@The Wizard

‘Due Process; Lamenting the death of the rule of law in a country where it might have always been missing’, Lewis H. Lapham, laphamsquarterly.org

True law is right reason in agreement with nature.
—Cicero

Law is a flag, and gold is the wind that makes it wave.
—Russian proverb

To pick up on almost any story in the news these days—political, financial, sexual, or environmental—is to be informed in the opening monologue that the rule of law is vanished from the face of the American earth. So sayeth President Donald J. Trump, eight or nine times a day to his 47 million followers on Twitter. So sayeth also the plurality of expert witnesses in the court of principled opinion (media pundit, Never Trumper, think-tank sage, hashtag inspector of souls) testifying to the sad loss of America’s democracy, a once upon a time “government of laws and not of men.”

The funeral orations make a woeful noise unto the Lord, but it’s not clear the orators know what their words mean or how reliable are their powers of observation. The American earth groans under the weight of legal bureaucracy, the body politic so judiciously enwrapped and embalmed in rules, regulations, requirements, codes, and commandments that it bears comparison to the glorified mummy of a once upon a time great king in Egypt.

Senior statesmen and tenured Harvard professors say the rule of law has been missing for three generations, ever since President Richard Nixon’s bagmen removed it from a safe at the Watergate. If so, who can be expected to know what it looks like if and when it shows up with the ambulance at the scene of a crime? Does it come dressed as a man or a woman? Blue eyes and sweet smile riding a white horse? Black uniform, steel helmet, armed with assault rifle? Or maybe the rule of law isn’t lost but misplaced. Left under a chair on Capitol Hill, in a display case at the Smithsonian, scouting locations for Clint Eastwood’s next movie.

The confusion is in keeping with the trend of the times that elected Trump to the White House. In hope of clarification, this issue of Lapham’s Quarterly looks to the lessons of history. They are more hopeful than those available to the best of my own knowledge and recollection, which tend to recognize the rule of law as the politically correct term of art for the divine right of money.’

[long snip]

'The framers of the Constitution were of the same opinion. The prosperous and well-educated gentlemen assembled in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 shared with John Adams the suspicion that “democracy will infallibly destroy all civilization,” agreed with James Madison that the turbulent passions of the common man lead to reckless agitation for the abolition of debts and “other wicked projects.” With Plato the framers shared the assumption that the best government, under no matter what name or flag, incorporates the means by which a privileged few arrange the distribution of property and law for the less fortunate many. They envisioned a wise and just oligarchy—to which they gave the name of a republic—managed by men like themselves, to whom Madison attributed “most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue the common good of the society.” Adams thought the great functions of state should be reserved for “the rich, the wellborn, and the able”; John Jay, chief justice for the Supreme Court, observed that “those who own the country ought to govern it.”

The CIA, NSA, and all the other XYZs in the War Department believe strongly that they set policy. In effect, that they are in charge and know best. How does that fit in with the Constitution. Where are these powers specified?

The Treaty Clause is part of Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution that empowers the President of the United States to propose and chiefly negotiate agreements between the United States and other countries, which, upon receiving the advice and consent of a two-thirds supermajority vote of the United States Senate, become binding with the force of federal law.

(My Bold)

Since we ratified the UN Charter that makes all of our wars of aggression unconstitutional and war crimes. Our use of phosphorus and napalm are war crimes.

If you read the Constitution carefully, especially the Bill of Rights then you know that what we got bears little resemblance. So we have two levels of bad. The Constitution, written by the slave owning aristocracy, is a piece of shit by modern, or any, standards. It was intended that the elite run the government, and the people in only one case get to elect these elite representatives. Electoral college for the Presidency? really. With nothing specified as to how the States are to select these electors. There is little commitment to democracy and, given our corruption on top of that, it's clear that we have a very defective democracy. And the second level, of course, is that we ignore the Constitution when it's too inconvenient.

The thing is, we desperately need a new constitution and the will to follow it. This will never happen.

Yeah, you mention Brzezinski. He convinced Carter to put the screws to the Soviet Union by arming and financing the extremists in Afghanistan. How'd that work out? Looking for a pair of Trade Towers in NYC? He had stated publicly that he was the first Pole in 300 years to put the screws to Russia. He ruined Carter's presidency. Carter had good options to make the world a safer place, instead he listened to Brzezinski. Same thing with Reagan and Richard Pearle. We might not be sitting in a world under a hair trigger of thermonuclear armageddon if it were not for Pearle. Reagan came within one item of agreement on a plan to eliminate nuclear weapons. That was SDI, or star wars. Gorbachev insisted that the project remain in the laboratory and that Space was not to be militarized. Pearle convinced Reagan to keep SDI and not sign the agreement. These asshole Neocons from the deep state have screwed us and civilization over and over again. Wait till Biden is in office. He will fill the War department with neocons, starting with Susan Rice.

@polkageist I truly wish the American people would see this. It appears the good people of Portland do but far too many people in this country are blind to this.

We no longer believe in the rule of law and haven't for many, many years. We are a rogue nation governed by sociopaths.

BTW, you have good taste in sig lines. Check out my second sig line.

How can we go along with you when you espouse sanity? Our politics can't handle it. We no longer believe in the rule of law and haven't for many, many years. We are a rogue nation governed by sociopaths.