[extropy-chat] letter concerning presidential growth

[Jeff Davis]

--- Adrian Tymes <wingcat at pacbell.net> asked:

> What of those citizens who attempted to do so, and
> were thwarted
> by the other citizens?  Would you tar them with the
> same brush,
> for failing to lay down their lives (which it might
> have taken,
> in the face of that much opposition) for what you
> claim is just?

I have long wondered why "innocent" civilians and
"innocent" soldiers must pay the price for the crimes
of sovereignty, and why this evasion of accountability
-- of personal and specific responsibility -- is a
fact, and why a fact so deserving of the most intense
scrutiny and discussion, is so little scrutinized and
discussed.
 
If one proposes holding those who exercise the
executive power of sovereignty personally responsible
for their executive actions, and the "subject"
citizens responsible as well, and to do so in any
thorough and equitable fashion, then I suggest that
every case be considered individually.  In such a
regime those citizens who opposed a criminal -- gross
or petty -- executive, would, I think reasonably, be
adjudicated innocent of culpability.

Bear in mind the extent of innovation in this
proposal.  "Sovereigns" have historically operated in
a "lawless" milieu.  That's the problem.  Without an
overarching enforcement power, sovereigns can do
anything they "can get away with" -- till other
sovereigns -- themselves lawless free agents --
intervene.  This is the critical difference between
subjects (ie citizens) and sovereigns; the former are
at all times subject to the enforcement power of the
sovereign's authority -- the law -- while the latter
are subject only to the realities of bandit power
available as a natural fact to the bandit elite. 

"Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies,
but let wasps and hornets break through." (Swift,
1709.)

http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/BluePete/Law.htm#fn2

"To state it in its extremes: Law is a cobweb,
entangling the weak, the sport of the strong;
[simultaneously] however, ...law is the very substance
of civilization."

The challenge I think is to make the strong and the
weak equally subject to the law, and in all cases to
make the punishment fit the crime.  Crimes of
"sovereign" scale must have punishment to match. 
(Which to me means forfeiture of every last nickel --
the criminal's family cannot benefit from the crime --
and disappearance into a dungeon of severe austerity
and comprehensive isolation from society.  No news, no
contact; gruel and water under the door until the
final solitary breath.  This is the just punishment
for mass murderers: Bush, Blair, Rumsfeld, Cheney,
Rice, Wolfowitz, Feith, Frum, Hadley, Addington,
Gonzalez, Yoo, Clinton, Noreiga, Saddam, Kissinger,
Pinochet,...to name just a few.

Justice should be tempered by mercy.  But first you
must have justice.

Best, Jeff Davis

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do
as you damn well please. And with it comes the only
basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." 
                    P.J. O'Rourke 


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