Treason, Traitors
It's rather alarming how common it is for righties to throw around the T word(s). Here's a recent, though rather trivial, example. (Via The News Blog, via Atrios.)
But, you know, the only two prominently political and certifiably traitorous traitors that I can think of are both not merely right-wing but right-wing heroes--namely Ollie [spelling corrected: duh] North and G. Gordon Liddy.
Both certifiably nuts, too. But that's a different story.
It's rather alarming how common it is for righties to throw around the T word(s). Here's a recent, though rather trivial, example. (Via The News Blog, via Atrios.)
But, you know, the only two prominently political and certifiably traitorous traitors that I can think of are both not merely right-wing but right-wing heroes--namely Ollie [spelling corrected: duh] North and G. Gordon Liddy.
Both certifiably nuts, too. But that's a different story.
posted by Winston Smith at
12:44 PM
10 Comments:
I have a co-worker who has an autographed picture of Ollie on the wall of their cube...
honestly...I am looking at right now....the fact that it is proudly displayed is surreal.
You could have warned us that would take us to the actual diatribe.
I mean, I feel dirty even glancing through crap like that.
Some twit in a crap-college paper.
Low-hanging fruit.
At least take on Coulter, who has a law degree. That would be cool.
Oh, WS, I've been playing with Euthyphro, and wondering if we can just dispense with the "gods" part, and ask the same questions about the law itself.
Does the law dictate things because they are good, or are they good because the law says so?
Because Ollie North's riff is that the Contras were his friends, and they were good guys and "freedom fighters," and he wasn't going to abandon them because of some morally confused and arbitrary Boland Amendment that backed the Sandinistas.
Did the Boland Amendment make the Sandinistas good guys?
Was it moral to abandon your friends, and guys you saw as fighting for Right (freedom), for the sake of the law?
Are those who disobey The Law traitors? Do you prosecute your father, as Euthyphro did, possessed of a moral certainty about things because your reading of the law says it must be so?
If there is only the law, what of wisdom? Is the love of wisdom, philosophy, a humbug? What of Good? Perhaps we should all become philonomosophers, lovers of the law, and abandon our friends and sell out our fathers to the admiration of the will of the state. The state would like that.
But I'm a rebel, man. Ollie North, too. Up the establishment.
God I hate Plato. I read that dialogue over xmas and even though I happen to agree on this question I kept reaching for an ice pick.
Public laws don't even have to have direct good benefits to be worthwhile - they allow citizens to know the accepted limits of behavior and act accordingly.
Perhaps the idea you're looking for is the right of people to break the law in emergencies for the greater good in the understanding that they will face the legal penalties. A good recent statement of this.
If Ollie wanted so badly to be loyal to his friends, he should have recruited some like-minded friends and marched down there himself to fight the Sandinistas.
In other words, he should keep the United States of America the hell out of his relations with his friends.
It opens a lot of interesting (to me, at least) stuff, rilke. On one hand we have Forster's famous "if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying
my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country."
Your link features a Jefferson quote saying that one may (and should) disobey the law for the greater good and "throw himself on the justice of his country and the rectitude of his motives.”
Justice being the key word. Philosophers like to ask not what is legal, but what is just. The concept of friendship enters in, too, I think.
Those who refused to "name names" of their friends before the HUAC got blacklisted.
As penalty for impiety toward the gods of the city and the dissemination of philosophy, which by its nature is subversive to the city, Socrates recommended he be given free meals for life at the best restaurant in town. (He got death.)
Ollie North skirted the Boland Amendment and then lied to protect his country, his friends and his president. He got a pardon and a talk show.
Bill Clinton lied to protect his family, and got a slap on the wrist in a plea bargain after he left office.
What is just?
Oh, God, Tom...you just can't be serious with that one.
When you start trying to argue--if I understand you aright--that Clinton's blowjob was worse than Iran-Contra...that's a reductio of your position.
And please none of that insincere 'it wasn't the sex it was the lies' nonsense...
Not comparing anything with anything, just musing on the idea of justice.
"It opens a lot of interesting (to me, at least) stuff, rilke. On one hand we have Forster's famous "if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying
my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country."
Your link features a Jefferson quote saying that one may (and should) disobey the law for the greater good and "throw himself on the justice of his country and the rectitude of his motives.”"
I call Frankfurt.
There's nothing remotely noble or just in what Bush is doing:
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/01/administrations-new-fisa-defense-is.html
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