While We Set Their VCR Clocks They Set Policy

While doing my daily skim through the Brookings Institute website I found this op-ed written by Shibley Telhami, a nonresident senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

According to his resume Mr. Telhami should be among the foremost experts on the Middle East today, and that's what I'm going to talk about. Thomas Jefferson said that the Earth belongs to the generation that inhabits it. Never is this truth more clear than following a massive change in the global system, in this case the end of the Cold War. During the 1980's and 90's the economic world became a nightmare for business leaders who couldn't adapt to rapidly changing technology and international rule sets. For many executives learning to deal with the Japanese, email, and conference calling were simply tasks that couldn't be accomplished. Now, in the security and international policy realms we find ourselves in a similar situation.

While most Americans of my generation vaguely remember the Cold War the first formative images in international policy for most of us were the fall of the Berlin Wall and Gorbaychev's birthmark. Mr. Telhami's article belies his formative years doing duck and cover drills in school. Simply the terminology he uses implies that the old zero-sum game is in overtime. Mr. Telhami talks about "balance of power" and at one point compares a potential pullout of Iraq to the American pullout of Saigon, or more specifically he says, with reference to a retreat from Iraq potentially inciting Islamist militancy,

"America's enemies, including the Soviets, did not attack the United States once we abandoned Saigon and bared our defeat."

What? How is that relavent? I never read about any Maoist terrorists waging an asymetrical war against the U.S. during the 70's, nor were the Soviets likely to openly attack the U.S. after we'd pretty much agreed that Mutually Assured Destruction was the name of the paradigm in which we were living. For that matter, I'd like to point out that it wasn't long after the fall of Saigon that we were paying CIA clandestine services officers to train Osama bin Laden and give him stinger missles to fight the Ruskies. It's a brave new world! I digress.

For my part I am grateful in the extreme to Mr. Telhami's ilk for their part in making sure that I didn't grow up on the set of Mad Max. I don't want to be percieved as disrespectful, nor do I discount the gift of decades of experience. I just question the relavence of being a ski jump medalist in the summer Olympics. If Mr. Telhami represents the pinnacle of thought on the modern Middle East situation then we're in trouble. Thankfully he doesn't. We're fortuneate to have a number of people who have adapted to the paradigm that the fall of the Soviet Union has created, but the fact that this sort of article gets plastered on the front page of the Brookings website "above the crease" (visible without scrolling down) frightens me. While I certainly believe that institutions like Brookings are to be lauded for their ability to include varied viewpoints, I must say that this is evidence that the "wise old men" of our nation should really consider if they are prepared to accpet the challenges faced by a world map that looks a lot more like a diagram of the Internet overlapping a lava lamp than the old maps that ensorcelled the Soviet Union as though "Here be monsters".

The following is the email I sent Brookings:

I'm curious about the relavence of mr Telhami's discussion of "America's enemies, including the Soviets" not opting to attack the U.S. following the Saigon pullout in relation to inciting militancy by pulling out of Iraq. While considering the present in the context of history is, of course, imperative, viewing Iraq in the fame of a Cold War proxy war seems ridiculous. By the time Vietnam ended the MAD ruleset had not only been sold worldwide, it was on clearance at Wal-Mart. A more accurate comparison might be the Goths stepping up their raids into Roman territory following pullouts from northern outposts. While that comparison has obvious flaws, the psychology behind those raids and asymetrical attacks on U.S. soil are significantly more simmilar than Cold War containment/proxy wars versus pre-emtive warfare and stabilization operations. I'd be happy to entertain arguements, but that sort of thinking (i.e. Cold War type) is what keeps certain strategic factions within the Pentagon focused on China as the next emerging near-peer competitor. Sorry, the Manthorpe Curve is defunct, and it's time to define our world in much more complex terms than the zero sum game. This is more like playing the stock market than poker. Investments carry risks, but sometimes the riskiest investments can carry massive payoff. Last generations military decision makers were staring across a table at their opponent trying to guess what kind of hand he was holding. This generation's must be more like market analysts trying to determine what the payoff is and how long after investing before we call it a win or loss.

Holistic Medicine for America

In reading another blog that I frequent I came across a bit, rather proudly written by an activist Green pointing out that corporations had taken over America causing everything from obesity to war. I wanted to respond to this myopic view, however the blog is member-only, so that was that. It did, however, prompt what I think is a rather nice little bit about the true causes of many issues which plague America today.

The major problem with the thought process of most activists is that while they note the symptoms of the disease they take what amounts to a centralized symptom and call it the illness. Large corporate power structures seeking to cut bottom lines are composed of members of our society. Therefore, they are part of the ailing body. If the legs hurt we do not necessarily amputate the legs. We must to seek a more inclusive diagnosis. If the ailments of the extremeties are caused by problems with the heart, we do not simply cut out the heart. We must seek a more pragmatic solution. What are the problems of the heart, and how do we treat them? In this case the legs represent everything from obeise members of society to malfunctioning electoral systems. They cannot simply be removed without damaging the body, so we must seek out the cause of the ailment. The heart represents the institutions which have driven our ascendancy as a nation (capitalism, democracy, corporate power, military might, etc.), so we cannot simply cut it away, we must reform it.

I would put forth that we have already begun this process, that one merely has to take a step back to see. For example, during the 80's we reached a tipping point in consumer culture. Americans bought everything that was pitched to them. All one has to do is compare 80's marketing to the marketing of eras previous and subsequent. Previously marketing had been geared more towards pragmatism. In the 90's marketing began to apeal to everything from pragmatism to artistic taste and spiritual satisfaction demonstrating a growing dissatisfaction with consumer culture. It is, of course, strangely ironic that only after the peak of consumer culture is nearly twenty years past (just ask any marketing exectuve) do we find ourselves with words like "consumerist" in the lexicon.

Throughout the 90's and 21st century we have seen a growing backlash towards irresponsible corporations, to the point that companies like Whole Foods (a supermarket chain devoted to organic/free-range/environmentally sound products) have begun to thrive in earnest. This is but one symptom that has begun to turn around. The natural tendency of activists is to note only the areas in need of change, not the areas that have changed. The frequent response among activists to any assertion that change has occoured is a "that's not enough" attitude. By putting forth that a process is under way one hardly presupposes that it is complete. By assuming a "We're on the way!" attitude activists are more likely to find support. Simply put, people bandwagon. Whole Foods didn't begin to thrive because activists put photos of caged pigs in newspapers. Whole Foods began to thrive because they provided an easy, fashonable, and well executed alternative to eating factory farm produce. Activists are important in the system because they spread knowledge of a flaw in the system. However, the flaw will seem to go largely ignored until someone, usually an entrepeneur or politician, presents another viable option. The test of a viable option is, of course, that it does not cause any dramatic change in a person's life. While being Vegan and growing one's own produce requires immense effort, shopping at Whole Foods simply requires the expenditure of more money. By making the interior of the store more attractive and the level of service superior to a normal super market Whole Foods provides a viable (indeed superior) option for almost anyone living at or above the median lifestyle. Using similar logic, I put forth that when gas prices (either through taxation or natural economic forces) rise very much beyond their present level (I'll state that any amount significantly over $2 a gallon should suffice). Americans will begin to purchase more fuel-efficient cars on a large scale, producing competition in that aspect of auto manufacturing.
Activists (both left and right) have already given America numerous reasons to reduce it's consumption of oil, however since Americans like SUV's and sports cars, until the cost of fuel is taxing to the point that these become financially impractical for Americans to own they will continue to purcase them, unless, that is, someone comes up with a fuel-efficient SUV. Hell, a lot of the sports car set has already defected to the Honda Civic. Why not? They all knew that it would save them on gas, and the market has provided a million ways to make your Civic cooler with bolt-on parts.

Activists are the system's natural response to ailment. They function like antibodies, attacking those things which infect the system. However, a healthy immune system functions better than an ailing one. It is my belief that activists need to be organized and educated. While in Europe most activist groups unite under the banner of political parties (forcing random counterculture elements to simply refer to themselves as anarchists, something I find most ammusing) in America our activist groups tend to be decentralized and lack any sort of focus. The result is that serious activists who want to drive change are absorbed by major political parties and organizations leaving perfectly good movements to fill their ranks from the afforementioned counterculture elements. As an examle, my mother supports almost every aspect of the Green platform, however there isn't much of an organized Green Party here so she gives money to the Sierra Club and volunteers for the local Democrats. I would like to applaud the Green Party's focus on seeing Greens elected to local office in areas with a heavy liberal bias. That is exactly the kind of grass-roots effort we need. In America we have a tendency towards top-down thinking, based on the idea that the head leads the body. While this system is not entirely flawed, a healthy brain in a body riddled with tumors and illness will hardly be able to repair the entire form. It is my opinion that it is better to think of the system as a pyramid. One must lay the foundations layer by layer before the capstone can be put in place. By strengthening the immune system thus, the Greens are helping to lay the foundations for a stronger body. Well, it's late and I'm rambling. Hmmm... fried peanut butter sandwiches... excellent....

The Infinite Power of the Masses (Is Valued at $9.34 Trillion)

Just a note on current reading... In 2000 Hernando de Soto, the famed Peruvian economist, published a book called The Mystery of Capital. According to his studies the total wealth of the shadow economy, extralegal assets filling legal niches in the third world (e.g. houses to which no one has a title) is $9.34 trillion. To put it in context let's just say that it's immensely more than the total wealth held legally in those countries. The reason: the legal structure necessary for ownership doesn't exist in the third world. The result: $9.34 trillion dollars disconnected from the global economy and 80% of the inhabitants of the third world unable to connect their functional economies to the global economy. Talk about a glass ceiling. Time to talk less about bringing democracy to these nations and more about bringing bureaucracy to them. The nearly instantaneous addition of a functional and legitimized middle-class to the third world would almost surely bring about democratic change within a generation.

A Note For Bill

Bill is unable to read this because Bill suffers from a combination of cataracts, macular degeneration, and retinal detachment stemming from a congenital defect. You see, Bill is guilty of the apparently unforgivable sin of being born to a mother who suffered from chicken pox during her pregnancy, and, as is frequently the case in this scenario, Bill didn't come out exactly as he was supposed to. He's not deformed to the point of being miserably handicapped. There aren't any missing limbs, and his brain is in superb working condition, so superb in fact that Bill managed to finish two years of college and even now earns a little money helping people who aren't particularly computer literate set up web sites and install software. He hasn't too much difficulty getting around as he has a nearly flawless map of Memphis stored in the area of his brain dealing with navigation and spatial relationships. He'd probably have little difficulty at all if he didn't constantly walk into telephone poles and flower planters, frequently injuring him just enough to make his life difficult and painful, but not enough to hospitalize him.

As Bill and I walked towards my house tonight so that I could get him the makings of a few sandwiches and some iced tea he held his left eye open with one hand, turning his head at specific angles attempting to counteract the effects of the macular degeneration. On the walk we chatted about his condition, Bill slowly and carefully explaining his situation, not angry with the world that had left him this way, but rather somewhere between disappointed and hopeful.

Bill told me that about seventy percent of Memphis' homeless are either "mentally disabled or substance abusers." He said that he falls into that "other" category, the men and women who just fall through the cracks of the system. As someone who is through experience wary of drug addicts and alcoholics, I wondered for the first few blocks of our walk together if Bill wasn't selling me the Brooklyn Bridge. After all, maybe the milky color of his eyes had something to do with smoking crack, and perhaps I was just unable to notice any of the classic symptoms of an alcoholic with which I am so familiar. No, Bill had approached me with a great deal of reluctance, only asking for anything at all after he was sure that I wanted to listen, lacking entirely the practiced nonchalance of a freeloader. We must've exchanged three or four sentences of casual greetings before he inquired if it would be alright for him to ask me what he was sure was "a redundant question." I, being flat broke and sure that I wouldn't be moved to offer money, but just a pastrami sandwich from my fridge, decided to listen to his pitch. And so, upon my invitation, a blind beggar accompanied me on my walk home. The drivers of several cars looked strangely at us, their aversion to Bill's disheveled state quite clear on their faces. I found myself almost glad that Bill couldn't see them.

When asked what sort of assistance he received from the government he replied that Social Security, a system we all know to be on wobbly legs at best, sent him $117 a month, of which 27 cents remained now, two-thirds of the way through the month. "There isn't much way to withdraw 27 cents from a bank, and it wouldn't do me much good if I could," Bill lamented. Bill told me that Tennessee was good enough to provide him some level of health coverage through Tenn-Care, a nearly bankrupt and poorly managed attempt at providing health care to Tennessee's poor. However, like many attempts at reforming health care for the "indigent," to use Bill's own term (a term that filled me with the frightening images of Dickens' world), Tenn-Care fails to provide for preventive medicine of any sort, instead choosing to await serious illness or injury to be useful. I asked why it was that he received so little in the way of government assistance, and was floored. Bill, a man unable to walk without periodically impacting random objects, does not qualify as one-hundred percent blind, and thus does not qualify for full disability. "When I'm fully blind," the anticipation in Bill's voice sending a shiver down my spine, "I'll get a lot of help."

Gathering that I was interested in politics Bill asked my opinion regarding embryonic stem cell research, knowing that many researchers believe that it could correct the effects of both the macular degeneration and the detached retina. "I really believe," he firmly told me, "that if I just had the money something could be done, something to fix all this." The only answer I had for him was that, yes, most probably, something could be done.

Bill was polite in the extreme, a shy sort of politeness that comes from a combination of good manners and constant rejection. If only my own generation could muster this sort of politeness in their daily life. As I walked with Bill I thought of Bellevue Baptist Church, a massive religious complex in the overwhelmingly Republican East Memphis sometimes referred to as "Six Flags Over Jesus." I imagined the massive sums of money that were brought in every year though donations and fund-raising events, such as their Broadway-like annual Christmas pageant, "The Singing Christmas Tree," a production of such magnitude as to require the participation of hundreds of cast and crew. I remembered a specific scene from one year during my childhood in which blacklights made the innumerable phosphorescent hands of the cast glow. I imagined those hands and the money that had purchased the phosphorescent paint put to use to help Bill and the millions of other Bills around the world. I imagined a world in which a structure the size of Bellevue Baptist Church might house Bill. I imagined a disability system in which a man who is functionally blind could receive more than $117 a month to help him survive, and I imagined a world in which Bill would not have to be blind, a world where preventive medicine and ongoing treatment would be available to him, a world in which the proven miracle of stem cell transplants would be allowed to give him back his sight. I imagined a world in which people understood that Christ did not mandate that the meek wait their turn to inherit the earth or that only mud return the sight of blind beggars. I imagined, and I prayed, but I gave Bill a good sweat shirt and $7, enough for him to stay three nights at the shelter, because I can't seem to muster Bill's hopeful tone, just an angry one.

To Arms!!!

Dear readers, I must apologise to you for my prolonged absence from the blog. I've been up to my chin in projects since my last post, and I simply haven't had the time to research anything new. However, between trying to fix an old Roper gas stove, painting, yardwork, moving in, and working on the Kerry campaign, I've noticed I'm still bitching about one thing more often than not. So here's a quick shout out to my kids in DC. Keep your heads down, because if you think gun violence is bad now...

I'd like to thank a bipartisan group of Congressmen (I had originally intended to target specific individuals, but hey, let's spread the love.) for making sure that Washington, DC, my home until one week ago, is going to be safer. Presuming the District of Columbia Personal Protection act passes the Senate in coming months the law abiding citizens of the District will no longer have to worry about those annoying little gun registration laws passed by the city council so long ago. Now, before I go any further, I'd like to point out that this bill is a piece of House of Reps grandstanding used by Dems to give them a little Second Amendment flava and Republicans for the opposite reason. It's no more a real piece of legislation than a letter to the editor of the Washington Times is a real piece of journalism, however, that doesn't change the fact that the citizens of DC are still looking under their beds for their enfranchisement.

I'll spare you the obnoxious details. Simply put, DC has strict gun control laws, extremely strict. Forget packing a handgun unless you're specially licensed as an armed security guard or a cop. Shotguns and rifles are legal, but you've got to register them with the Metro PD, and don't expect to transport them out of your house unless they're locked and unloaded. The bill repeals these regulations, put in place by the city council and mayor of the District of Columbia, without the consent of the citizens of the District. In fact, they don't even get a Congresman to vote on the issue. Now, I won't even get into the DC Taxation Without Representation bit right now, but sufficed to say that really starts getting agitating when Congress takes that rare oportunity to exercise it's power of the District's local laws. Folks, just so you're aware, DC is the only place in the country where they can do that.

As a nod to the "spirit" of the bill (H.R. 3193 By the by) I'll go ahead and point out that DC has a high violent crime rate. The idea, denounced by anyone with one whit of knowledge regarding gun violence statistics, is that if the law abiding citizens of DC had guns they'd be able to kill the bad guys. Okay real simple, you remember high school algebra, right? If 1 + x = 1 then x = 0, right? Meaning x has no value. Try this on. Canada + lots of legal guns = minimal gun violence and Italy + strict gun control = minimal gun violence, then what must be true of both lots of legal guns and strict gun control? That they both have little effect on gun violence? That, perhaps, they function similarly to the "0" in the previous equation? Don't peg me for a gun control nut here. I'm a gun lovin', trigger pullin' freak when it comes down to it. When I first moved to DC I was upset to discover that I couldn't obtain a conceal and carry permit, but that doesn't make me delusional regarding the role of gun control in violent crime or able to read the Second Amendment backwards and hear a message from Charlton Heston. The simple fact here is that DC doesn't want guns. The city has made it quite clear that this legislation is unnecessary and unwelcome.

To add insult to injury the bill cites that one of its goals is to "REFORM D.C. COUNCIL'S AUTHORITY TO RESTRICT FIREARMS." It cites a 1906 law regarding the killing of wild birds and animals which states that,: "The District of Columbia shall not have authority to enact laws or regulations that discourage or eliminate the private ownership or use of firearms." Believe me, I'm going to be on the look out for any laws of this nature which apply to segregation and women's sufferage, and I'll be emailing them to Mr. Ford and Mrs. Blackburn respectively. Frankly, Mr. Tanner, I just expected more from you. Welcome, dear readers to the land of dangerous precedents. Seems like we're visiting frequently lately.

This subject has become, at this stage, quite personal to me, as the legislation was voted for by every West Tennessee Congresman. Thank you, John Tanner, Marsha Blackburn, and Harold Ford Jr. I'll be in touch.

Vows...

Readers, it would seem that the new trend in the House of Representatives is to attempt to create de facto consitutional amendments. A measure to amend the Constitution to ban gay marraige was defeated in the Senate by a coalition of Democrats and Republicans, so the Republicans in the House who had backed it wholeheartedly decided to get clever. They drafted H.R. 3133, the Marriage Protection Act, which is the spiritual forerunner of the Pledge Protection Act. It is, however, slightly more insidious in its unconstitutionality. It attacks one very specific area of the Constitution (one dealing with states recognizing each others' acts, records, and judicial proceedings) by ignoring it, then attacking another, somewhat weaker area discussing the jurisdiction of courts in order to produce a loophole diverting the potential of a legal battle regarding the area that it really wants to attack. Sound convoluted? It is, but let me try to explain.

The Marriage Protection Act is very simply designed to protect states from being forced to recognize a marriage license issued in another state. That's unconstitutional. And I quote: "Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State." The bill limits the jurisdiction of the courts to hear cases which might question the constitutionality of a state not conforming to that particular clause with regard to marriage. This is tantamount to the House passing a bill that says "Criminals who violate federal law cannot be tried in federal court." Rep. Hostettler (R-IN), the bill's chief sponsor, has done an excellent job of citing constitutional sources for limiting the jurisdiction of courts, however, he exploits a potential reading of the Constitution to produce an intentional loophole. Art. III Sec. 2 reads:

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

The key words here are: "...with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make." Now, here's where things get tricky in my opinion. Hostettler is assuming that the phrase that I just quoted applies to the first sentence as well. (i.e. Congress can make Exceptions and Regulations in Cases to which a State is Party.) It seems to me that the Founders were trying to give Congress the right to create additional areas in which the Supreme Court would have original jurisdiction. The reason I say this is simple. If for whatever reason the state of Indiana sued the state of Virginia and Congress had passed one of these "Protection Acts" regarding the subject of the lawsuit, who would decide? The state courts? They can't. The federal courts? They couldn't either. Judge Judy? I don't think so. Again, blocking cases where specific issues are at stake threatens to create a logical error of the type that would cause a computer to crash.

If reading the constitution in one fashon produces a smooth flow of logic (even if you don't like the outcome) it must be more correct than a reading which produces potential unresolvable conflicts. Let's try to keep in mind that our Founders were the children of the Enlightenment, and Reason was the founding principle to which they subscribed, not religion. If you find yourself in doubt of that simply read virtually anything Thomas Jefferson or James Madison ever wrote.

Thomas Jefferson instructed us that when reading the constitution we should try to imagine the original intent of the founders. Given that the founders were all men of reason, I doubt very much that they intended for us to view the Constitution as a fortress which we are to besiege with crafty legal wrangling. That's all this is, readers, this is a legal and political attack laid according to Sun Tzu's Art of War. They are choosing which portion of the Constitution to engage and altering the battlefield so that they will never have to engage the portion which they cannot defeat. The document establishing our government was not meant to be attacked or defended in segments, divided so that it may be conquered. It was meant to face honorable men face to face. Perhaps our founders placed to much faith in their succeeding generations.

Weekend Observation

Well, my Orwellian fears of despotic plots to undermine the republic have yielded to a fairly benign weekend (at least in that arena). I did however stumble over a rather interesting quote from Thomas Jefferson from his Notes on Virginia. It's a quickie, just a little blurb, but it, in the style of Enlightenment politicians, is rather profound. "It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."

I'm not going to expound on it. A far wiser man than I said it, and I'll leave it to you, dear readers, to ponder his meaning. Personally, I choose to ponder it in relation to the war. It seems to me that for a just war fought on the honest pretenses of freedom and democracy there's an awful lot of spin control. Just a thought.

Not That Simple?

It has been brought to my attention that my explanation of the unconstitutionality of the Pledge Protection Act was oversimplified, so I'll remedy that in brief. Here's the wording of the act:
`No court established by Act of Congress shall have jurisdiction to hear or determine any claim that the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, as set forth in section 4 of title 4, violates the first article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States.'
Here's the wording of Sec. 1 Art. 3 of the Constitution of the United States of America :
The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.
According to the website of Rep. Todd Aikin (R Missouri) the Congress derives its power to regulate the jurisdiction of inferior courts from this article. Here's the problem:
It simply doesn't say that. It says that the Congress can "ordain and establish" them. The part of the US Code which the bill amends deals with instances in which jurisdiction is in question, and, well, that has nothing to do with this. According to Aikin's website this also only affects lower courts, however, the Supreme Court could be interpereted as having been established by "Act of Congress" since the Constitution was adopted by the Constitutional Congress. Additionally, since the Supreme Court is the highest level of appeals court, how are these cases supposed to arrive in their inboxes? Simple, if Aikin has his way, they won't. So, I'm saying to the Gentleman from Missouri, start writing your constitutional amendment because that's the only way this will ever be legitimate.

-BT

Check the Imbalances

It would seem, dear readers, that it simply isn't enough for the GOP to push an agenda in Colorado which greatly undermines the rights of the people of that state (see previous blog entry). In fact, it would seem that the GOP has engineered (through some unholy alliance no doubt) the passage of a bill designed to upset the system of checks and balances laid out in our Constitution. The bill is with reference to one very specific, and, if you ask me, relatively ridiculous issue: the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.

If you think back, you may remember that a California man brought suit agianst his daughter's school system because he, an athiest, did not wish his daughter to recite the words "under God" when saying the pledge. One California senator stated that a federal appeals court's ruling that the pledge was "an unconstitutional endorsement of religion" was "political corretness run amok." In my personal opinion he is, at least in spirit, correct. He might, however, find a bit of resistance from the author of the Pledge were Mr. Bellamy alive today.

Bellamy was a Christian Socialist and the chairman of the comittee of state superintendants for the National Education Association. He wrote the Pledge as part of a flag raising ceremony for the quadricentinial Colombus Day celebration in 1892, and, notably, he did not include the words "of the United States of America," or "under God." The former was added, against Bellamy's protest, by the National Flag Conference after a campaign by the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution, the latter, by Congress in 1954 following a campaign by, astonishingly, the Knights of Colombus, but I digress.

The real point of this article has virtually nothing to do with the Pledge. The point, friends, is that the United States House of Representatives, in an unprecedented move, has passed a bill which (should it pass the Senate and President) will prevent federal courts, including the Supreme Court, from hearing cases regarding the Pledge. It's called the Pledge Protection Act, and when it arrives at the Senate floor it will be, by far and away, the most unconstitutional piece of trash to ever disgrace both houses of Congress.

For those of you not already clear on why this is so absurd, I'll provide a brief tutorial of the system of checks and balances which is written into our Constitution. The three branches of government (Legislative, Executive, and Judicial) are responsible for keeping each other in check, thus preventing one branch from gaining too much power. Congress is the legislative branch. The word legislate derives from Latin roots meaning "to write laws." Thus the function of Congress is self explanatory. The executive branch, the President, is equally self explanatory. It is the job of the President to execute the laws laid forth by congrees. Where's the check and balance? Simple, laws have to pass the executive branch before they become laws, but, should the President veto them, a two-thirds majority vote of the entire congress will override the veto. The function of the judicial branch is a little less self explanatory than others. The nine justices of the Supreme Court function a little differently than other courts. They only hear cases in which the constitutionality of the law which has been violated is in question or a civil suit (as in this case) has raised a constitutionality issue. While they have no power whatsoever in the law making process, they can strike them right out of existence. Seem a little unbalanced? Well, it's not. The president appoints the justices who must then be ratified by congress. See, everybody gets a say. After they're sitting, though, they're there for life, and they determine what cases they hear. Now, if Congress and the President really didn't like a ruling the Supreme Court made they could make an amendment to the Constitution, thus making whatever was unconstitutional before, constitutional. However, this takes a pretty hefty number of votes in the House and Senate, and doesn't happen very often. So, you see, the system of checks and balances really does prevent any one branch from having too much power.

So there, three houses of government, all alike in dignity, in fair Washington, DC where we lay our scene. The play is a tragedy in the most Greek sense of the word, the kind of tragedy where things started off just fine and went downhill from there. The Pledge Protection Act is a direct assault on the Supreme Court's position in the system of checks and balances. It is nothing less than an attempt by GOP members in the House of Representatives to force the Supreme Court to dance to their tune. The good news is that, theoretically, the Supreme Court could strike a ratified (it hasn't even hit the Senate floor yet) Pledge Protection Act right off the books, but only after someone brings suit against and makes it through the lengthy appeals process to the Supreme Court. What does this mean for us? Imagine an act of the same nature to protect abortion cases. You're pro-life, you say? I didn't specify that this hypothetical act had to protect women who wanted to have abortions. Imagine an America where Congress could place protections on free speech cases. Imagine an America where you could be arrested for voicing an unpopular opinion and then, when you finally get a hearing, it's deemed illegal for the courts to hear your case. Well, the Pledge Protection Act is one of but a few steps into that deep chasm that is despotism, and once over the edge, readers, there is no turning back.

-BT

Related Links:
The Pledge of Allegiance - A Short History
House Votes to 'Protect' Pledge of Allegiance (Reuters)

Going Political

Okay, I've already got a website dedicated to me, so I've decided that for now my blog is going to be dedicated to something more important: the state of our nation. There's a reason this website is named for the seminal work on the collapse of the Roman empire (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon, First Vol. Pub. 1776). I think there is something more than coincidental, possibly even prophetic in the fact that Gibbon published the entirety of his 6 volume work between the years 1776 (the year of the Declaration of Independence) and 1788 (the year prior to the creation of the Bill of Rights and the start of the French Revolution). Gibbon, with unrivaled eloquence, scathing wit, and an artists eye for detail laid out the events leading to the collapse of the Roman Republic and Empire and, more importantly, the underlying causes. "There is," as Hans-Friedrich Mueller says, "much in Gibbon to offend." He lays bare the damaging consequences of religions fanaticism and the tendency of mankind to sacrifice freedom for luxury. Gibbon is offensive because he is honest. Historians are only offensive when they are either too truthful or blatantly deceitful. I doubt very much that anyone with even a vague understanding of history would attempt to discredit Gibbon on the factuality of his treatise.
In writing about the collapse of the first western civilization, Gibbon foreshadowed all that would come. The Romans (this time in the form of American colonists) would again throw off the shackles of their insane monarch, and they would rise to power first through a rugged might and dignity, then through economic and political influence. We would follow the template laid out by empires long dead. We would rise. We would reign, and now, says history, we will fall.
If that template is to be believed, having advanced to our present status with approximately four times the rapidity of the Romans, we should collapse at that same alarming rate. With advances in communication and technology, the deteriorating attention spans of our people, and a consumerist paradigm the likes of which the world has never even imagined we should expect to be reduced to a state of despotism within a generation or two. Or have we already arrived there? Are we, like the ancient Romans, so bloated with pride over our supposed republic, our military might, our economic power, and our social dominance of the globe that we simply do not see that our own political influence is being dismantled bit by bit.
In Colorado the state legislature has instituted a referendum to determine whether or not the winner-take-all system with regard to the electoral college should be abolished in favor of a percentile distribution. (e.g. Should 33% of the state vote Democrat this November and the other 67% Republican then 3 of the 9 electoral votes would go to to Kerry and 6 of the 9 to Bush. This would almost always result in a 4/5 split between the two parties.) The benefits of this type of vote to Democrats is questionable, in fact there are many good arguments both for and against this measure, however, that's not the issue that's really at stake here. Republican Party lawyers have threatened, or more appropriately declared their intent, to bring the constitutionality of the issue into federal court should the measure pass. The reason: a clause that states that the method of distribution of the electoral votes is to be determined by the state legislature.
While I believe that there is a great deal of legitimacy to the arguments against the abolition of the winner-take-all system, I find that that issue takes a back seat to two other issues raised by this referendum. The first is the never-ending issue of states' rights. With Republican party members contesting the legality of Colorado's decision-making process in federal court we may find that American voters, American citizens, will find themselves at the mercy of Washington-based lawyers. I find it to be a dangerous proposition that GOP lawyers would be more than willing to take the issue to court based simply on the fact that the decision will be based on a referendum rather than a vote of the state legislature?
The second issue that this raises is the fundamental flaw in a political system, claiming to be a republic, in which it is possible to view a legislature's decision to hold a referendum as potentially unconstitutional. For goodness sake, we're talking about elected officials seeking the guidance of their constituency. How does this seem any more wrong than congressmen being lobbied over thousand-dollar dinners in Washington? Why is it debatable that the citizens of this country can be allowed by their elected officials to make decisions regarding their own government? I understand that the wisdom of a republic is that it mitigates the influence of the mob, but what is the wisdom in allowing lawyers, motivated by financial interest, to question the authority of the people and the elected officials?
It seems to me that this is simply a calculated attack on the power of the average citizens of the United States, just an attempt by the political elite to weaken the ability of the people to determine their own fate in the political arena, giving more power to special interest groups and Washington insiders. In these crucial times we must, as a nation, take care in how we allow this to proceed. We must heed the warnings of our founders that true patriots question their government and not simply allow it to advance unchecked.