Kagro X begins our day with a joint rant (with Glenn Greenwald) against Harvard's Harvey C. Mansfield.
I'd like to pull out a few quotes from Mansfield's Wall Street Journal article and speak to them independently, as illustrative of the serious sociopolitical problems we find ourselves with as we try to mend this damaged polity in the United States.
"Responsibility" is not mere responsiveness to the people; it means doing what the people would want done if they were apprised of the circumstances.
Mansfield seems to forget that the failure of the people to be "apprised of the circumstances" may be due to the yoking of the political to the economic, specifically that the attention space of the citizens may be overrun by politically bad information in the service of consumer capitalism, and that humans were designed in their hunter gatherer life to evaluate danger and accidents on the basis of a couple of hundred tribe members, not on the basis of thousands of reports of bloody accident and strife.
So citizens live in a state of fear quite useful for marketers, who salve our pain with comfort and status items that are almost always conspicuous consumption.
Schwarzenegger tells us that Maria insists on having a Hummer to protect the kids, and that all he can do is make it greener by converting it to biodiesel.
The case for a strong executive begins from urgent necessity (read 9/11) and extends to necessity in the sense of efficacy and even greatness. It is necessary not merely to respond to circumstances but also in a comprehensive way to seek to anticipate and form them.
The question here, as Malcolm Gladwell explained so succinctly on The Colbert Report, is that the executive must not only rely on his gut, but that his gut must be first trained by his head, which did not happen with George W. Bush.
"Necessary to" the survival of a society expands to become "necessary for" the good life there, and indeed we look for signs in the way a government acts in emergencies for what it thinks to be good after the emergency has passed.
And we find that the levers of government are firmly in the hands of political scientists subconsciously working for the Masters of War. Is this why Greenwald and Kagro X are angry? They should say so, clearly, not just speak pejoratively.
A free government should show its respect for freedom even when it has to take it away. Yet despite the expansion inherent in necessity, the distinction between urgent crises and quiet times remains.
With inappropriate blurring caused by the need for arms makers to continue their profits.
What works for quiet times is not appropriate in stormy times.
But the feedback mechanism to adjust the works is being damaged by the apathy of the population in quiet times.
Civil liberties are for majorities as well as minorities, and no one should be considered to have rights against society whose exercise would bring society to ruin.
Islamofascism? Religion in general in government? Omnipotent rulers with no wisdom?
Its formality represents the rule of law, and the actuality arises from which branch better promotes the common good in the event, OR in the opinion of the people.
These are subtle distinctions, and a good use of language here. I'd like to see this discussed in the comments. I think the opinion of the people in this day of 24 hour news is an event, not a considered opinion.
We seem to live from opinion spasm to opinion spasm, the rule of the mob that so worried Madison (and obviously worries Mansfield).
But denigrating that worry doesn't make the situation go away. Consider "One vote, one time" as applied to abortion, Islam, gun control.
Mansfield properly, and politically incorrectly, points out that the executive is supposed to be well-trained, so that the evanescent mob opinions can be leavened with experience and wisdom. Contrary to current pop literature, mobs do not have political wisdom.
Thus the title of this diary, the sorrowful necessity of a strong executive when we have a weak (minded) citizenry.
The fault is not Mansfield's, nor the political theory, but the population's laziness in having access to the political information necessary to form good mob wisdom.
Democrats today would be friendlier to executive power if they held the presidency--and Republicans would discover virtue in the rule of law if they held Congress.
Ain't that the truth. I think Kagro X might be missing the good stuff by being too eager to condemn the bad stuff.
Today Republicans and Democrats repeat these arguments when the former declare that we are at war with terrorists and the latter respond that the danger is essentially a matter of law enforcement.
Good point, often overlooked and misunderstood. I always say "It's not a WAR!" every time it is said. And I have to say it a lot. There is no war. There are a lot of stateless criminals, however.
I believe too that the difficulties of the war in Iraq arise from having wished to leave too much to the Iraqis, thus from a sense of inhibition rather than imperial ambition.
Once again Mansfield ignores the desire of the oilogarchy to write the laws for their own benefit. Enuf said.