>>It is inherent in the concept of political rule that the ruling force is subject to no laws except physics. The whole point of governance by the rule of law, which Americans seem tragically to be losing sight of, is that any elite which rules over the people and is subject to no restraint itself must inevitably tend towards tyranny. Hence the invention of a form of political government requiring no human tyrant(s), but merely artificial man-made laws.
>
>And that's precisely what's *not* happening in the US as of September 2003.
>
>What is happening is that Americans are *regaining* their sense of governance by the rule of law. Resistance to the Patriot Act, the $87 billion for the Iraq rathole, and the rest of the Bush Bullshit is *increasing,* not decreasing! Even some of the elite is coming around to the idea that it has to restrain the rest. The country is moving *away* from tyranny, not toward it, or at least that's the way it looks at this point.
I have to defer to your judgement then, you must after all be in a better position to judge.
>Watch and learn, Bill. I assume that at least some of the Australian news media are reporting what's going on here rather accurately. Or you could look carefully at some of the better US media that are available on-line, such as the NY Times or the Washington Post.
Yes, good advice, I read those on-line occasionally. Though it seems that the more interesting stuff is re-run by the better Australian papers anyhow. Obviously I would need to immerse myself in American media a lot further to have any hope of understanding things as deeply as a local. I find that I need to know how people are reacting to the news they get to truly know what it means and I can't do that of course. Anyhow, time is finite.
> (It takes some skill and knowledge of the US political scene to dig out the nuggets of real information from the crud surrounding them, but it can be done.) Or better yet, you really ought to come here for an extended visit, and check out the scene first-hand. Nothing like being in the Belly of the Beast to see what Jonah is up to.
Not on your life. Do the words Guantanamo bay mean anything to you?
>(BTW, I don't understand your last sentence in the above-quoted paragraph at all, and I read it about 5 times.)
Just my idiosyncratic caricature of the rule of law. By which I mean that, to keep it out of the hands of men, rule of law instead tries to vest absolute power in words. That is the theory as I conceive it.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas