----- Original Message ----- From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
> Ian, you're getting all wierd, and I don't know quite what's got
into you.
> Yeah, I know that the govt and others do bad things in the name of
liberal
> values. So what values haven't bad people perverted. We're all
socialists
> here, and are unimpressed if someone starts saying, haven't you
idiot heard
> about Stalin? Yeah, laeyersa re a conservative bunch ina
conservative
> profession, your point? What do you expect, we grease the wheels of
> commerce, that's what we are paid to do. Surely you are disappointed
that we
> have not started the revolution. Yes of course there is no neutral a
priori
> pie-in-the-sky basis for law,a s you knwo I have published on this,
so
> what's your point? Does that mean due process and the rule of law is
a bad
> idea?
========== Which paper are you speaking of?
It may mean that when powerful factions of lawyers, both in and out of government, use sophisticated argumentation strategies to undermine due process itself because it advances their political and economic interests and that this is done from within the very terms of liberal discourse itself and that discourse is incapable of proving them wrong precisely because there is no pie-in-the-sky basis for adjudicating a determination of wrongdoing, we have a far bigger problem on our hands than the fact that due process has been undermined. The camel now has his nose, neck and two front legs in the tent of liberty and democracy and the people who have encouraged him into the tent since the formation of the National Security State have no intention of slowing down, let alone stopping. How are non-lawyers supposed to use the same institutional means to get the camel out of the tent by which he got in?
I just spent lunch rereading Applbaum's chapter on the ethics of rights violations. There's nothing in there Ashcroft and his minions couldn't use to powerful effect in their strategy to neutralize the coming civil libertarian arguments. It's an excellent book and the fact that it's assessment of the issues can be appropriated is making my blood boil. Yeah ,yeah it's not the first time good arguments have been hijacked by nasty people but how much more cynicism are citizens going to have to put up with?
Ian
"What liberalism requires is the possibility of making the evil of cruelty and fear the basic norm of its political practices and prescriptions. The only exception to the rule of avoidance is the prevention of greater cruelties." [Judith Shklar]