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Talking Turkey

By on November 18, 2007 0

I see that Hürriyet, Turkey’s main – sometimes I think only! – national newspaper (the name means “liberty,” or equally “republic”), has an article on Ron Paul. (Conical hat tip to LRC, which reports that the coverage is largely favourable.)

What little Turkish I once knew (from back in the 1990s when I was dating a Turkish woman) has pretty much expired, but I think the headline means something like “Behold, dollars rule! – The World Wide Web is vomiting forth American dollars on behalf of surprise U.S. presidential candidate Ron Paul ….” (I would not recommend too much confidence in this translation, however.)

Well, I imagine that the prospect of an American President who isn’t constantly forcing Turkey to choose between maintaining good relations with its neighbours (both European and Middle Eastern) and maintaining good relations with the U.S. might be something of a relief.

Hold-fast Is the Only Dodd

By on November 15, 2007 1

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

In tonight’s Democratic debate, when asked which should take priority, national security or human rights, Chris Dodd said something like the following: “National security, of course. When the President takes the oath of office, he swears to do two things: to protect the Constitution, and to protect our national security. So clearly national security is number one.” Later on in the debate he repeated the first half of this odd claim, saying something like: “The President doesn’t swear to protect the country or protect the Constitution, he swears to do both.”

Chris Dodd Now even if it were true that the President swears to do both those things, it’s hard to see what would entitle Dodd to conclude that the second one must take precedence over the first. But in fact there’s nothing about national security in the presidential oath of office:

I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Now perhaps someone might argue that protecting national security is involved in “faithfully execut[ing] the Office of President of the United States.” But in the Constitution’s listing of presidential duties, the only presidential function that has anything to do with national security is serving as “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual service of the United States.” And who determines when or whether the army, navy, and/or militia are to be “called into the actual service of the United States”? The Congress. The President is not supposed to be proactive in military policy; he’s supposed to lead the troops against enemies of Congress’s choosing, at a time of Congress’s choosing, for a duration of Congress’s choosing. There’s no way of construing this modest assignment into some sort of sweeping license to suspend constitutional rights in the interest of national security.

So either a) Dodd is lying, or b) he doesn’t know what’s in the oath he’s so desperate to take or the Constitution he’s so eager, or c) he thinks protecting the Constitution just means protecting “it” from foreign invasion and not, say, protecting the rights enumerated in its text.

Now I, obviously, don’t think that protecting the Constitution and protecting human rights amount to the same thing, and I don’t much care about presidential oaths one way or another. Still, it’s clear enough that the function of Dodd’s surreptitiously slipping the presidential oath’s actual requirement (protecting the Constitution) into second place behind its invented requirement (protecting national security) was to downplay the importance of rights, and to lend colour of law – or colour of presidential oath, anyway – to such downplaying. So, for the record: the presidential oath clearly places constitutional rights above national security. If you don’t like those priorities, then for God’s sake stop running for the job that requires you to swear to uphold them.

Playing With Fire

By on November 13, 2007 24

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

Because Ron Paul sponsored a constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning, some critics have inferred (not unreasonably) that he supports bans on flag-burning. In fact he doesn’t; he was simply trying to make the point that such bans would presently be unconstitutional, and so that those who do favour making flag-burning illegal are obligated to amend the Constitution.

It was for similar reasons that Paul introduced a declaration of war against Iraq – not because he supports such a war (nobody who’s followed his campaign even slightly could suppose that), but because he wanted to make the point that a war is unconstitutional unless Congress declares it – so that if his colleagues take the Constitution seriously they should show it by, um, doing their wrong deeds the right way.

Okay, I get it; but I don’t much care for the strategy.

burning flag What’s my objection? Well, I’m not making the criticism that his introducing these proposals is risky because Congress might actually vote for them; if the mood of the Congress were such that they had a chance of passing, someone else would already have introduced them, so I don’t think it was especially risky (though it is disconcerting to see a loaded gun being tossed around to make a political point, even if the safety is on).

No, my complaint is that this strategy focuses unduly on the unconstitutionality of Congress’s misdeeds rather than their wrongness. Paul clearly doesn’t think that aggressive wars and flag-burning bans would be unobjectionable if only they were constitutional; but his strategy could encourage that belief.

Of course as an anarchist I don’t regard the Constitution as having any authority; but I don’t think my criticism depends on that point. Assume the truth of minarchism; or assume the correctness of Barnett’s case for the anarcho-compatibility of the Constitution; or even just assume (and this much is definitely true) that a federal government that kept itself within constitutional bounds would be enormously, staggeringly preferable to the one we have now – and I still think my criticism holds. However objectionable a law’s unconstitutionality is (and I do think, as things stand, that a law’s being unconstitutional is a serious ceteris paribus objection to it), such a law’s being inherently unjust is surely a more serious objection to it. As a political strategy, introducing resolutions encouraging Congress to pass unjust constitutional amendments in order to render other unjust actions constitutional (thus making the Constitution more unjust – as though whatever legitimacy the Constitution possesses could be independent of its content!) can only foster the misleading impression that unconstitutionality is a more serious problem than injustice. I’m not saying that Paul believes that; I don’t think he does. But I do think he has been trying to serve two masters – constitutionality and natural justice – and this particular strategy I fear serves the lesser master at the expense of the greater.

Incidentally, on a tangentially related subject, can anyone tell me precisely what Ron Paul’s views on abortion are? Because I know he recently supported legislation declaring human life protected from the point of conception; but I seem to remember that back in the 90s he was supporting RU 486 (the “morning-after pill”) as a desirable alternative to abortion, which would imply that he thinks protected status begins at some point later than conception. (Didn’t he have an article in Liberty in this subject? Unfortunately my back issues are packed away.) So has he changed his mind, or is there some nuance I’m missing? Does anyone out there know more?

Bow to the Idol

By on November 11, 2007 4

First there was fussing and fuming because Barack Obama didn’t want to wear a U.S. flag pin. Now there’s more fussing and fuming because Obama didn’t put his hand over his heart during the State Loyalty Oath Pledge of Allegiance.

Obama and the flag Now I’m no great fan of Obama – who’s not the peace candidate he pretends to be – but how refreshing it is to see a candidate not going along with the flag-worship that prevails so tiresomely throughout this country!

During my recent trip to Poland I was struck by the fact that I saw only two Polish flags the entire time I was in the country. What a relief. In the U.S., American flags are in your face aggressively, everywhere. And the whole thing is one big use/mention confusion, like promising people life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and then giving them a shiny sticker that says “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” instead.

Rage for the Machine

By on November 9, 2007 0

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

Thanks to the Mises Institute, Isabel Paterson’s 1943 classic The God of the Machine is now online (as a honking big PDF file). The book’s central thesis is that there are systematic analogies between political structure and engineering structure, and that the freest and most prosperous societies historically have been those which adopted the appropriate structure. But such a bald description of its thesis falls short of conveying the brilliant, fascinating, witty, eloquent, insightful and sometimes frustrating character of this libertarian masterpiece.

Isabel Paterson and the glowing ovoid When I first read this book, probably around 1982, I thought it was one of the most exciting books I’d ever read, and it had an enormous influence on me – for better or worse! Paterson’s arguments were in fact one of the reasons it took me so long to convert to anarchism (not till 1991, from having first become a libertarian in 1979); she’d convinced me that a free society requires the right political structure. She was perfectly right, of course; her mistake, and mine, was thinking of political structure solely in terms of state structure, and so failing to see that an anarchy has political structure too. I have plenty of other beefs with the book (her analysis of the role of big business in American history, for instance, is sometimes too right-libertarian, albeit not consistently so), and I still don’t know quite what to make of her engineering analogies (which she denied were analogies!). For some of my skirmishes with Paterson’s ideas see here, here, and here. But the book still rocks.

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