Positive Liberty

Most of Kuznicki’s post below is stuff I agree with. (Which must be a first.) But he objects that he doesn’t think that there are many Americans who really do wish for our enemies to win the present war, saying “I’m not aware of many radical leftist peacenik Islamic theocrats.” A cute thing to say, but of course, Islamic theocrats are not necessary; all that’s necessary is radically multiculturalist moral relativism, and a radically anti-American view of the meaning of warfare. And we’ve got that in spades.

According to Marxism, of course, warfare is begun by capitalists intent on seizing resources away from other capitalists or from peasants in other countries—the process of Imperalism. This, of course, is very far from being the truth about war, but what’s important here is that there are an enormous number of college students who are taught this every day in American institutions of higher learning, so called. Add moral and cultural relativism to that, and you have people who believe that America’s incursion into Iraq isn’t just foolhardy, but a positively wrongful example of the exploitative nature of capitalist society. And such visions lead many people into a desire—in some cases approaching fanaticism—that America lose this war, because we have “no right to force democracy on them” and so forth.

The fact that there are people—and they tend more often to be associated with the Democratic Party—who really do have such an infantile, if not positively evil, frame of mind with regard to the war, is simply beyond dispute. This is the crowd that supports Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky, and A.N.S.W.E.R. and who advocate fragging and so forth. They are legion. Kuznicki’s repeated refusal to acknowledge the existence of such people I find simply inexplicable.

As to the substance of his point, however—that a victory by President Bush would seem to vindicate his unconstitutional acts (such as the Guantanamo Bay prison) and therefore set a dangerous precedent—that’s certainly true.

I’ll be honest: it’s profoundly frustrating for me, as a supporter of both the decision to invade Iraq and the decision to remain there, to find myself having to defend the reputation of a man who is undeniably engaged in egregious violations of the Constitution. The notion that a President can take prisoners on the battlefield, send them to a prison camp off shore, and then hold them there, apparently indefinitely, without a genuine trial, is beyond shameful. It is a brazen violation of both the Constitution and the ancient common law tradition which I hold dear. It is profoundly to be hoped that the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision on this matter will help to set things straight.

Still, it is important to keep things a bit more in perspective. Franklin Roosevelt’s detention of the Japanese, and his use of military tribunals, was no less unconstitutional and illegal, and Roosevelt did a lot more else, besides. (At least Bush isn’t drafting people.) Yet it is still a cause for immense joy that we won that war. Abraham Lincoln censored opposition press and adopted other violations of important constitutional rights, yet it is also cause for rejoicing that he led the United States to victory in that war. War is all hell. It is a most efficient destroyer of individual liberties. That’s why libertarians hate it. But it would be a mistake to allow our frustration over such things to obscure our need and our desire for victory.

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