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Reflections on American Politics

W_L

Entry posted by W_L

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Something in the air is just making me very political :P (There's not even a soapbox anymore, but I just feel a surge of energy). I know, I will behave and not post politics in chat or forum areas, but only in my blogs :D

 

I was just reflecting on American sensibilities over the last 40 years. I think if Watergate were to happen today under the Obama administration, few would bat an eye lash or the US senate attempt to push for impeachment. Woodward and Bernstein would probably be summarily detained and sent off to Gitmo for questioning instead of being heralded as heroes or lauded with awards. In a world full of terror, we have no room for debate or principles.

 

I was talking to a co-worker today, an African American woman who does collections for my company. We were talking about our respective vacations, I mentioned how life is different now with all these travel restrictions and stuff after 9/11.She nodded and said "It's probably better now".

 

I didn't understand what she meant, so I pressed and she answered, "We won't ever have to worry about something big like 9/11."

 

I pointed out that it won't stop crazy people like those two brothers in the Spring and she said, "That took like 12 years, and if we didn't have this stuff now, we'd be in a worse spot."

 

I agreed, but still said, "Well, I wish things could go back to how it used to be in the 90's".

 

She signed "Everyone does, but we are safer now. I'd rather live without worrying about my kids dying in a bombing or having to worry about my own safety. Sometimes the government just has to do certain things"

 

I asked, "Even spying on us?"

 

She answered quickly, "Yes, if you have done nothing wrong, you got nothing to hide. You and me just do our jobs and go on trips, we got nothing to worry about"

 

In her early 50's, she's several decades older than me and had seen the race battles in Boston. I can understand her perspective. Back in her day the bomber wasn't an Arab man or woman looking for glory or virgins in heaven, it was an angry black or white kid, who just wanted fairness in their treatment (Black kids were bus to white dominant school and white kids bus to black schools in Boston as part of a social engineer project for "integration"). The government didn't step on the "security" and "intelligence" side as it does now and race riots kept on happening up into the late 70's.

 

That conversation bugged me for some reason. I kept thinking it over and over in my mind and finally came to a strange conclusion. Many Americans and maybe many other peoples around the world, no longer value older concepts of freedom anymore. We're grinding out our work, going home to watch our favorite TV shows, and go on trips to exotic places, but we have stopped really thinking about principles behind what we do, seeking meaning in life, and just apathetically drag our asses through our days.

 

Sure, you still have people like the Tea Party and Occupy crowd, who believe in "Freedom" in the US, but that's not the kind of freedom that mattered to the average American 40 years ago. While I am a conservative and a hardliner in terms of security and intelligence, I am also a man of principles and know why I am fighting for certain things.

 

If we were in the 1970's, I probably would have been part of the old core of the Republican Party, who might have disliked the scoop by the Washington Post, but would have stood by ideals and vote to impeach Nixon just the same. Today, I challenge any Democrat to do the same and I doubt I'd find many takers, nor would there be much traction in a monolithic aging Republican Party, unless it's against a Democratic African American President. My type of "ruthless idealism" is dead, all that's left is the "ruthless".

 

I was born in 1987, but I still like the old school of principles before actions, honor before deceit.

 

Now, with the recent string of news in the US and UK, I think I was right when I declared to Zombie in the Soapbox a year ago that there are limits to freedoms. I would go further now and say that concepts like freedom are dead and part of a bygone era. From those that lived through the cold war and racial tensions, it must seem like paradise, when you no longer fear anything due to a protective from someone above you, but without anything to fear it is fear itself that scares you most.

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Zombie

Of course there are limits to "freedoms". That's always been the case because it's a truism. The only free man is Robinson Crusoe. Freedom in a group or society - oops, I used the "S" word :P - has always been relative, always a compromise between conflicting interests.  So freedom's no more dead than it ever was - just more compromised :P
 

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W_L

What are the older concepts of freedom?

 

Freedom in its older sense, dating back to the late Enlightenment, meant an ideal that every person should be allowed equal standards of treatment without racial, ethnic, beliefs, national, or sexual divisions being predicate values that would alter their treatment.

 

Free Association, Speech, and Religion came from this original concept of freedom.

 

Today's concept in the US is very different than what the original concepts were: to the Left political spectrum, freedom means equal rights to property and wealth. To the Right political spectrum, Freedom means removal of standards set by outside powers like a Federal government except under special conditions like national security.

 

I stand in the middle, I believe in standards, but I do not believe in overreach. In essence, I believe that there is a natural "fair" in standards that should not be crossed or abused by either or both sides, which polarization has done to the US over time. We've become a society that has placed the value of security above equal standards.

 

The Chinese have an old saying about that: "When all agree that a deer is a horse, then your kingdom has no laws left for its horses."

 

@Zombie: Don't think the UK is that far behind the US. Freedom has its limits, but the UK is testing its limits faster and earlier than the US. :P

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Zombie

@Zombie: Don't think the UK is that far behind the US. Freedom has its limits, but the UK is testing its limits faster and earlier than the US. :P

 

Britain does, however, have an essential control for freedom - the rule of law. We have a legal system that is independent of party politics. Judges are not party political appointments with claimed affiliations to any political party. It's no big deal when UK judges rule against the UK government - we expect that to happen when law is breached. That's our ultimate guarantee of "freedom" however you wish to define it.

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Westie

UK law has never recognised the definition of "freedom" that the united states liked to pretend they had.

 

I remember someone in soapbox claiming the right of free speech as "god given".  It isn't.  No rights are.  You surrender your rights to the needs of your nation (not society Zombie - there is no such thing ;) ) as judged by your representatives from time to time.

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W_L

You're thinking of Tim, laws are human made not godly :P

 

Where laws are derived is what I view as most important. I see freedom as a function and extension of natural standards.The rule of law cannot exceed what human civilization, not merely nation or society, deems acceptable or else the argument against dictators, tyrants, genocide, and other "evils" are meaningless.Standards function as fixed points in ideals rather than floating earl grey tea leaves :P

 

I am not a monarchist conservative :D

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Zombie

It's quite simple. Laws derive from the legislature - the system most Commonwealth countries have adopted from the Mother of Parliaments. Same in the US. And the "rule of law" in Britain derives from an independent judiciary which has been well developed over several hundred years, but is less clear in the US due to party political contamination. So in Britain it is a very robust control for those "freedoms" that exist within the legal framework.

 

Terror laws passed in the US and Britain pose serious risks to many of our long established "freedoms" and we do not yet know how this is going to pan out. Snowden has woken up the complacent to the real threats that 100% surveillance poses to those "freedoms" and the fact that - though we are not there yet - that is the end game the security services wish to achieve, and for that he should have our gratitude. Armed with this knowledge it's up to the citizenry to ensure that end game is not achieved. Unless they're content to end up back in 1984.

 

I don't agree with Westie that "You surrender your rights to the needs of your nation". If that were so we would be no different from China and communist systems where the collective always trumps the individual. That is not the case in Britain.

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W_L

I think we're talking two different, though similar, things Zombie. I am thinking in terms of general standards of law that human beings have created through natural development, i.e. principles of freedom. You seem to be pointing to the process of legislation by which a parliament creates laws through centuries of development.

 

They're not mutually exclusive concepts though.

 

I agree with you that the Terror laws have outlived their utility and threatens the basic civil liberties on which human civilization throughout the world is founded on.

 

The fight against terror is not a mechanical war of intelligence, weapons, and technology, but a war of ideologies and human interaction. Nations and people will not stop every lone wolf terrorist with a radical idea or zeal through surveillance, but instead, nations and people are merely entrenching themselves into a static defense, like a medieval castle protecting the commoners against Barbarian raiders. Wait until their defenses clash with the Mongol Hordes of Genghis Khan :P

 

We have fought against ideological extremism before in the past in both our nations, Great Britain had your "The Trouble" and the US had "Race riots". What's the difference between terror from the 60's and 70's to the modern threats?

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Zombie

One difference is the term "terrorism" is now being stretched to include all sorts of activities that no-one in the 60s or 70s would have ever considered to be terrorism and no reasonable person should consider to be so today either. It gives governments across the world a handy excuse to use oppressive laws in everyday business. That's a real worry.

 

As to your comment on "general standards" of law that's a philosophical matter. Moses had it easy - he was given them on a plate ... er, tablets of stone :P

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