Laws and Security

As the holiday season comes to an end, it's tough for me to maintain a festive spirit. The year that's about to end brought a great many things that I didn't think I'd ever see in the United States, and I'm concerned about what the new year may bring. And I thought we had hit bottom when the United States officially became an aggressor nation with promulgation of the Bush Doctrine. But we've gone a long way down from there. Domestic espionage? George II asserts that he need not be constrained by law if, in the judgment that once made him an alcoholic coke head, he believes that national security is at risk. He thinks it's okay to torture, even though most people realize that anyone being tortured will probably be willing to say whatever it takes to stop the torture--unless they hold out until the torture kills them.
We might all do well to reflect on these lines from A Man for All Seasons:
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
And what's worse, George II says that the nation's security concerns outweigh the privacy of the people involved. If that's true, he could have easily convinced a court to give him a court order and spied on Americans legally. And he wants to ferret out whoever leaked the existence of this program to the media. Once again, when caught violating the law, he says he had to do it for national security and says that the person who caught him was wrong.
So I worry about what 2006 will bring.
By the way, I'd like to send my warmest wishes for the holiday season to the people at NSA who participate in violating the privacy of their fellow citizens. I hope that in 2006 you all get your moral compasses back and stand up to your master, George II.

Keeping America Safe My Butt

So George Bush authorized eavesdropping on Americans to keep us safe. 9-11,9-11, 9-11. Terrorists, terrorists, terrorists.
If any terrorist group wanted to strike against the United States, it wouldn't be that tough--unless they wanted to use airliners as bombs, which has been done before. But since the Bush administration has made an obsession of terrorism for over four years now, there is simply no need to run the risks of revealing methods or wasting resources. The terrorists know they're winning. They see that Bush and the minions of his administration--and realistically, a goodly number of legislators, too--are willing to trample on the rights of American citizens. They see that they have emboldened Christian fanatics to make the winter holiday season divisive. That may not be as satisfying as seeing Muslim fanatics running the show, but hey, Falwell and Robertson, in reality, agreed with Bin Laden that the 9-11 attacks were part of God's judgment against the United States. The war on terrorism (particularly if we recognize the war against Iraq as part of that war) is a huge drain on the U.S. economy; children being born today will pay higher taxes for fewer government services because they must repay the debts from this phony war. Why should the terrorists lift a finger? They've already got us.
If they chose to lift a finger, there's little that could be done to stop them. The possibility of death doesn't exactly distress a terrorist who expects to die. The possibility of incarceration might be a deterrent, but one who resists arrest strongly enough stands a good chance of being martyred. And the federal sky marshals who killed a man suffering from bipolar disorder--even though his carry-on had been checked and passed minutes before--or any other federal law enforcement types would be all to happy to enhance their hero status by blowing away a terrorist.
I never thought I'd see the day when any occupant of the White House would claim that he had the authority to violate the constitutional rights of his fellow citizens in order to protect them. I always thought that an American president would believe that Americans would give up life before they would give up their rights. So now, while people who seem very much like those I see in my classrooms are fighting and dying in Iraq "to protect our liberty,"their commander in chief chips away at liberty. It's a sorry picture.

Intelligent Design

I'm one of those liberal college professors whom conservatives accuse of trying to brainwash students. What would they make of an observation made by one of my students in the reflective essay that I require as a final exam. She's a conservative Christian, being home-schooled through high school while taking some college courses, and she was in a course where I require students to read one of the Harry Potter novels, conduct research on it, and write a formal research paper on it. She said in her final that she wasn't so sure, in the beginning, that she should read Harry Potter because it dealt with witchcraft, which she regarded as a sin. In the end, though, she said that the experience had led her to think more prayerfully and pray more thoughtfully, and she had grown intellectually and spiritually. I don't know when I've been so proud of a student.
I went from grading papers to reading an editorial by a historian on intelligent design. He didn't much like what he saw as the underlying assumption that the whole universe was created for the benefit of Terran humanity--an assumption that he found in nineteenth century textbooks. The historian part of me should want to agree with him. But I think there's more to intelligent design than the idea that people are somehow the crown of creation. Surely any of us who spend time in stores or shopping malls during the holiday season realize that God could have made people a lot smarter and more thoughtful--particularly if they were going to represent the high point of creation.
But intelligent design, to me, is the acknowledgment that science doesn't have all the answers and probably never will. Even the part of the universe that we know is the product of the confluence of a number of variables far beyond human comprehension. Even processes that scientists can explain fairly well, such as photosynthesis, leave questions unanswered: Just why is it that the chemicals involved are present in the right quantities and proportions, and why do they react as they do? Those unanswered questions, to me, loom large as a reminder of the limitations and imperfections in human knowledge, even in the supposedly reliable sciences. (That would be the same sciences that taught me, when I was an undergraduate, that there was a plant kingdom and an animal kingdom. A friend of mine in the biology department tells me that today there are considered to be no fewer than five kingdoms of living things.) That recognition could be the basis for people to have some humility that seems to be largely missing from the whole debate over the origins and development of life.
Or so it seems to me.

I'm Here

I'm here, having been talked into blogging by my 26-year-old son. He seems to think that everyone should blog. I'm not sure everyone's thoughts are worthy of sharing, but my wife also encouraged me. I think she hopes that I'll use a blog to rant against Bush. I probably will. But I'll see what happens, and I guess you will, too. If you're reading this, I'd love to hear your ideas on stuff to write about. Knowing nothing about a subject might or might not stop me from writing about it.
As a friend of mine signs her e-mails, "Peas."