andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> OK, I will answer the question. If you commit a crime,
> whether or not it is a dangerous and violent one --
> let's just say, violent, because it's presumptively
> dangerous if it is a crime, right? -- you may be
> properly charged, prosecuted, and (if the evidence is
> there) convicted. [And so forth]
I can't really disagree with what Justin argues in this post. I don't think anyone can.
But there is a but.
First, let's leave aside nonsense about the threat of "fascism," which only beclouds real dangers. And let's leave aside the bogie of Bush & Co. as in some sense a dangerous aberration in u.s. politics.
And let's also leave aside nostalgia for some past arcadia of civil rights (or bourgeois freedoms) that never existed in the u.s. (Slavery. Lynch Law. "Third Degree" a joke rather than a horror. Governors -- i.e., Adlai Stevenson -- and Senators -- i.e. Paul Douglas -- selected by mob figures [Jake Arvey]. This point to be kept in mind in construing the verb "to lose" in what follows.
A post on marxism list contains the following: "Washington is truly trapped in a quagmire in Iraq, which is quite a bit more reminiscent of the Napoleon or Hitler's attempts to march into Russia." I would leave out the "or Hitler" and substitute Spain for Russia, and on that basis assert this may be quite simply true of the present fix of u.s. imperialism. The U.S. can neither stay in nor retreat from Iraq without seriously endangering its world hegemony, nor can it, as Marvin and others seem to assume, surrender that hegemony without seriously endangering its very existence. To put it another way: even under a more rational administration than at present the u.s. rulers (however we label them: elite, class, capital) may feel it not possible not to attack Iran. That is, there may be a serious analogy to be drawn between Spain for Napoleon and Iraq for the U.S, between Russia for Napoleon and Iran for the U.S.
If the u.s. is in such a fix, then under _any_ administration over the next decade or two we face a very serious threat of losing [word?] our bourgeois civil liberties and the undermining even of the individual freedomes allowed by the illiberal constitution under which we now live.
And to return to Justin's post. If any significant part of what I have suggested above is true, then Justin's arguments about what are and are not legitimate or proper powers are wholly beside the point, because the government which exercises those powers is becoming wholly illegitimate itself. And we should be arguing not about whether charges of tax-evasion rather than murder are proper or improper but how we can best build a defense of ourselves against the u.s. state.
Carrol