excerpts..."
".....There's one final irony worth noting in all of this.Political leaders and political movements convinced of their own Goodness are usually those who need greater, not fewer, constraints in the exercise of power.That's because - like religious True Believers -those who are convinced of their inherent moral superiority can find all manner to justify even the most corrupted acts on the ground that they are justified by the noble ends to which they are put,or are cleansed by the nobility of those perpetrating those acts...."
Following: excerpts directed at new Government policy
that extends President's power to kill anyone, including you, without "burden of Proof."
".....Faith v. reason and evidence
It is, for several reasons, extraordinary that so many citizens have been successfully trained to so venerate
their Party's leaders that they literally believe no checks or transparency are necessary, even as those
leaders wield the most extremist powers: executing people, bombing multiple countries, imprisoning
people with no charges, mass monitoring and surveilling of entire communities.
..
.......It is truly staggering to watch citizens assert that their government is killing "Terrorists" when
those citizens have no clue who is being killed. But that becomes even more astounding when
one realizes that not even the US government knows who they're killing: they're just killing anyone
whose behavior they think generally tracks the profile of a Terrorist ("young men toting arms in an
area controlled by extremist groups")...they, in fact, have no idea who they are killing.
In light of all this evidence, to continue
to blindly assume that unproven
government accusations of "Terrorist"
are tantamount to proof of those accusations
is to embrace the type of faith-based trust that
lies at the core of religious allegiance and faith
in a god, not rational citizenship. Yet over and
over, one encounters some form of this dialogue
whenever this issue arises:
ARGUMENT: The US government shouldn't
imprison/kill/surveil people without providing
evidence of their guilt.
GOVERNMENT-DEFENDING RESPONSE:
But these are Terrorists, and they have to be stopped.
OBVIOUS QUESTION: How do you know they're
Terrorists if no evidence of their guilt has been presented
and no due process accorded?
Ultimately, the only possible answer to that question -
the only explanation for why this definitively authoritarian
mentality persists - is because people have been so indoctrinated
with the core Goodness of their particular party leader that they
disregard all empirical evidence, and their own rational faculties,
in order to place their blind faith in the leader they have grown to
love and admire (if my leader says someone is a Terrorist,
then I believe they are, and I don't need to see evidence of that).
One can reasonably debate the extent to which democracy
requires that some degree of trust be vested in the capabilities
and judgment of whichever political leaders one supports.
But however far that trust should extend, surely it must stop
well before the vesting of the power to imprison and kill in
total secrecy, far from any battlefield and without any checks
or due process.
Core principles disregarded in favor of leader-love...….the first and most inviolable rule of government is
that leaders must not be trusted to exercise powers
without constant restraints - without what we're all
taught in elementary school are called "checks and balances".
Here is how Thomas Jefferson expressed this warning
in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798:
"In questions of power...let no more be heard of
confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief
by the chains of the Constitution."
..... John Adams said in his
1772 Journal:
"There is danger from all men. The only
maxim of a free government ought to be
to trust no man living with power to
endanger the public liberty".
When one is taught to relate to a politician
based on a fictitious personal relationship,
one comes to place excessive trust in those
with whom one identifies (the way one comes
to trust, say, a close family member or loved one),
and to harbor excessive contempt for those one
is trained to see as the villain character. In sum,
citizens are being trained to view politicians
exactly the way Jefferson warned was so dangerous:
"In questions of power...let no more be heard
of confidence in man."
Political factions driven by self-flattering convictions of their own moral superiority -
along with their leaders - are the ones most likely to abuse power.
Anyone who ever listened to Bush era conservatives knows that
this conviction drove them at their core ("you are with us or with the Terrorists"),
and it is just as true of Obama-era progressives who genuinely see the political
landscape as an overarching battle between forces of Good (Democrats: i.e., themselves)
and forces of Evil (Republicans).
Thus should it be completely unsurprising that Obama
(and his most ardent followers) genuinely believe that
rules are urgently necessary to constrain Republicans
from killing whoever they want, but that such urgency
ceases to exist when that power rests in the hands of the
current benevolent leader. Such a dangerous and perverse
mindset is incredibly pervasive in the citizenry, and goes a
long way toward explaining why and how the US government
has been able to seize the powers it has wielded over the last
decade with so little resistance, and with no end in sight...Related articles
