Throughout the Bible, God is given dozens, perhaps hundreds, of different names. They are familiar in our dialogue and church services: Prince of Peace, Almighty Father, Messiah, Holy Spirit, etc. Because God is both three persons and one God, a Trinity, we have names for each of the persons of God as well: the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There are far more names for the Son than for either the Father or the Holy Spirit. The Son is referred to as the Logos of God, a term meaning word, logic, pattern, order and much more. He is also the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Savior, and perhaps in the Old Testament the Angel of the Lord. The church throughout history has also sometimes described God with phrases not found in scripture, but theologically appropriate in one way or another. Those of you who, like me, have read the novels of Stephen Lawhead know that he depicts ancient Celtic Christians as referring to God as the “Swift Sure Hand” and the “Many-Gifted Giver.”
Recently, a great deal of controversy has erupted as the Presbyterian Church accepted a report which encouraged its member congregations to use a collection of various phrases to describe the Trinity. Some of the sets of names in the report were at least arguably within reason, while others are anti-biblical and deeply troubling. The result of the report has not been a general applause for how advanced and civilized the Presbyterians have been, but rather horror on the part of the orthodox and mocking from the national press. The media laugh at people who call themselves Christians but who fail to believe in the basic tenets of Christianity. Even though I suppose they prefer those people to real Christians, they still know that what they are doing is in some way silly and enjoy mocking them in the public press.
What after all is in a name? Why are names important to us? Why are the names of God important to us? Claude Levi-Strauss contended that some names, such as those for race horses, are purely random and tell us nothing about what they identify. (As for his theory about race horses, I find that difficult to believe. While race horse names are odd, they are odd within a certain scope. No one calls their horse Molasses Molds’ Egg-Yolks.) Post modern writers sometimes claim that naming by another is an act of violence against the object named. This is largely because they resent the names that society has given to various people, things and groups. The ancients believed that a name gave you some kind of power over the person identified by it. And the descriptive value of names was taken seriously in ancient times. God gave a new name to Abram making him Abraham. Likewise, He took Jacob and gave him the name Israel. In the New Testament, the name of Saul becomes Paul and Simon becomes Peter. If one takes the Bible seriously, one would have to guess that there is something to naming. Adam, of course, named all the animals at God’s behest. This showed that he had authority over the animals and involved him in God’s creative process. The names that God has for Himself and the fact that Adam named woman are some of the factors that also relate directly to this controversy in the PCUSA.
Names of God in the Bible tell us something about Him. They reveal something about His nature and character. God tells Moses that He is “I Am.” This is often thought to show God’s self existence and transcendence. He who is who He is—life, being, immutable, eternal, forever, self-existent, self-explaining, self-revealing. Francis Schaeffer calls Him “the God who is there.” In Jesus’ identity as the Logos, we see Him as the revelation of God, how we see God, how we interact with God, how we know of God, how we think about God and how we think about everything. Jesus is the Word, the logic, the reason, the pattern, the order of God. In addition, He is the Anointed One, full of the Holy Spirit and chosen by God to be the redeemer of mankind. He is the Savior in His redemption of mankind. But Jesus is also identified in the New Testament as the Creator. “Without him nothing was made that has been made.” If you believe, as is pretty self-evident from the Bible itself, that the Bible is God’s revelation about Himself and that the names of God in the Bible are God describing and naming Himself, then the biblical names for God are pretty much all you really need. There are many of them, and they tell you a lot about God.
The difficulty for some people is that they’re not happy with God the way He is. For one thing, God as described in the Bible seems to them too patriarchal. Jesus is, after all, a man. As C.S. Lewis has pointed out, there is a man sitting on the throne of the universe, even though that man is also fully God. While in Genesis God does say “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the livestock and over the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female, He created them,” and although God does describe Himself through Jesus’ words as a hen gathering her chicks, the predominant language used for the Father throughout the Bible is also masculine. And in a world that is so eager to find the feminine to be divine as to believe hook, line and sinker the ridiculousness of the novel The Da Vinci Code, this masculineness of God is a difficult thing to accept. C.S. Lewis certainly thought that this naming of God told us something about God. He notes that while it is silly to think of God as masculine in the sense of masculine organs, there is something about the characteristics of masculineness that to paraphrase his words makes everything in the universe feminine by comparison to God in His masculinity. Hence the people of God are also almost always depicted as female. When God is unhappy with the unfaithfulness of His people, He describes them as an unfaithful wife. When in the New Testament the church is described, she is described as the bride of Christ. Indeed, the New Testament identifies marriage itself, the relationship between man and woman, as a metaphor or art type of the relationship between God and His people. It is indicated that the relationship between man and woman is what it is because in some way it was meant to express the relationship between God and His people. This, of course, meaning the way it was meant to be by God’s design, not the way sin has made it. And that is really the problem. We look at the relationship between men and women as affected by sin and we look at our culturally laden understanding of men and women as affected by sin and we see things that we don’t like. Sometimes, of course, we also see things we don’t like in God’s own order because of the sin in us. For either or both reasons, we become dissatisfied with what we understand to be the relationship between men and women and seek something else. We also sometimes seek a God who is someone else in order to give us what we think we want. The problem is that trying to remake God in our own image is idolatry. While there are many ways in which God condescends to us, we must ultimately accept Him as He is and for who He is. Any time we try to change who God is, we are not changing God, we are merely worshipping someone or something else, the one thing our God strictly forbids us to do. Only the real and living God can save us from His wrath and from our sins and from ourselves. No image of wishful thinking can provide real solutions to real problems, let alone lead us into eternity.
Names that try to say something about God that is not strictly biblical are problematic. And unfortunately, when surveyed, many of the names in the Presbyterian report do just that. Perhaps the worst is “compassionate mother, beloved child and life-giving womb.” This implies a degree of feminineness which is never attributed to God anywhere in the Bible. It seeks to enthrone a goddess in place of God and to worship the divine feminine in place of the divine. Likewise, some of the others like “overflowing thought, living water, flowing river” seem innocuous at first, but actually may convey to innocents the erroneous doctrine of modalism. Modalism is the idea that the Trinity is not really three persons, but rather one person who manifests himself in three different forms like ice, liquid water and steam. But the church long ago rejected modalism. The Bible teaches that God is one God, but He is also three persons. This is a difficult doctrine, but it is a biblical one. Modalism is not. Likewise, some of the report’s suggestions confuse the reality of other doctrines. Another one of the Presbyterian phrases is “Creator, Savior, Sanctifier.” The problem is that the New Testament makes it quite clear that Jesus is the creator, just as much as the rest of God. All of the persons of the Godhead are involved in the creation. In Genesis, we see the Spirit of God moving upon the waters. The New Testament tells us that Jesus is the creator, and without Him nothing was made that was made. And the Father has always been associated with creation. So this phrase is also less than satisfactory. Another, “Rock, Cornerstone and Temple” interferes with other biblical imagery. It is the Christian who is the temple of the Holy Spirit. It is not the Spirit that is the temple. In addition, when the Bible refers to the rock, it is usually referring to Jesus or to faith in Jesus, not to God the Father. Even “King of Glory, Prince of Peace, and Spirit of Love” is difficult because Jesus is in some ways the King of Glory as well as the Prince of Peace. In short, when people without the theological depth of the church fathers or the poetic powers of a William Shakespeare meddle with biblical metaphors, the result is mixed.
In our shallow and theologically naïve age, it is probably better for us to stick with the names of God described in the Bible itself lest we fall into error and confusion. This is not to say “give me that old time religion,” it is to say give me the Word of God, unsullied, unadulterated and unchanged. While not everything that we say or do is directly prescribed by the Bible, it is probably dangerous if we begin implying things about God that are not represented in the Bible. Presbyterians and other mainline churches are always worried about divisiveness. But they fail to rally around the one thing that can give them unity, the Word of God. Perhaps this is because the division is already there: a division between people who take God’s Word seriously, and people who only take their own word seriously.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Thanks for your veto of embryonic stem cell research President Bush
BREITBART.COM - Bush uses first-ever veto to kill popular stem cell bill
As promised, so delivered. The President has wisely used his first veto to block a bill that would provide federal funding for killing human beings in the embryonic stage as part of questionable scientific experimentation. Bravo Mr. President.
As promised, so delivered. The President has wisely used his first veto to block a bill that would provide federal funding for killing human beings in the embryonic stage as part of questionable scientific experimentation. Bravo Mr. President.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
A Friend's New Blog
One of my old friends has a new blog called Recreational Ranter (abreviated as rec reanter for short on my links list) that you should check out. He is an army chaplin and a wise man.
Movie Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
I was once a maritime law attorney. I have a great interest in pirates. Is there a connection there?
The new Pirates of the Caribbean movie is definitely not for small children. Perhaps it’s just me, (I have a thing about anemones, barnacles and other sea creatures growing out of people’s skin) but the sight of human beings being slowly transformed into collections of multiple sea creatures seems a bit too grotesque for children. In addition, this film sports an apparent voodoo priestess and multiple convincing attacks by a giant octopus-like creature that sinks ships in a single gulp. All of that said, the movie was interesting.
The cinematography, acting, humor, props, clothing and setting of Dead Man’s Chest all exceed the impressive standard set by the first film. The movie also continues an interesting tradition of the use of Christian archetypes. In the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, we saw a curse that caused people to be deprived of all pleasure in life. The more they sinned, the less they got out of it. The only way they could be delivered from this curse was through the shedding of blood: the blood of the son of a particular father who had been partially responsible for placing the curse in the first place. Dead Man’s Chest continues this with multiple references to substitutionary suffering or punishment. The movie takes the idea of souls and damnation seriously. It also continues the theme that sin ultimately subjects us to slavery. On ther bad theology side it seems at times to say people are basically good. In multiple references, characters in the film say that they are praying or will pray about some particular problem. There is a man in one scene who is seen to have a cross and rosary beads and indicates that he does not fear death and judgment. His subsequent treatment may or may not be a rejection of Christianity depending on how you interpret the scene. It is ambiguous enough to fall either way. Likewise, there is a humorous scene involving a pirate reading the Bible. Or at least attempting to read the Bible. Nevertheless, a light or humorous treatment of Christianity is still less hostile than the way Christianity is commonly treated these days in television and motion pictures. This humor could even be spun in a positive way. I am curious if these things are Disney’s attempt to market its films to Middle American Christians or if, in fact, the writers of the film have some predilection to the use of universal archetypes from religion and philosophy?
In many ways the stunts in this film are more spectacular than those in the first. But I though the sword fighting scenes in the first film were still far superior to those in the current movie. While I thought the overall plot was a bit of a letdown, I am still looking forward to the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie when it comes out.
The new Pirates of the Caribbean movie is definitely not for small children. Perhaps it’s just me, (I have a thing about anemones, barnacles and other sea creatures growing out of people’s skin) but the sight of human beings being slowly transformed into collections of multiple sea creatures seems a bit too grotesque for children. In addition, this film sports an apparent voodoo priestess and multiple convincing attacks by a giant octopus-like creature that sinks ships in a single gulp. All of that said, the movie was interesting.
The cinematography, acting, humor, props, clothing and setting of Dead Man’s Chest all exceed the impressive standard set by the first film. The movie also continues an interesting tradition of the use of Christian archetypes. In the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, we saw a curse that caused people to be deprived of all pleasure in life. The more they sinned, the less they got out of it. The only way they could be delivered from this curse was through the shedding of blood: the blood of the son of a particular father who had been partially responsible for placing the curse in the first place. Dead Man’s Chest continues this with multiple references to substitutionary suffering or punishment. The movie takes the idea of souls and damnation seriously. It also continues the theme that sin ultimately subjects us to slavery. On ther bad theology side it seems at times to say people are basically good. In multiple references, characters in the film say that they are praying or will pray about some particular problem. There is a man in one scene who is seen to have a cross and rosary beads and indicates that he does not fear death and judgment. His subsequent treatment may or may not be a rejection of Christianity depending on how you interpret the scene. It is ambiguous enough to fall either way. Likewise, there is a humorous scene involving a pirate reading the Bible. Or at least attempting to read the Bible. Nevertheless, a light or humorous treatment of Christianity is still less hostile than the way Christianity is commonly treated these days in television and motion pictures. This humor could even be spun in a positive way. I am curious if these things are Disney’s attempt to market its films to Middle American Christians or if, in fact, the writers of the film have some predilection to the use of universal archetypes from religion and philosophy?
In many ways the stunts in this film are more spectacular than those in the first. But I though the sword fighting scenes in the first film were still far superior to those in the current movie. While I thought the overall plot was a bit of a letdown, I am still looking forward to the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie when it comes out.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Disappointment with Frist
At this point, I am reluctant to say anything else negative about the current Republican leadership because I very much want Republicans to gain seats in the House and Senate rather than the opposite in the upcoming elections. I am sure that everything will be worse if the Democrats gain more seats. But I have to say that I am disappointed with Senator majority leader, Bill Frist. Frist introduced a bill last week to expand funding for embryonic stem cell research and is pushing the already busy Senate to debate the bill and vote on it in July. The bill is supposed to be considered along with bills that will allegedly ban the implantation of embryos in women for future harvesting of cells and a bill that will promote ways to extract cells from embryos without killing the embryos. (As for this last bill, exactly what are they going to do with the wounded embryos after the stem cells have been removed? They can’t possibly implant them all in women, especially when they have reduced their likelihood of undamaged survivability.)
This is very disappointing because human beings are human beings as long as they are alive and no matter how small, large, or decrepit. There is no question that when a living sperm meets a living egg it produces a living human being. While these young human beings sometimes perish naturally in the course of human reproduction, it is not right to intentionally mass produce and slaughter them for the purpose of highly speculative medical research. Bills that promote this research, even if they use existing embryos rather than creating new ones, they are still fueling the market for further research and putting pressure on society to allow the creation of new embryos for their destruction in future years. Even though those embryos left over from in vitro fertilization may be used for the research Frist seeks, that still does not make it right. Otherwise, the Nazis could have claimed they were justified in performing valuable medical research on the Jews, gypsies and Slavs they already intended to exterminate. But one cruelty does not justify another. Creating and freezing embryos as part of in vitro fertilization is wrong to begin with. Experimenting on the leftover embryos simply compounds the evil. And, it increases the possibility of demand for the creation of new embryos.
On top of all of this, stem cell research on adult stem cells and cord blood stem cells has been far more fruitful than that involving embryonic stem cells. In fact, not only have embryonic stem cells not been nearly as fruitful, they simply cannot do many of the things their backers claim. A good example is Nancy Reagan’s belief that stem cell research would help in the treatment of Alzheimer’s. In Alzheimer’s, human brain cells are effectively “gummed up” by a process we do not yet understand. Stem cells cannot be used to grow a new brain for an Alzheimer’s victim. As a result, it is highly unlikely that even if embryonic stem cell research is successful, there will ever be any kind of a cure for Alzheimer’s as a result.
Public policy needs to be based upon the difficult moral realities of life, not upon wishful thinking. While I fully sympathize with those who have deadly medical conditions and hope that medical science does discover treatments to heal them, I don’t think that killing other human beings, no matter how small they may be, is justified to further such medical treatments.
This is very disappointing because human beings are human beings as long as they are alive and no matter how small, large, or decrepit. There is no question that when a living sperm meets a living egg it produces a living human being. While these young human beings sometimes perish naturally in the course of human reproduction, it is not right to intentionally mass produce and slaughter them for the purpose of highly speculative medical research. Bills that promote this research, even if they use existing embryos rather than creating new ones, they are still fueling the market for further research and putting pressure on society to allow the creation of new embryos for their destruction in future years. Even though those embryos left over from in vitro fertilization may be used for the research Frist seeks, that still does not make it right. Otherwise, the Nazis could have claimed they were justified in performing valuable medical research on the Jews, gypsies and Slavs they already intended to exterminate. But one cruelty does not justify another. Creating and freezing embryos as part of in vitro fertilization is wrong to begin with. Experimenting on the leftover embryos simply compounds the evil. And, it increases the possibility of demand for the creation of new embryos.
On top of all of this, stem cell research on adult stem cells and cord blood stem cells has been far more fruitful than that involving embryonic stem cells. In fact, not only have embryonic stem cells not been nearly as fruitful, they simply cannot do many of the things their backers claim. A good example is Nancy Reagan’s belief that stem cell research would help in the treatment of Alzheimer’s. In Alzheimer’s, human brain cells are effectively “gummed up” by a process we do not yet understand. Stem cells cannot be used to grow a new brain for an Alzheimer’s victim. As a result, it is highly unlikely that even if embryonic stem cell research is successful, there will ever be any kind of a cure for Alzheimer’s as a result.
Public policy needs to be based upon the difficult moral realities of life, not upon wishful thinking. While I fully sympathize with those who have deadly medical conditions and hope that medical science does discover treatments to heal them, I don’t think that killing other human beings, no matter how small they may be, is justified to further such medical treatments.
Hamdan V. Rumsfeld, post 2
One of the issues brought up in the Hamdan case is the question of whether or not the detainees are covered by Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. It is thought to be important because Common Article 3 prohibits inhuman treatment of prisoners and requires certain due process rights. But as we will later see, it is possible that Article 3 does not apply to these prisoners. But that should not mean that they can be treated inhumanely or provided with no due process? No.
The Supreme Court’s attitude toward the Hamdan case shows one of the dangers of a positivist view of human law. If something has to be enacted by a treaty or statute or other document in order to have the force of law, then people who are not specifically covered by express positive law have no legal protections. Within the traditional Christian Natural Law view of human law, all human beings are created in the image of God and therefore are entitled to certain basic rights. These rights may not always be as broad as what the Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution to mean. But in some cases they are probably broader than what the Supreme Court has interpreted our Constitution to mean—such as in the right of the unborn to protection from intentional homicide.
The terrorists at
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Post 1
This is the first in a series of articles about the recent Supreme Court opinion in Hamdan v Rumsfeld. As is often true, the news media in their enthusiasm to reinforce their own opinions has ignored many of the subtle legal facts concerning the Hamdan case. These articles will attempt to shed a bit more light on what the case actually means and decides. It is alleged that Hamdan was the driver for Osama bin Laden. He was captured during the invasion of Afghanistan. He is charged with conspiring and agreeing to attack civilian objectives and commit murder with unprivileged belligerence and terrorism. As part of this conspiracy, he acted as bin Laden’s driver during the time when he knew bin Laden and his associates were engaged in such terrorist acts. He arranged for transportation of and actually transported weapons used by Al-Qaeda members including bin Laden’s bodyguards. He also drove or accompanied Al-Qaeda leaders to various press conferences, lectures and training camps where attacks against the Americans were discussed and encouraged, and he obtained training for himself at Al-Qaeda sponsored training facilities. Hamdan was to be tried by a military tribunal convened pursuant to the president’s authority as commander in chief. According to the Court’s opinion at page 3 of the slip opinion, Hamdan was assigned to a military tribunal under the provisions of the 2001 presidential order on “detention, treatment and trial of certain non-citizens in the war against terrorism.” This order allows for the detention and trial of persons connected with Al-Qaeda or other terrorist activities aimed at the United States. Contrary to the many articles and video segments you may have seen on television, the majority of the Court did not actually find that the procedures of Hamdan’s proposed trial violated the Geneva Convention. What five members of the Court actually held is that the military commission in question is not authorized by either the Geneva Convention or the Uniform Code of Military Justice. In other words, the Court is claiming that the president did not have authority to set up the commission. Four members of the Court in dicta are critical of the procedural safeguards used by the proposed military commissions. In order to support that criticism, they refer to the Laws of War and Common Article III of the Geneva Convention.
Because of the view today that the Supreme Court is in some way the living oracle of a living Constitution, people pay a great deal of attention to every word the Court says in their opinions. Traditionally, this was not always the case. The part of a legal opinion which is actually binding as precedent and law is its “holding.” How to spot the holding of a case is sometimes a difficult thing to explain. Lawyers learn how to do it in law school through exposure to excerpts of thousands of judicial opinions. Attempts to create a foolproof method of extracting holdings on the part of legal scholars have generally failed. Let it suffice to say that the holding is the applied legal rule for the particular case. It is that logical, legal conclusion upon which the case hinges and without which the case could not be decided as decided. It is the particular bit of law that is fully sufficient to determine the outcome of the case and no more. Holdings can be interpreted narrowly or broadly but in theory it is always supposed to be the necessary thing about the case rather than the many superfluities in the body of the opinion. Extraneous matter beyond the holding is often useful in determining the Court’s attitude. After all, judges are learned experts in the law and their opinions are worth paying attention to. This is triply true of the Supreme Court since they are not merely learned experts but the final earthly court of appeal. But even with the Supreme Court, it is technically true that only the holdings of their cases are binding upon themselves and others. In the Hamdan case, it was not necessary for the decision in the case to look at the procedures to be used in the military commission once the Court had already decided that the power to create military commissions did not belong to the president. This, by the way, is an odd conclusion considering the very things that had been expected up to this point. But more on that later.
Given the Court’s holding, it now falls to Congress to create some kind of authority for military commissions and to set them up. Ironically, Congress thought they had already done this. And they thought that when they did it, they had prevented the Supreme Court from hearing an appeal of the Hamdan case. Reading through records of the congressional debate on the Detainee Treatment Act of 2205 would show as much. It was said on the floor of the House that the bill was contemplated to prevent the Hamdan case from proceeding to the Supreme Court (so I am informed by one of my friends in Washington who discussed the matter with people involved in supporting the debate). But the Court ignored the actual intent of Congress and created a loophole for themselves in the Detainee Treatment Act so that they could hear Hamdan v Rumsfeld in spite of Congress’ attempt to prevent them from doing so. In this sense, the Hamdan case is every bit as much an attack on the authority of Congress as the authority of the president. You haven’t heard that in the press though, have you? The press has been spinning the opinion as an attack on the president alone and in the ringing endorsement of Congress. The Detainee Treatment Act as provided in the Court’s own précis of its opinion, provides that “no Court…shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider…an application for…habeas corpus filed by…an alien detained…at Guantanamo Bay.” Hamdan is an alien detained at Guantanamo Bay. The Supreme Court maintained, however, that this did not apply to them because the habeas petition of Hamdan was already in process when the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 was enacted into law. And the Court noted that such laws are not retroactive. The problem in that the very history of habeas corpus law is that habeas corpus is a procedural matter and can, in fact, be affected retroactively. When the Congress has acted to deny the Supreme Court jurisdiction to hear particular writs of habeas corpus, they are almost always doing so with existing cases in mind. So, from the very foundation this case is somewhat suspicious. More to follow in the next posting concerning Hamdan.
Because of the view today that the Supreme Court is in some way the living oracle of a living Constitution, people pay a great deal of attention to every word the Court says in their opinions. Traditionally, this was not always the case. The part of a legal opinion which is actually binding as precedent and law is its “holding.” How to spot the holding of a case is sometimes a difficult thing to explain. Lawyers learn how to do it in law school through exposure to excerpts of thousands of judicial opinions. Attempts to create a foolproof method of extracting holdings on the part of legal scholars have generally failed. Let it suffice to say that the holding is the applied legal rule for the particular case. It is that logical, legal conclusion upon which the case hinges and without which the case could not be decided as decided. It is the particular bit of law that is fully sufficient to determine the outcome of the case and no more. Holdings can be interpreted narrowly or broadly but in theory it is always supposed to be the necessary thing about the case rather than the many superfluities in the body of the opinion. Extraneous matter beyond the holding is often useful in determining the Court’s attitude. After all, judges are learned experts in the law and their opinions are worth paying attention to. This is triply true of the Supreme Court since they are not merely learned experts but the final earthly court of appeal. But even with the Supreme Court, it is technically true that only the holdings of their cases are binding upon themselves and others. In the Hamdan case, it was not necessary for the decision in the case to look at the procedures to be used in the military commission once the Court had already decided that the power to create military commissions did not belong to the president. This, by the way, is an odd conclusion considering the very things that had been expected up to this point. But more on that later.
Given the Court’s holding, it now falls to Congress to create some kind of authority for military commissions and to set them up. Ironically, Congress thought they had already done this. And they thought that when they did it, they had prevented the Supreme Court from hearing an appeal of the Hamdan case. Reading through records of the congressional debate on the Detainee Treatment Act of 2205 would show as much. It was said on the floor of the House that the bill was contemplated to prevent the Hamdan case from proceeding to the Supreme Court (so I am informed by one of my friends in Washington who discussed the matter with people involved in supporting the debate). But the Court ignored the actual intent of Congress and created a loophole for themselves in the Detainee Treatment Act so that they could hear Hamdan v Rumsfeld in spite of Congress’ attempt to prevent them from doing so. In this sense, the Hamdan case is every bit as much an attack on the authority of Congress as the authority of the president. You haven’t heard that in the press though, have you? The press has been spinning the opinion as an attack on the president alone and in the ringing endorsement of Congress. The Detainee Treatment Act as provided in the Court’s own précis of its opinion, provides that “no Court…shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider…an application for…habeas corpus filed by…an alien detained…at Guantanamo Bay.” Hamdan is an alien detained at Guantanamo Bay. The Supreme Court maintained, however, that this did not apply to them because the habeas petition of Hamdan was already in process when the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 was enacted into law. And the Court noted that such laws are not retroactive. The problem in that the very history of habeas corpus law is that habeas corpus is a procedural matter and can, in fact, be affected retroactively. When the Congress has acted to deny the Supreme Court jurisdiction to hear particular writs of habeas corpus, they are almost always doing so with existing cases in mind. So, from the very foundation this case is somewhat suspicious. More to follow in the next posting concerning Hamdan.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
The battle of their time - and ours
the bear hour
At the link is an excellent article by Alexandra on the battle of Antietam and why it is still significant today.
At the link is an excellent article by Alexandra on the battle of Antietam and why it is still significant today.
Monday, July 03, 2006
Happy 4th of July
founding.com A User's Guide to the Declaration of Independence
Here is a link to information on the Declaration of Independence.
I hope and pray that all of you, and our blessed country, the United States of America, have a happy and safe Fourth of July celebration. God bless America and give her an even greater part in His great story!
The Declaration of Independence is one of the most important documents in our history. While the Constitutions sets out the rules we are to play politics by, the Declaration is the document that creates the nation. It recognizes a foundation for our government in God and His laws, the human rights created by God, and the consent of the governed.
Governments are God’s servants to limit evil and promote good in the temporal realm, in accord with His legal principles, through human laws that vary from polity to polity.
Human laws must be just to be valid. This is why the government derives ONLY its “just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Without God, there are no true rights. Rights created by men can be taken away by men. “Rights” implied from our equality alone, without God, lead to chaos, license, and behavior destructive of ourselves, our families, our associations, our communities, our states and our nation itself.
The consent of the governed to just laws and just government is also critical. Good government must have the support, participation, and oversight of the people or it will not remain good. The people must, as far as sinful people can, abide by God’s laws too, or their government will not remain good, if it remains at all.
The Declaration also lists concrete instances in which the government of England had violated the law of God, the rights of the colonists and others, and ignored the need for the consent of the colonists. This was no mere self interested revolution. The colonists knew these concrete acts implied England held a philosophy of government different from their own: one in which they and their neighbors could be treated like slaves even though the treatment had not yet escalated so far.
Many Christians believe the American war of independence was unjust. I believe they are wrong. A just war is a war for justice, when necessary and appropriate alternative means are no longer likely to be effective. The colonists had just cause as described in the Declaration and in history. They had suffered a “long train of abuses.” Their petitions for redress had been met with the force of arms and occupation. While there were a few incendiary patriots in Boston and elsewhere, America as a whole acted with patience and deliberation. Had England granted the colonists the rights of free Englishmen the war would have been avoided.
Here is the text of the Declaration:
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offencesFor abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
Here is a link to information on the Declaration of Independence.
I hope and pray that all of you, and our blessed country, the United States of America, have a happy and safe Fourth of July celebration. God bless America and give her an even greater part in His great story!
The Declaration of Independence is one of the most important documents in our history. While the Constitutions sets out the rules we are to play politics by, the Declaration is the document that creates the nation. It recognizes a foundation for our government in God and His laws, the human rights created by God, and the consent of the governed.
Governments are God’s servants to limit evil and promote good in the temporal realm, in accord with His legal principles, through human laws that vary from polity to polity.
Human laws must be just to be valid. This is why the government derives ONLY its “just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Without God, there are no true rights. Rights created by men can be taken away by men. “Rights” implied from our equality alone, without God, lead to chaos, license, and behavior destructive of ourselves, our families, our associations, our communities, our states and our nation itself.
The consent of the governed to just laws and just government is also critical. Good government must have the support, participation, and oversight of the people or it will not remain good. The people must, as far as sinful people can, abide by God’s laws too, or their government will not remain good, if it remains at all.
The Declaration also lists concrete instances in which the government of England had violated the law of God, the rights of the colonists and others, and ignored the need for the consent of the colonists. This was no mere self interested revolution. The colonists knew these concrete acts implied England held a philosophy of government different from their own: one in which they and their neighbors could be treated like slaves even though the treatment had not yet escalated so far.
Many Christians believe the American war of independence was unjust. I believe they are wrong. A just war is a war for justice, when necessary and appropriate alternative means are no longer likely to be effective. The colonists had just cause as described in the Declaration and in history. They had suffered a “long train of abuses.” Their petitions for redress had been met with the force of arms and occupation. While there were a few incendiary patriots in Boston and elsewhere, America as a whole acted with patience and deliberation. Had England granted the colonists the rights of free Englishmen the war would have been avoided.
Here is the text of the Declaration:
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offencesFor abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Democracy
I was recently reading the blog Colossians 3:16 and came across a post commenting on comments made by Condoleezza Rice at the Southern Baptist Convention. The post quoted Condi as saying, “If American does not serve great purposes, if we do not rally other nations to fight intolerance and support peace and defend freedom, and help give hope to all who suffer oppression, then our world will drift toward tragedy.” The author of the comment was troubled by this for a variety of reasons. First, they emphasized truly that our allegiance as Christians is first to God and His kingdom rather than to any of the kingdoms of this world. Second, they were suspicious of Rice’s belief in democracy and that other nations need to have democracies. Third, the article noted that we need to judge political issues from a biblical perspective rather than aligning ourselves with any particular party. All of the parties get things wrong from time to time. I have some sympathy with the author’s conclusion that “the last thing we need is continued blurring of the lines between Christianity and patriotism and a pat on the back for political morality jargon. We need to be jarred back into becoming and making disciples. Not until America’s Christians truly understand and live this will we be the ‘force for good’ that America could be.” It is certainly true that we need to become and make disciples. It is also true that we need to avoid being co-opted politically. As many authors have mentioned, David F. Wells for example, it is easy to seek popularity by adopting the ways of the world in place of the ways of God. This is particularly easy in the political realm where popularity seems so important. All that said, I wanted to deal particularly here with the question of democracy.
Many people believe that democracy arose as a result of Christianity. This is not exactly the truth. Democracy of the unorganized village type is virtually the first government known to humankind. The ancient Sumerians practiced village democracy until slowly falling into the rulership of priest kings. Of course nearly everyone who has seriously studied history is aware of the democracies of the Greek city states. While we fault these democracies today for having slaves, they were somewhat remarkable for their time in the level of government participation they gave the average freeman. I think Russell Kirk is correct in spotting the true weakness of the Greek democracies however: Greek religion did not support genuine morality or virtue. As a result, although the Greek democracies did involve the agreement of the populace, the populace was easily led into all sorts of mischief. They engaged in wars of aggression in order to gain wealth and land. They undertook schemes to take away wealth from certain individuals and redistribute it to others by force. They undertook reverse schemes to create temporary dictatorships that superseded the Greek democracies until overthrown. And the Greek democracies were always easily manipulated by demagogues with good verbal skills. The sophists of course, the philosophical ancestors of today’s postmodernists, were always willing to make money by teaching people how to manipulate the masses with oratorical skill. Like today’s marketing executives, they were mostly interested in the practical outcome of obtaining power and wealth rather than believing in any objective moral accountability. Rome was of course not a pure democracy but was a republic with democratic elements until the emperors took over. But it can be said that a large reason for the emperor’s destruction of the republic was that the general citizenry had become uninvolved in the democratic features of the government and relied instead on powerful and influential individuals. At times the Roman assemblies that were supposed to meet and vote on various things would simply have the officials responsible enter in the records that they had met even though they had not.
It is true though that the modern growth of democracy and republican government has largely occurred through the influence of Christianity. The reasons for this are fairly straight forward: they relate to Christian theology.
Most governments that involve aristocracies or autocratic rulers are based on the philosophy that some human beings are inherently gifted or entitled by nature to rule over others. Christianity has always taught that all human beings were the same kind of thing—sons of Adam and daughters of Eve to use C. S. Lewis’ phrase. None of us has an inherent right to rule over others. In fact, Jesus consistently tells us that if we want to be the greatest of all, we need to be the servant of all. Leadership and status come not from being in some way superior, but rather from providing service to others, especially others who are in need. In addition, the doctrine of the fall and human depravity plays a role in this. Because human beings are all fallen, none of us is inherently trustworthy. Not a single human being or group of human beings can be trusted to justly govern others. So we try to decentralize power and create various checks, balances and institutional devices designed to make it difficult for an errant human being or a group of errant human beings to impose their will on the others. This makes it difficult to get things done but it is more important to make it difficult to do evil things than to make it easy to do good things since few human problems can actually be solved by human government. Christians have also traditionally supported the classical notion coming through Plato and Cicero but also appearing in the Bible of the rule of law. The rule of law means the reign of law. That because individual human beings are not trustworthy, we do not allow any human being or group of human beings to be radically sovereign in the sense of making up the law as they go. Such radical sovereigns change the law to match whatever they do. Instead, the rule of law demands that rulers follow the laws. The notion of rule of law presupposes that there is in fact a higher law, a pattern beyond human making that determines whether or not human rules are actually legitimate. The Bible supports this notion. In Romans 13 and in I Peter, God indicates that the purpose of human government is to punish evil and reward good. God provides us with a standard as to the difference between good and evil. In Romans chapters 1 and 2, Paul outlines all the ways in which we are aware of that standard, even though we fail to live by it. All human beings are morally accountable to God in part because they do know what God wants even though they don’t do it. So the purpose of human government is participating in God’s law to restrain evil and encourage good. When governments do this they are legitimate. When they don’t they are illegitimate (I’ve said this almost too many times on this blot but it still applies here). Because we don’t trust human beings, we tend to prefer these democratic or republican decentralized forms of government. Pure democracies were normally rejected by the Reformers and other Christians of history because they recognized that the mob couldn’t be counted on to do the right thing any more than individual human beings or individual interest groups. This is essentially why the United States has a republican form of government. Our founders balanced their fear of autocratic individuals with their fear of the easily manipulable mob. They sought to create checks and balances against all of them.
But the Christian influence on democracy and republican government isn’t the only one. The Enlightement has also adopted democracy as its standard. The Enlightement is not necessarily connected to Christianity. If there were no Christianity, the Enlightement probably never would have been possible. But the Enlightement project starts with the human being at the center and works outward. A Christian worldview starts with God at the center and works outward coming back around to validate human senses and to provide philosophical evidences for the existence of God, but starting with God first rather than with the human being first. The Christian view democracy has always been based upon man’s failings. The Enlightenment view of democracy is mostly based upon trust in human nature.
Some of the adherents of the Enlightenment view of democracy have the notion that the outcomes of human policy making are derivative of human forms of government. They believe that autocracies tend to be inherently war-like and that democracies tend to be inherently peaceful. This is not true nor is it supported by historical data. It is largely based on an erroneous belief that American rebellions against unjust wars have been due to the democratic nature of our government. And coupled with the view that it is autocracies like Nazi Germany and Napoleonic France that have wars of aggression. One need only look back to the Greek city states to discover that it is entirely possible to have an aggressive democracy. What is really determinative of a people’s policies is the goodness of the people and the accuracy of their religious, moral and ethical views. If America were truly and fully dedicated to Christ and properly understood God’s Word and applied it maturely, I have no doubt that American public policy would be better than it is today. By the same token, if American succeeds in transplanting democracy to Iraq, it is unlikely that Iraqi public policy will ever be anything like as good as American public policy so long as Iraq is dominated by Islam. The public policies of predominantly Hindu India are certainly better than the public policies of an autocratic India. But they are definitely not particularly good in contrast to what a predominantly Christian India would produce.
So, I would say that democracy and republicanism are good. Because they are good, we should want them for our neighbors and help our neighbors in that direction. But we are deluding ourselves if we think that democracy and republicanism alone will cause our neighbors to be peaceful and prosperous. The truth is that only truth causes people to be peaceful and prosperous. Democracy and republican forms of government are based upon some of the truth. But they are not the whole truth. To whatever degree a people believe in the truth, they generally flourish. To whatever degree they reject the truth, they generally have problems. I say “generally” because God tests even “good” nations with famines, plagues, wars and other problems. In a fallen world there is no magical remedy for the effects of the fall.
In conclusion then, I think that it is not wrong for us to advocate democracy for others. This is helping them to come to a greater knowledge of truth. But we also need to help them come to Christ. Democracy is better than autocracy, but autocracy with Christ is probably better than democracy without Christ. The reason that we should strive to help our neighbors and fight intolerance, support peace and defend freedom is because we should love our neighbors. Leaving our neighbors under the rule of oppressive tyrants who prevent them from hearing the Gospel, who enlist their children in vicious wars and who enslave both mind and body is not good. It is not loving to let that sort of thing happen to your neighbor. And for the time being, American is available to be God’s tool. Contrary to what Condoleezza Rice believes, if America fails, God is capable of raising another helper from another place. But remember the words that Esther’s relative Mordecai spoke to her concerning her place in the Persian Empire: “Do not think that because you are in the kings’ house you will own of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to this royal position for such as time as this.” God no longer has one chosen nationality. People of all nations can be part of His church of His chosen people. But God is quite willing to use every nation and every people if they will but submit themselves to Him and become His instruments for good. If we do not help other nations become open to the Gospel and live in peace, then perhaps God will find some other nation to do so. But it will cost us. If we are unwilling to be God’s instrument, God will no longer have any real reason to sustain the United States in the position it has become accustomed to. Like Esther’s house, we would not escape. It is likely we would perish if we rejected God’s use of our people. It is important for us not to stick our heads in the sand and miss the opportunities of our times. It is important too not to be arrogant and to suppose that we know everything and can do everything on our own. Nevertheless, we should not be in the business of seeking personal peace and affluence. We should be in the business of seeking to be used by God for His plans both for the salvation of individuals and for the shaping of nations. The fact that some nations may not want to be shaped requires tact, wisdom and skill. Apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, people do not want to be saved either. But we don’t give up on them. We pray for them and preach the Gospel to them despite their opposition. The poor and homeless are reluctant to give up the bad habits that made them poor and homeless. But we do not think it is appropriate to let them rot on the streets, do we? Why then should we let our national neighbors rot within their autocracies and inhumane laws? We should do what we can while remaining humble, prudent, and realistic. But we should never give up.
Many people believe that democracy arose as a result of Christianity. This is not exactly the truth. Democracy of the unorganized village type is virtually the first government known to humankind. The ancient Sumerians practiced village democracy until slowly falling into the rulership of priest kings. Of course nearly everyone who has seriously studied history is aware of the democracies of the Greek city states. While we fault these democracies today for having slaves, they were somewhat remarkable for their time in the level of government participation they gave the average freeman. I think Russell Kirk is correct in spotting the true weakness of the Greek democracies however: Greek religion did not support genuine morality or virtue. As a result, although the Greek democracies did involve the agreement of the populace, the populace was easily led into all sorts of mischief. They engaged in wars of aggression in order to gain wealth and land. They undertook schemes to take away wealth from certain individuals and redistribute it to others by force. They undertook reverse schemes to create temporary dictatorships that superseded the Greek democracies until overthrown. And the Greek democracies were always easily manipulated by demagogues with good verbal skills. The sophists of course, the philosophical ancestors of today’s postmodernists, were always willing to make money by teaching people how to manipulate the masses with oratorical skill. Like today’s marketing executives, they were mostly interested in the practical outcome of obtaining power and wealth rather than believing in any objective moral accountability. Rome was of course not a pure democracy but was a republic with democratic elements until the emperors took over. But it can be said that a large reason for the emperor’s destruction of the republic was that the general citizenry had become uninvolved in the democratic features of the government and relied instead on powerful and influential individuals. At times the Roman assemblies that were supposed to meet and vote on various things would simply have the officials responsible enter in the records that they had met even though they had not.
It is true though that the modern growth of democracy and republican government has largely occurred through the influence of Christianity. The reasons for this are fairly straight forward: they relate to Christian theology.
Most governments that involve aristocracies or autocratic rulers are based on the philosophy that some human beings are inherently gifted or entitled by nature to rule over others. Christianity has always taught that all human beings were the same kind of thing—sons of Adam and daughters of Eve to use C. S. Lewis’ phrase. None of us has an inherent right to rule over others. In fact, Jesus consistently tells us that if we want to be the greatest of all, we need to be the servant of all. Leadership and status come not from being in some way superior, but rather from providing service to others, especially others who are in need. In addition, the doctrine of the fall and human depravity plays a role in this. Because human beings are all fallen, none of us is inherently trustworthy. Not a single human being or group of human beings can be trusted to justly govern others. So we try to decentralize power and create various checks, balances and institutional devices designed to make it difficult for an errant human being or a group of errant human beings to impose their will on the others. This makes it difficult to get things done but it is more important to make it difficult to do evil things than to make it easy to do good things since few human problems can actually be solved by human government. Christians have also traditionally supported the classical notion coming through Plato and Cicero but also appearing in the Bible of the rule of law. The rule of law means the reign of law. That because individual human beings are not trustworthy, we do not allow any human being or group of human beings to be radically sovereign in the sense of making up the law as they go. Such radical sovereigns change the law to match whatever they do. Instead, the rule of law demands that rulers follow the laws. The notion of rule of law presupposes that there is in fact a higher law, a pattern beyond human making that determines whether or not human rules are actually legitimate. The Bible supports this notion. In Romans 13 and in I Peter, God indicates that the purpose of human government is to punish evil and reward good. God provides us with a standard as to the difference between good and evil. In Romans chapters 1 and 2, Paul outlines all the ways in which we are aware of that standard, even though we fail to live by it. All human beings are morally accountable to God in part because they do know what God wants even though they don’t do it. So the purpose of human government is participating in God’s law to restrain evil and encourage good. When governments do this they are legitimate. When they don’t they are illegitimate (I’ve said this almost too many times on this blot but it still applies here). Because we don’t trust human beings, we tend to prefer these democratic or republican decentralized forms of government. Pure democracies were normally rejected by the Reformers and other Christians of history because they recognized that the mob couldn’t be counted on to do the right thing any more than individual human beings or individual interest groups. This is essentially why the United States has a republican form of government. Our founders balanced their fear of autocratic individuals with their fear of the easily manipulable mob. They sought to create checks and balances against all of them.
But the Christian influence on democracy and republican government isn’t the only one. The Enlightement has also adopted democracy as its standard. The Enlightement is not necessarily connected to Christianity. If there were no Christianity, the Enlightement probably never would have been possible. But the Enlightement project starts with the human being at the center and works outward. A Christian worldview starts with God at the center and works outward coming back around to validate human senses and to provide philosophical evidences for the existence of God, but starting with God first rather than with the human being first. The Christian view democracy has always been based upon man’s failings. The Enlightenment view of democracy is mostly based upon trust in human nature.
Some of the adherents of the Enlightenment view of democracy have the notion that the outcomes of human policy making are derivative of human forms of government. They believe that autocracies tend to be inherently war-like and that democracies tend to be inherently peaceful. This is not true nor is it supported by historical data. It is largely based on an erroneous belief that American rebellions against unjust wars have been due to the democratic nature of our government. And coupled with the view that it is autocracies like Nazi Germany and Napoleonic France that have wars of aggression. One need only look back to the Greek city states to discover that it is entirely possible to have an aggressive democracy. What is really determinative of a people’s policies is the goodness of the people and the accuracy of their religious, moral and ethical views. If America were truly and fully dedicated to Christ and properly understood God’s Word and applied it maturely, I have no doubt that American public policy would be better than it is today. By the same token, if American succeeds in transplanting democracy to Iraq, it is unlikely that Iraqi public policy will ever be anything like as good as American public policy so long as Iraq is dominated by Islam. The public policies of predominantly Hindu India are certainly better than the public policies of an autocratic India. But they are definitely not particularly good in contrast to what a predominantly Christian India would produce.
So, I would say that democracy and republicanism are good. Because they are good, we should want them for our neighbors and help our neighbors in that direction. But we are deluding ourselves if we think that democracy and republicanism alone will cause our neighbors to be peaceful and prosperous. The truth is that only truth causes people to be peaceful and prosperous. Democracy and republican forms of government are based upon some of the truth. But they are not the whole truth. To whatever degree a people believe in the truth, they generally flourish. To whatever degree they reject the truth, they generally have problems. I say “generally” because God tests even “good” nations with famines, plagues, wars and other problems. In a fallen world there is no magical remedy for the effects of the fall.
In conclusion then, I think that it is not wrong for us to advocate democracy for others. This is helping them to come to a greater knowledge of truth. But we also need to help them come to Christ. Democracy is better than autocracy, but autocracy with Christ is probably better than democracy without Christ. The reason that we should strive to help our neighbors and fight intolerance, support peace and defend freedom is because we should love our neighbors. Leaving our neighbors under the rule of oppressive tyrants who prevent them from hearing the Gospel, who enlist their children in vicious wars and who enslave both mind and body is not good. It is not loving to let that sort of thing happen to your neighbor. And for the time being, American is available to be God’s tool. Contrary to what Condoleezza Rice believes, if America fails, God is capable of raising another helper from another place. But remember the words that Esther’s relative Mordecai spoke to her concerning her place in the Persian Empire: “Do not think that because you are in the kings’ house you will own of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to this royal position for such as time as this.” God no longer has one chosen nationality. People of all nations can be part of His church of His chosen people. But God is quite willing to use every nation and every people if they will but submit themselves to Him and become His instruments for good. If we do not help other nations become open to the Gospel and live in peace, then perhaps God will find some other nation to do so. But it will cost us. If we are unwilling to be God’s instrument, God will no longer have any real reason to sustain the United States in the position it has become accustomed to. Like Esther’s house, we would not escape. It is likely we would perish if we rejected God’s use of our people. It is important for us not to stick our heads in the sand and miss the opportunities of our times. It is important too not to be arrogant and to suppose that we know everything and can do everything on our own. Nevertheless, we should not be in the business of seeking personal peace and affluence. We should be in the business of seeking to be used by God for His plans both for the salvation of individuals and for the shaping of nations. The fact that some nations may not want to be shaped requires tact, wisdom and skill. Apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, people do not want to be saved either. But we don’t give up on them. We pray for them and preach the Gospel to them despite their opposition. The poor and homeless are reluctant to give up the bad habits that made them poor and homeless. But we do not think it is appropriate to let them rot on the streets, do we? Why then should we let our national neighbors rot within their autocracies and inhumane laws? We should do what we can while remaining humble, prudent, and realistic. But we should never give up.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Evangelical Outpost on WMDs
the evangelical outpost: Weapons as Mass Distractions:
Technology and the Threat of WMDs
Excellent commentary on the WMD issue. Though unnecessary to justify the war I am still pleased we are finally admitting to finding WMDs and the ingredients that go into them. I am amazed, but not surprised that the press ignores this radical change in data.
Technology and the Threat of WMDs
Excellent commentary on the WMD issue. Though unnecessary to justify the war I am still pleased we are finally admitting to finding WMDs and the ingredients that go into them. I am amazed, but not surprised that the press ignores this radical change in data.
Radio Show on Law and Gospel
Apologetics.com: Challenging Believers to Think and Thinkers to Believe
At the link is a link to my guest appearance on the radio show Apologetics.com discussing the relationship of law and gospel.
At the link is a link to my guest appearance on the radio show Apologetics.com discussing the relationship of law and gospel.
Hudson v. Michigan: The Knock and Announce Rule and the Exclusionary Rule
Hudson v Michigan involves one simple question: whether the Supreme Court’s traditional knock and announce requirement for searches of a person’s home is subject to the exclusionary rule if violated. In other words, if the police come to your house to search it and barge right in without knocking on the door or announcing that they are there, will the evidence of crime that they subsequently find in your home be excluded from admissibility in court because it was obtained in violation of the amendment to the Constitution that protects against unreasonable searches and seizures? In Hudson, the Supreme Court answers that question no. The court declines to apply the exclusionary rule even though Michigan stipulated that their police violated the knock and announce rule.
As the court notes in its opinion, the idea that the peace officers should knock and announce their presence a reasonable time prior to forceful entry into a person’s home is an ancient rule of the English common law which has been codified in federal statutory law since 1917 and applied by the U.S. Supreme Court as required for reasonable searches and seizures since 1995 with the case Wilson v Arkansas. As a traditional custom among law enforcement officers, the practice is perhaps more ancient and more common than its requirement as a matter of law.
Quite reasonably, the court has also recognized a variety of exceptions to the knock and announce rule. These include situations in which there is a threat of violence to the enforcing officers or where the evidence they seek would probably be destroyed or irretrievably hidden if they announced their presence. Another exception is if knocking and announcing would be futile. Certainly too, though there is no court case about it, when a swat team is descending upon terrorists holding hostages, they do not and should not knock or yell first.
Nevertheless, was the Supreme Court right in saying that the knock and announce rule is not protected by the accompanying exclusionary rule? It is common in our courts that when a law enforcement agency violates the protections against reasonable search and seizure, the evidence they seize as a result is excluded so that the person often cannot be convicted of the crime of which they are accused. The reason for this is simple. It provides a deterrent. If law enforcement agencies know they cannot use the evidence they obtain illegally, they are far less likely to undertake illegal measures to obtain evidence. The exclusionary rule is often explained using the metaphor of “the fruit of the poisonous tree.” If a tree is inherently poisonous (i.e. illegal), the fruit that grows on it shouldn’t be eaten either. In other words, evidence gained from an illegal search should be thought of as illegal evidence and excluded from the courtroom. Many prosecutors have suggested that there should be a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule. If the police do not believe they are violating the Fourth Amendment, why should the evidence be excluded since the deterrent is no longer present in that instance, but the criminal wrongdoing still is. The argument for a good faith exception is a strong one. But is the argument against applying the exclusionary rule here a strong argument?
In Hudson, the Supreme Court distinguishes situations in which unlawful evidence is obtained by unlawful warrantless searches. There, the court says “citizens are entitled to shield their persons, houses, papers and effects from the government’s scrutiny.” (Hudson slip opinion, page 8.) The court feels that a search with a warrant conducted without knocking and announcing is different. While there are interests that the knock and announce rule is meant to protect, it is not designed to prevent the government from seeing or taking the evidence described in its warrant. As a result, the court believes that the exclusionary rule is inappropriate. The court feels that the possible violation of the Fourth Amendment involved in failing to knock and announce is not the actual cause of the seizure of the evidence since the evidence could have been lawfully seized under a warrant anyway. The court also believes that the deterrent’s benefits are outweighed by the social costs of the exclusionary rule in this instance. Knocking and announcing is an ambiguous requirement that requires “reasonableness” in its application. It exposes the officers involved to potential harm and allows perpetrators to hide or destroy evidence.
While the court’s arguments are rational and justifiable, I for one have difficulty agreeing with them. The problem is that if the exclusionary rule does not apply, it is unlikely in the current law enforcement environment that police will continue to knock and announce at all. Instead, whenever they are enforcing a warrant, they will simply break down your door and storm in. Why is that undesirable? For several reasons. First, the police do occasionally make mistakes. They do sometimes storm into the wrong apartment. While it is a minor hindrance, it is some hindrance against mistakes if they actually knock and announce their presence first. This at least allows the occupant of the apartment to react as an innocent person being victimized by a mistake. If armed men storm into your apartment or home and you don’t know that they’re the police or that they are coming, you may react in ways that the police will interpret as the actions of a guilty perpetrator, and the result may very likely be that the police will shoot you. Since this does occasionally happen, it is certainly a realistic fear. Can this unlikely event outweigh the need for the police to get at real perpetrators? Yes. Protecting innocent people is more important than getting at guilty people since the reason we go after guilty people is in order to protect innocent people. Protecting innocents should always come first. This is also why we consider people innocent until proven guilty and why we have standards of proof rather than merely assuming that anyone accused of a crime should be locked up unless they can justify their freedom.
In the modern world there are already many ways in which our privacy is legitimately fading away. Because so many of our acts and transactions involve other people, they are essentially public. As a result, our phone records and financial records may lawfully be viewed by the government or counted in government statistics despite peoples’ frequent desire to the contrary. This is especially true during the current war on terrorism. But, the long-time traditional protections of the home as a man’s castle, the protection against the use of hearsay, and the protection of the right to bear arms, these items must be protected and maintained despite the current war against terror and the government’s desperation to apprehend dangerous criminals. Today the government can see what we do inside our homes with infrared scopes. They can listen to our conversations in public places with long-range eavesdropping equipment, and they can see what goes on in our backyards by flying over our property. All of these things are normally considered lawful even though they were not possible in the past when the technology to execute such spying did not exist. Now that the possibility for such intrusion does exist, protecting the old traditional rights against exclusion becomes an even greater imperative. Certainly if the police are executing a warrant, they could use advanced technology to be sure that the alleged perpetrator is not disposing of evidence or arming himself. Using listening devices or infrared devices, they could determine if the evidence is being destroyed or if guns are being aimed. This would be expensive, but it would not be difficult. And, while there is some danger to officers by announcing their presence, they are protected by bulletproof vests and heavy weapons. Neither the average home owner nor the average criminal is reasonably going to provide armed resistance against the small army serving a warrant. While some criminals do remain unreasonable and do attempt to harm peace officers in the course of their lawful duties, that risk should not outweigh the interest of lawful citizens of being protected against immediate unannounced intrusion into their homes by the same armed band.
If the police do make a mistake and violate the Fourth Amendment by storming into someone’s home unannounced, there is no real deterrent against their actions if the exclusionary rule disappears. The damages that would be awarded against the police department in a lawsuit for a house storming would be de minimis. Many people could not afford the protracted legal battle against the government necessary to obtain the damages. And the damages would likely be far smaller than the attorney’s fees necessary to take the case forward. The only way such continued unannounced storming will be prevented is if there is no reason for the police to engage in such assaults in any but the most extraordinary circumstances. The only way to prevent them from having a reason to engage in these assaults is to apply the exclusionary rule. If evidence cannot be gotten by such rude conduct, there will be no reason to engage in the conduct.
I fully sympathize with the police and the difficulty and stress of their situation. But as an innocent public citizen, I am also afraid of unannounced accidental searches of the wrong properties. Based on the stories in our newspapers during my lifetime, I do not believe such a fear is unreasonable or unfounded. As a result, I would have been happier if the Supreme Court had continued to link the exclusionary rule to the knock and announce rule.
As the court notes in its opinion, the idea that the peace officers should knock and announce their presence a reasonable time prior to forceful entry into a person’s home is an ancient rule of the English common law which has been codified in federal statutory law since 1917 and applied by the U.S. Supreme Court as required for reasonable searches and seizures since 1995 with the case Wilson v Arkansas. As a traditional custom among law enforcement officers, the practice is perhaps more ancient and more common than its requirement as a matter of law.
Quite reasonably, the court has also recognized a variety of exceptions to the knock and announce rule. These include situations in which there is a threat of violence to the enforcing officers or where the evidence they seek would probably be destroyed or irretrievably hidden if they announced their presence. Another exception is if knocking and announcing would be futile. Certainly too, though there is no court case about it, when a swat team is descending upon terrorists holding hostages, they do not and should not knock or yell first.
Nevertheless, was the Supreme Court right in saying that the knock and announce rule is not protected by the accompanying exclusionary rule? It is common in our courts that when a law enforcement agency violates the protections against reasonable search and seizure, the evidence they seize as a result is excluded so that the person often cannot be convicted of the crime of which they are accused. The reason for this is simple. It provides a deterrent. If law enforcement agencies know they cannot use the evidence they obtain illegally, they are far less likely to undertake illegal measures to obtain evidence. The exclusionary rule is often explained using the metaphor of “the fruit of the poisonous tree.” If a tree is inherently poisonous (i.e. illegal), the fruit that grows on it shouldn’t be eaten either. In other words, evidence gained from an illegal search should be thought of as illegal evidence and excluded from the courtroom. Many prosecutors have suggested that there should be a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule. If the police do not believe they are violating the Fourth Amendment, why should the evidence be excluded since the deterrent is no longer present in that instance, but the criminal wrongdoing still is. The argument for a good faith exception is a strong one. But is the argument against applying the exclusionary rule here a strong argument?
In Hudson, the Supreme Court distinguishes situations in which unlawful evidence is obtained by unlawful warrantless searches. There, the court says “citizens are entitled to shield their persons, houses, papers and effects from the government’s scrutiny.” (Hudson slip opinion, page 8.) The court feels that a search with a warrant conducted without knocking and announcing is different. While there are interests that the knock and announce rule is meant to protect, it is not designed to prevent the government from seeing or taking the evidence described in its warrant. As a result, the court believes that the exclusionary rule is inappropriate. The court feels that the possible violation of the Fourth Amendment involved in failing to knock and announce is not the actual cause of the seizure of the evidence since the evidence could have been lawfully seized under a warrant anyway. The court also believes that the deterrent’s benefits are outweighed by the social costs of the exclusionary rule in this instance. Knocking and announcing is an ambiguous requirement that requires “reasonableness” in its application. It exposes the officers involved to potential harm and allows perpetrators to hide or destroy evidence.
While the court’s arguments are rational and justifiable, I for one have difficulty agreeing with them. The problem is that if the exclusionary rule does not apply, it is unlikely in the current law enforcement environment that police will continue to knock and announce at all. Instead, whenever they are enforcing a warrant, they will simply break down your door and storm in. Why is that undesirable? For several reasons. First, the police do occasionally make mistakes. They do sometimes storm into the wrong apartment. While it is a minor hindrance, it is some hindrance against mistakes if they actually knock and announce their presence first. This at least allows the occupant of the apartment to react as an innocent person being victimized by a mistake. If armed men storm into your apartment or home and you don’t know that they’re the police or that they are coming, you may react in ways that the police will interpret as the actions of a guilty perpetrator, and the result may very likely be that the police will shoot you. Since this does occasionally happen, it is certainly a realistic fear. Can this unlikely event outweigh the need for the police to get at real perpetrators? Yes. Protecting innocent people is more important than getting at guilty people since the reason we go after guilty people is in order to protect innocent people. Protecting innocents should always come first. This is also why we consider people innocent until proven guilty and why we have standards of proof rather than merely assuming that anyone accused of a crime should be locked up unless they can justify their freedom.
In the modern world there are already many ways in which our privacy is legitimately fading away. Because so many of our acts and transactions involve other people, they are essentially public. As a result, our phone records and financial records may lawfully be viewed by the government or counted in government statistics despite peoples’ frequent desire to the contrary. This is especially true during the current war on terrorism. But, the long-time traditional protections of the home as a man’s castle, the protection against the use of hearsay, and the protection of the right to bear arms, these items must be protected and maintained despite the current war against terror and the government’s desperation to apprehend dangerous criminals. Today the government can see what we do inside our homes with infrared scopes. They can listen to our conversations in public places with long-range eavesdropping equipment, and they can see what goes on in our backyards by flying over our property. All of these things are normally considered lawful even though they were not possible in the past when the technology to execute such spying did not exist. Now that the possibility for such intrusion does exist, protecting the old traditional rights against exclusion becomes an even greater imperative. Certainly if the police are executing a warrant, they could use advanced technology to be sure that the alleged perpetrator is not disposing of evidence or arming himself. Using listening devices or infrared devices, they could determine if the evidence is being destroyed or if guns are being aimed. This would be expensive, but it would not be difficult. And, while there is some danger to officers by announcing their presence, they are protected by bulletproof vests and heavy weapons. Neither the average home owner nor the average criminal is reasonably going to provide armed resistance against the small army serving a warrant. While some criminals do remain unreasonable and do attempt to harm peace officers in the course of their lawful duties, that risk should not outweigh the interest of lawful citizens of being protected against immediate unannounced intrusion into their homes by the same armed band.
If the police do make a mistake and violate the Fourth Amendment by storming into someone’s home unannounced, there is no real deterrent against their actions if the exclusionary rule disappears. The damages that would be awarded against the police department in a lawsuit for a house storming would be de minimis. Many people could not afford the protracted legal battle against the government necessary to obtain the damages. And the damages would likely be far smaller than the attorney’s fees necessary to take the case forward. The only way such continued unannounced storming will be prevented is if there is no reason for the police to engage in such assaults in any but the most extraordinary circumstances. The only way to prevent them from having a reason to engage in these assaults is to apply the exclusionary rule. If evidence cannot be gotten by such rude conduct, there will be no reason to engage in the conduct.
I fully sympathize with the police and the difficulty and stress of their situation. But as an innocent public citizen, I am also afraid of unannounced accidental searches of the wrong properties. Based on the stories in our newspapers during my lifetime, I do not believe such a fear is unreasonable or unfounded. As a result, I would have been happier if the Supreme Court had continued to link the exclusionary rule to the knock and announce rule.
Another Program Leaked by Press
The news media have gleefully disclosed and thereby made less useful another one of the government’s tools in the war against Islamist extremism. The government had obtained access to international financial transaction records, in particular, through access to a database known as SWIFT. The program provided access to a variety of transactions. My understanding is that most transactions subject to tracing are international transactions. In this way, the government of the United States has an opportunity to find and evaluate terrorist financing patterns. But, now that the program has been talked about widely in the media, it is likely that even unintelligent terrorists will begin being more careful about wiring money. Many people believe that the program is unlikely to be successful because terrorists will have already understood that their financial transactions would be under scrutiny. I do not believe that this is a justifiable criticism. It is true that the most clever and intelligent of our terrorist adversaries probably are trained in covert operations and are careful to avoid transactions that are traceable. But, even clever people are sometimes desperate. Sometimes when the level of desperation rises, people take risks. And sometimes those risks lead to them being caught. It is also the case that not everyone who engages in terrorism is a well-trained mastermind. In particular, as we succeed in killing and capturing members of the Al Qaeda network and other terrorist organizations, less trained and less intelligent people will rise to fill their empty ranks. These new people are more likely to make mistakes. Their mistakes can then be capitalized upon.
Sadly, the New York Times has made that capitalization more difficult by revealing another legal government program. This program falls once again under the heading of what I discussed in an earlier blog posting: Synthetic Privacy. In the modern world, we have come to have unreasonable expectations about privacy. We not only want things that are actually done in the quiet of our own homes to remain private, but we seek to require third parties to essentially cover up for us and keep information away from others even though that information is of necessity shared with dozens or perhaps even hundreds of people. We do things in public, engage in public transactions, produce records that are shared with dozens of people, and then we somehow expect the government to take measures to make sure that the government cannot find out about what we did that many other people already know about. This obsession with creating artificial privacy—privacy about things that are not really private—is perhaps understandable, but inappropriate during wartime. While our homes and papers should remain secure from unreasonable searches and seizures, there is no reason why statistics about telephone patterns or wire transfers shouldn’t be known by the government and used to eliminate militant Islamists bent on murdering hundreds of innocent people. We need to keep in mind the difference between genuine privacy and embarrassment and synthetic privacy that provides no real help to anyone except our enemies.
Sadly, the New York Times has made that capitalization more difficult by revealing another legal government program. This program falls once again under the heading of what I discussed in an earlier blog posting: Synthetic Privacy. In the modern world, we have come to have unreasonable expectations about privacy. We not only want things that are actually done in the quiet of our own homes to remain private, but we seek to require third parties to essentially cover up for us and keep information away from others even though that information is of necessity shared with dozens or perhaps even hundreds of people. We do things in public, engage in public transactions, produce records that are shared with dozens of people, and then we somehow expect the government to take measures to make sure that the government cannot find out about what we did that many other people already know about. This obsession with creating artificial privacy—privacy about things that are not really private—is perhaps understandable, but inappropriate during wartime. While our homes and papers should remain secure from unreasonable searches and seizures, there is no reason why statistics about telephone patterns or wire transfers shouldn’t be known by the government and used to eliminate militant Islamists bent on murdering hundreds of innocent people. We need to keep in mind the difference between genuine privacy and embarrassment and synthetic privacy that provides no real help to anyone except our enemies.
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