These are, in case you missed it, from the Constitution of the United States. I guess this stuff doesn't matter so much any more. It's interesting that these amendments don't make a distinction, either, between citizens and non-citizens. They say "no person," "any person," "the accused."
9:45:26 PM Permalink
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License to Kill
Man thinks 'cause he rules the earth he can do with it as he please
And if things don't change soon, he will.
Oh, man has invented his doom,
First step was touching the moon.
Now, there's a woman on my block,
She just sit there as the night grows still.
She say who gonna take away his license to kill?
-- Bob Dylan
9:23:32 PM Permalink
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Kim Stanley Robinson
Perceptive piece about science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson in In These Times:
No science-fiction author since Dick and Ursula Le Guin has seen so clearly the dilemmas that the corporate-military system, feeding upon war and environmental plunder, has prepared for civilizations near and far. All three authors, interestingly, happened to be from a futurist-oriented California: the older two raised in Berkeley or thereabouts, Robinson in Orange County. But where Dick stresses the psychological, and Le Guin (the daughter of famed anthropologist Alfred Kroeber) the anthropological, Robinson is a master of hard science, especially geology. Readers indifferent toward politics and those inclined rightward nevertheless thrill to Robinson’s close descriptions of what changes in the land have been wrought by the ages—and may be wrought in the future through “terraforming” the landscape and climate of barren planets.
I have Robinson's latest, The Years of Rice and Salt, in my stack of books to be read. His Orange County trilogy is really great sf: one novel is a pessimistic view of life in a future Orange country, one is a Utopia (of all things), and one is neutral. There are characters common to all three novels, though they all take place in different futures. As this article notes, his novels about the terraforming of Mars are amazing (though I actually prefer the others).
8:21:18 PM Permalink
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The New Republic Online
Lots of good stuff in the current New Republic; I've been reading these articles in the print edition, but they're online, too.
The cover story of the print edition is Majority Rules, which makes a pretty good case for an emerging Democratic majority. This goes against just about everything else you'll read:
Today the Democrats are increasingly a party of professionals, women, and minorities rather than of blue-collar workers. They are based in postindustrial metropolitan areas rather than in the small-town South and the Rust Belt North. And they are a party of the progressive center rather than the Great Society left or the laissez-faire right. The new Democratic Party's true historical antecedent is, ironically, that same progressive Republican Party of the early twentieth century that Rove identifies with the Bush Republicans. It, and not Bush's GOP, will oversee America's postindustrial transition because it, and not Bush's GOP, embodies the demographic and cultural changes that this new America will bring.
Though the Democratic Party is often, maybe even mostly, disappointing, certainly this is a good sign.
Stupid Is, Stupid Does chortles over the incompetence defense the Bushies are using in the Harken/offshore mess: "Harken tried to weasel out of paying its taxes, but it didn't succeed, because it failed to earn a profit. Yes, your honor, we broke into the bank vault, but since we forgot to take the cash with us, we didn't actually steal any money."
An Unbeautiful Mind is a long, fascinating review of two books by John Polkinghorne which try to reconcile science and religion (ha!). The review opens with:
According to Boswell, Hume once remarked that "when he heard a man was religious, he concluded he was a rascal, though he had known some instances of very good men being religious."
I referred to another review of these Polkinghorne books a couple months ago, but I'm too lazy now to find my link. This is a really good article; in reviewing Polkinhorne's Christian apologetics, Simon Blackburn nails so much of what is wrong, oh heck, let's say loony, about religion.
For gods are dangerous things. When the divine architect condescends to reveal himself to an especially transparent people, you would think that He or She or They would take a lot of care over the messages the receivers get from Him or Her or Them. Polkinghorne notices that the biblical record does not come out too well on this score: "Inevitably it expresses attitudes (to women, genocide and slavery, for instance) which we cannot endorse today." Inevitably? Could not omnipotence have gotten in among those cloudy chaotic processes with a bit more fine-tuning, and gotten some words down that were a bit clearer and more supportable about women, genocide, and slavery, and all the other things for which people have been beaten and burned and drowned and stoned on biblical authority? But Polkinghorne is calm and unperturbed, because when doing ethics from the Bible "I feel that I can discern a cousinly relationship between myself and many other Christians as we seek to bring modern knowledge and ancient experience together in a consonant combination."
In other words, and thank heavens, we can mix 'n' match. If we do not like bits of Deuteronomy or Leviticus, we may thankfully junk them. If Jesus's view of fig trees and pigs and witchcraft and possession by devils, or his view of Canaanites (or perhaps it was just Canaanite women) as "dogs," no longer appeals to us, then we may tiptoe past. And if Paul's evident belief that the world was about to come to an end impugns his status as recipient of the divine word, we may airbrush it out. In this way we may arrive at "a consonant combination" and a good night's sleep. Meanwhile our cousinly fellow-readers in Rome or Riyadh can enthusiastically help the God of love to persecute those who use contraceptives or like their sex upside down or back to front, before marriage or in a mirror. According to Polkinghorne, this is just the price of complexity and plurality. Whereas the truth is that when you mix 'n' match you only bring back what you already wanted to bring back. Appeals to biblical authority are pure reader responses, hermeneutics run riot, postmodernism in action.
Finally, there's this announcement from TNR that they will start requiring registration for many articles. I don't mind this so much. I do mind, though, that you need to create a separate user ID for their site (instead of just using an email address), and that the user id is limited to 11 characters. If they're going to make us register, make it easy, and don't make me remember yet again some other user name.
6:12:52 PM Permalink
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Thanks to Sophia Stern at NYU for telling me about a really neat music site where there are hundreds of old dance songs, done by a great jazz band in the 1920s and 30s. Try "Button up Your Overcoat" and "Forty-Seven Ginger-Headed Sailors." [John Patrick's Weblog]
This is fun; on this page there are a lot of good music pages listed.
5:36:58 PM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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