New Site Name/Address

I was never really excited about the new name of this site, Freedom Syndicate, so I'm moving once again to another address, with a new name: Enemy of the State. Hopefully I won't do anything crazy in the future like change the address again... I think I'll be sticking with this new one. Check it out at http://enemyofstate.blogspot.com
Update your bookmarks too.

Bush Was Right?

Didn't you hear? Bush was right about everything from WMD's to the Iraq-al-Qaeda connection. How do I know this? Because of the new song out by The Right Brothers, called "Bush Was Right". The Right Brothers are trying to get their song on Total Request Live on MTV, and have said that if it doesn't make it, its because of political censorship. Keith Olbermann has some fun with it over at Crooks and Liars here.

The Militarization of America

I recommend stopping by The Agitator and checking his ongoing coverage of post-9/11 militarization of police forces throughout the country, titled "Militarizing Mayberry." The latest example is a small town of 55,000 with a yearly murder rate of one, which has acquired full SWAT gear through post-9/11 increases in federal funding. Since there are no hostage situations or bank robberies occurring, the SWAT teams, armed like soldiers with automatic weapons, are being utilized to serve warrants against nonviolent "drug offenders" (i.e. someone growing a marijuana plant in their closet).

Furthermore, the SWAT teams have been unconstitutionally pushing for no-knock warrants in many situations where it is completely inappropriate. The result of this has been an unacceptable number of outright murders while serving warrants. The common situation is one in which someone wanted for having a small amount of marijuana hears a loud banging in the middle of the night as their door is knocked down. Fearing for their families (and thinking the intruder is likely a criminal), the person sometimes arms himself. Then as soon as the SWAT team sees someone toting a firearm -- the person need not even point the gun at them, let alone fire at the SWAT team -- they open fire.

Instead of using the military to assist in oppressing the American people, which would surely be met with resistance, our government has chosen to make our local police departments into militarized bases. As police departments become assault teams who shoot first and ask questions later (even when pursuing nonviolent "criminals"), the line between police and soldiers becomes blurred and the "War on Drugs" is revealed as what it is: a War on Americans. In small towns and large cities alike, serving warrants against nonviolent offenders is becoming a death sentence for many, with the militarized police as judge, jury and executioner.

Coercing Homogeneity in Culture

The recent flurry of op-ed pieces regarding culture, immigration, and diversity has made it abundantly clear that most right-wing pundits are wildly in love with the abstract idea of an "American identity" (one example here). Citing the riots in France as evidence of the divisions inherent in multiculturalism, these pundits warn of the dissolution of society sure to follow if liberal programs continue to encourage diversity. Granted, government programs which impose racial quotas for the sake of "diversity" are ill-conceived and discriminative, but the idea that acceptance of different cultures will endanger the unity of the nation is foolish and betrays a deep xenophobia.

Those who warn of the dangers of multiculturalism are in effect proposing to subvert cultural individuality to a commonly accepted abstract ideal of American identity. Coming from right-wingers who claim to value individuality in economic matters, it is surprising that the same appreciation does not extend to a human's right to live how they choose economically and socially. What is proposed by these pundits is a system of government initiatives meant to subtly stifle differences in society, imposing a wealthy ruling-class morality and social system agreed upon by legislators.

Such initiatives are not only inherently racist and xenophobic in their attempts to homogenize the variety of social traditions in America, they are also based on historically absurd premises. There is no "American identity", only a variety of differing individual and group ideologies and traditions. The "melting pot" of history is not one in which cultures are "melted" into a homogenous mass, but rather one in which people of differing cultures appreciate each other. This sort of communal indoctrination in a non-existent tradition would of course "strengthen America" in that it would make people more likely to eschew their own values in favor of state-worshipping blather like the pledge of allegiance, the idol of Mount Rushmore, and all the other paraphernalia of state-centered culture. However, to make the state into the centerpiece of an "American culture" is to not only abandon the centuries-old values and culture of one's ancestors, but also to allow the state to control one's actions even more completely through the manipulation of cultural values and social indoctrination of sorts.

What is good for the state is almost always bad for most people, and in this case the cost of government-imposed sameness in culture and values would be no less than the hundreds of years' worth of life-affirming tradition. Countries consumed by nationalist fervor and obsessed with "pure" cultural uniformity have historically devolved into absurd spectacles of shallow violence and mindless conformity, as in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. Of course many may find it doubtful that the U.S. is capable of such degeneration into autocracy, however nationalist cultural "cleansing" in the form of social pressure or government coercion always empowers the state at the expense of individuality, diversity, cultural identity and freedom. The citizens of this nation, once free and already far down the road to serfdom, should be wary of those intent on creating a uniform national identity.

The French Question

With the riots in France still going strong despite some decreases in violence, many columnists on the right have seized on the violence to reaffirm their views. Among Republicans, the narrative goes something like this: the French people are too weak to impose law and order on the slums encircling Paris, and are paying the price for this weakness. Furthermore, the lax immigration policies of the French have allowed Muslim subcultures to subvert native French culture by refusing to force these minorities to assimilate. Some typical quotes, from a column by Thomas Sowell (column here):

This squeamishness in word and deed [referring to backlash against the labeling of rioters as "scum"], and the accompanying refusal to face blatant realities is also a major part of the background for the breakdown of law and order and the social degeneration that follows.

European countries especially have thrown their doors open to a large influx of Moslem immigrants who have no intention of becoming part of the cultures of the countries to which they immigrate but to recreate their own cultures in those countries.

Of course all of this betrays Sowell's complete ignorance of French culture and politics. Sowell completely ignores the standing French policy of forced assimilation which has attempted to force these immigrants into French customs. Sowell has no idea that many French people are highly xenophobic and hold French culture above all else. This widespread racism and xenophobia is evidenced by the recent near-win of Jean-Marie Le Pen in the presidential election. Le Pen is the openly racist and xenophobic head of the anti-immigrant National Front, and champions the exact policies many right-wingers are pushing for in the U.S. The French government has also gone so far in their cultural cleansing as to prohibit the wearing of religious attire, such as Muslim headscarves, in public schools. This is all exactly what Sowell and other Republicans would do -- use government force to crush anyone who is different or who refuses to conform with politicians' conceptions of what fits a national identity.

What escapes Sowell is that, combined with the rampant poverty and unemployment produced by France's massive socialist bureaucracy, this sort of government suppression of immigrants' identities is sure to breed resentment. Besides being racist and ignorant, attempting to force your culture on others is a sure way to alienate huge portions of society who choose to live their lives as they wish. When the French government creates inescapable poverty caused by foolish socialist programs, and combines it with ignorant, racist programs to force conformity on a population, they get exactly what they deserve -- riots.

Sadly, Sowell and most other Republicans refuse to learn the real lesson of these riots, which is that the government should never attempt to coerce certain cultural characteristics on a population, and that such anti-liberty practices are sure to result only in chaos. Republicans would have you believe that this is more evidence that we need an all-powerful police state to crush everyone into submission. What we really need is to let people live their lives however they choose, and to stop trying to impose politicians' wealthy ruling-class culture on people's diverse and wonderful ethnic traditions.

The entire idea of "if you want to live in our country, you have to live by our rules" peddled by so many ridiculous right-wing pundits and politicians is a worthless statist abstraction built on racism and ignorance, and has no place among those who truly value individual freedom and the right of people to live their lives as they see fit. The government has no legitimate claim to anyone or anything, and has no right to legislate culture any more than it has a right to control speech or any other human freedom.

P.S. Juan Cole also has a good post on French culture, and a good (though a little leftist) take on the events in France. Article here.

No Appeal For Detainees

In our burgeoning police state, the newest development is a bill proposed by Republican Senator Lindsay Graham which would strip "enemy combatants" being detained by the government of any right to appeal their detention (link here). And the Senate just passed the bill. Especially after revelations about illegal overseas "black sites" -- top secret military prisons where terror suspects are detained without any recourse to fair legal proceedings -- this bill is especially disconcerting. Bush has now claimed the right to deprive anyone of due process simply by labeling them as an "enemy combatant", and is now attempting to legitimize this unconstitutional practice through the new law.

On Hardball with Chris Matthews, Graham defended the measure by stating that, "Well, to be an enemy combatant, you have to have be found to have been part of a force, al Qaeda or some other terrorist network." (transcript here) Of course he never touches on the real issue of who will be doing the "finding" of who is guilty of a crime. The obvious problem is that whoever makes the determination, it certainly isn't going to be a judge. To those who either haven't heard of separation of powers or find human rights to be inconvenient relics (read: everyone in our Federal Government) this all makes perfect sense. To us real people, however, the prospect of Bush and company flushing habeas corpus down the toilet is very troubling.

Legally blocking any recourse to courts would logically complete the emerging system in which anyone, guilty or innocent (read: anyone who disapproves of the president), can be "disappeared", spirited off to a secret prison, and never heard from again. Of course if these practices were challenged legally -- which is now extremely unlikely now that the bill has passed -- Bush can simply deny having anything to do with the disappearances, just as he denies the existence of the jails themselves. Unless those people Bush chooses to dispose of are attractive white girls, no one will suspect that anything is awry. Even if they do fit that description, no one but Greta Van Sustern will lose any sleep over it. With the passing of this bill, the door will be wide open for virtually any conceivable intrusion on the liberties of Americans. The Democrats, who constantly spew empty rhetoric about valuing liberty, would have filibustered this kind of trash if they were worth anything at all. Once again the government is working to chip away at freedom and seize more and more power. No surprise there.

What is most disgusting isn't even that this unconstitutional filth was passed by the Senate (they've been using the Constitution as toilet paper for decades now), but that 1) Bush will sign it into law without any criticism from the "limited government" Republican crowd, and 2) with Bush packing the nation's courts full of power-hungry Republican sycophants and apologists for executive power, there's a decent chance that the obviously unconstitutional law will survive in the courts. Might as well stop saying "God Bless America." "God Save America" is more appropriate.

Secret Prisons & The Police State

In the aftermath of the Post story I discussed here a few days ago (link here), numerous nations have vigorously denied any connection to the secret camps described in the story as being spread throughout ex-Soviet countries in Eastern Europe. Oddly enough, it has also been revealed that a number of these secret prisons are housed in old Soviet detention centers. Thus it seems that Bush and his administration are not only adopting the anti-liberty practices of Soviet totalitarianism in their new Gulag, but are also re-animating the old facilities perfectly fit to such use. The circle is now complete, and the U.S. is eagerly stepping in to fill the void of totalitarianism left by the demise of the Soviet Union.

As things stand now, since 9/11 George Bush has attempted to suspend habeas corpus in the case of Jose Padilla and others; he has militarized police forces throughout the nation; he has created an army command (NORTHCOM) with control over the continental United States as battleground; he has supported the Patriot Act which encroaches on citizens' privacy and weakens judicial review; he has infringed on freedom of speech with the use of caged "free speech zones"; he has initiated the use of liberty-degrading mandatory national ID cards; he has mounted numerous illegal disinformation and propaganda campaigns involving Iraq and domestic issues, even being caught red-handed in his manipulations surrounding the Medicare drug plan; he has extralegally detained thousands of foreigners in Guantanamo Bay without any evidence of their guilt; he has overseen the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, with him and members defending the use of torture on many occasions; and now it is revealed that Bush has been disappearing people from throughout the world in violation of their human rights to fair judicial process, and detaining them indefinitely in holes in the ground throughout the world.

Even General Tommy Franks, the officer who oversaw the invasion of Iraq, has said that America's constitution will not survive another terrorist attack, and that in the case of another attack the U.S. will devolve into a police state.

America, the land of the free, indeed.

What more could one need to realize that Bush is evil and power-hungry beyond imagining? He has no respect for liberty, and should be removed from office immediately. Removed, that is, unless you approve of America's transformation into Big Brother police state. As sad as it is, I guess anyone who doesn't get it by now deserves their chains.

Bush Flees To South America, Vowing Never to Return (Just Kidding)

Today, Bush started a tour of Latin America that will include bilateral talks with a handful of nations who are largely critical of Bush (links here and here). In anticipation of Bush's arrival in Mar Del Plata, Argentina, city officials are "hunkering down" in anticipation of widespread anti-Bush violence. Like an arriving hurricane, Bush will be met with boarded up windows and mass disarray as people from all over Latin America protest his presence, policies, and hegemonical American domination of the Western Hemisphere.

No doubt security will be extremely tight at all Bush's stops, and there doesn't seem to be any indication Bush will be making public appearances. These mass protests have become very common whenever Bush travels abroad, as opponents of the occupation of Iraq and Bush's aggressive foreign policies descend on any city unlucky enough to host the President. It seems there is no longer anywhere the president can go where he is not protested and despised, since the invasion of Crawford by Cindy Sheehan's "Camp Casey" (what ever happened to her, by the way) and the constant presence of pro-Roe v. Wade and anti-war protestors in Washington. No reason to let the man get a good night's sleep as long as he's killing people overseas and shredding the Constitution here at home, so I say keep up the good work.

Riots! (And Not the Good Kind)

For about a week now, the suburbs of Paris have been ablaze as gangs of "alienated youths" roam the streets setting fire to hundreds cars and firing shots at police and firefighters (Guardian story here). Apparently, the riots were sparked by the deaths of two African teenagers who were electrocuted while hiding in a power station. The young men thought that they were being pursued by police (in fact they were not), and were attempting to hide.

Of course it is absurd to start riots over the accidental death of two teenagers, when the police had nothing to do with the matter. Is the perception of police involvement on the part of the victims sufficient to blame police for the accident? Apparently in the eyes of numerous poor, alienated Parisians the answer is yes. Compared to this farce, the riots in response to the beating of Rodney King were ideologically bulletproof. (In fact there was no excuse to take out anger at the police on private property in those L.A. riots either, but at least there was something that understandably caused outrage in that situation.)

A number of right-wing pundits have come out saying that these riots are a direct result of France's loose immigration policies, and have warned that the U.S. could face similar problems if they do not work to stop the massive illegal immigration occuring along our Mexican border. Now, of course there is a relation between the riots and France's large African immigrant population (most of the rioters are apparently African immigrants), however it is fallacious to claim that the problems were caused by the immigration policies.

The problem is not the immigrants, but French society itself, and the situation into which society thrusts these immigrants. The massive parasitic bureaucratic state in France is beyond all imagining, and the tax burden on French citizens is one of the highest in Europe. With an unemployment rate of almost 9 percent and myriad laws that stifle free markets, it is no surprise that poverty in France is seen as inescapable by these young people. The negative effects of such a huge parasitic state are evident in France's per capita GDP of $25,400 (compared to $40,100 in the U.S.) and its GDP growth rate of just over 2 percent (compared to the current 4.4 percent in America in the midst of a recession, and the over 7 percent in 2003). This system has crippled the people of France, with the natural population growth rate screeching to a halt and the economy sagging.

It stands to reason that when such a huge proportion of French society is dedicated not to creating wealth, but to seizing and redistributing it, improving the standard of living for the poor will become increasingly difficult as there is less and less to go around. The state does not produce wealth. It does not produce food or shelter or anything else that could be used to alleviate poverty, and the more society concentrates on reapportioning wealth, the more will be leeched from the processes that work to improve the lots of everyone, including the poor.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that France's socialist system works to improve the well-being of the poor. Of course in the short term, the poor receive more money, but in the long term the poor, the middle classes, and the wealthy are dragged down -- with the wealthy as always hurting the least no matter how much the law discriminates against them. No doubt the French peoples' intentions are good, but the systems they have initiated do nothing but bring all of healthy society to its knees. Human beings naturally expand and produce the goods necessary for them to be prosperous and content, but the more people rely on government the more they work to stifle these natural human processes.

In this environment, it is not surprising that many poor French immigrants feel alienated and hopeless. The government systems that dominate their culture serve only to increase the power and influence of wealthy politicians while miring the rest of honest, hard-working people in mediocrity and poverty. When paired with pathetic state-run public schools that churn out ignorance better than education, and the hopeless feeling of dependence created by the failed welfare state, these riots should not be surprising in the least.

Instead of making immigrants into scapegoats, people should recognize the natural effects when humans are not allowed to naturally produce and trade the necessities of life. The state produces nothing of value to society, and can only improve the lots of some by taking from others. There is no way that such a system can meet the needs of millions of people, and the result is poverty, anger, alienation, and violence. Of course there are other contributing factors to this outbreak of violence, but the French could greatly alleviate this and many other ills of their society by simply letting people act and trade freely.

(All the above statistics taken from the CIA World Factbook and Phrasebase.com.)

Its Beginning to Look a Lot Like Gulag

"If this were a dictatorship, things would be a heck of a lot easier -- just so long as I'm the dictator." -- George W. Bush

A shocking story in the Washington Post, released today, details an extensive CIA system of secret prisons throughout the world, operating without any oversight or regulation (link here). The prison system, which has prisons in a number of eastern European states, was established after 9/11 by the Bush administration. The locations of the prisons are only known to the president and a few regional officials, since the operations are not subject to any form congressional oversight. With the exception of a handful of high-level government officials, no one knows how many people are in these prisons, who they are, what they are alleged to have done, or how they are being treated. Such a system of secret prisons can only be established through a presidential authorization of covert action. In this case, Bush signed the necessary covert action "finding" only six days after the September 11th attacks.

When Human Rights Watch came out with their report calling Guantanamo Bay a "gulag," it was clear that they really didn't know what a gulag is. There were some terrible things in Guantanamo, and I would love to see it shut down, but calling it a gulag was obvious hyperbole. Gulags are secretive. You don't know who goes in and what happens inside them. In gulags, innocent people can be "disappeared" and never heard from again. There is no congressional oversight in a gulag. In short, the prison system described in the Washington Post is a great example of a gulag.

The entire secretive system is built around keeping Americans in the dark and contravening the American court system. Since when is our court system something to be avoided? Since when do we allow our government to circumvent their constitutional obligations by exploiting cute legal loopholes? The legal acrobatics of Bush and his team in excusing these terrible things is akin to the annoying sibling with a hovering finger, joyfully saying, "I'm not touching you!" Similar, except that because of Bush's foolish legal contortions, people are dying, people are being tortured, and lives are being ruined.

This also sheds some light on why Cheney was pushing for a CIA exception to the new anti-torture bill in Congress. What would a gulag be without torture? Bush and Cheney, despite the obviously horrible nature of these prisons, are very careful to maintain a thin veneer of legality in their secret prisons and torture chambers.

I suppose one should be careful with their criticism of this secret prison system, since any government in the business of building gulags might not hesitate to use them against its own citizens. What is to keep them from scooping Americans in the abyss of these prisons? There would be no way to prove that anything happened. Once confined to a black hole in the ground on the other side of the globe, you would no doubt find it exceedingly difficult to challenge the legality of your detention. Just another Holloway-esque disappearance, except if you aren't an attractive white girl, no one will look for you.

To those who so blindly trust our government, all I can say is that it is naive to think that despite these totalitarian measures, we will all be fine. Government always uses its power to its full extent, and if they claim the power to jail people secretly, they will use the hell out of that power, human rights be damned. Even if they don't come after you, what kind of free country supports such an evil, anti-freedom system as this?

There can no longer be any doubt. Bush is an evil, evil man with aspirations of totalitarianism. He must be removed from power.

Alito's Casey Dissent

From The New Republic (via The Volokh Conspiracy), a good analysis of Alito's very contentious dissent in the Casey decision:

. . . Alito's dissent was not ideological and did not show any disrespect to governing Supreme Court abortion precedent. On the contrary, Alito's analysis was a careful application of the framework laid out by Justice O'Connor in her many opinions on the subject. It was also relatively mainstream: Opinion polls then and now show that 60 to 70 percent of Americans generally favor spousal notification provisions. Moreover, the notification provision at issue in Casey was narrowly drawn. It did not apply to unmarried women, it provided for many exceptions, and it required only that a woman sign a statement attesting that she had complied with the law. What's more, in his dissent, Alito presumed that 95 percent of married women do notify their spouses if they have an abortion; and no one was able to show that the other 5 percent wouldn't fall within the statute's many exceptions. In short, Alito's opinion was careful, modest, pragmatic, and reached a fairly mainstream result. This was hardly the work of an anti-Roe firebrand.

Once again, whether you agree or disagree with Alito's stance on this, even the most cursory examination of the case and law in question shows that there was nothing in Alito's decision that would at all indicate some ideological opposition to Roe. He may in fact be opposed to Roe, but this is not the smoking gun. The left needs to stop repeating such an easily-refuted and obviously false argument, or they have very little chance of getting people to see their point of view.

Here's a link to the original New Republic article (subscription required).

Political Armageddon? Please?

I've been reading more about the whole situation surrounding Harry Reid's antics today, and the more I read the more I am delighted with how things are turning out, although not at all in the way Democrats are delighted.

A lot of the smooth operation of Congress is completely dependent on a traditional agreement of cooperation between the majority and minority parties, and what Reid did earlier today amounted to firing a warning shot towards the Republicans in response to 1) their stalling regarding the Iraq intelligence inquiry, and 2) their recent discussions of using the "nuclear option" in response to a Democratic filibuster of Samuel Alito. This warning might make Republicans a little more conscious of how fragile that traditional agreement can be if things get messy. Of course it was a political stunt, with which Reid hoped to appeal to Democrats and show anyone who cared that he was "taking things seriously," but it could also have some serious consequences.

The first, and less interesting possible effect of this would be the Republicans finally getting serious about an investigation into the Bush administration's pre-war intelligence manipulations. Of course this would be great to finally get some answers, but the committee doing the investigating would be headed by Republicans, and it seems pretty likely nothing too exciting or truthful would come of the inquiry unless the Democrats somehow overpower the Republicans (which is unlikely).

The second and most delightful possibility is that the Republicans will sense that they are being made to look weak, and will respond in kind to Reid's forceful actions. That would mean exploiting their position as the majority party and making Democrats' lives miserable. If this happens, most likely the Democrats will respond with a filibuster of Alito (which they are discussing anyway), and if things are heated enough, Republicans might go to the "nuclear option" of changing Senate rules to prohibit filibustering. The Republican base certainly thinks they are owed a solid conservative judge after the Miers scare, and Republicans may be willing to go very far to re-invigorate the party. Needless to say, if this happens Democrats will gladly break the tacit agreement that allows Senate to function smoothly despite partisan differences, and the whole system breaks down. No more laws, no more idiot Senators meddling with our lives, and no more ridiculous spending. What could be more perfect than the entire corrupt, incompetent, absurd system being brought to its knees by the squabbling of these two worthless parties?

Of course this second option is probably unlikely since both parties are no doubt well aware they would look like absolute fools to let things get that out of hand, but if something like this was to happen, now would be the time. With Bush as weak as he is, the weak Democrats smelling blood in the water, and the Republicans trying to re-assert themselves in the face of all the crippling events they are facing, the entire situation is ripe for some sort of heated exchange.

By now everyone knows that the Republicans have abandoned any claim to being a party of "limited government," and the Democrats are just as bad as they've always been, so it seems our only hope of rolling back the growing state is to let the entire decadent system collapse on itself. If both the Democrats and Republicans are shown to be the fools they are, the stage would also be set perfectly for a third party to take the stage and (possibly) do some good. And if we get a month or two reprieve from the constant hacking away at liberty of Congress, all the better.

Such an extreme turn of events would of course necessitate some amazing turns of luck, so I suggest we all start praying to the gods of liberty for some miracles. I guess things aren't all bad when the worst-case scenario is Bush getting investigated finally for the whole Iraq debacle.

(For the record, this is all just wishful thinking, but if it really happens I think we'll have a new national holiday to celebrate.)