Yes, Glenn, the principle really does need to be explained
Wed Sep 19, 2007 at 11:03:38 PM PDT
First, retroactive immunity turns the "rule of law" into an even greater mockery than it has been for the last six years. The central premise in granting immunity is that telecom companies did nothing wrong -- even if they violated the law -- because they cooperated with warrantless spying at the behest of the President.
But we don't actually live in a country where private actors are permitted to commit crimes and violate laws provided that the President tells them that they should. The President has no greater power to authorize others to break the law than he does to break the law himself. Quite the contrary, Article II of the Constitution imposes the opposite obligation: "he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." Lawbreaking is still illegal even if George Bush says it should be done. Does that principle really need to be explained?*
Yes.
(This has been another edition of Atrios's Easy Answers to Easy Questions.)
We do actually live in a country where people commit crimes and violate laws, and the people whose sworn promise it is to hold them to account do not do so. The President can and does break the law. He claimed that power, first secretly and then openly. No one with the means to do so stopped him, and with that FISA capitulation this August, this Congress proved it never will.
Laws, even the Constitution, mean precisely nothing — nothing — unless individual people uphold them, government officials and regular citizens alike. When Bush does something "illegal," but the people in the position to enforce the law, as written, promise never to do so... then nothing Bush does is really illegal, is it? It's like an arcane law against, say, loaning your neghbor your vacuum cleaner. If people loan vacuum cleaners with abandon and no one enforces the ban, then the law does not consequentially exist. Bush and Cheney finally proved Nixon right. Until we prove them wrong, that is.
The Constitution is not in effect. Bush and Cheney wield nearly absolute, unrestricted, unaccountable power. They are tyrants, dictators, kings. Do you doubt that Bush and Cheney are as powerful, even amidst the nation's disgust and the world's loathing, as any earthly king or despot that has come before them? Right now, all that the text of the Constitution represents is the hope that someday we may uphold the principles behind it and win our freedom.
Mr. Greenwald, perhaps you meant the question rhetorically, and you are someone who is doing one of the best jobs of it. But yes, we really do need to explain the principle. How many Americans truly understand the concept of tyranny of the majority, the necessity of "better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man go to jail" in a free society, the virtue of limiting government power, why the different powers are separated among the branches of government, or the reason we bother having a government and laws at all? The fact that just law, justly enforced, secures our freedom, and unjust law or the absense of law result in its loss? Why not hand the President (or a General) unaccountable power, and trust that he will do right? Protecting me is the President's job, no? C'mon, don't bother me, I've got to make a living here.
These may be truths, but they are not self-evident. State even the blindingly obvious, because when we don't, it is not. People are only as free as they make themselves.
* Emphasis mine.
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