Reflections  

I, Nation — ndividual sovereignty may be closer to reality than libertarians ever suspected. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in Inyo County v. Paiute-Shoshone Indians, recently ruled that Indian tribes may have immunity from searches in criminal investigations. This is supported by the Bush Administration which said the tribe's immunity should be upheld to preserve "the dignity to which their sovereign status entitles them." Four states — Washington, Arizona, Montana and New Mexico — are siding with the tribe in this case.

In another development arising out of federal law on Indian gaming, a gambling permit has been issued to an Indian tribe that consists of one person. So, if a lone remaining member of an Indian tribe can claim sovereign status and immunity from searches in criminal investigations, when can the rest of us be entitled to the same equal protection, individual sovereignty and immunity? Or, is such status reserved only for those who meet the federal government's convoluted definition of sovereign? — Errol Nelson

Somalia envy — The loving appreciation of "anarchy" in Somalia in the May Liberty reminds me of the last political tragedy of the 20th century: Al Gore's concession of the 2000 election. Not that I wanted him to win — heaven forbid — but repeated court challenges by his backers could have kept the White House empty and thus saved taxpayers a load of money, implicitly demonstrating that this country could survive without a president — that the United States could, in effect, realize the political sophistication of Somalia. — Richard Kostelanetz

Santorum and the Sodomites — Just like Sen. Rick Santorum has "no problem with homosexuality," but just a "problem with homosexual acts," I have no problem at all with Sen. Santorum as long as he doesn't have sex. I personally respect him to the max and have even voted for him. I want to assure you that I have absolutely nothing, nothing against the man — as long as he remains celibate. He's right that he need not apologize to gays for saying homosexuality poses a threat to the family and to society in general. "In every society," said the senator, "the definition of marriage has not ever included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case might be."

Man on dog! Man on dog is precisely the bone I want to pick with Sen. Santorum — that, and his orientation, which I see as a threat to America. I can't help it, those are my feelings. It's not just that he looks like a Basset hound, but I get nightmares about imagining what would happen when the sex police make their rounds and peer through the Santorum bedroom window and suddenly are confronted with the sight of the senator's wife having sex with what they believe is a dog!

I'm sorry, I can't help it, but it just looks bad, and I am personally disgusted by the thought of a woman having sex with a man who looks like a basset hound. Nowhere is it written that men who look like hush puppies can enter into marriage contracts. Normally, I would argue feverishly against invasions of privacy that entail peeping in the bedroom window of consenting adults, but the senator himself assures us that he does not believe that anyone, and I stress, anyone, has the right to privacy. In fact, he tells us, a right to privacy doesn't exist at all! He can't find it in the Constitution, and it was just an erroneous concept stuck into law by some nutso Supreme Court ruling that struck down laws regulating contraception.

The Court's opinion in the contraception case, Griswold v. Connecticut, found that the right to privacy was unstated, but implicit, in the U.S. Constitution. How silly! Imagine the Supreme Court coming up with an idea like that!

If the senator hadn't borrowed his political orientation from the Taliban, he might have noticed the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Maybe I'm nuts, but that paragraph screams out privacy to me. One can only imagine what things need to be searched and seized when the police kick in the door to check for contraceptive use or the possible occurrence of gay sex. But the senator could effectively and correctly argue that contraception is a threat to the propagation of the human race, and against biblical prescriptions to be fruitful and multiply.

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home," says the senator, "then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery, you have the right to anything." Why, you could kill people in your bedroom! You would have the right to masturbate till you went blind! You could do a ménage à trois! Someone could hang on the chandelier! All those are just gateways to Dr. Johnson's sex toys, to Long Dong Silver, to "The Joy of Sex" and to Silicon Sally Love Dolls and lap dancers. Let's confiscate those jellies, and rubbers and pills that facilitate this lifestyle! If there's a city or town so decadent that it wants to legalize this junk, let them do it one by one, town after dirty town, so we can see who they are, these cities that should be turned to salt!

Senator, I'm sorry, it's not that I'm dissing you, but it's just how I feel. It comes down to the fact that I think your philosophy is totalitarian and stupid and I don't think people like you should be U.S. senators or be allowed to breed. — Sarah J. McCarthy

Killing swarthy Muslims for Jesus — A year ago I wrote a newspaper column about Israel. It was addressed to conservatives, who have become Israel's most hard-core supporters in the United States. I asked them why they supported Israel in its war with the Palestinians. I argued that if either side could say the war was about its "right to exist," it was the Palestinians. Israel exists; the Palestinian state does not — and Israel already has about 78% of the land of Palestine.

I got more emails from that column than anything I have written. I also appeared on two radio talk shows, both conservative in which the host and the callers argued for Israel.

And now I have a better idea of that conservative sentiment.

In the column I had dealt briefly with two arguments: that Americans should side with Israel because it is a democracy and because it is in a war against terrorism. And I heard both of those arguments in the emails.

But also other ones. There is a belief among evangelical Christians that the Israelis are God's chosen people, and that all of Palestine belongs to them because the Bible says so. You don't see that in the mainstream press, because the mainstream press does not deal in religious arguments. Religious arguments are presented in a ghetto. Religious believers, when venturing out into the secular mainstream, use secular arguments. They talk about democracy, but that is not what is in their hearts.

In writing the column, I was dealing with their public argument, but not the argument they cared about.

That was the first thing. The second thing was that when people talk about Israel as a democracy, they are really engaging in identity politics. They are not saying, "This land should belong to whatever group has the most egalitarian voting system." It is saying, "I support the Israelis because they are like me." And the Israelis may be more like him, in religion, political ideas, wealth, style of living, dress, etc.

Is that how one should decide a claim between two foreigners? I didn't see why it should be.

The third thing was the argument about terrorism. Which boils down to, "I'm for Israel because suicide bombing, especially of civilians, is disgusting." And it is disgusting. But Israeli soldiers kill civilians. It is not suicide bombing; it is an organized activity of the Israeli state. One could call it a government program. Is that not disgusting?

What you find disgusting depends on which side you're on, and that depends on how you define the issue. A few humanitarians will say that all killing is equally bad, and feel it. But for most, the idea comes first, the disgust second, the arguments third. — Bruce Ramsey

Word Watch Every modern war has its distinctive vocabulary, a set of words that is spread, multiplied, and in many cases originated by the popular media. In the Civil War it was "Old Abe" and the "secesh" and "hold the fort!", and ultimately "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags" and the "Lost Cause." In World War I it was "huns" and "doughboys," "they shall not pass" and "over the top," "unrestricted submarine warfare" and "40 and 8," and ultimately "armistice," "reparations," "corridors," "partitions," and "open covenants, openly arrived at." World War II, a self-consciously plebeian war, popularized "grunts," "spam," "dog tags," "dog-faces," and a lot of other mostly down-at-the-heels words. While our soldiers in Vietnam engaged in "firefights" around "strategic hamlets," Walter Cronkite told hapless viewers of CBS News that the Pentagon was once again "beefing up American forces," proof that the war was being "escalated" instead of being "Vietnamized." And eventually, after the war was over, we got to hear a lot about "fragging." All war words, appropriate or inappropriate, interesting or uninteresting, become tiresome with repeated use. The vocabulary of the current war took only hours to become so, despite the fact that some of it was effective, in carefully measured doses. "Shock and awe" has a biblical solemnity, coupled with the little lilt, the little hint of conscious self-dramatization, that one often finds in the King James Version. "Boots on the ground" is as sonorous as, well, boots on the ground; it has, besides, that small, invigorating whiff of S and M. "Embedded," used in regard to media correspondents traveling with military units, must have been coined by some public-information officer who'd spent the past 20 years trying to get the drop on the media elite. The word worked its magic. Now, instead of pontificating in front of the Pentagon, with the associate producer making sure that everybody's got enough Sprite, the Dan Rather wannabes were fighting to be embedded in a Marine Corps platoon sweating its way across the Iraqi desert. That can't be bad. But even good words can be heard too often. Here are some other expressions that can stand a rest: "Harm's way." This one has been creeping up on us for a long time. When the war began, it crouched and sprang. Now it's everywhere. But after all, it's just War Lite, war talk for non-warlike people. To be "in harm's way" sounds as if you were standing someplace where you might possibly stub your toe or pick up a splinter or something. It doesn't suggest the idea of having to blast your way out of an ambush while a hundred other guys try to blow your head off. "Regime change." Bernard Lewis, the Western world's (deservedly) most respected authority on Islam, denied being responsible for inventing this phrase. He pointed out that both "regime" and "change" have been in common speech for a long, long time. It might also be observed that the madcap Iraqi state was positively begging for the item in question. The thought of "regime change" just naturally goes together with the thought of "Saddam Hussein." Nevertheless, efforts are underway to make "regime change" go with a lot of other things. Prospective President John Kerry, for instance, has attempted to make it synonymous with "getting rid of George Bush." But whatever one thinks of Kerry's implied comparison of Bush with Saddam — and I think it's a classic revelation of the Democrats' most potent and reliable motivation, which is hatred of Republicans — "regime" really does mean more than "that guy I don't like." It means a whole system of things. By the time this reflection is published, however, I'm sure that we will have reached the point where Little Leaguers are demanding a regime change whenever they're disappointed in their coach. "Smoking gun." The popularity of this one dates to the Watergate era. It really is an evocative phrase, a phrase that's capable of all kinds of uses. What it means right now is, "Saddam's weapons of mass destruction." But the phrase is so overworked that, from the strictly linguistic point of view, it would be better if those weapons never got found. Let's not let the saying spread any farther. It might be funny, and it might solidify support for the Second Amendment, if people went around saying, "Is that a smoking gun you're carrying, or are you just happy to see me?" But I don't want to hear it. "Fog of war," meaning a soldier's inability to know exactly what's going on while he's fighting, is a less happy expression. It's one of those phrases that smell of the lamp — an old-fashioned way of saying that it's the kind of phrase that has to be found by searching late at night, with the lamp on. This one is always attributed to Clausewitz's "On War," although Clausewitz didn't say it quite like that. He said it in a more complicated manner. If you ever happen to read Clausewitz, you'll get so sick of his trademarked method of saying obvious things in pompous ways that you'll quickly resort to someone else — maybe to someone like Mary Poppins, who was just as warlike, and much more perspicuous. But yes, Clausewitz was right: soldiers can't know everything; unpredictable things happen in battle. They also happen when I try to cook. There's something eerie about the fog of cuisine. Well, if you like "fog of war," keep it. It's not patently offensive. Just don't say it all the time. But that's the problem. Only the rare television news show fails to include "fog," "boots," "embedded," and "smoking gun" in every one of its 15-minute segments. This is something that we have to live with. We're embedded. Our boots are on the ground. Some wartime cliches are less innocent of purpose than the ones I've mentioned so far. "The Arab Street," consistently invoked by people who have never set foot outside the network limousine, is a conceptual hand grenade, used to annihilate everything in its vicinity. Whatever the United States does, short of mass conversion to Wahhabi fundamentalism, is certain to "arouse the Arab street," and the results are always "likely to be devastating." This "street" is dark and angry and oddly memorious. Tom Brokaw, observing the destruction of Saddam Hussein's statue in the center of Baghdad, registered dismay about the (shocking!) appearance of the American flag and its effects on Islamic hearts and minds. Casting himself as the Proust of the Arab street, Brokaw intoned: "Memories in this part of the world go back a long way, back to the Crusades in some cases." People must have very long lives on the Arab street. Or maybe they don't. Maybe they just believe everything their government tells them. Whatever. I can't see why we should worry much about (A) advanced geriatrics or (B) mind-numbed robots. Speaking of (B), I could spend all day on the sayings of the former Iraqi government, although the numbness, in this case, was self-induced. Its great rhetorical achievement was a stupendous unity of tone. Goebbels and Hitler had much more tonal variation. When Saddam and his flacks were flapping, all their big effects came from the kind of imagery one associates with a delinquent eight year-old: "hit them with your shoe," "rattle their joints," "put a knife to their throats," "we were able to chop off their rotten heads," "God is grilling their stomachs in hell." Sad to say, nothing resonant emerged. Saddam was unable to repeat the success he once achieved with "the mother of all battles." His information minister enjoyed a brief run as the Iraqi Jerry Lewis, but his success as an entertainer was largely dependent on the fact that everybody knew he would not have time to repeat his best lines. In the verbal war, no one laid a glove on America, except Americans. Our verbal losses resulted entirely from friendly fire. Among the most serious attacks by American forces on American speech were two prevalent and ridiculous mispronunciations: "ca-SHAY" for "cache," as in "a large ca-SHAY of weapons"; and "calvary," used of a military unit. I may be naive, but I am astonished to find that even senior military officials, let alone $200,000-a-year media correspondents, have no idea that "cavalry" is the name of the military outfit, whereas "Calvary" is the name of the hill where Jesus died. Maybe these people are Muslims, after all. But even if they are, they should still learn how to read. Confusion of sounds is nothing, of course, compared with confusion of concepts. The worst losses in this category occurred on Battle Ground America, in the thousands of newspaper and television reports that characterized antiwar demonstrations as "peaceful" and "nonviolent," no matter what happened, short of somebody actually getting lynched. Marvelous: all those hate-filled demonstrators, and nothing unpeaceful takes place! Unfortunately, it was a miracle like most other miracles. It was something that didn't happen. I am looking at a picture of "demonstrators" in San Francisco, trashing a line of newspaper vending machines. What an homage to freedom of the press! What touching gratitude to the liberal media! But, to paraphrase the old poet: the heart, misgiving, asks, can this be peace? No, I don't think so. Neither is it peace when the "demonstrators" merely decide to immobilize the city, as they did in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. You can measure their sincerity by their choice of action. When in doubt about the means available to protest a foreign war, it was obvious to them that what you should do is prevent your neighbors from getting to work. Suppose that my friends and I decided to protest the war by sitting down in your driveway and keeping you from leaving home. Would that be "peaceful"? Suppose I refused to budge, even when the cops came. Suppose I started smacking the cops with signs, vomiting on the pavement, and throwing things through your windows. Would that be "nonviolent"? Maybe I would call it that, but why should you? As antiwar battalions melted from The American Street, they left much of the media with gaping holes in its credibility — damage incurred, in large part, because of inadequate defenses against "nonviolence" and other weapons from the demonstrators' massive arsenal of words. As deep calls to deep, so the absurd calls to the absurd. My favorite absurdity on the military side is a remark delivered by General Montgomery Meigs, who on April 3 told MSNBC that such and such an attack on Baghdad would be a "blow to the solar system." The general had, of course, been aiming at the solar plexus — but his blow went wide. — Stephen Cox

© Copyright 2008, Liberty Foundation

Send editorial comments to letters@libertyunbound.com.
All letters to the editor are assumed to be for publication unless otherwise indicated.

Send web site comments to webmaster@libertyunbound.com.