-Caveat Lector-
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: May 4, 2007 10:39:59 AM PDT
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Subject: Wall St Journal: America NEEDS a Fuehrer Who's Above the
Law, Elected "for Life"
Glenn Greenwald
Wednesday May 2, 2007 10:32 EST
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/05/02/mansfield/index.html
The Right's explicit and candid
rejection of "the rule of law"
The Wall St. Journal online has today published a lengthy and truly
astonishing article by Harvard Government Professor Harvey
Mansfield, which expressly argues that the power of the President
is greater than "the rule of law."
The article bears this headline: The Case for the Strong Executive
-- Under some circumstances, the Rule of Law must yield to the need
for Energy. And it is the most explicit argument I have seen yet
for vesting in the President the power to override and ignore the
rule of law in order to receive the glories of what Mansfield calls
"one-man rule."
That such an argument comes from Mansfield is unsurprising. He has
long been a folk hero to the what used to be the most extremist
right-wing fringe but is now the core of the Republican Party. He
devoted earlier parts of his career to warning of the dangers of
homosexuality, particularly its effeminizing effect on our culture.
He has a career-long obsession with the glories of tyrannical power
as embodied by Machiavelli's Prince, which is his model for how
America ought to be governed. And last year, he wrote a book
called Manliness in which "he urges men, and especially women, to
understand and accept manliness" -- which means that "women are the
weaker sex," "women's bodies are made to attract and to please men"
and "now that women are equal, they should be able to accept being
told that they aren't, quite." Publisher's Weekly called it a
"juvenile screed."
I'll leave it to Bob Altemeyer and others to dig though all of that
to analyze what motivates Mansfield and his decades-long craving
for strong, powerful, unchallengeable one-man masculine rule --
though it's more self-evident than anything else.
But reading Mansfield has real value for understanding the dominant
right-wing movement in this country. Because he is an academic, and
a quite intelligent one, he makes intellectually honest arguments,
by which I mean that he does not disguise what he thinks in
politically palatable slogans, but instead really describes the
actual premises on which political beliefs are based.
And that is Mansfield's value; he is a clear and honest embodiment
of what the Bush movement is. In particular, he makes crystal clear
that the so-called devotion to a "strong executive" by the Bush
administration and the movement which supports it is nothing more
than a belief that the Leader has the power to disregard, violate,
and remain above the rule of law. And that is clear because
Mansfied explicitly says that. And that is not just Mansfield's
idiosyncratic belief. He is simply stating -- honestly and clearly
-- the necessary premises of the model of the Omnipotent Presidency
which has taken root under the Bush presidency.
This is not the first time Mansfield has expressly called for the
subordination of the rule of law to the Power of the President. In
January of 2006 -- in the immediate aftermath of revelations that
President Bush had been breaking the law for years by spying on the
telephone conversations of Americans without warrants -- Mansfield
went to The Weekly Standard and authored a truly amazing article,
which I wrote about here (see item 2).
Unlike dishonest Bush followers who ludicrously claimed that Bush's
eavesdropping was not illegal, Mansfield embraced reality and
candidly argued that President Bush possesses the power to break
the law in order to fight The Terrorists. The headline of that
article presented the same mutually exclusive choice as the WSJ
article today: The Law and the President -- in a national
emergency, who you gonna call?
In that article, Mansfied claimed, among other things, that our
"enemies, being extra-legal, need to be faced with extra-legal
force"; that the "Office of President" is "larger than the law";
that "the rule of law is not enough to run a government"; that
"ordinary power needs to be supplemented or corrected by the
extraordinary power of a Prince, using wise discretion"; that "with
one person in charge we can have both secrecy and responsibility";
and most of all:
"Much present-day thinking puts civil liberties and the rule of law
to the fore and forgets to consider emergencies when liberties are
dangerous and law does not apply. "
"Law does not apply" -- that is Mansfield's belief, and the belief
of the Bush movement. I didn't think it was possible, but
Mansfield, with today's article in The Wall St. Journal, actually
goes even further in advocating pure lawlessness and tyranny than
he did in that remarkable Weekly Standard screed.
He begins by describing "the debate between the strong executive
and its adversary, the rule of law." He then says: "In some
circumstances I could see myself defending the rule of law," but
"the rule of law has two defects, each of which suggests the need
for one-man rule."
The rule of law has two defects, each of which suggests the need
for one-man rule. That is what is on the Op-Ed page of The Wall St.
Journal this morning. The article is then filled with one paragraph
after the next paying homage to the need for a Great Leader who
stomps on the rule of law when he chooses -- literally:
"The best source of energy turns out to be the same as the best
source of reason--one man. One man, or, to use Machiavelli's
expression, uno solo, will be the greatest source of energy if he
regards it as necessary to maintaining his own rule. Such a person
will have the greatest incentive to be watchful, and to be both
cruel and merciful in correct contrast and proportion. We are
talking about Machiavelli's prince, the man whom in apparently
unguarded moments he called a tyrant. . .
"The president takes an oath "to execute the Office of President"
of which only one function is to "take care that the laws be
faithfully executed." In addition, he is commander-in-chief of the
military, makes treaties (with the Senate), and receives
ambassadors. He has the power of pardon, a power with more than a
whiff of prerogative for the sake of a public good that cannot be
achieved, indeed that is endangered, by executing the laws. . . .
"In quiet times the rule of law will come to the fore, and the
executive can be weak. In stormy times, the rule of law may seem to
require the prudence and force that law, or present law, cannot
supply, and the executive must be strong."
In the course of explaining how the rule of law applies only in
"quiet times," Mansfield also argues that "civil liberties are
subject to circumstances," not inalienable, and that "in time of
war the greater dangers may be to the majority from a minority."
Thus, he explains -- in what might be my favorite sentence -- "A
free government should show its respect for freedom even when it
has to take it away."
I'm not going to spend much time rebutting the notion that the
American President has the power to act as a Prince and override
the rule of law when circumstances supposedly justify that. For one
thing, given that this belief has governed our country since the
9/11 attacks, I've made the argument many times before, including
here and here, as well as in my book.
But more so, one would hope that no response is really necessary,
since most Americans -- outside of the authoritarian cult that has
followed George W. Bush as Infallible War Leader -- instinctively
understand that America does not recognize such a thing as a
political official with the power of "one-man rule" that overrides
the rule of law. That we are a nation of laws, not men, is so basic
to our political identity that it should need no defense.
And for those with any lingering doubts about how repugnant
Mansfield's vision is to the defining American political principle,
I would simply turn the floor over to the great American
revolutionary Thomas Paine (.pdf), writing in Common Sense:
The point here is not to spend much time arguing that Mansfield's
authoritarian cravings are repugnant to our political traditions.
The real point is that Mansfield's mindset is the mindset of the
Bush movement, of the right-wing extremists who have taken over the
Republican Party and governed our country completely outside of the
rule of law for the last six years. Mansfield makes these arguments
more honestly and more explicitly, but there is nothing unusual or
uncommon about him. He is simply expounding the belief in
tyrannical lawlessness on which the Bush movement (soon to be led
by someone else, but otherwise unchanged) is fundamentally based.
This is why he is published in The Weekly Standard and The Wall St.
Journal -- the two most influential organs for so-called
"conservative" political thought. All sorts of the most political
influential people in our country -- from Dick Cheney to Richard
Posner to John Yoo and The Weekly Standard -- believe and have
argued for exactly this vision of government. They literally do not
believe in our constitutional framework and our most defining
political values.
They have declared a literally endless War which, they claim, not
only justifies but compels the vesting of <likewise endless, which
is to say, for an unlimited time, not bound by elected term of
office> unlimited power in the President -- "unlimited" by
Congress, the courts, American public opinion and the rule of law.
That continues to be the central political crisis we have in this
country. It is an encouraging development that Congress is
exercising aggressive oversight and investigative powers, but the
administration is stonewalling completely, and will continue to,
because they do not recognize any duty to respond, to answer
questions, to be subject to scrutiny or accountability. We live in
stormy times, and thus, as Mansfield says: "In stormy times, the
rule of law may seem to require the prudence and force that law, or
present law, cannot supply, and the executive must be strong."
That is why -- as jarring as it is -- it is actually necessary to
ask presidential candidates whether they intend to exercise the
power to imprison American citizens with no charges of any kind.
The dominant political movement in this country believes in that
power and has defended and exercised it.
Mansfield's beliefs may be twisted and tyrannical and radical and
profoundly un-American. But they are also the beliefs that have
propelled our government for the last six years and -- absent some
serious change -- very well may continue to propel it into the future.
UPDATE: I just want to add one related point here. Much of the
intense dissatisfaction I have with the American media arises out
of the fact that these extraordinary developments -- the dominant
political movement advocating lawlessness and tyranny out in the
open in The Wall St. Journal and Weekly Standard -- receive almost
no attention.
While the Bush administration expressly adopts these theories to
detain American citizens without charges, engage in domestic
surveillance on Americans in clear violation of the laws we enacted
to limit that power, and asserts a general right to disregard laws
which interfere with the President's will, our media still barely
discusses those issues.
They write about John Edwards' haircut and John Kerry's windsurfing
and which political consultant has whispered what gossip to them
about some painfully petty matter, but the extraordinary fact that
our nation's dominant political movement is openly advocating the
most radical theories of tyranny -- that "liberties are dangerous
and law does not apply" -- is barely noticed by our most
prestigious and self-loving national journalists. Merely to take
note of that failure is to demonstrate how profoundly dysfunctional
our political press is.
-- Glenn Greenwald
=============
Führer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Führer
State & Party Leader Hitler
Führer was the title granted by Hitler to himself by law, as part
of the process of Gleichschaltung, following the death of the last
Reichspräsident of the Weimar Republic, Paul von Hindenburg, on
August 2, 1934. The new position, fully named Führer und
Reichskanzler (Leader and Chancellor of the (Third) Reich), unified
the offices of President and Chancellor, formally making Hitler
Germany's Head of State as well as Head of Government respectively;
in practice, the Dictator of the Nazi Third Reich.
Nazi Germany cultivated the Führerprinzip (leader principle), and
Hitler was generally known as just der Führer ("the Leader"). One
of the Nazis' most-repeated political slogans was Ein Volk, Ein
Reich, Ein Führer' - 'One people, One state, One leader'.
For military matters, Hitler used the style Führer und Oberster
Befehlshaber der Wehrmacht ('Leader and Supreme Commander of the
Wehrmacht'), until that addition was dropped in May 1942 by decree
of the Führer. The style of the Head of State for use in foreign
affairs was Führer und Reichskanzler (Leader and National
Chancellor) until July 28, 1942, when it was changed to Führer des
Grossdeutschen Reichs ('Leader of the Greater German Nation').
(Para)Military usage of the word Führer
Führer has been used as a military title (compare Latin Dux) in
Germany since at least the 18th century. Ironically, given the
context of the word to refer to Adolf Hitler as supreme ruler of
Germany, in the context of a company sized military subunit in the
German Army, the term "Führer" referred to a commander lacking the
qualifications for permanent command. For example, the commanding
officer of a company was titled "Kompaniechef" (literally, Company
Chief in English), but if he did not have the requisite rank or
experience, or was only temporarily assigned to command, he was
officially titled "Kompanieführer." Thus operational commands of
various military echelons were typically referred to by their
formation title followed by the title Führer, in connection with
mission-type tactics used by the German military. The term Führer
was also used at lower levels, regardless of experience or rank;
for example, a Gruppenführer was the leader of a squad of infantry
(9 or 10 men). Aside from this generic meaning, "Gruppenführer" was
also an official rank title for a specific grade of general in the
Waffen SS. The word Truppenführer was also a generic word referring
to any commander or leader of troops, and could be applied to NCOs
or officers at many different levels of command.
Under the Nazis, the title Führer was also used in paramilitary
titles (see Freikorps). Almost every Nazi paramilitary
organization, in particular the SS and SA, had Nazi party
paramilitary ranks incorporating the title of Führer.
Contemporaries
Hitler's choice for this political title was unprecedented in
German. Like much of the early symbolism of Nazi Germany, it was
modeled after Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy, which impressed
Hitler. Mussolini's chosen nickname il Duce ("the Leader") was
widely used, though unlike Hitler he never made it his official
title. Note that the Italian word duce (unlike the German word
Führer) is no longer used as a generic term for a leader, but
almost always refers to Mussolini himself.
Remarkably different authoritarian political leaders in various
official positions assumed, formally or not, similar titles -- in
their own languages, as nationalism dictates -- suggesting the
power to speak for the nation itself, and justifying a more than
ordinary exercise of power.
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