|
Table of
Contents
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. |
Should George Bush have Compared Himself to Lincoln? - Several months ago George Bush compared his situation to that of Lincoln. Superficially the comparison seems apt. Lincoln was America’s leader during an unpopular war that was supposed to end quickly. Bush led the country into an attack on Iraq that was suppose to end quickly. Both wars turned into long drawn out affairs. But of course the pundits say the comparisons end there.
Perhaps that is really not true. Perhaps the comparisons are more numerous and are worthy of greater study. Consider:
1) Lincoln used a moral issue - “the end of slavery” to rally the nation to renewed effort . Bush has used - “bringing democracy and freedom to the Middle East” in the same way.
2) Lincoln, despite the fact that the North had the resources to treat southern prisoners in a humane way, keep these prisoners in horrid conditions. Bush, despite the fact that the experts say inhumane treatment is counter productive, has allowed places like Abu Grave and Guantanamo to be established and has fought against Federal Court interference.
3) Lincoln deprived his Northern critics of their civil rights in some cases jailing them, or exiling them, or having mobs destroy the newspapers that published their views; he refused to allow the Federal Courts to intervene. Bush has authorized secret tapping of citizens and refuses to submit to judicial oversight as envisioned when Congress established the right of the executive to listen in on phone conversations.
4) Lincoln decided that taxing the people to pay for the war would bring massive opposition, so he increased the Federal debt to pay for the war. Bush has followed a similar path using debt not taxes to pay for the war.
5) Lincoln realized that he would also pick up a lot of opposition to the war if he had a “inescapable draft” that required the “sons of privilege” to go in the army, so he allowed those with money to hire others to take their place in the army. Bush realizes that his war would be massively opposed if he installed a draft, so he has stayed with rotating the same men through the war zone again and again even though the evidence clearly shows that PTSD will eventually destroy the lives of between 1/3 and ½ of these men.
6) Behind the scenes, Lincoln was greatly influence by lobbyists that wanted very high import tariffs so the south would have to buy New England manufactures rather than the manufactures of England which was buying the south’s cotton. Bush has been greatly influenced by AIPAC and other pro Israel lobbyists that want the Middle East to be more accepting of western culture, western political institutions, and the existence of Israel.
7) Lincoln depended heavily on recent immigrants, particularly from Ireland, to fill the ranks and serve as cannon fodder. Bush’s Pentagon is actively recruiting in poor foreign counties as well as illegal immigrants to get the bodies needed to fill the army.
All this having been said, Lincoln and Bush are faced with a couple of major differences that have to be noted:
1) Lincoln searched for and eventually found a general for the Army of the Potomac that was willing to sacrifice his men’s lives by the thousands in order to keep unrelenting pressure on Lee’s army; over a dozen generals, to their credit, had told Lincoln they would not conduct such a campaign involving the intentional slaughter of their men. Lincoln also wanted large areas of the civilian economy in the south destroyed, he was able to find a general to do this task even though many of his fellow generals thought this commander was mentally unstable. Bush has changed commanders in Iraq several times, but so far no provocation, or excess of zeal, has caused any American general to take either Iraqi or American lives unnecessarily.
2) Lincoln was blessed in his principal adversary; Lee’s commanders asked to be allowed to drift way just before Appomattox to form guerilla bands throughout the south. Lee vetoed the idea. Lee was a gentleman and believed in “just war” ideas. Bush is facing an enemy in Iraq that is willing to kill innocents (and even their friends) to win. If Bush wants to understand the mental toughness, determination, and willingness to sacrifice (both innocents and supporters) that will be needed to prevail in Iraq, he might read a bit about the psychological make up of Grant, Sherman, and Lincoln.
In closing, it appears that at some deep level there is more to Bush’s self identification with Lincoln than at first meets the eye.
........... (Prepared by Hugh Murray on 7/7/2007)
Do Veracity and Credulity Need Reinforcement in America Today - People must operate with two essential first principles: veracity and credulity. More particularly individuals and society can only function if people are both truthful themselves and accepting of what other people say as being truthful as well. Of course, as people age they become increasing aware of people that are not always truthful about all things and indeed nearly everyone will adopt the practice of telling “white lies” to ease (or head off) embarrassing social situations.
However, sever societal difficulties arise when people lie about important things to gain financial (or other) advantage. What are some of those societal difficulties? First, people will begin demanding that statements, said to be true, be reduced to a certified writing which might be subsequently used in court, if the need arises. Second, people will begin demanding that certain people who regularly convey information to others be certified by the government as both educationally qualified and of good character. Third, people will increasingly turn to lawyers: (a) to prepare statements certifying the truth of things, (b) to develop rules, regulations, and enforcement processes for purveyors of important information, such as doctors, mortgage brokers, stockbrokers, etc., and (c) to fill cases in court to redress harms when statements are not true or when purveyors of information do not convey the full truth. Fourth, people will tend to curtail serious involvements (financial, marital, etc.) with their fellows; this in turn will lead toward the breakdown of society.
Finally, people may begin to accept the truncated, sterilized, “lawyerly” versions of truth, and they may even forget that most serious situations require that truth in it fullness and nuance be both conveyed to and absorbed by the hearer. Consider the way truth is conveyed in the typical trial. The witness swears to tell the “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”, but if a witness begins to “amplify” on his “yes/no” answer he is cut off with a curt “just answer the question”. Would this sort of truncated approach to truth be as destructive to the “veracity/credulity” needs of society as outright lying? ..........(prepared by Hugh Murray on 8/5/2007)
Two Current Cases Point up the Need for Simplified Legal Processes - The U S Supreme Court is currently coping with two cases that are unnecessarily difficult because America’s lawyers are excessively attached to making every legal proceeding into an adversary process. The two cases are the FISA Court case and the Motorola - Scientific Atlanta Case.
The first case involves the requirement that America’s intelligence agencies get permission from a special Federal Court before listening in on the telephone conversations of American citizens. The intelligence agencies complain that it takes to long to get the FISA permissions because opposing lawyers have to be educated about the facts of the case so they can argue the pros and cons before the FISA judge. Obviously the time critical nature of the intelligence process argues strongly for a different legal process. Perhaps the Judicial Branch of government should have two employees always present wherever Intelligence Agencies are operating and might want to make a quick decision to listen in on an America’s phone conversation. These two employees should be a special Federal Magistrate empowered to make such a decision and a person who is in training to become such a magistrate. Both these judicial officials should be both familiar with the applicable law and with the technology used in wiretapping. A tape recorded record should be made of (a) presentations by intelligence officials, (b) all factual investigations by the judicial officers, (c) all deliberations, and (d) the final decision. This approach would be much speeder and would allow the intelligence officials to get a decision very quickly. Periodicly, these tape recordings could be randomly checked by Congressionial Oversight Committees.
The second case involves the aiding and abetting of fraud. The specific case involves Motorola and Scientific Atlanta, both large companies, who developed a scheme with Charter Communication to defraud Charter customers by overcharging for cable boxes and then kicking back money to Charter by buying advertising on Charter channels. The Enron situation has many similarities. Enron “cooked its books” by creating special purpose entities that ended up holding a lot of Enron’s bad investments. These special purpose entities needed special expertise to properly organize. In order to get this expertise, Enron turned to organizations such a Merrill Lynch, the large brokerage entity, and Vinson and Elkins, a large Texas law firm. To date, the law has prohibited defrauded parties from suing those who “helped” organize fraud if no direct relationship existed between the defrauded party and the “helping” organizations. The strongest argument against allowing defrauded parties to sue “helping” organizations is the costs that the litigation would impose on the parties. Whether guilty or not, plaintiff’s lawyers seeing a “deep pocket” would demand endless production of documents and dozens of depositions in hopes that a pot of money would be offered just to settle the litigation and bring the harassment to an end. Obviously, defrauded parties should be compensated, but the current system of using the legal system’s discover mechanism as a hammer to beat litigants into submission is unacceptable. An arm of the government should be available to investigate charges of “helping fraud”, if such “helping” is found by the government investigator to have occurred then a judge should be assigned to determine damages. Obviously, the SEC is the agency to look into the allegations of “helping fraud” particularly when publicly traded companies are involved.
The Supreme Court has a big problem with these cases. The FISA situation requires speed, the “helping fraud” situation is a cost problem; the court has got to stand up and tell the lawyers that a new system is coming to town. In Brown v. Board of Education the court showed it can tell local government officials that a new system is coming to town. Will the court be as courageous when the group getting cut out are fellow lawyers? ......... (Prepared by Hugh Murray 9/30/2007)
Madison Warned Against the Unchecked Influence of Factions - James Madison, the author of the US Constitution, warned in Federalist 10 that the United States would fail if “a faction” every got unchecked power over the levers of government. He believed that a government covering a large geographic area would have within it many competing interest groups and these would act to check each other such that no one interest group would gain overarching power. He was particularly confident of this because the power would be vested in Congress and Congressmen would represent relatively small districts (30,000 voters). He further believed that since most government power was centered in the states. He felt diversification of power would serve as a check on any urge to centralize power. He doubted that any single faction could gather enough of a following in a majority of the states to gain the “destructive power” he worried about.
Madison was truly a farsighted political theorist. He had studied the ancient societies of Greece and Rome as well as the deep political thinkers of Europe such as Montesquieu and Hume. These studies had shown him that small government structures have a better record of preserving the citizen’s liberty than large structures which tend to move toward empire and dictatorship. Nevertheless, Madison felt that the bifurcated American structure with independent states within a Federal system would check the natural tendency of a large “republic” to subjugate the smaller political subdivisions and the citizens.
Certainly, he never envisioned that 70 years later a man representing a well financed “business” faction would emerge with enough appeal to get 39% of the popular vote (in a four way race), while not even bothering to get on the ballot in one third the states, and thus garner enough electoral votes to capture the Presidency. Then acting unilaterally this newly elected President, without the approval of Congress, invaded the states where he had not bothered to get on the ballot. This invasion was done as the invaded states (which had choosen to stand apart from the Federal government) were asking for a conference to discuss their status vis a vie this new President.
Madison is to be forgiven. He could not have anticipated that a President of the United States would go to war without the approval of Congress. He could not have envisioned a situation where a person who only garnered 39% of the popular vote, without offering himself to all voters in the country, would without reticence accept the highest office in the land.
In any event on that day in 1861, the march toward the “American Empire” began. The power that the Constitution gave Congress has steadily seeped away to the executive and the judiciary. The size of Congressional districts have gone from 30,000 to 600,000. Today, the power of the states is a sham and a fiction; they function mostly to administer Federally mandated programs and enforce Federal judicial decrees. ....................(prepared by Hugh Murray on 8/11/2007)
................ prepared by Hugh Murray ())
.............prepared by Hugh Murray on
(prepared by Hugh Murray on )
.
.................. (prepared by Hugh Murray on
.
..................(prepared by Hugh Murray on 9/19/2006)
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. This page hopes to bring a common
sense, old fashioned view to today's news. The comments displayed
on this page were prepared by
Hugh V. Murray, who can be reached at hvm@aol.com
|
.......