The Pendulum
After reading Judge Napolitano's A Nation of Sheep, I remarked (possibly here) that reading the book gave me a small measure of hope. Napolitano chronicles the erosions of our civil liberties over the last century and a half, and particularly studies direct assaults on our liberties during times of national crisis and/or war. I found the relative restoration of our liberties after each round of turmoil encouraging. An image of a pendulum came to mind, always swinging, always correcting its course. Even though I find the current crisis for our civil liberties alarming, America has a great system of checks and balances in place. We can count on the pendulum to swing back. (Maybe) That was not the Judge's point, but my own musing led me to that shaky conclusion.
Well, today I'm getting around to reading Naomi Wolf's End of America, and her introduction put that self-correcting pendulum argument to rest. She said two things are different about our current crisis of liberty:
1 -- In the past, the times of crisis or of war were finite. They had a definite end point, after which we could count on the pendulum swing to restore most of what was lost. Not so now. Our global "war on terror" is vague and unending. There is not a point at which we can say we've won. Until the policy is changed, our nation will be at perpetual war. That means that the suspension of our civil liberties is indefinite. Lack of them will come to seem like the norm.
2 -- In the past, we never allowed torture. If Solzhenitsyn's Gulag taught me anything at all, it taught me that torture produces ridiculous and unreliable "information." Torture somebody intensely enough or long enough, and they'll tell you anything they think you want to hear. Torture, therefore, is never used for intelligence gathering. It is used strictly for intimidation and subjugation. Wolf argues that the coupling of torture with the suspension of the rule of law and habeus corpus creates a point beyond which it become difficult to return. In other words, in order for a pendulum to swing back, it's apparatus must be intact. Dismantle it or hinder it, and the pendulum does not swing.
Sobering thoughts.
Well, today I'm getting around to reading Naomi Wolf's End of America, and her introduction put that self-correcting pendulum argument to rest. She said two things are different about our current crisis of liberty:
1 -- In the past, the times of crisis or of war were finite. They had a definite end point, after which we could count on the pendulum swing to restore most of what was lost. Not so now. Our global "war on terror" is vague and unending. There is not a point at which we can say we've won. Until the policy is changed, our nation will be at perpetual war. That means that the suspension of our civil liberties is indefinite. Lack of them will come to seem like the norm.
2 -- In the past, we never allowed torture. If Solzhenitsyn's Gulag taught me anything at all, it taught me that torture produces ridiculous and unreliable "information." Torture somebody intensely enough or long enough, and they'll tell you anything they think you want to hear. Torture, therefore, is never used for intelligence gathering. It is used strictly for intimidation and subjugation. Wolf argues that the coupling of torture with the suspension of the rule of law and habeus corpus creates a point beyond which it become difficult to return. In other words, in order for a pendulum to swing back, it's apparatus must be intact. Dismantle it or hinder it, and the pendulum does not swing.
Sobering thoughts.