Habeas corpus
Habeas corpus, apparently not so much according to leading Republican candidates.
Putting them against Thomas Jefferson ( I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution), Winston Churchill (...the great principle of habeas corpus and trial by jury, which are the supreme protection invented by the British people for ordinary individuals against the state. The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him judgement by his peers for an indefinite period, is in the highest degree odious, and is the foundation of all totalitarian governments.
It is only when extreme danger to the state can be pleaded that this power may be temporarily assumed by the executive, and even so its working must be interpreted with the utmost vigilance by a free parliament...
Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy. This is really the test of civilisation.) and Mr Justice Antonin Scalia (The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive).
This being part of a quite explicit rejection of the Goldwater/Reagan libertarian-conservative fusion. A shift noted as being in the wind by a couple of libertarian commentators ten years ago.
There seems to have been a triple shift. First, the commitment to a radical foreign policy. Second, the commitment to a much more explicitly religious-based social policy. Third, an acceptance of government action not motivated by anything other than a form of tribalism. Whether it is the tribalism of political favours or the tribalism of “us against them”.
Tribalism is unprincipled in the sense that, as long as government is supporting “us” against “them”, then it is OK. Hence Romney (Crane asked if Romney believed the president should have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens with no review. Romney said he would want to hear the pros and cons from smart lawyers before he made up his mind) and Guiliani (Crane said that he had asked Giuliani the same question a few weeks ago. The mayor said that he would want to use this authority infrequently) “not getting” habeas corpus.
Hardly the first time in US history. War is tribalism par excellence, one reason friends of liberty have been so askance about it. Both Abraham Lincoln and FDR suspended habeas corpus. But the present struggle is not remotely as dire as those they were engaged in. Moreover, Lincoln’s action has since been rejected (most recently in the Hamdi judgement) as has FDR’s-most notably in an act compensating Japanese-Americans signed by Ronald Reagan.
It is natural to tribalism to lack a sense of humility about one’s own actions and capacities. The fundamental critique of overweening confidence in government is to understand that the problems of government are inherent in its nature. They are not solved by having the “correct” intentions or being done by “good” people.
It is even more natural to being motivated by a “grand cause” to lack a sense of humility about one’s own actions and capacities. What passes for the conservative movement in the US nowadays has managed to join both forms of lack of humility together-tribalism and grand causes. So they have come to resemble more and more the Left at its worst. In the words of the above-cited 1997 article: We now worry that the conservative movement has abandoned the ideal of conserving simple rules in favor of a governing doctrine indistinguishable from the manipulative statism of its opponents. A contributing factor in this resemblance may have been the influx of people who were themselves refugees from the Left but may have carried considerable baggage across with them.
Part of the problem may be the inherent difficulties of conservatism in a technologically and socially dynamic society in a period of particularly dramatic change. In the words of the 1997 article again: What ails conservatism these days is that many conservatives, especially in Washington, are deeply alienated from American life. The pages of conservative publications have become a collection of complaints: about electronic technology and biotechnology, high culture and popular culture, intellectual life and family life.
… These conservatives view America's very creativity and exuberance a cause for dismay. Conserving free institutions doesn't satisfy their desire to discipline a rambunctuously productive country. Freedom makes them uncomfortable, because it entails a dynamic, open-ended future rather than prescribing a static, politically determined one.
The libertarian strain in the Goldwater/Reagan fusionist politics clearly was important in encouraging a healthy scepticism about government action. In particular, in encouraging the view that American society was healthy at base: that removing distorting, or changing ill-conceived, government action was the first way to consider restoring social health. It was also politically useful, not merely in the coalition-building sense, but in propounding a politics that expressed its confidence in people.
But, of course, if one is significantly alienated from that society, such an approach no longer seems attractive. (Such alienation being something many contemporary conservatives share with much of the Left.) And your politics will less and less be about confidence in people and more and more about lack of the same.
The fundamental problem with attempts to turn conservatism into a coherent political philosophy is that it ends up being at the mercy of the morally arbitrary nature of what has passed down from previous generations. But the problem is worse if one does not want to even conserve much of what exists. For what instrument is available to manage this mighty goal of reversing social trends? Only government, of course. And what benchmark will one cite to reverse or control such trends? The sort of nostalgic traditionalism that religion provides by far the most potent form of.
Which is not to deny that, for example, dealing with the jihadis does not involve some genuinely new problems. But attempting to do so unanchored in any sense of learned humility from the past is extremely dangerous. As, for example, Winston Churchill well understood. (Though he was always rather more of a Burkean liberal than a genuine conservative.)
Such learned humility as the keeping the political and religious realms separate. James Madison has some apposite things to say on such matters: During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. Which helped him conclude that: Religion & Govt. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.
It is perfectly clear that neither the Jesus of the Gospels nor the Apostles of the Acts were attempting to be political legislators. Living and preaching in the highly ordered Roman Empire, questions of political order were not their concern. Christianity later strongly ventured into such matters (though very rarely into full theocracy). With the results that led the American Founders to be pioneers in the separation of Church and State.
Muhammad, by contrast, very much was a political legislator as well as a religious figure. The current state of Islam, especially in the Middle East, is not exactly a rousing recommendation for religious politics. (Nor are the relatively brief periods of Islamic splendour, and the long periods of chaos and stagnation.) Particularly not in dealing with the problems of modernity. It is simply arrogance to assume one’s own religion is somehow immune to the problems of mixing religion and government just as it is simply arrogance to assume one’s politics can simply trump the inherent problems of government or one’s views have priority over intellectual openness and free speech.
And beating one’s breast about one’s dedication to America does not make tribalism less of a contradiction of the fundamental ideas of the American Revolution. In no country is the difference between patriotism (commitment to one’s country) and nationalism (commitment to one’s ethnic group conceived as a political entity)-a distinction that is central to the Anglosphere generally-more stark than in the US. Nationalists-those who think the US is some ethnic creation-are a despised fringe. They simply do not “get” a US where a black woman can be the most admired political figure, particularly among conservatives. They do not stop and think about what it means that officials and soldiers in the US swear to uphold the American Constitution. Nor does religious tribalism make it any better, it is merely more popular (and therefore more dangerous).
It has long been my view that American politics is largely divided between two groups each accusing the other of “not getting” the American Revolution, and both being correct. But the Republicans are currently “not getting” the American Revolution much more than the Democrats. With clear political effects.
The Republican political brand is in trouble with polls showing a strong decline in Republican identification and rise in Democrat identification.
The pattern is particularly strong among the young. 18-25 year old show the lowest level of (pdf) Republican identification for at least 20 years. If you are profoundly against the direction society is heading in and fearful of the future, the young are hardly friendly territory.
But it does leave the question of how American politics will evolve. Acton’s party of liberty seems to be very thin in US politics at the moment.
Putting them against Thomas Jefferson ( I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution), Winston Churchill (...the great principle of habeas corpus and trial by jury, which are the supreme protection invented by the British people for ordinary individuals against the state. The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him judgement by his peers for an indefinite period, is in the highest degree odious, and is the foundation of all totalitarian governments.
It is only when extreme danger to the state can be pleaded that this power may be temporarily assumed by the executive, and even so its working must be interpreted with the utmost vigilance by a free parliament...
Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy. This is really the test of civilisation.) and Mr Justice Antonin Scalia (The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive).
This being part of a quite explicit rejection of the Goldwater/Reagan libertarian-conservative fusion. A shift noted as being in the wind by a couple of libertarian commentators ten years ago.
There seems to have been a triple shift. First, the commitment to a radical foreign policy. Second, the commitment to a much more explicitly religious-based social policy. Third, an acceptance of government action not motivated by anything other than a form of tribalism. Whether it is the tribalism of political favours or the tribalism of “us against them”.
Tribalism is unprincipled in the sense that, as long as government is supporting “us” against “them”, then it is OK. Hence Romney (Crane asked if Romney believed the president should have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens with no review. Romney said he would want to hear the pros and cons from smart lawyers before he made up his mind) and Guiliani (Crane said that he had asked Giuliani the same question a few weeks ago. The mayor said that he would want to use this authority infrequently) “not getting” habeas corpus.
Hardly the first time in US history. War is tribalism par excellence, one reason friends of liberty have been so askance about it. Both Abraham Lincoln and FDR suspended habeas corpus. But the present struggle is not remotely as dire as those they were engaged in. Moreover, Lincoln’s action has since been rejected (most recently in the Hamdi judgement) as has FDR’s-most notably in an act compensating Japanese-Americans signed by Ronald Reagan.
It is natural to tribalism to lack a sense of humility about one’s own actions and capacities. The fundamental critique of overweening confidence in government is to understand that the problems of government are inherent in its nature. They are not solved by having the “correct” intentions or being done by “good” people.
It is even more natural to being motivated by a “grand cause” to lack a sense of humility about one’s own actions and capacities. What passes for the conservative movement in the US nowadays has managed to join both forms of lack of humility together-tribalism and grand causes. So they have come to resemble more and more the Left at its worst. In the words of the above-cited 1997 article: We now worry that the conservative movement has abandoned the ideal of conserving simple rules in favor of a governing doctrine indistinguishable from the manipulative statism of its opponents. A contributing factor in this resemblance may have been the influx of people who were themselves refugees from the Left but may have carried considerable baggage across with them.
Part of the problem may be the inherent difficulties of conservatism in a technologically and socially dynamic society in a period of particularly dramatic change. In the words of the 1997 article again: What ails conservatism these days is that many conservatives, especially in Washington, are deeply alienated from American life. The pages of conservative publications have become a collection of complaints: about electronic technology and biotechnology, high culture and popular culture, intellectual life and family life.
… These conservatives view America's very creativity and exuberance a cause for dismay. Conserving free institutions doesn't satisfy their desire to discipline a rambunctuously productive country. Freedom makes them uncomfortable, because it entails a dynamic, open-ended future rather than prescribing a static, politically determined one.
The libertarian strain in the Goldwater/Reagan fusionist politics clearly was important in encouraging a healthy scepticism about government action. In particular, in encouraging the view that American society was healthy at base: that removing distorting, or changing ill-conceived, government action was the first way to consider restoring social health. It was also politically useful, not merely in the coalition-building sense, but in propounding a politics that expressed its confidence in people.
But, of course, if one is significantly alienated from that society, such an approach no longer seems attractive. (Such alienation being something many contemporary conservatives share with much of the Left.) And your politics will less and less be about confidence in people and more and more about lack of the same.
The fundamental problem with attempts to turn conservatism into a coherent political philosophy is that it ends up being at the mercy of the morally arbitrary nature of what has passed down from previous generations. But the problem is worse if one does not want to even conserve much of what exists. For what instrument is available to manage this mighty goal of reversing social trends? Only government, of course. And what benchmark will one cite to reverse or control such trends? The sort of nostalgic traditionalism that religion provides by far the most potent form of.
Which is not to deny that, for example, dealing with the jihadis does not involve some genuinely new problems. But attempting to do so unanchored in any sense of learned humility from the past is extremely dangerous. As, for example, Winston Churchill well understood. (Though he was always rather more of a Burkean liberal than a genuine conservative.)
Such learned humility as the keeping the political and religious realms separate. James Madison has some apposite things to say on such matters: During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. Which helped him conclude that: Religion & Govt. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.
It is perfectly clear that neither the Jesus of the Gospels nor the Apostles of the Acts were attempting to be political legislators. Living and preaching in the highly ordered Roman Empire, questions of political order were not their concern. Christianity later strongly ventured into such matters (though very rarely into full theocracy). With the results that led the American Founders to be pioneers in the separation of Church and State.
Muhammad, by contrast, very much was a political legislator as well as a religious figure. The current state of Islam, especially in the Middle East, is not exactly a rousing recommendation for religious politics. (Nor are the relatively brief periods of Islamic splendour, and the long periods of chaos and stagnation.) Particularly not in dealing with the problems of modernity. It is simply arrogance to assume one’s own religion is somehow immune to the problems of mixing religion and government just as it is simply arrogance to assume one’s politics can simply trump the inherent problems of government or one’s views have priority over intellectual openness and free speech.
And beating one’s breast about one’s dedication to America does not make tribalism less of a contradiction of the fundamental ideas of the American Revolution. In no country is the difference between patriotism (commitment to one’s country) and nationalism (commitment to one’s ethnic group conceived as a political entity)-a distinction that is central to the Anglosphere generally-more stark than in the US. Nationalists-those who think the US is some ethnic creation-are a despised fringe. They simply do not “get” a US where a black woman can be the most admired political figure, particularly among conservatives. They do not stop and think about what it means that officials and soldiers in the US swear to uphold the American Constitution. Nor does religious tribalism make it any better, it is merely more popular (and therefore more dangerous).
It has long been my view that American politics is largely divided between two groups each accusing the other of “not getting” the American Revolution, and both being correct. But the Republicans are currently “not getting” the American Revolution much more than the Democrats. With clear political effects.
The Republican political brand is in trouble with polls showing a strong decline in Republican identification and rise in Democrat identification.
The pattern is particularly strong among the young. 18-25 year old show the lowest level of (pdf) Republican identification for at least 20 years. If you are profoundly against the direction society is heading in and fearful of the future, the young are hardly friendly territory.
But it does leave the question of how American politics will evolve. Acton’s party of liberty seems to be very thin in US politics at the moment.