But what the antigovernment movement missed is that attacks on the public sector equal assaults on the public. When the high calling of public service yields to the highest bid, the corruption is total: the heart of government -- the military -- becomes mercenary; the mind of the military -- intelligence -- becomes privatized. Citizenship itself is universally gutted, yet another source of our malaise.
That is the final paragraph from an op ed in today's Boston Globe by James Carroll entitled Outsourcing intelligence. Equally pertinent is what he says in his opening paragraph, where after noting that Bush is destroying something essential to our democracy because of the move by the Defense Intelligence Agency to privatize some of its functions, he writes
This raises the prospect that hired guns, instead of sworn officials, will be conducting covert operations, spying missions, interrogations, "renditions," surveillance -- the whole dangerous complex of shadow activity that began as the government's most sensitive responsibility.
Carroll has a particular concern about DIA - his father founded it in 1961, choosing not to leave the service and take a lucrative job at Ford because as a product of immigrant culture he had a love of this nation, a desire to give back to make it better. He could not have accepted the idea of a profit-driven motivation for the agency's core functions. And as Carroll rightly notes, there is a real issue of accountability when government officials leave service to do essentially the same job for perhaps double the pay:
Whether their activities are different or not, they themselves are. Such ex-officials are dismantling politically accountable structures, and undercutting an ideal of selflessness that formerly made the custodians of state power its most important check.
Carroll describes as what has been happening in this administration as outsourcing run amok while rightly noting that the current extremes are but a logical outgrowth of a process driven by conservatives at least since Reagan, that even the country's basic needs can be "best met" by private enterprise, thus leading to what Carroll describes immediately before that final paragraph:
government has been in slow motion collapse, with the ineptitudes of Iraq as final proof of its untrustworthiness.
It is only with that last sentence that I might express disagreement, since we yet to see the full impact of No Child Left Behind in undercutting the idea of the value of public schools, although things like the outstanding Fairfax County Public Schools starting to see increasing numbers of school fail to make Adequate Yearly Progress is the first canary keeling over. Still, I believe Carroll is saying something important, of which I wish to explore some implications which occur to me.
The Preamble to the Constitution makes clear that our government exists for certain basic purposes. The first, "to form a more perfect union," was a recognition of the failure of government under the Articles of Confederation because of the inherent weakness of that national government. Under this administration, with the craven acquiescense of the Congress, we have seen moves to abandon EACH of the key phrases which follows, not exclusively via privatization, but always with a clear disdain for the role of government serving the larger public.
ESTABLISH JUSTICE - move after move has undercut this ideal, whether it was the sneak and peek of the original USA PATRIOT Act and/or the proposals first made for the vast expansion of government powers, the NSA spying and now the 6 month extension of spying powers just done, or the assertion of an Attorney General that habeas corpus is not constitutionally guaranteed, this administration has expressed its disdain for the idea of of establishing a justice that it cannot trample
INSURE DOMESTIC TRANQUILITY the people and the nation cannot be tranquil when the government cannot even respond to disasters like Katrina that it knows are coming. Its continued willingness to use fear to gain political advantage certainly undercuts tranquility. Opposing equitable governmental assistance in medical insurance and prescription drug coverage in favor of the profits of of PhARMA certainly does not make the nation tranquil. Constantly issuing terror alerts to distract the media and the nation from its transgressions is not conducive to domestic tranquility. And its willingness to remove restrictions on access to deadly weapons certainly leads to a situation of greater domestic violence.
PROVIDE FOR THE COMMON DEFENSE - clearly this administration has ignore the word "common" in that phrase. The privatization of intelligence functions is only the latest in a long span of outrages, whether it has been the privatization of support functions for the military, the weakening of the military by the disastrous decision to go to war in Iraq on false pretenses, or most especially the weakening of our defenses - and in this regard our ability to provide domestic tranquility - by the abusive use of Guard forces in an illegal (at least under international law) and abusive conflict in Iraq, this nation has seen is overall defensive strength weakened more in the 6+ years of this administration than during any other of my lifetime - and I was born in 1946. We are destroying our military - 44% of the most recent West Point class able to decide to leave after its 5 year commitment to the Army did so - from where will the future military leaders come? And remember that our Guard units have large numbers of first responders, and their repeated deployment overseas weakens our police and fire units, necessary not only for common defense but also domestic tranquility.
PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE the Bush administration seems to interpret this clause as only applying to public assistance, to which it is philosophically (or should I say theologically) opposed. But it is here that preservation of our natural environment is addressed, it is here that education is covered. For the latter the administration has expanded mountaintop removal mining, has sought to open ANWR and other protected areas to petroleum extraction, has fought protection of endangered species. The administration argues that it is helping the economy by diverting water intended to preserve salmon runs for large-scale commercial irrigation. It may be assisting certain favored constituencies, but it misses the idea of "general" as applying to the public at large. That is why we have PUBLIC schools, because they are part of a "commons" that we all share, from which we all benefit. This administration does not believe in such an approach. After all, if you are sick you can always go to the emergency room, right?
SECURE THE BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY TO OURSELVES AND OUR POSTERITY What can we say? Patriot Act, Habeas, refusal of the administration to be accountable, assertions of the executive that it is not subject to Congressional oversight, assertion of the unconstitutional doctrine of the Unitary Executive, the invention of a new definition of the Office of Vice President - these are but a few of the examples of how this administration cares not for the liberty of the people.
Others can write more cogently on this than can I. This writer is but a government teacher, rushing to begin another school week, and thus typing in haste, not editing, hoping that this meagre assemblage of words may in some small way express the outrage and anger and sorrow at what has been happening to the country in which he has lived for more than 6 decades, which he served in the Marines, as a local government civil servant, and now as a public school teacher.
This administration has clearly proved one thing, but it is not that government is inherently untrustworthy. Rather that final adjective should be applied to this administration and those who enable it. At a minimum they are not worthy of public trust. They are at least negligent in fulfilling their oaths, for the president to take care that the law be faithfully executed (signing statements, anyone?) and for the Congressional enablers to support the Constitution. In many of their actions they are far worse, deliberately destructive of the vision expressed in the Preamble, put forth by our Founders, after a decade of government that was not fulfilling the dream expressed in the Declaration, a dream to which they pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor. The leadership of this nation shows no honor when it places the gaining of private wealth over the protection of the public good.
Remember, it is not just intelligence and support functions this administration has been privatizing, removing from accountability. It is private prisons, and it is police and military functions, through companies like KBR, Blackwater, Custer Battles. Iraq has enabled them to put together the infrastructure and organizations which can also be used at home. Deliberate lack of oversight has facilitated the transfer of billions of dollars of public funds to such organizations. And our liberty and future as a nation are at stake.
I have written what I can, provoked by reading Carroll. Until now I had not titled this piece. Perhaps what I have put on the subject line will either draw little attention or else be considered by some deceptive advertising on my part. I think it is the only thing I can offer.
I demand that the Democrats in Congress and any Republican who still believes in the Constitution stop this madness immediately, move to restore the sanity our Constitutional framework is supposed to provide, lest we wake up and discover that we can burn down the National Archives because the documents contained therein under glass no longer have meaning.
Me? I am going to school to teach adolescents what our government is supposed to be. Today we will look at sources, like Magna Carta, Petition of Right and the like, the tradition which inspired our Founders, in the hope that enough people still retain the courage to stand up and defend that tradition. My students think I am slightly crazy, and my insistence on this tradition is perhaps an illustration of that craziness - I am not willing to casually allow the raping and murder of our tradition of liberty. That is why I am today so outraged, why I have taken the time to write this screed.
I wish I could say "peace" but today I am too outraged.