Equal Protection of the Law

Here’s the deal (as our Vice-President is fond of saying):

Every defendant in any criminal trial in the U.S. may have representation in the courtroom by only one attorney: the legal counsel appointed him, by lot, from the Office of the Public Defender.

Oh, and attorneys in said office must be paid on the same (average) salary scale that pertains to the lawyers in the nearest offices of the two largest private law firms in the country.

Now, go ahead and do your worst, budget-cutters, in stripping the courts of the means of functioning properly. At least we’re all equal in the eyes of the law, now.

The Founders and their Genius

We hear a lot these days about the Constitution, often from people who, clearly, have only a sketchy acquaintance with what it actually says. The context is typically a call for the removal from office (occasionally by violent means) of a “liberal” politician or judge who has said or done something, usually unspecified --or, if specified, erroneously so, such as the creation of “the bank bailout” of 2008 by President Obama, who took office in 2009—, that places him or her outside the category of the fully American, if not that of the fully human.

The Constitution is virtually interchangeable, in this rhetoric, with “the Founders.” The word “Founders” is always capitalized, like the name of Jesus, but not because it is a proper noun; rather, the Founders constitute American divinity. Right-thinking (in both senses of the phrase) people believe that every word of the Constitution, every parochial conceit of “the Founders” –forget that they were a rather diverse group of individuals who often disagreed vehemently—is Holy Writ, as immutable as the Torah (again, ignore  the marginal hints contained in the scrolls of which, that are intended to suggest what is supposed to be meant by a word in the text proper that has no colorable meaning where it appears; odd though it may be for the Author of the Universe to have made these spelling errors).

If the Founders did not say it, this line of thinking goes, it cannot be true; and it certainly cannot be enshrined in our laws; all attempts to do so constitute secular (a word that is not often used by Patriots) blasphemy, and should be dealt with like, well, like blasphemy.

They don’t say what, if any, respect should be given to Amendments to the Constitution; perhaps the Bill of Rights has pride of place, having been put together by the Founders.

This, simply put, is the basis for an entire political movement in the U.S. The “Contract From America,” a Tea Party founding document, would require that every law passed by Congress contain a citation to the specific provision in the Constitution that authorizes it.

Good-by, Air Force: the Army and the Navy are specifically authorized by the Constitution, but no such luck for the fly-boys. Good-by, Telecommunications Act. Moving to the sacred cows of the Right, so long Defense of Marriage Act (actually, marriage is never mentioned in the Constitution), Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, and even (no, especially, as it authorizes the federal government to intervene in a purely state matter) the Act for the Relief of the Parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo (remember her? And her physician, Senate Majority Leader Dr. Bill Frist?).

I’d like to point out just a couple of things that are true of the Constitution, and of the Founders.

The Constitution explicitly endorsed the practice of slavery; indeed, all the talk of Liberty notwithstanding, the Constitution puts forth a formula for how to count slaves in determining the population of a state for purposes of allocating Congressional representation. Our British friends had a great deal of fun with this over several decades during and after our Revolution.

The Founders themselves, as a group, generally did not expect the Constitution to be immutable; they regarded it, like all products of negotiation among differing interests, to be a provisional, approximate statement of the kind of government they wanted to establish. that's why they provided a means to amend it.

None of the Founders would have agreed with the notion of a speed limit; it wouldn’t have made sense to them. And placing a limit on immigration would probably have seemed silly, or meaningless, to them.
Contrariwise, the notion that an adult male, having been born in, say, Massachusetts, should automatically be allowed to vote for President, would also have been an odd proposition in their eyes. In fact, the notion that any citizen could vote directly for President was regarded as inadvisable by the Founders; and of course their wisdom in this regard prevails today.

They pretty much unanimously, however, agreed that the States had too much power, as opposed to that of the federal government –they were writing a Constitution, after all, because the Articles of Confederation weren’t working. They wanted something that worked better.

The point is this: the Constitution is a remarkable document, and it has worked pretty well. It is not immutable, not Holy Writ (whatever that may be). It's purpose, again, is to serve our needs, not for us to worship at its immutable feet, not to be handled, like a palimpsest, with velvet gloves under glass and never, ever to be disturbed. It will only work if we respect its purpose, and not enshrine its every word. If we so enshrine it, it will become a talisman, a symbol that will lose, over time, its connection to reality.

Wiki-Luddites

I have a dilemma: I feel a sort of relish in the disclosures, by Wiki Leaks, of hundreds of thousands of documents, mostly diplomatic dispatches (“cables”) that, read in small groups, sometimes seem to resemble nothing so much as (more or less) grammatical Facebook postings. OK, I’m being extravagant; they often contain real information, coherently presented, and very interesting, to boot..

My reaction, my smug satisfaction at this worldwide dumping of our diplomatic laundry, is troublesome to me. I’ve always considered myself a responsible adult, reasonably knowledgeable in, and accepting of, the ways of the world, or at least of serious adults. I know we need a government; I even know –this threatens to put me in the minority, it sometimes seems—that we need trained, educated, seasoned experts in this or that aspect of governing. And I believe that governing, let alone international relations, involves the occasional devil’s bargain, that principle can guide us, but sometimes has to be a signpost rather than a highway: we need to go in a certain general direction, but there may have to be stops and detours, because the world does not pose choices always involving the pure case of anything.

Believing all this, I ought to abhor what Mr. Assange has done, which is to dump, indiscriminately it seems, hundreds of thousands of unrelated bits of information on the table, as it were, for the world to paw through. The haphazardly accumulated reports and comments of hundreds of individuals laboring in the trenches of American policy and international politics, each with its own context, intended audience, and fallible author, are laid out for the –titillation, really—of the world’s readers.

Damage was, clearly, done as a result. People were embarrassed, relations were disrupted, trust was broken, the reputations of individuals, and of the United States, suffered. There is nothing good about this.

So why do I feel, well, sort of pleased, at moments, about all this?

What is the nature of this pleasure? I think it is schadenfreude, the pleasure we derive at the misfortunes of others. Naming it condemns it; it’s unworthy. But why do I feel this way? I have been a supporter of President Obama; I don’t have a particular axe to grind, I think, in this arena; I wish my country well in its foreign relations, and I am, at least broadly, supportive of its strategic goals if not of every initiative.

But the feeling persists, and it can be reduced to this: the bastards had it coming. Not the individuals whose cables, however foolish, trivial, or mendacious they might have been, but they, the people (or the institutions) who are always above it all.

Who are they? They are the men and women in power suits on the Sunday talk shows who speak knowledgeably and casually of the deaths of thousands, of the impoverishment of millions, as of chess problems with theoretical solutions that are, unfortunately, impractical or unwise today no matter how salutary they may be in the long run. You see, action today might hurt the economy, or might discourage our intended ally, might deny us the fly-over rights or the refueling base we need. So, sorry, but the peasants will just have to die a while longer. We can’t risk hurting the fortunes of the people two lockers over at the country club, so there’s no help for the unemployed until, maybe, spring, if things haven’t improved on their own by then.

Governments lie. We all know this; it is why presidential news conferences are seldom worth tuning in. We are not told the truth, but rather artful untruths intended to boost morale or markets or one’s negotiating stance.

But didn’t I just say, above, that sometimes prevarication is necessary? Yes; but it has become the primary mode of government discourse in this country.

Want to win an election? Construct a false narrative about your opponent: that he believes homosexuals are perverts who should be denied basic rights; that he wants to impose socialism –never mind what that is, it’s bad-- on us all; that he’s a philanderer; that she has sex with campaign workers, or casual acquaintances, or animals; that she’s an illegal alien, a liar, a cheat. If that doesn’t work, make sure the voting machines are screwed up, or the ballots are lost, or stop the count –go to court, to the Supreme Court, if necessary. We must win, and if the other guy wins anyway, then he or she is not legitimate and our primary responsibility is to oppose him. Not his policies: him.

Want to oppose a policy, but don’t want to reveal your actual motives? Make some up.

The facts don’t support your view? Lie about the facts; change what you said on your website last year so that it says the opposite, or nothing. Experts disagree with you? Anoint your own experts.

No one, anywhere in government, seems just to tell the truth. And if someone does, well, then, he is fired, if he’s at a low enough level, or, if not, pilloried in the press. Obama says the police made a stupid decision? Then he doesn’t support law enforcement. We don’t like the policies of the current administration? Threaten to secede from the Union, or sue the federal government, or threaten “second amendment solutions.”

Anything goes.

Ultimately, those in power seem to care more about their petty careers than they do about their responsibilities. They care more about the symbols and perquisites of power than about governing. So we have weeks of hearings about whether an athlete stuck a needle in his vein, but no hearings on vital issues: we can summon a majority, but a majority is not sufficient even to debate questions of war and peace, or justice, or how we ought to handle the great matters that concern us. Just hold out until the Sunday talk shows, and we can create our own world.

This is the great betrayal that we have come to expect from our elected leaders. Those in the civil service are pawns, mistreated as much as the rest of us are. The leaders who depend on them to do the hard things do not respect them, or even stand up for them when they are caught; why should we? Send the privates and corporals to jail; just make sure the generals and cabinet officers get high-paying jobs when they retire suddenly, “to spend more time with their families.” Condemn the tax cuts as blackmail, on Monday; then on Wednesday hail them as “bipartisan,” with the Minority Leader smiling behind you as you sign the bill you said you’d never sign.

Okay, so be it. If we are to have anarchy, then why should the guys in the $5,000 suits get all the fun? If we are to be at the mercy of those with the biggest bank accounts, we should get to laugh at something. We can at least show them, using their own words, looking silly, or dishonest, or stupid. Never mind if they also, often, look hardworking, or responsible, or thoughtful. After all, we aren’t really after the front men; it’s their handlers we want to reach. And we know we reach them by how upset they get. Supposedly responsible men have argued for the assassination of Mr. Assange: then bravo: he's hit a nerve! That's the most we can expect, on our own behalf, it sometimes seems. After all, why should the citizens be more responsible than their leaders?

We know it won’t work for long; it’s not just the late President Reagan who was Teflon-coated. They all are. So let’s do it over and over again.

And if I feel this way, do you need any further explanation of the Tea Party phenomenon?