Aux Armes, Citoyens!
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/05/us-cia-killlist-idUSTRE79475C20111005
(Reuters) – American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.
There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.
My comment: I am the most ardent warhawk I know, and have many times prayed that the public and our leaders would take the threat of militant Islamic fascism, which is a theocratic hence political party, and not a religion, seriously.
The prayer has been denied. This is not taking the enemy seriously. This is serious tyranny over a once-free people, which makes us the enemy.
“No public record of the operations or decisions…no law establishing its existence…”
No law. The legacy of 900 years of Anglo-American common law is gone.
Come, all of you who demanded Gitmo be closed, and that secret CIA prison camps disbanded. You called Bush the second Hitler. Here are the same policies, or worse. Where is your outrage?
Back when I was a Libertarian, we would roll our eyes at the latest statist outrage — and there were enough outrages that Reason Magazine could fill a column with them and never want for material — and while rolling our eyes, we would rhetorically ask, “We’ve tried reasoning. When it is going to be time to shoot the bastards?”
Well, classical enlightenment theory identifies the time with the following test:
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
I addressed my comment to all armed gentlemen among my readership. When has that point been reached that the design of despotism is clear? When a death panel has the power to slay American citizens in a war that has not been declared by Congress, without warrant, without oversight, without fear of reprisal should they abuse this power, without any law establishing their duties, and no rules to check such abuse, or even to define it?
We are discussing men of the intellectual stature and moral conviction of George Stephanopolis or Barney Frank.
Do you honestly think, seeing the rhetoric delivered against, for example, Sarah Palin, that the Left would raise stern and righteous objections if she were killed as an enemy of the state? Do you think it would even make a front page headline?
No doubt you say, “but such a thing could not happen here! This is America!”
Did you say that when the state, without any enabling legislation or compensation, took private property for public use in the form of the nationalization of the automobile industry?
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
