Friday, March 26, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Power Line - The DOJ Seven, Michael Mukasey's take
Power Line - The DOJ Seven, Michael Mukasey's take
The reason that the so-called Al-Qaeda Seven are so disturbing to me is less about whether the DOJ has attorneys that have represented these terrorists or not. It is about the Democrat tendency toward a mental habit that logisticians would call the fallacy of the band wagon and the popular press would call -- in an Orwellian turn of phrase -- GroupThink. I prefer to think of it less about what it affirmatively is and more about what it excludes. I would call it "monolithicism." All ideas must bow down to the monolithic idea.
Monolithicism is most likely to occur in a situation where the elites not only reject the people's ideas of what the content of rules should but that the people should have any input into the discussion. The monolithic idea must be rammed down the people's throat in such a way that the people never get to undo the new rule. Imagine that you are Napoleon III trying to redesign Paris so that you can prevent the people from barracading the streets in protest, like happened in Victor Hugo's Les miserables. To fix the problem, you take the people's property, destroy their buildings and homes, so that you can build the Champs-Elysee as a monumental street connecting the the Arch of Triumph and the historic Concorde Plaza. To build the monolithic street, the people had to be walked over. The excuse for this process is that Napoleon III leaves behind a legacy of an increasingly peaceful Paris with a majestic street that people like me adore. The pain of some people for the monolithic of historic proportions.
Think of Roe v. Wade. Abortion is completely subject to legislative bodies. There is no shadow (yes, I know the phrase is "penumbra," but what is "penumbra" but a type of shadow) of the Constitution that can be said to favor killing babies. There is no literary or philosophical concept in existence in 1787 (that I have seen, admittedly) that addresses abortion as a natural right. Even so, the Supreme Court shoved the monolith of abortion down our throats. The people have been in an uproar for and against ever since.
Monolithicism justifies all its evils as the perpetrators know better than the people. The people must not only be ignored, they must be penned in so that their complaints have no effect. (Just think about Denver's Protest Pen at the 2004 Democrat National Convention.) In America to build our equivalents of the Champs-Elysee, we have had eminent domain. The persons forced to give their land don't like it, but they get compensation. The system can be abused, but the property owner does get a hearing before a judge and a right of appeal on the pricing and legitimacy of the eminent domain procedures applied. Not terribly monolithic.
This brings me back to the Al-Qaeda Seven. The DOJ has a very strange notion that the President should have no input on how the department should be run due to legal and prosecutorial ethics. I agree that it should have a limited impact from White House staff who are not members of the bar (compare many states rules requiring owners and directors of law firms to be lawyers). I vigorously disagree that the President should have no say.
Yet, as an outsider, I fear the Al-Qaeda Seven and their friends are in a position to impose their shared monolithic notions about how a terrorist should be treated by US soldiers and law enforcement without any input from people of the quality of former AUSA Andrew McCarthy, the blind sheikh's prosecutor. Since the President is not allowed any real input, I don't trust AG Holder, and I hear of few leading luminaries in Holder's (not Obama's) DOJ, what input do the people have to prevent the imposition of monolithicist ideas about terrorists being abused by the US?
The reason that the so-called Al-Qaeda Seven are so disturbing to me is less about whether the DOJ has attorneys that have represented these terrorists or not. It is about the Democrat tendency toward a mental habit that logisticians would call the fallacy of the band wagon and the popular press would call -- in an Orwellian turn of phrase -- GroupThink. I prefer to think of it less about what it affirmatively is and more about what it excludes. I would call it "monolithicism." All ideas must bow down to the monolithic idea.
Monolithicism is most likely to occur in a situation where the elites not only reject the people's ideas of what the content of rules should but that the people should have any input into the discussion. The monolithic idea must be rammed down the people's throat in such a way that the people never get to undo the new rule. Imagine that you are Napoleon III trying to redesign Paris so that you can prevent the people from barracading the streets in protest, like happened in Victor Hugo's Les miserables. To fix the problem, you take the people's property, destroy their buildings and homes, so that you can build the Champs-Elysee as a monumental street connecting the the Arch of Triumph and the historic Concorde Plaza. To build the monolithic street, the people had to be walked over. The excuse for this process is that Napoleon III leaves behind a legacy of an increasingly peaceful Paris with a majestic street that people like me adore. The pain of some people for the monolithic of historic proportions.
Think of Roe v. Wade. Abortion is completely subject to legislative bodies. There is no shadow (yes, I know the phrase is "penumbra," but what is "penumbra" but a type of shadow) of the Constitution that can be said to favor killing babies. There is no literary or philosophical concept in existence in 1787 (that I have seen, admittedly) that addresses abortion as a natural right. Even so, the Supreme Court shoved the monolith of abortion down our throats. The people have been in an uproar for and against ever since.
Monolithicism justifies all its evils as the perpetrators know better than the people. The people must not only be ignored, they must be penned in so that their complaints have no effect. (Just think about Denver's Protest Pen at the 2004 Democrat National Convention.) In America to build our equivalents of the Champs-Elysee, we have had eminent domain. The persons forced to give their land don't like it, but they get compensation. The system can be abused, but the property owner does get a hearing before a judge and a right of appeal on the pricing and legitimacy of the eminent domain procedures applied. Not terribly monolithic.
This brings me back to the Al-Qaeda Seven. The DOJ has a very strange notion that the President should have no input on how the department should be run due to legal and prosecutorial ethics. I agree that it should have a limited impact from White House staff who are not members of the bar (compare many states rules requiring owners and directors of law firms to be lawyers). I vigorously disagree that the President should have no say.
Yet, as an outsider, I fear the Al-Qaeda Seven and their friends are in a position to impose their shared monolithic notions about how a terrorist should be treated by US soldiers and law enforcement without any input from people of the quality of former AUSA Andrew McCarthy, the blind sheikh's prosecutor. Since the President is not allowed any real input, I don't trust AG Holder, and I hear of few leading luminaries in Holder's (not Obama's) DOJ, what input do the people have to prevent the imposition of monolithicist ideas about terrorists being abused by the US?
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