My point is that I didn't write that and your post gave me undeserved credit.
[...]
>So what exact parameters do you propose? Do you have anything to offer more
>substantial than "people (and especially attorneys) who say bad things
>should stop"?
I can't find where I said that either. Before I decide whether to apologise for saying something so vague and sweeping, could you identify the post from which you are quoting?
Or apologise for making stuff up.
>(And if you're going to dictate the opinions that may and may
>not be legitimately offered by an attorney, or anyone else, I'll find your
>suggestions much more impressive if we agree that it's *your* attorney when
>*you're* the one in the dock, or deciding how to stay out of it. )
>
> And if arguing that unambiguous atrocities are perfectly compatible with
>>> bourgeois law is a crime, a lot of us should have been packed off to the
>>> Supermax a long time ago.
>>>
>>
>> Yes, well if you encouraged someone stupid enough to listen to you
>
>
>Come now. Aside from being unnecessarily (and unimpressively) insulting, are
>you really going to force me, in order to prove my point, to compose a list
>of the unambiguous atrocities that are perfectly compatible with bourgeois
>law? What would be the point of that?
No point at all. Your point about other atrocities being compatible with bourgeois law is quite irrelevant. We are discussing a specific atrocity that isn't compatible with bourgeois law. And that makes all the difference.
You seem to be suggesting that the Cheney view (that torture of government prisoners is actually legal) is correct. Your reasoning being that other atrocities are legal, so all atrocities must be legal. Have I got you right?
I reject this on the basis that it is flatly wrong. You won't prove it right by composing a list of atrocities that are perfectly legal in capitalist jurisdictions. You are simply muddying the waters.
Everyone knows torture is a crime, even Cheney. Those who were part of the conspiracy to torture were not relying on any belief that their conduct was lawful, or preposterous legal opinions that this was so, they were relying on the fact that, under the Bush administration, the USA had abandoned any pretense to be operating under the rule of law.
They knew perfectly well what the law was, but they held the law in contempt.
Now if you understood anything about bourgeois law you would appreciate this kind of attitude has long been considered as one of the most serious dangers to the interests of the capitalist class imaginable. That a government can just do anything it wants, to anyone it wants, without legal restraint is as much a danger to the bourgeois as a socialist revolution. Perhaps more so in the present political climate.
The rule of law is the very foundation of "bourgeois law". They invented it, precisely to protect themselves from arbitrary government imposition. So the bourgeois might not care about people being tortured, but they do care very much about the government claiming the right to do whatever they like to whoever they like. They only have to think about recent events in Russia, where selective members of the capitalist class have been stripped of all their assets and even thrown into jail on trumped up charges, in heavy-handed disregard for the law, to see where that sort of thing can lead.
This is, incidentally, one of the progressive aspects of capitalist society. Perhaps you are one who holds in contempt every aspect of bourgeois society, one of those whose instinct is to throw out the baby with the bath-water.
I think differently. The rule of law does, to some significant extent, protect not just the bourgeois, but all of us, from certain excesses. Like torture. It wouldn't be progress to go back to the days when this sort of excess was widely practiced.
Of course this sort of excess never actually stopped in some places, like Russia. So I'm not suggesting that Russia has gone backwards or abandoned the rule of law. Russia has never had such a thing, its rulers have always held to the notion that rulers are above the law and can behave arbitrarily. The majority of the people of Russia seem to have always meekly accepted this. (With a couple of notable exceptions.)
But the people of the US have until recently overwhelmingly rejected arbitrary government authority. It would be a most alarming development were the lawless behaviour of the Bush years to continue on without question. Not just alarming for defenders of human rights either, even the defenders of the rights of capital are alarmed by that prospect.
Only reactionaries, of either the right or left variety, pine for the days when disputes could only be settled by force and the law was irrelevant to that.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas