“It’s only logical that if we can prevent advertisements from being run, we can prevent all kinds of speech.”

I’d really love to see what defenders of campaign finance reform can find to say in their defense after watching this:

Filed under: civil liberties, media/culture, politics

Torture and Secrecy

Reflecting on Ross’s debut from his new perch at – yes, them again – First Things, my friend and former colleague James Poulos is at his best:

The issue is not whether torture is capable of producing results, or even the quality of those results. A million monkeys at a million waterboards will eventually produce a confessional masterpiece. Under existential threat, the argument about torture poses the question of whether to start, not when to finish. And the justification of the decision to start has been that this decision had been kept secret. For Cheney to defend his record, he must not only, like a Soloflex salesman, harp on ‘results’; he must defend the secrecy of the methods that obtained them. Secrecy was essential to results.

This reveals an uncomfortable but important truth about how our argument against our torture differs from ‘the’ argument ‘against torture’ — the ethical or theoretical argument. That latter argument can be resolved in reference to the suffering of the victim or the corruption of the perpetrator. Ours, on the other hand, is not. Even someone who justifies the suffering of our victims or the corruption of our perpetrators cannot yet be finished. They must defend the secrecy; in so doing, they must defend trusting the government of a free and equal people to violate the terms of that people’s law, custom, and mores on terms which only the government is to set and know.

Filed under: civil liberties, government/law, torture

Conservatives and Civil Liberties

Andrew Sullivan asks for evidence of conservative blogs or sites that protested the Bush-era surveillance state. I haven’t been at this for all that long and am sure that there are others who could do a more impressive job of this than I can, but for the record you can go here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here (that one’s by JL), here, and here for an initial sampling of my earlier writing on the subject. Like I said, just for the record.

Filed under: civil liberties, conservatism

Freedom’s Underside, Pt. III

by JL Wall

E.D. Kain, on Iraq:

But that should call in to question why we are so dependent on oil to begin with, and beyond that, why we as a culture have shifted so many of our priorities to a belief in unending growth that can and should be enforced by an omnipotent military.

The problem with “the American Way Of Life is not on the table” “is not up for compromise” or some other such better phrasing that’s escaping me this morning doesn’t lie in a devotion to liberty.  But we haven’t defined The American Way Of Life as involving, to a primary degree, devotion to liberty, but to growth, the clearing of the economic elbow room in which we will then practice our liberty.  But when “growth” and “expansion” are viewed as at least as essential as liberty, when reconsidering “unending growth” is a reconsideration of The American Way Of Life even if such growth is not sustainable (except, perhaps, by force — eh, what I mean is anangkê, not bîos or hybris), then we ourselves are compelled to do the compelling.

Which is to say: anangkê esmen — we are compelled — we are required — we are constrained to this course by our choice of this course.  We clear space, ostensibly in which to grow and expand a liberty, but in reality because the past and present benefits have grown comfortable: we haven’t seen the cost, the underside; or if we have, we are less terrified by them than the the unknown nature of a different life.

And we see liberties more essential to liberty constrained, restricted, deemed inessential because they interfere with the growth which is supposed to to allow them to flourish.  Though meant as a force to expand liberty, unrestrained and unending growth (or at least the philosophy thereof) are forces of constraint on our ability to live in liberty.  Yesterday there was a girl on campus shouting very loudly that she had free copies of the Constitution for anyone who wanted them — presumably (I could be wrong) as part of those tea-party-things I’ve heard about.  I was tempted to tell her it was better late than never she’d discovered the document.

Filed under: civil liberties, economics, government/law, philosophy, war

Freedom’s Underside

by JL Wall

Two weeks ago (but I’m just now getting to it) Patrick Deneen helped reiterate a point that I’ve become particularly keen on over the past year or so:

My argument, in a nutshell, is that the liberal arts were based on the teaching of an older form of liberty, namely the liberty that is achieved through self-governance. Its role has been increasingly displaced with the rise of the new liberty – achieved through the new sciences – namely, the liberty from limits aimed at the fulfillment of our desires.

and

For the humanities – the older science – liberty had been understood to be the achievement of hard discipline, the learned capacity to govern appetite and desire, to tame the unlimited cravings of the will and achieve a condition of self-government. For the new science, liberty was constituted by the removal of obstacles, by the overcoming of limits, by the transformation of the world – whether the world of nature, over which humans increasingly exercised control by means of science and applied technologies, or even the nature of humanity itself, a nature that was believed to be as malleable as nature had proven to be.

Case in point, for me: Sophokles’ Antigone is just as ill-at-ease with the title character as it is with Kreon, despite the fact that she follows the laws of the gods and he refuses to, despite the fact that her individualism sits better with modern audiences than Kreon’s blind near-authoritarianism.  A polis in which there is only one vote is not a polis, Kreon Haimon [EDITED 4/15: Whoops! -- JLW] says.  And, in the eyes of the play, neither have liberty and neither is the ideal citizen.  Antigone’s interpretations of what is right, her radical freedom from any restraint, separates her from society as much as Kreon’s decrees do him — this despite the fact that she is right to offer her brother the minimal burial rites required by the gods.  One could not be free except among fellow freemen, within society.  Say what one will about the particulars, it is a liberty that requires restraint and responsibility.

Or, since we’re in the proper season for it: Pesach is a celebration of liberation from slavery.  It is a deliverance into freedom, however, that culminates with the reception of the law and the Covenant at Sinai.  Deliverance into freedom required the revelation and acceptance of responsibility.

Freedom isn’t just another word for nothing left to lose. (The word you were looking for, Mr. Kristofferson, is “desperation,” or, if you needed more syllables, “Backed up against a wall.”  Neither actually give you choice, just alternatives that you might sometimes confuse for it.)

Filed under: civil liberties, education

Race and the Drug War

Last Friday, Jonah Goldberg wrote a post at The Corner arguing that there is something “unlibertarian” about opponents of drug prohibition who use claims about the drug war’s disproportionate effects on blacks in an attempt to demonstrate its injustice. This post prompted a lengthy response from Reason’s Jacob Sullum, who helpfully showed up Goldberg’s claim that blacks are disproportionately affected by the drug war simply because they are “disproportionately in this line of work” for the falsehood that it is, concluding that especially in conjunction with the troublingly racist history of drug prohibition in the U.S., the disproportionate harm that the drug war inflicts on black Americans does indeed suggest an injustice that goes beyond that which libertarians would recognize in the war on drugs even if its effects had an equitable racial distribution.

Meanwhile, here’s how Goldberg responded to a reader who made some points similar to Sullum’s:

Let’s take drugs out of it. I’m in favor of the death penalty. Let’s assume blacks and white commit murder at identical rates but because blacks are poorer they get convicted and executed more than whites. I don’t think that fact alone means we should get rid of the death penalty. It means we should do a better job of executing white murderers. A justly convicted murderer should be punished regardless of his race. A justly convicted drug dealer should be punished, regardless of his race as well. If we’re punishing a disproportionately high number of blacks, that’s a sign we should crack down on more guilty whites, not give up on punishing crimes.

It’s really hard to follow the logic here. In the first place, the hypothetical crackdown that Goldberg proposes here is appropriate only if the laws in question deserve to be enforced; this is uncontroversial enough in the case of murder, but given that this very issue constitutes a huge part of what’s at stake in discussions of drug prohibition, it seems an unreasonable move to make. Moreover, doesn’t it seem that Goldberg has pretty much given up the game at this point? “Poor people are disproportionately affected by all sorts of things all the time”, he wrote earlier in this post, “and blacks are disproportionately poor. In most other spheres, libertarians don’t take that fact and bend their principles to it.” But that’s exactly what Goldberg is proposing to do in this hypothetical example! We’ve got the murder laws that we do, and they’ve got the effects that they have; whether those effects make life a bit more difficult for certain “identity politics groups” is supposed to be entirely beside the point, isn’t it? Or do Republicans only buy into identity-politicking when it can be used as an excuse for harsher sentencing penalties and enforcement of existing laws?

The more basic point, though, is this. What differentiates the case of the drug war from that of, say, the racially disproportionate effects of market capitalism or loan policies based on credit-worthiness is that drug policy is an aspect of our state-sponsored criminal justice system, and as such its societal function is essentially that of, well, doing justice, whereas private banks and the free market have only economic ends in mind. And so it’s simply astonishing to see Goldberg claiming that a government policy that leads blacks to be incarcerated at several times the rate of whites is somehow less troubling in its racial implications than affirmative-action policies that “keep Asians or Jews out of elite colleges”; neither situation is ideal, to be sure, but locking up a poor black man who couldn’t afford legal representation for selling dope on the corner is, shall we say, a bit more morally problematic than telling a Jewish kid from Scarsdale that he’ll have to go to Williams instead of Harvard. It is indeed the case that so far all this amounts to is an argument for serious and widespread drug policy reform, and not outright decriminalization; there’s nothing at all unlibertarian, however, about suggesting that one reason we might want to go one or the other of these routes is that an already disadvantaged racial group that still bears the scars of a long history of genuinely appalling treatment in this country might stand to benefit from it.

Well, that or you could just shut your mind to the facts and write, as one of Goldberg’s readers actually does, that the only evidence we need for the belief that drug dealers are disproportionately black is the disproportionate blackness of the “victims of drug dealing-related murders”. Because it’s certainly not as if there could be another explanation for that.

(Cross-posted at @TAC.)

Filed under: civil liberties, libertarianism

Leaders Needed

Glenn Greenwald’s widely-cited post from over the weekend on Jim Webb’s courageous push for prison reform is a must-read. I especially liked this bit:

Webb’s commitment to this unpopular project demonstrates how false that excuse-making [that says that taking bad but popular positions is necessary if one is to avoid political risk] is –  just as it was proven false by Russ Feingold’s singular, lonely, October, 2001 vote against the Patriot Act and Feingold’s subsequent, early opposition to the then-popular Bush’s assault on civil liberties, despite his representing the purple state of Wisconsin.  Political leaders have the ability to change public opinion by engaging in leadership and persuasive advocacy.  Any cowardly politician can take only those positions that reside safely within the majoritiarian [sic] consensus.  Actual leaders, by definition, confront majoritarian views when they are misguided and seek to change them, and politicians have far more ability to affect and change public opinion than they want the public to believe they have.

In this context, the unpopular stances Greenwald has in mind concern the drug war, sentencing guidelines, prison conditions, and the horrid condition of a country where blacks are sentenced to prison on drug charges at over five times the rate of whites despite not using drugs any more frequently, but it’s not hard to think of others that fit the bill:

1. The specific question of whether a country with a criminal justice system in the state of ours can really be trusted to administer the death penalty responsibly.
2. The dangers inherent in the legislative branch’s unconstitutional, near-complete abdication of its roles in declaring war, making and passing laws, and so forth.
3. The questions of why, since college is demonstrably not for everyone, we insist on making it a precondition for a productive adulthood, and of how we can extend higher educational opportunities to those with the capacity really to benefit from them while helping others transition into family life and the workplace.
4. The need to rethink our open-ended and essentially conditionless support of the Israeli government, with all its aims and policies, no matter the damage this does to our image in the Middle East and the rest of the world.
5. The importance of a serious national dialogue about overconsumption, excessive indebtedness, and the dangers of fiscal irresponsibility – at home, in business, and in government alike.
6. The need for serious, far-sighted, and no doubt inconvenient (for many) entitlement reform, and the corresponding task of paying down our national debt.
7. The tremendous dangers, both foreign and domestic, inherent in our commitment to maintaining a massive national security apparatus with a near-trillion dollar budget the shrinking of which is a political impossibility.
8. The questions of whether international terrorism might be better opposed by abandoning or at least severely altering the present rubric of the Global War on Terror, and more generally whether the recent history of U.S. military engagement might suggest the need for a serious retrenchment of our far-overstretched armed forces and a recommitment to using American power to serve the national interest first and foremost.

That’s just off the top of my head – what have I missed, and where do you put the odds of finding “actual leaders” who are willing to take these and similar issues up?

Filed under: civil liberties, economics, education, foreign affairs, government/law, politics, torture, war

It’s Not About the Economy, Pothead. (Or, a Rant.)

As a strong supporter of the legalization of marijuana, I sympathize entirely with Freddie’s frustration with Obama’s craptastic take on the subject from Wednesday night’s “town hall” meeting. That said, I’ve got to get something off my chest.

There is, I am comfortable saying, a whole host of good arguments in favor of legalizing pot. The argument that we should legalize pot because we can then aid the economy and make money for the government by taxing it is, however, decidedly NOT a member of that host. Want to know why Obama LOLed at your question last night, pro-legalization America? Maybe it’s because the idea that a tiny boost in GDP and the associated tax revenue comprise a sufficient reason to legalize a substance that millions of Americans stupidly think is dangerous is a laughable idea. Is it true that pot is nowhere near as dangerous or addictive as those tut-tutting parents, pols, and educators so sternly and solemnly say that it is? That the drug war is costly, dangerous, and patently unjust? That legalizing an already widely-used substance and so bringing its use out of the shadows is the best way to develop the social mores necessary to use it responsibly? That it’s generally best, all else being equal, not to ban those activities that don’t cause serious social harm? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. But then why, if there are so many arguments as good as these in favor of legalization, is the one that Obama’s web-based pesterers have repeatedly chosen to present him with an argument about tax revenue? Is it because they think that avoiding the moral questions altogether and instead dressing up their argument with dollar signs and fancy economic analysis would make their case look – what? – more serious? Less frivolous? Less about freedom and self-indulgence than the Very Serious Matter of the Health of America’s Economy? And if so, why in the world would they think that anyone would buy it? You’d almost think that the folks who came up with this strategy were on drugs or something …

Does anyone agree with me? Does everyone? Or is there something I’m missing here?

UPDATE: Reader Gherald L. has a very nice post laying out the economic case for legalization as it ought to be stated.

Filed under: civil liberties, government/law, libertarianism

Unlikely Convergence

First, from Paul Weyrich and William Lind’s forthcoming and decidedly un-libertarian The Next Conservatism, which I’m currently reviewing for ISI’s Intercollegiate Review:

Local order depends on local police. The job of local police is not responding to crime, but prevent crime before it happens. Response comes too late; civic order has already been disrupted.

Here as elsewhere, tradition shows us what works. What works is the neighborhood cop. He walks or cycles a regular beat in the same neighborhood, day in and day out, year in and year out. He knows the people who live there and they know him. He knows what is normal and what is out of place in the neighborhood. He talks to people, and they tell him what is going on. He protects the neighborhood, and the neighborhood protects him. That is how the famous British “Bobby” worked, and it was why he did not need to carry a gun.

In modern parlance, this is called “community policing.” Expanding community policing is an important part of the next conservatisms agenda. It is national security writ small, as conservatives would write it, consistent with our desire to “Think locally, act locally.”

Second, from a lengthy post by Radley Balko, which as always is well worth reading in its entirety:

… if we’re going to put more cops on the streets, we need to emphasizing the right kind of policing, where cops become an active part of their communities. The problem with policing today isn’t so much a lack of personnel, it’s that it’s plagued by a structure of perverse incentives and a lack of accountability and transparency, problems driven by 40 years of get-tough-on-crime rhetoric and war imagery from politicians and law-and-order activists. […]

The problems accompanying the fact that there are entire communities who no longer trust the police charged with protecting them aren’t going to go away once we put more cops in the neighborhood. That will likely only make things worse. We first need a major overhaul in the way police interact with the communities they serve.

At this point I was going to make a hopeful remark about the possibilities for conservative-libertarian fusion, but then I realized that an obviously sane policy like this one is likely to be favored by smart liberals as well, and that the real lesson is that obviously sane policies are a political non-starter in a mass democracy with leaders as dumb as ours, hence there’s actually no reason to be hopeful about anything at all, really. Woohoo.

Filed under: civil liberties, conservatism, government/law, libertarianism, politics

“They monitored all communications.”

Via Thoreau, this is un all too believable:

Just one day after George W. Bush left office, an NSA whistleblower has revealed that the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program targeted U.S. journalists, and vacuumed in all domestic communications of Americans, including, faxes, phone calls and network traffic.

Russell Tice, a former NSA analyst, spoke on Wednesday to MSNBC host Keith Olbermann. Tice has acknowledged in the past being one of the anonymous sources that spoke with The New York Times for its 2005 story on the government’s warrantless wiretapping program.

After that story was published, President Bush said in a statement that only people in the United States who were talking with terrorists overseas would have been targeted for surveillance.

But Tice says, in truth, the spying involved a dragnet of all communications, confirming what critics have long assumed.

"The National Security Agency had access to all Americans’ communications," he said. "Faxes, phone calls and their computer communications. … They monitored all communications."

Filed under: civil liberties