Is That Right?

Our faith is our strength
--motto of Tristan da Cunha 

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the
Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination
--John Keats 

Freedom is a bourgeois prejudice
V.I. Lenin 
__________________  

"Truth", "Freedom", "Rights", "liberties", endowments ... these terms occur in our foundational documents, but have never been definitively explained. That is why a person like Edward Snowden is either deified or demonized -- we are not sure what we are allowed to do.

The most famous line from the Declaration of Independence (1776) states:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

But in a society based upon laws, definition is important. How can these be "self evident" when at the time of the Declaration's writing, all men (= people) were not treated as though they had been "created equal[ly]"? If they are "truths", then they would have trumped behavior to the contrary.

It would take the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteen Amendments to confer freedom, full citizenship and the right to vote upon black males. It would not be until the 19th Amendment (ratified in 1920) that women would gain the right of suffrage.

Perhaps one may believe in universal equality of the construction of man, yet still believe that some few ubermensch retain the right to overmaster them. However, that is not societal equality, of the sort that a government document may confer. Further, how can it be "true" and "self-evident" that all are created equally when the observed evidence is so contrary. 

If rights are inalienable, they why need they be conferred by a "Creator"? If one were a citizen atheist, one still maintains his rights even though he denies they have been conferred upon him by a Creator. If rights are inalienable to my existence, then they need not be conferred, and are just a fact. 

If rights are "inalienable", then they are indwelling in the human, and may not be divorced by fiat or behavior. The Existentialists argued for man's radical freedom, even in cases of incarceration or death sentence, but that is a philosophical argument arguing for freedom in one's head space, a domain on which the government has not yet intruded. 

Justice Brandeis sought to protect that intangible freedom in his dissent in Olmstead (1934), when he foresaw a time when governments might develop and enlist technology to invade even that private sphere -- a "thought police", of sorts. However, one's actual physical condition may indeed be constricted, either by one's violation of his contract with the State or bad faith behavior of the State itself. So one's essential "liberty" is not a truth.

Liberty is not so much a right as a very tenuous condition. While an enlightened individual may eke out a mental zone of free thought when physical freedom may be denied to him, liberty is only the result of an agreement between the free man and his government, and only exists in the zone when both are performing their responsibilities correctly. Slavery and servitude is more generally man's state. 

"Life" is the one given among the "truths", but even it is not a "Right" -- life is simply a biological imperative. It is the seed seeking rich soil, the egg seeking fertilization, and then implantation. The impetus to life is a dumb fact if one is existing on this planet, much as when life has been extinguished, death and the absence of life will be a fact.

The Articles of Confederation also alludes to the “Great Governor of the World.” Were these references to a Big Guy just sops to simple people fleeing religious persecution? Many of the Founders were Deists, but they also believed in an "unmoved mover", a disinterested creator of all that is.

In Jefferson’s view, the rising generation, once sustained by complete liberty of conscience, would abandon religions based on biblical revelation in favor of those founded on reason. “There is not a young man now living in the United States,” he predicted in 1822, “who will not die a Unitarian.” (Separation of Church and State.) But reason had its day with The Enlightenment.

In fact, there are NO inalienable rights; ask Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. There are "rights" conferred by government, rights which may be abridged, abrogated or annulled, either judicially or extralegally.

We must be honest about who we are and what we want if we are to understand our present condition, yet who can do this even on a personal level? Our founders were brilliant and brave, their rhetoric soaring, but the words belie terrific contradictions and outright misstatements.

We are a riven society because men are riven, and men have created these concepts called rights.

[cross-posted @ milpub]

Free Throw

We have fallen down again tonight 

In this world it's hard to get it right 

--Everybody, Ingrid Michaelson

 [NOTE: Due to an editorial error, yesterday's post 
incorrectly contained two different pieces of writing.

 Today, we will publish Jim's portion. --ed.]

_____________________

There's a lot of discussion and outrage about the racial remarks made by an 81 year-old billionaire  somewhere in a world uninhabited by people like this Ranger.

Even the President and Michael Eric Dyson have expressed their shock and ire at the comments. The NBA Commissioner Silver is moving to force Sterling to sell his team.

But wait a minute here. Doesn't Ranger remember 46 years ago taking an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, both foreign and domestic? Didn't I go off to war as a result of this oath?

Please correct my thinking, but isn't one of those things covered by this oath a little thing called "freedom of speech"? If a billionaire doesn't have freedom of speech then my oath of allegiance was certainly a wasted effort.

What is democracy without freedom of speech? Even if that speech is reprehensible.

NSA -- Back to Basics

 _____________________

In every Terrorism awareness training session in the 1980's was a block of instruction called "Legal Aspects of Terrorism," taught by a qualified lawyer in the field and often complemented by an FBI Counterintelligence specialist.

The FBI presence was essential since their counterintelligence function was connected to the criminal nature of Terrorism. The FBI was a law enforcement agency that also used intelligence to counter the threat, but the intel function served to bring criminal activity to court for a judicial determination before a jury.

This function of law enforcement (LE) is the basis of our judicial system. Warrants are issued to LE under probable cause, in accord with the 4th Amendment. The Constitution does not provide for the issuance of warrants to anyone but LE for anything except the investigation of reasonable allegations of a crime. Again, the warrant is issued in order to collect evidence to present to a courtroom to determine the guilt or innocence of the accused (and or course, innocence is presumed.) 

So how does an intelligence analyst operating outside of the LE community usurp the right to request warrants and collect evidence that does not support LE? Why are we ignoring this important fact in the current National Security Administration (NSA) discussions?

Neither the NSA nor the Central Intelligence Agency are anything but intel functionaries separate from LE. The NSA and CIA are intel, classified, closed, interbred and are trained to manipulate and cherry pick data for support of policy. How have intel analysts acquired the right to request warrants separate from LE purposes? Further, since they are contravening the legal procedures accorded the Constitutionally authorized agencies, how will the data they collect be used?

 

Terrorism is a crime and the collection of evidence to prove such should follow established legal procedure. Analysts are not police and do not serve police functions UNLESS they are working in a LE organization. While all LE agencies utilize intel analysts, those analysts operate under the LE aegis in order for their data collection to support an arrest capacity. 

 

Do NSA analysts need search warrants? Why issue a warrant if the information gathered will never reach a courtroom? Why has the U.S. created a Terrorism response that is not 100% tied to our legal system? The data gathered by these non-LE agencies may result in actionable evidence, but not prosecutable, so why the legal aura granted by issuance of a non-necessary warrant? 

As RangerAgainstWar has written before, all Terror events like those of 9-11-01 give off indicators of the activity, and shotgun policies are not the best way to counter the threat. The disconnect is the interface between LE -- whose data need not be classified -- and intelligence agencies. The two organizations operate in separate, non-mutually supportive, spheres. To date, there has not been a court case adjudicated on NSA-gathered evidence. 

There are things worse than Terror incidents, and one of these is the disconnection of the citizen from the information he needs in order to be an informed member of his nation who can vote responsibly. If our votes do not direct policy then the concept of voting is meaningless.

Think: Has there ever been a U.S. national leader who was elected on the platform of promising to make our government "more secretive"? If we do not buy into secrecy before the election, why do we accept it afterwards?

If our government prioritizes secrecy over transparency, we have moved from a democracy into the realm of autocracy.

Obama Messiah

 If telling the truth is bad manners,
then we will have bad manners 
--Sabotage (1936) 

I'm from the government
and I'm here to help 
--Ronald Reagan 

Thank you, sir,
may I have another?
--Animal House (1978)
___________________

President Obama says he will protect the American people, while concomitantly whittling our civil rights down to size. But who better to corral than Munchkins? Yet again, he is overreaching his job description. The President does not protect us physically; Job #1 of our Chief Executive is to protect and uphold the Constitution. 

Mr. Obama is co-opting the rhetoric of his erstwhile mentor Reverend Wright when he suggests he is our individual protector on this earthly plane.  Are we so cowed and puerile that we accept this power-grab, and then accept Attorney General Eric Holder as Obama's "Sin Eater", functioning as inmate John Coffey did in Stephen King's derivative story The Green Mile (appealing to the simple idea of one individual as repository and magnet for all sin?)

Do we hear the gospel lyrics, "His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me" when we think of our President? If so, we may as well be in the land of the opium eaters.

We have an entire apparatus of government to handle the function of personal protection, to include the States, state-controlled police assets and their governors (unless you live in Florida.) Have we become so conditioned to paternalism that we find this perversion of duty to be a comfort? 

Protecting lives is a paltry exercise of authority compared to the concept of protecting our core values. A life without rights of privacy or fear from capricious and arbitrary imprisonment, or one in which the President can order secret prisons, renditions, kidnappings, assassinations, torture and aggressive wars is not free.  The life of a man in such a society does not need a protector.

That man is already safely ensconced in his cage of unfreedom.