Long before this blog, I kept an equally-erratic literary journal called A Voice in the Wilderness. And while nothing written there was particularly world-shattering, I don’t want it to get lost in the mists of cyberspace. So to do my part to save the planet, I’m going to recycle and reuse that content, putting the save-worthy stuff here on Mongrel Dogs. Today we start with a piece written in reaction to an op-ed in the Washington Post written by one Victoria Toensing, on 2002 September 23, about the then-nascent Bush policy of secret detention and arbitrary arrest. Sadly it’s five years later and we are five years deeper into the pit, the cause of liberty even more undermined by its alleged defenders.

The piece is reproduced below the fold.

It is hard to imagine any more ways in which Victoria Toensing (“A National Need for Preventive Justice”, 2002 Sep 23) could completely misunderstand American priorities, American justice, or American liberty. The proper response to an act of barbarism is not more barbarism. It is a re-dedication to the cause of freedom — to the Constitutional guarantees that make the United States of America the most free and open society in the history of the planet.

I would feel more assured that her proposed “prism for dealing with the issues of detainees and the collection of evidence would not abandon our constitutional precepts” if she did not then go on to spell exactly how, in fact, it does jettison those precepts. Due process? Presumption of innocence? Separation of powers? Judicial review? Although these terms have long been identified with American liberty, Ms. Toensing sees fit to cast them on the dustbin of history.

And please do not repeat the tired — and wrong! — assertion that World War II justifies the secret tribunals, indefinite uncharged detentions, and highhanded assumption of unbridled exectuive power. In case Ms. Toensing has missed it, there is a crucial difference between 1942 and 2002: Today, Congress has not seen fit to grant — nor the President to even seek! — a declaration of war. The elected leaders of this great democracy have not said, in the voice of the people, that we are at war. Therefore, no “wartime emergency” measures are legal or justified. The President has had twelve months to make his case and to ask for a writ of war. He has not troubled to do this, making the overheated calls for rampaging executive authority ring somewhat hollow.

I mention only in passing that almost every one of the decisions so happily offered as precedent now, has been long considered a travesty of American justice, that every act of judicial deference has been long considered a regrettable mistake, and that every executive trampling of individual liberties has been long regarded as a Constitutional debacle.

Ms. Toensing finds it “bizarre” that the government was required to disclose its charges and evidence to the counsel to John Walker Lindh. What she finds bizarre, true lovers of liberty will find heartening: The Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the Eighth Amendment, and all the attendant legal structure, exist to protect the individual from the unrestrained fury of the State. Not merely as a citizen but as a human being, Mr. Lindh was entitled to those full protections and was afforded all of them. Amazingly, the walls of civilization somehow did not come tumbling down — because America is strong enough to offer those protections even to those who wish to destroy us — and America is strong enough to triumph nonetheless.

In the case of Messr. Hamdi and Padilla, it is so comforting to know that “they are being held as prisoners of war until the end of the conflict, as has been done ever since rules of war were written.” Apparently, in this example, since the rules of war happen to be convenient, they are to be sacrosanct. But when the rules of war do not favor the administration view — such as when the Geneva Convention demands full and impartial hearings into the status of prisoners of war — then suddenly we are in a “new age” when the old rules do not apply. By the way, Ms. Toensing is somewhat untruthful. Messrs. Padilla and Hamdi are not being held as “prisoners of war”. The President’s men claim only that the two are “unlawful combatants” — a designation with no recognized meaning and thus, ironically, itself unlawful. “Prisoners of war” have rights as guaranteed by the Geneva Convention and other treaties. “Unlawful combatants” apparently remain or go free at the whim of the President.

Several times Ms. Toensing asserts that prisoners should be detained “until the end of the conflict”. Yet we are engaged in a drawn-out conflict, the very embodiment of a “long twilight struggle”. When, exactly, will the war end? How are we to know? Had President Bush deigned to obtain a writ of war, our objectives and victory conditions would be clear. But instead we are offered war without end, an ill-defined and unceasing conflict worthy of Orwell’s 1984. Normalcy will never return because this so-called “war”, unencumbered by anything so quaint as a Congressional writ, has no discernible endpoint. Terrorism is not a war to be fought. It is a disease to be contained, a virus on the body politic. It will remain for as long as regions exist in which it can incubate.

Ms. Toensing askes, “Why would we want to reveal any information about who is in custody or the basis for their detention when it could expose sources and methods?” The answer is simple: Because democracy and the fundamental liberty of Americans absolutely require an open and communicative government. If the people are to remain the government’s masters, must they not know what the government does in their name? Ms. Toensing also worries that opening deportation hearings aids the enemy, for example by “giving them pieces to complete an intelligence mosaic by which they can learn, for example, which detainee is cooperating or which cell has lost members and needs replacements”. If Al Qaeda needs to read the court docket to know which of its cells has gone missing, then this “terrorist network” poses no more threat than the keystone cops. The only ones who lose in an atmosphere of absolute, unchallenged secrecy is the American people.

Ms. Toensing bravely decries her own ability to judge terrorist trials. (By the way, the government can still close a deportation hearing — it need only show cause to the judge.) Why? Because, “Quite simply, I do not have access to the relevant investigative and classified information. Neither will the advocates of public disclosure. Nor will the press.” That is to say, the sovereign people of the United States of America cannot be trusted with the power to decide for themselves the propriety and validity of their government’s actions. If we remove the public entirely and without appeal from this, the most basic of actions, then what role is available? Or should we simply let our “betters” rule, perhaps in perpetuity?

Through her tone and her words, Ms. Toensing betrays the ultimate problem that any freedom-loving citizen has with the actions she defends: She and her ilk simply do not believe in democracy. They do not have any faith in the country they claim to defend and to cherish. They do not believe in the fundamental solidity and awe-inspiring strength of the American republic. They — more than the barbarians who felled the Towers — have wrought unneeded, unprecedented, and unwarranted changes in the political fabric of our nation. They — more than al Qaeda, more than Iraq — threaten the freedom of American citizens.

Ms. Toensing gets one thing right: “What is important for all these cases is that the courts are functioning.” They are indeed — and happily they have so far issued rebuke after sharp rebuke to the groping grasping grip of the executive. Thank Providence that the courts are open and functioning — for they alone are protecting the American people and American democracy itself against this President who purportedly swore to uphold the Constitution and now cynically strives to topple it.

We are stronger than this. We are smarter than this. We are better than this.

With respect,
-=-Bernard HP Gilroy

In preparing my second Convocation speech, I spent most of the summer at a loss. Once I had changed apartments, I sat down in earnest. Eventually, I ended up jettisoning my original effort and producing the speech as given. But in case you wonder what could have been, below I’ll post the speech I nearly gave. There are two caveats:

• I shamelessly cannibalized this for any rhetoric I thought actually worked, so the actual speech and this one overlap somewhat.
• I abandoned this and never finished editing or, indeed, writing it. So the thing given is unpolished and the quality comparatively low.

Without further hedging, let me give you the Speech that Wasn’t.

Good morning.

I’m going to break one of the cardinal rules of rhetoric and confess to the trepidation I felt in giving this speech. Or not in giving it — because, as anyone can tell you, I certainly like to talk, especially when the listener can’t talk back. But writing it gave me pause. Sometimes the only thing harder than doing a thing is doing it again. As Mr. Evans is wont to tell me, something cannot be considered “annual” until it happens the second time a year later. So in a sense, it is this speech that is intended to inaugurate an annual tradition of speeches by the holder of the Distinguished Faculty Chair.

For a while — longer, perhaps, than I should admit — I toyed with the idea of hedging my bets. The plan was to offer a searching analysis of the phenomenon of the “one-hit wonder” — the savant, found in science, in literature, in every human endeavor, who bursts onto the scene like a shooting star, shakes the foundations of a field, and then curiously vanishes back into obscurity, never to contribute again. I trust the subtext here is clear. Best of all, even if the speech fell flat, I would win: I could always claim that, rather than being a textual failure, it was a meta-textual success.

The solemnity of the occasion, perhaps, calls for something weightier — something at once soaring and deep, an exposition on the human soul and our never-ending quest for meaning. But having explored last year the very future of humankind, I found myself somewhat at a loss. When you’ve begun by debating the survivability of the species, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of places left to go.

Considering the date on which we meet, it might be considered by some to be a propos to discourse on the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The wrenching events of our time demand that we engage with them, wrestle them to the ground, demand meaning from them. On this subject there will be no shortage today of chattering on the airwaves and nattering in the papers. No one needs one more voice thrown into that cacophony. A native son of New York, I still contemplate the skyline with clenched jaw and clenched fist. It has been six years, and there is still a hole in my city — a hole in my country — a hole in my heart. And I find I am not ready to talk about that yet.

Instead, I’m going to talk about Rock, Paper, Scissors. In case you’ve forgotten, Rock, Paper, Scissors is a method of decision between two people, wherein each secretly picks one of the items and they compare. The key bit is that each item ties with itself, loses to one item, and beats the other. The traditional phrasing is, “Rock blunts scissors; scissors cut paper; paper covers rock”. It’s that last one I want to focus on. Paper covers rock? What the heck does that mean? How is that a win?

{Transition needed.}

This past summer I had the opportunity to visit the national Pearl Harbor Memorial in Honolulu, Hawai’i. Commemorating a naval attack, it is fittingly primarily a naval monument. The two great anchors of the monument are the USS Arizona and the USS Missouri. The Arizona was a battleship sunk during the Pearl Harbor attacks. Though most of the Pacific Fleet was refloated and rebuilt in the years following the attack, the Arizona could not be salvaged or moved. It sits at the bottom of what was once Battleship Row. The Navy operates a tender from shore to the stark elegant observation station that has been constructed above the wreck. From it you can look down on the coral-encrusted hulk of the Arizona, watery tomb for the majority of the servicemen killed that day.

The Missouri was BB-63, the last battleship ever constructed by the United States. Now a museum ship docked at Pearl Harbor, the Missouri is still an intimidating sight. Towering over the shoreline, she bears three turrets each with three 16-inch guns capable of throwing an explosive shell a distance of 20 miles and landing within a circle of radius six inches. The Missouri was a great and terrible engine of war, and everything in her design speaks to the awesome destructive powers that could be marshaled by an enraged industrial democracy. But standing on her deck, I found the most stirring and moving part was not her giant main guns, or the anti-aircraft machine guns still deployed on the side, nor even the capped tubes wherein Tomahawk cruise missiles had been installed in the 1980s. It wasn’t the sweeping bow or the grim turrets or the majestic bridge. It was a simple golden circle fixed to an otherwise nondescript spot on the mid-decks.

In 1945, at that spot on the decks of the Missouri, in the waters of Tokyo Bay, representatives of the Empire of Japan signed the formal documents indicating their surrender to the forces of the United Nations, ending the Second World War. In a brisk twenty-three minute ceremony, a band of perhaps twenty men — Japanese, American, Canadian, British, and Russian — affixed their names to two copies of the surrender documents to enact the armistice. From that point on the Missouri, you can just see the alabaster arc of the Arizona memorial. Between Arizona and Missouri lie a few hundred yards of open water and a few hundred thousand American casualties. They bookend the American involvement in a war that spanned a decade and a half and claimed upwards of sixty million victims — a number that, even living at the dawn of the most dangerous century, must give us pause.

Standing on the Missouri in mid August, I overhead a museum guide relate a story that struck me immediately. It’s one of those little tales that museum guides love, a tidbit that uses the mundane to illuminate the immense. Signing the Japanese surrender document was, as you might imagine, an event of great import in anyone’s life and, as you might also imagine, it could be the source of great trepidation. The representative of Canada, L. Moore Cosgrave, was apparently overcome by his nervousness and, while signing the Japanese copy, signed on the line for the French Republic. This forced everyone following him to also sign on the wrong lines. Eventually, concern over the implications of this error led General Richard Sutherland to cross out the names of the nations and pencil in the correct ones.

It was a minor, totally banal detail. Yet it was also a striking, astonishing thing. At that moment, General MacArthur stood in supreme command of the largest, most powerful military forces in the history of the world. Having brought the Empire of Japan to its knees, the Allied Powers held uncontested dominion over East Asia and the Pacific. How truly bizarre – between them, these men standing on the deck of the Missouri had fought the most devastating war ever known, had overseen barbarities of a nature hard to contemplate, had rained down obliteration on entire cities and had sent millions of men to their deaths to do it. Yet here they were, worried that somehow, a signature in the wrong place could render the document worthless and the exercise moot — that somehow, a misplaced name could unmake the surrender.

And that’s the hidden key. The Missouri, the last and greatest battleship, the apex of naval construction, serves as a very present icon of physical force — standing at the head of an unbroken lineage stretching all the way back to the first rock lifted by a semi-evolved ape in assault upon its brethren. Our long and bloody history attests to the power of that rock. But on that day in Tokyo Bay, it was not the battleship that mattered, or the airplanes or submarines, or even the atomic bombs looming in the background. To the assembled warriors of the most terrible conflict, what mattered was the document. Paper trumps rock.

And isn’t that the way, when you think about it? We often mistake the things as the drivers of history: wheat and salt, gold and oil. But somehow it’s the pieces of paper that seem to truly matter, to truly steer the course of human life. In 1914, a relatively minor Balkan War was transformed into the First World War by German violations of Belgian neutrality, codified in the Treaty of London of 1839. Informed that the British would go to war to defend Belgium’s neutral status, German Chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg expressed his shock that they would expand the war over what he infamously dismissed as a “scrap of paper”. That scrap of paper shook the foundations of Europe and remade the world order. Its spiritual successor, the Treaty of Versailles, would help engender the next world war.

The Declaration of Independence. The Constitution of the United States. The Magna Carta and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The Emancipation Proclamation. The Fourteen Points and the Atlantic Charter. Words on a page. Scraps of paper. But nothing more feared by tyrants, more despised by despots. It was no accident that the Soviets registered every typewriter and made unauthorized use of a photocopier a felony offense, punishable by jail time or even internal exile. They knew in their bones that they faced a greater existential threat from little scratches in black and white than from all the nuclear missiles in the world.

In a very real sense, the most disruptive weapon ever invented has been the printing press.

Words on a page. Scraps of paper. They give form and life to the ideas they contain. Through them we transcend the oral and enter the eternal.

Today the Hun School had its second annual Convocation to commence the year. As the current holder of the Distinguished Faculty Endowed Chair, it fell to me to present a speech. (I did this last year, too; you can find that speech online.) The text of this second speech can be found below the fold.

Good morning. Being offered a second opportunity to address the School community has been a great honor. I have to confess, it has also been a great challenge. For a while — longer, perhaps, than I should admit — I toyed with the idea of hedging my bets. The plan was to offer a searching analysis of the phenomenon of the “one-hit wonder” — the savant, found in science, in literature, in every human endeavor, who bursts onto the scene like a shooting star, shakes the foundations of a field, and then curiously vanishes back into obscurity, never to contribute again. I trust the parallel here is clear. Best of all, even if the speech fell flat, I would win: I could always claim that, rather than being a textual failure, it was a meta-textual success.

But on Sunday morning I woke up and realized that I was running away from what I needed to say. I had to abandon the whole thing and start over. I hope you’ll indulge me.

Today we meet as a School on a date both solemn and raw for the nation. It wasn’t planned that way; it’s just an accident of the calendar. But sometimes I wonder if history is anything more than accidents of the calendar. If it is, it is because we take those accidents and create meaning in them. As a native son of New York, my jaw still clenches and my eyes still tear whenever this day looms again. Six years later, there remains a hole in my city — a hole in my country — a hole in my heart. When I sat down to write, I thought that I was still not ready to speak about that day, to sift through the ashes for meaning. As I began to write, though, I made a shocking discovery.

It’s true — I am not ready.

But that doesn’t matter.

That is the first important lesson of the 21st century: We will face severe challenges for which we may not be ready. The challenges aren’t going to go away, though, so we have to get ready. Despite what the movies tell us, failure is an option — in fact, it’s the default option. We are going to have to choose success; we are going to have to work for it. Last year I laid out what I see as some of the dangers and pitfalls we might face and what might help us get past them. I remain proud of that speech, perhaps inordinately proud of it. But it didn’t take long to knock me down a peg. Within a few days of Convocation, several different people — students and faculty — had told me that they had appreciated the speech but that I had scared them sleepless. This disappointed me, because it meant that I had missed my mark. I had hoped to navigate the thin space between raising an alarm and causing a panic. Looking ahead, it’s a good thing to be a little alarmed. It’s a terrible thing to be panicked.

And this is the second lesson of the 21st century, as hard in its own way as the first: You cannot live in fear. You must not live in fear. Stimulate an animal’s fear centers continuously, and eventually it will die. Stimulate a free society’s fear centers continuously, and eventually it will wither.

We have spent the last six years cowering in a corner, huddling in our fear. It’s unhealthy for each and every one of us. It’s unbecoming of a great nation and a great people. It’s simply bad posture. Now, today, it is time to wake up. It is time to step up. It is time to grow up. My generation and the one preceding mine, we’re asking a lot of you. You’re being asked to grow up in the hardest century we’ve ever faced. You’re being asked to step up and shepherd this fractious and fearful world through fire and fury to a destination none can even imagine yet. It’s hard and it’s frightening and it is not fair. That doesn’t matter. It’s what is.

There will be those — there already are those — who will offer to take this burden from you. “Give yourself over to me”, they claim, “and I will tame the night for you. I will face down the bogeyman, I will guard you and keep you safe.” The best of these will be merely misguided. Most will be outright deceitful. No one can grow up for you. No one can live your life for you. That won’t stop them from trying to tempt you into surrender. They will bang the drum and rattle the saber and do everything in their power to convince you that your rightful place is prone on the ground, helpless and afraid. They will attempt to buy your birthright by selling you fear.

Fear of other people taking your things.

Fear of other people taking your job.

Fear of other people taking your life.

Fear of other people, period.

Fear of being different, of being outcast, of being alone.

Fear of other opinions and other beliefs and other faiths.

Fear of the different, of the alien, of the Other — of anything not them.

Simple fear.

They will tell you that there is only one path, that you must make yourself a smaller target by becoming less than yourself. We must, we are told, jettison the lessons of four hundred years of liberty. We must, we are told, give up our quaint notions of due process and restraint and fair play. We are told, “Dissent divides”. We are told that asking questions costs lives. We are told these things, and in our fear, we pretend that they are true. But in our hearts, we know that they are not.

Fear lives in the oldest, darkest corners of the brain — parts far older than humanity. Like everything else, fear persists because it offered an evolutionary advantage. But it never evolved for creatures like us, who think and remember. Those who appeal to your fear are trying to short-circuit your brain. They don’t want you questioning, because questioning gives you context. They don’t want you learning, because learning gives you options. Above all, they don’t want you thinking, because thinking gives you freedom. They want you reacting, worrying, following, fearing. It is a blatant confession of a bankruptcy of solutions; it could not be more obvious or insulting; and yet, amazingly, every day we fall for it.

You cannot live in fear. You must not live in fear.

What is the alternative? Should you go through the day in an optimistic fog, counting on the world to be always sunshine and daisies? Of course not. We face the hardest century. The world is going to be sharp edges and deep chasms. But consider this: When suddenly dropped into a frightening situation, the most primal instinct is to close your eyes and hope it goes away. It’s a very natural, a very human reaction. But closing your eyes doesn’t make the danger go away. In fact, the only safe course is to open your eyes and face the frightening thing. Even if the smart move is to run, you’re going to want to run with your eyes open.

Your would-be guardians and rulers have always been here, since our species huddled in the darkness, vulnerable and afraid; and for a time, they served a role. They interposed themselves between the sleeping masses and the vast unknowable night. Now a bright bonfire called civilization blazes and pushes back the night. Yet the fearmongers persist, hovering at the edge of the light, on the shore of the shadows, unwilling to come closer. They fear the darkness but they hate the light, because it reveals that we don’t need them any longer. Seeing the fire hold back the night, they scream that it will attract monsters and must be extinguished — that we must go back to cowering in darkness and terror, trusting only in them. But the fire doesn’t attract danger. It allows us to see danger coming and to prepare for it and thus avoid it. Our system of justice and liberty doesn’t threaten our lives; it makes them possible. It lets us see what truly is.

Despite what you’ve been told, most people on this planet are not out to kill you. Most people on this planet don’t hate you for your freedoms, whatever that means. They don’t hate you for your wealth or even for your actions. They don’t hate you at all. Just like us, most people desire little more than the opportunity to create a better life and the peace to enjoy the fruits of that labor.

Be wary of those who tell you differently. Distrust those who ring the alarm bell so loudly that you cannot think. Ask yourself: What are they afraid of? What do they fear you will discover? Fear is a powerful and dangerous drug on the body politic. It can be used to strip people of their defenses, of their dignity, of their principles. Using fear to bludgeon you into assent, people will act in your name to do the most dreadful of deeds: To abrogate elections, to spy illegally, to detain indefinitely. To discriminate and intimidate, to torture and to execute. In pursuit of imaginary security, they will demand that you surrender your privacy, your identity, your opinions, your self. They will tell you, “We cannot afford outdated customs such as judicial oversight or checks and balances or free debate.” They will say to you, “To fight the monsters, we must become monsters ourselves.” Don’t let them fool you.

We are stronger than that.

We are smarter than that.

We are better than that.

And you cannot live in fear forever.

In reading this AP News story on the upcoming speech by the President, I came across the following:

Bush and his senior advisers are likely to hear the initial thinking from Ryan Crocker, Bush’s envoy in Baghdad
[emphasis added]

Isn’t Ryan Crocker the accredited ambassador to Iraq? Confirmed and empowered, one would hope, by the United States Senate? He’s not some office flunky that Bush sent over to Iraq for a look-see. He’s the full-time diplomatic representative (to an allegedly sovereign nation) of the United States of America, not of George W. Bush. Talk about your imperial presidencies! It’s about as bad as when Bush himself said, of Rumsfeld,

Good. He’s done a heck of a job. He’s conducted two wars, and at the same time is out to transfer my military from a military that was constructed for the post-Cold War to one that is going to be constructed to fight terrorism.

Ominous phrases, both.

As has been usual, this is another exhortation to “Work to Win”. My “study” of WWI and WWII posters indicates that almost all fell into the “Work harder” or “Buy more bonds” categories. True to form, this poster says, “Victory up here… begins down here“. Overhead are a Retro Rocketship and a DV snub fighter. On the ground, in a vaguely-factory-ish compound, is another Retro Rocketship. It’s not so easy to make clear that this one is being assembled or worked on. I put in a forklift and a repair bot, as well as a guy welding something to the periscope hatch. (He’s hard to see, on the top of the ship.) Actually, I had to go find models for almost everything, as I didn’t have a lot of industrial nick-nacks lying around.

You have to feel bad for poor Tony Snow, Press Secretary to President Bush. You see, Tony really really loves the job — he’s full of passion for it — but darn it, he just can’t afford to fight the good fight anymore. According to reports on CNN and the AP, Tony will have to leave sometime before the Bush administration ends, for “financial reasons”:

“I’m not going to be able to go the distance, but that’s primarily for financial reasons. I’ve told people when my money runs out, then I’ve got to go.”

Oh, by the way, Tony makes about $168,000 each year as Press Secretary. But he can’t afford to stay, because “he felt he needed to make some more money to help his family, which includes children readying for college.”

There’s something both fascinating and sickening to watch these people claim “financial hardship” while pulling in three times my salary after wrecking the economy for anyone earning below $100K. But maybe this is good. Maybe Tony will have a little more sympathy for the people struggling to get by, the ones who can’t go back to Punditlandia and make millions and yet still have the audacious desire to send their kids to college, too.

Not so easy to make it in Bush’s America, is it, Mr. Snow?

Seven days ago I had the opportunity to relive the American experience in the Second World War in one morning. In reverse. As part of the Regal Princess‘ stop at the port of Honolulu, I took part in a tour of the memorials to the USS Arizona and USS Missouri. In case your command of WWII facts is rusty, the Arizona is a battleship sunk during the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on 1941 December 7 – the date that will live in infamy. The Missouri is part of the American response to that act. It’s an Iowa class battleship, the largest ever built and the last in service. On the decks of the Missouri, on 1945 September 2, the Japanese government signed the papers surrendering to the United Nations. In between, tens of millions of people died – nearly half a million of them American.

For reasons having to do with long lines and scheduling, my tour group actually explored the Missouri memorial first. The Missouri Memorial is, in fact, the Missouri – all of BB 63, anchored and refit as a floating museum. It’s not exactly a WWII monument. During the half century between VJ Day and its decommissioning, the Missouri served as a flagship of the United States Navy. It saw action in Korea, in Viet Nam, and even in the (first) Gulf War. During this span it was modernized and upgraded: the seaplane replaced with helicopters; the machine guns replaced with gatling anti-air. A full complement of Tomahawk cruise missile launchers was installed. In case all of that should fail, though, the Mighty Mo’ kept her main armament, nine 16-inch cannon in three independent turrets.

For all of the intimidating bigness of the battleship, the most stirring part turned out to be the surrender documents. Both copies – American and Japanese – are displayed. I was struck by the contrast of grand and mundane. At one glance are all the grandiose phrases calling for the end of war and the dedication to new peace. But look a little closer and you see the mark of a very human moment, where the representative of Canada, in his nervousness, signed on the wrong line and necessitated a hurried penciled correction. MacArthur insisted that the proper titles be penciled in and each signatory initial next to his correct line. How bizarre – between them, these men had fought the most devastating war ever known, had overseen barbarities of a nature hard to contemplate, had rained down obliteration on entire cities and had sent thousands of men to their deaths to do it. Yet here they were, worried that somehow, a signature in the wrong place could render the document worthless and the exercise moot.

Yet that’s the way of it, isn’t it? Paper covers rock. We think it’s the things that matter, but somehow, it’s the pieces of paper that seem to actually change the course of history. World War I became World War I, in a sense, with the British treaty guaranteeing Belgian neutrality – dismissed as just a “scrap of paper” by the German High Command. World War II spread to the West and became a World War with the Allied treaty of defense with Poland, again dismissed as just words on a page. In both cases, the powers that derided the words went on to be humbled by them.

The Declaration of Independence. The Constitution of the United States. The Magna Carta and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The Emancipation Proclamation. The Fourteen Points and the Atlantic Charter. Words on a page. Scraps of paper. But nothing more feared by tyrants, more despised by despots. It’s no accident that the Soviet Union registered all typewriters and made private possession of a mimeograph a felony offense.

And here, under glass, on the gently rolling deck of the mightiest warship ever constructed, was a piece of paper that had ended a war because it said so. The history of the war was written in the blood of its combatants – but it was ended through ink. The document contains little in the way of soaring oratory or grand pronouncements. It is a legal thing, a dry thing, a weary thing yet resplendent. That piece of paper recognized a changed reality and so enabled it.

Scraps of paper.

Word on a page.

Paper covers rock.

May it always be so.

I was going to write today about my visit to the USS Arizona and USS Missouri memorials and how moving it was. I suppose I’ll get to that, though maybe not today. Right now I’m going to blog about one of the deepening madnesses of the 21st century, the traveler security checkpoint.

Let me say at the outset that I understand why we have these checkpoints and, in their basic incarnation, I agree they’re a good thing. Although I don’t believe for an instant they necessarily stop anyone, they at least make the terrorists have to work harder and be smarter, and that at least reduces the number of incidents, not to mention mindless me-tooistic attacks. Although one wonders if it’s a net positive to breed a harder-working, smarter terrorist.

But since 9/11, this process has spiraled wildly out of control with little check on it. The list of banned items grows daily, follows no discernible pattern, and irritates travelers without adding an iota of actual safety. As with the super-tight security in the months following the WTC attacks, it’s more about appearing to do something to improve security rather than actually doing anything.

Today’s example that set me off: I’m in Honolulu, near the end of my Hawaiian adventure, and I’m trying to wrap up my souvenir gift list. I come across a nice set of hand-crafted wooden candle holders – three concentric rings that each hold a little tea candle. This strikes me as appropriate for one of the names on my list, so I buy the handle, check the name off the list, and take my purchase over to the port security checkpoint, a mere 100 yards away.

You might guess what happens next.

I dutifully empty all of my pockets into the little plastic boxes. I also drop in my hat and, having learnt at Newark/EWR that this saves time, I also unbuckle my suspenders and throw them in the box. Happily today I am not made to shed my shoes or otherwise further disrobe. I step through the metal detector, which remains mercifully quiescent, and start reassembling the bits of my life I’ve passed before the ever-watchful eyes of the Transportation Security Authority. I’ve just able rebuckled my suspenders when a ripple moves through the contracted security workers.

“Sir,” I am asked in a hushed tone, almost of disbelief, “does this bag contain … a candle?”

Actually, no, three candles, tiny little tea candles. I point out as much.

“You’ll have to step over here. Can I see your ID? Where did you get the candle? Is it in this bag?” While rattling off this list, the security person is rooting through my plastic shopping bag and comes across … da da da dum! … the candle holders. They’ve been intricately wrapped, ready to be put into a gift box, but that’s no barrier. The bag is untied, the paper peeled back, and the offending illuminary devices revealed for all to see. Another TSA guy has wandered over. “Did he bring a candle onboard?” he asks, incredulous.

When I ask why exactly this is a high crime, I’m told “security”. Nothing more is forthcoming. I’m also told that the TSA worker is going to have to confiscate the candles, but I can have a receipt. In theory, at least, Princess Cruises will pick up my candles – in addition to whatever other diabolical contraband that other nefarious passengers have tried to smuggle on board – and then return it to me at the gangway in Los Angeles. I take the receipt and watch the candles disappear. I have my doubts as to whether they’ll ever see the light of day. I suspect they’ll end up brightening up some cell in Gitmo.

Once I have passed the second layer of security and gotten on board, I walk over to the purser’s desk. I show him the receipt and ask how I get my candles returned in LA. He looks at me blankly. “You purchased candles in Los Angeles?” he aasks. No, I purchased them about one football field’s length away, in a tiny dockside novelty store. “I don’t think we have anything from LA. Let me ask.” Ah, good. Happily the one-level-higher purser does know what’s going on and explains to the desk gofer that the insidious candle will be returned at the gangplank. “So I should keep this?” says the desk gofer, holding the receipt I’d offered to him as physical proof of my story. No, no, the passenger needs that.

I’m assuming a copy of the receipt will attend the candle and help explain to Princess Cruise with whom the candle should be reunited. At least, it’s a paper trail in case I’m forced to go all habeuas corpus for the sake of my candles. Before leaving the desk, I ask again, “Why can’t I bring candles onboard?”

“Security.” The magic password. But I’m not taking that at face value any more.

“They’re tea candles. How are they a threat to security?”

“Well, you could light them in your candle. An open flame could set the whole room on fire.”

OK, first off, that means they were confiscated for safety reasons, not security ones. It’s irksome to be lied to. Second, that’s flipping insane! I can bring matches or a lighter on board. I know because I seem to have a spidersense that lets me discover every single nook wherein smokers are allowed to congregate and puff away. The ship crew delivers to my cabin every day a highly flammable newsletter – not to mention, say, the toilet paper provided gratis. Hell, for that matter, they let you bring back rocks – I could strike sparks like a flint. The point is, if I wanted to start a fire, nothing is done to stop me by preventing me from having the candles.

And even if I did want to start a fire, what good would it do me? The rooms are individually wired with smoke detectors and sprinklers. There are several warnings to that effect both in the cabin and during the mandatory safety drill at cruise inception.

What’s my point? It’s twofold. First, we must never get so used to the need for security that we allow it to substitute for thought or honesty. If Princess Cruises is really concerned about the fire potential of the candles, then Princess Cruises should say that. No one should be hiding in the folds of the TSA’s ever present cloak. Second, we have to start getting rational. Anyone with a basic knowledge of chemistry can do a lot more damage with the common items that are allowed. We need to face up to a disturbing fact: Living in an advanced, industrial, and open society will entail some level of risk. The net cannot be drawn finely enough to eliminate that risk.

Is my candle saga a milestone in the struggle for human dignity and freedom? No. But in its own small way it does plug into that. If we’re not careful, step by step, well-intentioned policy by well-meaning intervention, we’re going to give up everything, and all for the illusion of security.

Einstein once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Were he still living, he might well amend that to be the definition of “Democrat”. Although, truthfully, there seems to be less and less difference between being a Democrat and being insane. And I say that as a lifelong member of the party!

Jumping at the President’s command, the Democrats passed modifications to the Foreign Intelligence Services Act (FISA). In this latest craven capitulation, the Democrats agreed to give the executive the power to spy without warrants, subject only to “guidelines” issued by – believe it or not! – the US Attorney General. This, after eight months of hearings have uncovered crippling incompetencies and indeed outright political corrosion within the Department of Justice. My God, even his own party believes the Attorney General should resign! Yet somehow this creature of the President, who cannot seem to muster a single truthful answer to the most innocuous question – this lapdog now will be the guarantor of our civil liberties.

More below the fold.

The Democrats have to stop thinking it’s still 2000. In the last seven years this Administration has unrelentingly compromised the rights of Americans while undermining the rule of law and, indeed, the Constitution itself. We are not in the same America we inhabited at the end of the Clinton administration. Yet the Democratic Party keeps strategizing from the same – failed! – playbook. It didn’t even win them elections back when it was relevant. Now, it threatens the very Republic itself.

When pressed, those Democrats who voted for this noxious bill offered the usual, lame excuse: “If we stand against this, the Republicans are going to paint us as weak on national security.” As if the Republicans were going to play nice, now, and say, “Look, those Democrats, they love our country too.” No, the Republicans are going to sandbag the Democrats again, going to go on all the Sunday shows and trumpet how much the Democrats fail to use “Islamic” immediately followed by “terrorist”. The Republicans are going to score their points no matter what the Democrats do. It’s time to take a lesson from them: Sometimes, the only response to a bully is to thwap him down hard.

Is this a good bill? Almost to a person, the Democrats say ‘NO’. Then attack the bill, you twits! Don’t accept the “weak on defense” argument. Why isn’t any major Democrat painting the Republican party as “weak on liberty” or “soft on freedom”? Why aren’t they pointing out the frightening turn toward authoritarianism evidenced by almost all of the Republican candidates and leadership? Why isn’t anyone standing up for the Constitution, for the time-honored rights of free citizens? Don’t vote for a bad bill hoping it will go away. Expose it as a bad bill.

If the bill is bad, attack it. Spell out its defects. Point out how none of the supposed “fixes” addresses any real concerns, how these additional powers were not needed to foil the plots in Britain and Spain and even here. Educate the public regarding FISA’s already-generous tools that allow the law to go after the bad guys without trampling four centuries of jurisprudence. And while you’re at it, why not point out that the President of the United States had openly admitted to committing actual felonies while in office?

By the way, even from thousands of miles away on a cruise, it was clear to me that the Republicans were going to push a bad FISA bill. Why the hell didn’t the Democrats have their own bill fixing the true deficiencies in FISA (if any) without granting even more broad powers to the executive? Why are they always playing catch-up? After winning both houses last November, the Democrats should have the initiative on every major issue. How do they keep getting blind-sided?

What the hell is the point of a “loyal opposition”, when they interpret it as “loyal as a dog” and roll over at every instigation?

It’s pretty clear that there’s only one reason why Alberto “Fredo” Gonzales didn’t commit perjury: Because GOP senators arranged for his March testimony to not be under oath, and an oath is required for perjury. It’s equally as clear that he lied to Congress, and he should suffer for it. But it demands we consider: Why are the AG and POTUS so concerned about the fact of dissension within DoJ about their program? It can’t be to avoid the appearance of illegality, because the President has admitted to committing repeated felonies since 9/11, in his flagrant disregard of FISA; and apparently that wasn’t enough to trigger DoJ concerns.

What had they been doing, that is so beyond the pale that the acting AG, the actual AG, the director of the FBI, and virtually the entire upper staff at DoJ were willing to resign en masse rather than stomach? This can’t be anything as prosaic as violating FISA or even just simple data mining. What was this Administration doing, that even four years later, they are so terrified of becoming public that the Attorney General is willing to debase, embarrass, and all but perjure himself?

I don’t know (sorry) but I have a pretty strong suspicion. Other than a good juicy sex scandal (and I don’t believe that’s at the heart of this, though you can never rule it out), there is only one thing that is so terrible, so unthinkable, that the merest hint it had happened could in fact rouse the notoriously soporific American public. I think that if the fact ever do come out — and, if the next Administration is a Democratic one, the facts will come out — I will be proved right by history.

Here’s my speculation:
These thugs were using the NSA to spy on Americans for the express purpose of steering the Presidential election to George W. Bush.

It’s possible that this man has stolen not one election, but two. And I still have faith in America: The truth will out, and the wicked will suffer. It’s just a matter of time.