The Media Aren't the Enemy in Iraq

[Tom Odom]

I support a political debate as envisioned under the Constitution. Debate and dissent is not sedition.

The grandstanding has gone on on both sides. This was a snap shot taken from one side of the field.

As for neo-cons recognizing "that it is an enemy that needs to be fought," the problem is a failure to define that enemy and what defeating him requires, what it will cost, and what the results may bring.

Best

Tom

[slapout9]

Tom, you said a lot in this statement!

As for neo-cons recognizing "that it is an enemy that needs to be fought," the problem is a failure to define that enemy and what defeating him requires, what it will cost, and what the results may bring.

Very well said.

[Culpeper]

I support a political debate as envisioned under the Constitution. Debate and dissent is not sedition.

The grandstanding has gone on on both sides. This was a snap shot taken from one side of the field.

As for neo-cons recognizing "that it is an enemy that needs to be fought," the problem is a failure to define that enemy and what defeating him requires, what it will cost, and what the results may bring.

Best

Tom

Debate and dissent is loyal opposition. Sedition is making comments that may disrupt the recruitment of the armed forces, among other things.

[marct]

Debate and dissent is loyal opposition. Sedition is making comments that may disrupt the recruitment of the armed forces, among other things.

Culpepper, by analogy, then, it would have been sedition for anyone to say anything against Hitler in Germany. It appears to me that you are advocating a really dangerous precedent, here. "Democracy", at its root, is rule by the people (actually, tribe - "demos" - but that's nitpicking on my part ).

At the core of any working democratic system, republican, constitutional monarchy or insane kludge (yeah, I'm thinking of France now), is the idea that everyone should have the ability to say what they think no matter how stupid, pig headed or opposed to entrenched interest groups (like politicians) that may be.

Nobody with two neurons to rub together and a knowledge of human history would say that "democracy", in any of its forms, is "perfect". In the West, we trace "democracy" back to Athens - such a wonderful "democratic" state where maybe 10% of the population could vote. I should also point out that Athens lost their big war because of demagogues, politicians such as we see today (Alcibiades comes to mind). If Athens had had a free press, then that might not have happened.

Sedition should, to my mind, be restricted to acts that material damage the social contract of the democracy in which they operate, not to speach acts that oppose what many people disagree with. Once "sedition" is applied to any who disgree with the rulers of the society, then you no longer live in a democracy.

Marc

[Culpeper]

Marct

I couldn't agree with your more but America has used sedition acts to enforce the flow of information or conduct that could be counterproductive to a war effort, national security, or in the best interest of the government to prevent people from weakening the government depending on the circumstance. The bottom line is that national security trumps any Constitutional rights. Sedition acts of the past have been used and later repealed after the need no longer existed. I consider politicians such as Barbara Boxer as being very seditionist and counterproductive to the war effort. It has nothing to do with political debate, dissent, or rights under the First Amendment. In fact, her actions are an abuse of such freedom.

[marct]

Hi Culpeper,

I couldn't agree with your more but America has used sedition acts to enforce the flow of information or conduct that could be counterproductive to a war effort, national security, or in the best interest of the government to prevent people from weakening the government depending on the circumstance.

I certainly agree with you that it has been done in the past. This doesn't, to mind, necessarily make it right. After all, the original Continental Congress was sedition as were many of the acts of your founding fathers. It strikes me that there is a balanceing line that floats somewhere between sedition, defined as destroying the social contract, and sedition defined as opposing the government.

Generally, I find myself opposed to the first, except in extreme circumstances (hey, I'm descended from United Empire Loyalists ). The second, however, I find myself supporting. I don't think that any group of people, and that's all a "government" is, has a monopoly on "truth" <shrug>. Honestly, I do think that a large part of this stems from the US having a de facto two party system where your head of state has to be a member of one of the parties.

The bottom line is that national security trumps any Constitutional rights.

Honestly, I can't agree with that. Your constitution is your social contract, and one of the few in the world's history that has ever been openly stated and debated. If it guarentees something as a right, then that must hold until your constitution is changed, otherwise you are destroying all of it.

"National security" means more than just a surface veneer of stability and "business as usual" - it means a security of the soul of the nation and, for the US, the soul of you nation is the constitution as it is held in the hearts and minds of your citizens. Changing your constitution from time to time is a necessary adaptation. Abrogating it is an abomination; it is literally selling your soul for short term "gains".

We learned this, or at least some of us did, when we interned Japanesse-Canadians. In 1939, Tommy Douglas, then leader of the CCF, tried to warn us of the cost it would have for our national soul, and the government of the time didn't listen. Our "national soul" wasn't built around a constitution but, rather, around a long and often painful history of developing toleration (it goes back to the documents of surrender of Quebec in 1760). We forgot that, and we are still paying the price for it. I would strongly urge you to learn from our mistake, and not make the same one.

Marc

[AFlynn]

"National security" means more than just a surface veneer of stability and "business as usual" - it means a security of the soul of the nation and, for the US, the soul of you nation is the constitution as it is held in the hearts and minds of your citizens. Changing your constitution from time to time is a necessary adaptation. Abrogating it is an abomination; it is literally selling your soul for short term "gains".

We learned this, or at least some of us did, when we interned Japanesse-Canadians. In 1939, Tommy Douglas, then leader of the CCF, tried to warn us of the cost it would have for our national soul, and the government of the time didn't listen. Our "national soul" wasn't built around a constitution but, rather, around a long and often painful history of developing toleration (it goes back to the documents of surrender of Quebec in 1760). We forgot that, and we are still paying the price for it. I would strongly urge you to learn from our mistake, and not make the same one.
Marc

Earl Warren makes an interesting case study here, as he was all for japanese internment, but deeply regretted it afterward.

"Implicit in the term 'national defense' is the notion of defending those values and ideals which set this Nation apart. For almost two centuries, our country has taken singular pride in the democratic ideals enshrined in its Constitution, and the most cherished of those ideals have found expression in the First Amendment. It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties - the freedom of association - which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile.

US v. Robel (1967)

[marct]

Earl Warren makes an interesting case study here, as he was all for japanese internment, but deeply regretted it afterward.

Thanks for the reference, I'll try and look it up . In the Tommy Douglas case (it was a speach to Parliament), part of his objections were based on the differential status applied to "enemy aliens" - German-Canadians had about 500 or so interned and there were about 1000 Italian-Canadians interned. This is compared with about 90% of Japanese-Canadians.

Part of the point I was trying to make, and apologies to Culpepper because it probably didn't come through now that I reread my post, is that a two-party system that elects its head of state will be inevitably polarized. IMO, one of the main strengths of a constitutional monarchy is the ability to seperate the head of government from the head of state, so attacking the policies of the head of government is unlikely ever to be commonly viewed as "sedition". Since the Crown has almost no de facto power, although it has a lot of de jure power that is only used in extreme situations, this tends to mean that you actually get a more "democratic" government than you do in a republican system. Then again, I am a member of the Monarchist League

Marc

[Eddie Beaver]

Marct

I couldn't agree with your more but America has used sedition acts to enforce the flow of information or conduct that could be counterproductive to a war effort, national security, or in the best interest of the government to prevent people from weakening the government depending on the circumstance. The bottom line is that national security trumps any Constitutional rights. Sedition acts of the past have been used and later repealed after the need no longer existed. I consider politicians such as Barbara Boxer as being very seditionist and counterproductive to the war effort. It has nothing to do with political debate, dissent, or rights under the First Amendment. In fact, her actions are an abuse of such freedom.

And that's where you lose me if you believe such acts are relevant today in the post-Vietnam era (i.e. where the government flat-out lied to the American people and itself for a decade).

By the definition you're using here, I would consider the great majority of the leadership of the USG to be guilty of conduct that has been counterproductive to the war effort, to national security and to the strength of the government and of the national health.

Barbara Boxer employs stupid catch-phrases and political spin, these people employ bad actions and utterly bone-headed decision making.

We're at war, and thus far these people, as well as the Congress and the courts, have acted like a bunch of rank amateurs, like some sort of sickness that has debilitated leading Americans on all sides of the political spectrum.

Abuses of freedom is a category Boxer could not dream of being in; unlike the Bush Administration abusing the understandable degree of flexibility and freedom authorized them to protect the nation from terrorists by imprisoning an admitted knucklehead US citizen like Jose Padilla and turning him into a vegetable, all while playing footsie with the court system trying to do everything to keep their baseless case against him away from the Supreme Court.

Or better yet, the abuse of freedom to be secretive and shroud identities, procedures and evidence in the cloak of national security shown by the CIA leakers who have waged a relentless war against the administration for years now.

If you're this concerned with Sen. Boxer and others like her, you're staring at a feces-stained wall of the politically stupid while the tsunami of bitter realities and harsh truths prepares to sweep you from behind.

[AFlynn]

What we need is another George Creel.

"I did not deny the need of a large measure of secrecy in connection with the war effort, but insisted that the desired results could be obtained without paying the heavy price of a censorship law. With America's youth sailing to fight in foreign lands, leaving families three thousand miles behind them, nothing was more vital than that the people's confidence in the news should not be impaired. Suspicious enough by reason of natural anxieties, a straight-out censorship would inevitably stir demoralizing fears in the heart of every father and mother and open the door to every variety of rumor."
...
"What the Government asks of the Press: Observe secrecy respect to troop movements, ship sailings, convoys, the number of expeditionary forces abroad, the location of bases, the laying of mine fields, information relating to antiaircraft defenses, shipbuilding, and government experiements in war materiel...their enforcement is a matter for the press itself"
...
"After the rules for voluntary censorship, the nexst step, obviously, was the fight for national unity. Here I proceeded on the theory that before a sound steadfast public opinion could be formed, it had to be informed. Not manipulated, not tricked, and not wheedled, but given every fact in the case. A free people were not children to be humored, cajoled, or lollipopped with half-truths for fear that the whole truth might frighten them. The war was not the war of the administration or the private enterprise of the General Staff, but the grim business of a whole people, and every man, woman, and child had to be given a feeling of partnership. What we did, therefore, was to put trained reporters in the War Department, the Navy, and every other agency connected with the war machine, and every day saw an honest, unvarnished report of progress to the people."

From Rebel At Large, Recollections of Fifty Crowded Years pgs 156-165

As for who volunteers for the Army, I don't think you can hand-wave away economics. Plenty of kids I knew in high school are in the armed forces for plenty of different reasons, including "I want language training and money for college." It's not mercenary, but there are definitely people for whom it is not "easier to get an equally paying governmental civil job or go to college."