Buffalo Bill's Defunct, And Not Just Him

[Taranne]

Buffalo Bill’s Defunct, And Not Just Him

So during my mini-blogging vacation last week, the President put torture back in the news, campaigning for a bill to make torture okay so long as the President meets the strict requirement of deciding to torture someone. Some Senators have squawked. Colin Powell has decided to try to reconstitute some shred of the dignity his stint as Secretary of State forfeited and a bunch of retired servicemembers remembered that they took an oath to defend the Constitution and a much better nation than one where, as Eugene Robinson writes, “the president of the United States of America, persists in demanding that Congress give him the right to torture anyone he considers a ‘high-value’ terrorist suspect. The president of the United States. Interrogation by torture.”

On one level, it’s hard to figure out how this got started. The President and his co-conspirators propound a doctrine that, because the country is “at war,” the President already has all the authority he needs to do pretty much anything he wants if he says it’s for the war, a claim no outside authority has standing to dispute. Everyone knows that he’ll slap a “signing statement” onto any supposed compromise legislation that comes to him and he and his underbosses will do whatever they wanted to do in the way of torture in the first place. Why bother proposing legislation?

One possible reason is to provide some cover against international legal jeopardy. Sure, the Hague is run by NATO allies and Belgium has repealed its universal jurisdiction provisions, but you never know when some foreign prosecutor will pull a Pinochet on you while you’re abroad. While the President himself probably won’t travel abroad much after stepping down, some of his lieutenants like to get around, and there are the little people to think of too, all those intelligence officers and armed services personnel risking arrest every time they pass through a foreign airport. (You know who “the little people” are - they’re the only people, so far, to suffer any substantial punishment in abuse cases from the Long, Long, Long, Long War to date.)

But for that purpose, the joke is on the Bush Administration. The United States government cut down all the principles of state sovereignty and sovereign immunity in its eagerness to get at Saddam and Milosevic before him. When international do-goodery rounds on American officials, there will be no stump to hide behind. No international court that bothers to prosecute American officials will be impressed that, “No, you see? We passed this law!”

That only leaves the really depressing theory, which I’m not the first to advance. The White House is picking a fight with Congress over torture because the White House thinks it will help the President (and his party’s) standing with the voters. What makes the theory depressing is, it may be right. And what I want to know is, how do you like your blue-eyed boy, government power, Mr. Managerial Liberalism?

I’m not blaming liberalism for the Bush Administration. I’m not telling you, a la David Boaz, that “liberals ought to love President Bush for expanding the size of the government.” I’m not saying that taxation is torture is the holocaust. I’m saying, to paraphrase the sage, you go to the polls with the electorate you have, not the one you might wish to have. I don’t think Americans are especially depraved. Americans combine the usual human atavisms - instinctive suspicion of strangers and a desire for safety - with an unusual, maybe unprecedented amount of relative power, is all. But our country’s more successful political party plausibly believes that appealing to the country’s worst instincts is the key to maintaining power. To the extent they’re right, I want that government to have as little power and prestige as possible. The Bush Administration is uniquely awful, but it didn’t come out of nowhere, and what gave rise to it will persist

http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2006/09/19/5488

J'aimerais savoir ce que les libertariens de ce forum pensent des commentaires suscités par ce post sur le blog de Brad DeLong, notamment celui-ci:

Wow.

"I'm not blaming liberalism for the Bush Administration…. I'm not saying that taxation *is* torture *is* the holocaust."

Taxation = Holocaust ? That's a bold step there, and one worthy of Grover Norquist. When the whole "War on Terror" rhetoric wears thin in another 5 years, perhaps the Right can pick up this meme. Also, it's great that you don't blame liberalism for Bush-ism, as Bush is as far from liberal (or American Liberal) as you can get.

"I'm saying… you go to the polls with the electorate you have, not the one you might wish to have…. [O]ur country's *more successful* political party plausibly believes that appealing to the country's worst instincts is the key to maintaining power. **To the extent they're right, I want that government to have as little power and prestige as possible.**"

Pop Quiz: if the *more successful* political party is the one that is appealing to hate, fear, and violence, what does that imply about the *actual society* that Libertarians wish to rule with their laissez-faire, non-coersive, utopian principles? In practice, would Libertarian ideas and ideals lead us to a Randian heaven or something much worse, given the facts on the ground? Bonus Points: regarding point **2** in quotes above, would it be better to 1) aid the Vandals in their sacking of Washington by voting for them in every election, in hopes of staying ideologically "pure" and/or "starving the beast" or 2) limiting the ability of the Vandals to sack Washington by voting for the minority party, even though they might either increase or use existing gov't power in a powerful, positive, and socially responsible manner.

"The Bush Administration is uniquely awful, but it didn't come out of nowhere, and what gave rise to it will persist."

You and your ilk bought and paid for it, but now you don't like it? Please. Without the Republican-Corporate machine behind him, Bush would be clearing brush in Crawford right now. Accept the fact that most Libertarians are actually closet authoritarians and that when you vote, it empowers *actual* authoritarians, who outnumber you at least 10,000:1. Unfortunately, the *actual* authoritarians don't believe that you deserve any special exemptions on things like sex, drugs or freedom of expression just because you are ideologically pure