Scalia’s Cowardice
June 13th, 2008
One of the more striking things about the decision yesterday was just how unhinged, almost Malkin or Limbaugh-like Scalia sounded:
Reflecting how the case divided the court not only on legal but, perhaps, emotional lines, Justice Scalia said that the United States was “at war with radical Islamists,” and that the ruling “will almost certainly cause more Americans to get killed.”
“The nation will live to regret what the court has done today,” Justice Scalia said.
That is a talking point straight out of the worst recesses of the right wing fever swamp. It is also a cowards argument. I know, I know — I am being shrill and unkind and hardly polite. But I am tired of having to take this nonsense seriously just becasue some gasbag with a microphone or a Justice’s robe says it. Habeas corpus is the first freedom: without the right to challenge the executive’s power to detain you, you are not free. if the executive can decide who to hold, how long to hold them, and even whether or not they will ever be charged with a crime, then the government has a method for the complete control of its citizens. whether it chooses to use that method on you at any given time is merely a detail. You are not free in those conditions — you are merely a prisoner the government has chosen not to confine. No democracy can long survive the threat of a government that can lock you away without recourse. Democracies cannot survive without habeas corpus. And Scalia and Roberts and Thomas and Alito want to throw that freedom away. Why? Because a small group of fanatics got lucky once*. The country faces no threat to its existence. Al Qaeda are not the Nazis of the 1930s and 40s or the Soviets of the Cold War or, heck, even the Confederacy or the British of 1812. They are in no posiiton to bring down this nation. they can, on occasion, with if the stars all align perfectly against us, kill people. That is a horrible thing and something to be guarded against and fought. But it is not a threat to the survival of the nation and it is certainly not as dangerous to the nation as the repeal of habeas corpus would be.
To be so afraid of such a small threat that you would be willing to throw away the very foundation of liberal democracy is a cowardice so vast that I cannot even comprehend it. How does a man so filled with unreasoning fear manage to walk out of his own home, much less talk to strangers coherently? Certainly such a coward does not belong anywhere near a Judicial bench. No man who sees planet-devouring monsters in small terrorist groups can be expected to deal fairly with questions of justice and security. Obviously, his deep paranoia and personal fear-fullness will blind his legal judgment.
Oh, I’m sorry. Did I go too far there? Was I impolite? How terribly rude of me. Of course we must take seriously the notion that giving up the first freedom of liberal democracy is a necessary and required step to defeating a group that poses no serious threat to the survival of the nation. I say bollocks that. It is the argument of a coward or, even worse, a man willing to knowingly exaggerate the threat in order to terrify his fellow citizens. either way, it is a contemptible notion deserving only derision. If you really are so afraid that you want to toss the constitution over the side for the illusion of safety than your are obviously not thinking rationally. Such people should be given a cup of hot cocoa, a pat on the head, tucked into their beds, and be kept out of the way of the rest of us as we deal with the real problems at a level somewhere above that of a panic attack.
*And let’s be clear here — they did get lucky. If any of the major party candidates who ran in 2000 had been in the White House instead of Bush, it is very unlikely that the 9/11 attacks would have succeeded, at least to the massive extent that they did. perhaps that is why Scalia is reacting the way he is to these cases: guilt over his putting his pet idiot into the white House.
Categories: 9/11 Report, General, Legal Issues | 19 Comments
