Being Catholic in America

It's an interesting time to hang out with people of different political persuasions. There are the Democrats, who are almost uniformly aghast at the present administration; the Republicans, divided between NeverTrumpers, former Trumpers, and abiding supporters of the present administration; and a fairly mixed bag of independent, libertarian, or other people of less mainstream political stripes. And all of them tend to be quite vehement right now.

Faced with this hodgepodge on the one side and Catholic social teaching on the other, what's a Catholic to do?

Well, a few obligations are clear.

1. First and foremost, only Jesus Christ is your savior, not a politician, party, or platform. I don't care who the enemy we face in a given generation is; it's not worth damning your soul in order to defeat them.
   

   Put no trust in princes,
   in children of Adam powerless to save.
   Who breathing his last, returns to the earth;
   that day all his planning comes to nothing (Ps 146:3-4).

   Trust in Jesus. Trust in the merciful love that created and sustains the cosmos. Don't throw over the law of love in favor of pursuing vengeance or victory in the political arena. No earthly conflict is worth losing your soul over. Reject the temptation to make power or money, race or class, status or security an idol. Reject, in short, "bad religion," especially as diagnosed by Ross Douthat.
   
2. No matter what else you do or do not do, pray. Pray for the country; pray for the common good; and pray for our elected officials, military and security folks, and all those who take part in the immense machinery of governance. Pray for those affected for good or for ill by the government. Pray for the people you like, and pray extra hard for those whom you do not like. Wish God's blessings on all of them, remembering that God blesses by helping people towards their ultimate good (sanctity), and so to pray for one's enemies or even for the enemies of humanity is not the same thing as to simply ask that good things happen to bad people.
3. Read. Don't just watch, as important as the news, C-SPAN, and other forms of media may be. Read good, solidly researched and generally objective biographies of major figures. Look into the history of the country, of your state, of your community, and let that inform your prayers and participation. Read up on Catholic social teaching, starting with good books such as Brandon Vogt's Saints and Social Justice: A Guide to Changing the World. Share what you read, and talk about it at the dinner table.
4. Realize that Catholic teaching and reality do not fit cleanly into left/right categories. To be Catholic is to transcend partisanship often. To be faithful to Christ and to the facts while seeking to do one's duty as a citizen and be usefully involved in politics is to be in a party, but not of it.
   
5. Vote. Brexit and President Trump's election victory should have proven to everyone that every vote counts. You know Benjamin Franklin's quote, "Watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves."? Well, get out the vote and the election results will take care of themselves. What counts as a good result? Whenever policies conducive to the common good are enacted; whenever politicians seeking to serve the common good are elected. Now, of course, there will always be politicians and elected officials who are most interested in power, money, or self-aggrandizement. Human nature hasn't changed since our fall. At the same time, people can rise to the occasion. Confronted with stupendous challenges, they may respond with unexpected virtue. And even if they are not disinterested, their self-interest may motivate them to do a good job in order to get reelected.
6. Help reform your party. Few people have really publicly acknowledged that the parties died in 2016. There were four parties, really, with possible presidents in play: The Bernie Sanders supporters; the Democrats with Clinton; the Republicans with their 16 primary candidates; and Donald Trump's Breitbart/alt-right/etc. wing. The two major political parties in the United States are the walking dead right now. The Republicans could not field a life-long Republican presidential candidate who could beat Trump (a very recent Republican) in the primaries., and the Democrats could not defeat Donald Trump in the general election. It's time for the reform and renewal of the parties. True fidelity to the teaching of the Church--the whole teaching of the Church--should lead a Catholic to oppose his or her party on a semi-regular basis. For instance, on the right, the push for torture/enhanced interrogation, the ready willingness to discard human rights in the name of national security, and more should certainly be met with steadfast opposition from Catholics who are conservative. Look to St. John Paul II or Alexander Solzhenitsyn to see why. On the left, the push for abortion, attempts to restrict or redefine religious freedom so as to remove the Church and her members from charitable works and the public sphere, and gender ideology ought to be met with principled, firm, and unyielding opposition from Catholics who are liberal. Look to Pope Francis and Dorothy Day to see why.

7. Be willing to cooperate with your opponents when they're right. There are causes and laws that all people of good will should support. Certainly we ought to all be able to agree to pursue decent treatment of all our fellow men and women; certainly we ought to all be in favor of the protection and preservation of human rights. There are causes where we can and should cross the aisle to achieve a common goal. Democrats and Republicans can and should work together, live together, get married and raise children together, build homes, families, communities, and a country together. Differences and disagreements about means shouldn't prevent Catholics from seeing that we all (ought to) desire the same ends: our flourishing as one nation under God, indivisible.
8. Get involved in your local communities. Real change goes deep, and it starts locally. Join civic organizations; get involved in school boards and county commissions; become a member of clubs and associations. Meet your neighbors. Listen to them. Love them, whether they be left or right, whether they be like you or wildly different. Live love. Do good works at your state, diocesan or archdiocesan, and regional level. Support the common good of your local communities, and that will foster the common good of the nation as a whole.

Whatever else you do, do something! Catholics are called to be in the world, even as we are not of it. We believe in a God who became incarnate, who became a citizen of a certain place at a certain time, and who even paid taxes to God and Caesar. We are first and foremost citizens of the kingdom of Heaven, yes, but we are also citizens here below. Don't wait for someone else to come along and fix everything; take up what gifts and talents you possess and fix something.

Tell the truth. Live love. Contemplate your neighbor, and see Christ shining out through their eyes. Do the works of mercy, and work justice.

The World's Gone Mad

I am not an Alinskyite, nor a Marxist, nor a supporter of the deconstruction and political manipulation of the left.

My writing here on this issue does not arise from leftism. It arises from the same sources (I hope) as Dietrich von Hildebrand's opposition to Nazism, and his shock and dismay that there was any question about whether or not absolute opposition to the Nazis was mandated for Catholics. I hope to be standing in the tradition of Pope Pius XII, who, as I discuss in my book How Can You Still Be Catholic? 50 Answers to a Good Question, taught against Nazism and did his best to save Jewish lives during WWII.

Charlottesville was not a conflict between two political "sides." Nazism and the KKK are not on the political spectrum. They are both embraces of the demonic. They are insanity. They are always resolutely to be opposed, particularly by Catholics.

Further, to fight the Nazis is not an infallible sign of leftism. To fight the Nazis was once considered a patriotic duty in this country. I had thought those days were not over, that though conservatives may deplore the break down of law and order, they could empathize with those who might have found the sight of Nazis on the march and the KKK on the march a sight to inspire such fear and visceral revulsion as to prompt violence. I had thought that such revulsion might be shared by Republicans, as other commenters have expressed and acknowledged. But I'm truly astounded by the reaction from some conservatives and Catholics right now.

Why on earth, first of all, are the people passionately opposing the Nazis and the KKK being called "far left" or "communists"? I give you, once again, Pius XI's condemnation of the founding principles of Nazism.

That's the same pope that issued Divini Redemptoris, the condemnation of atheistic Communism.

Tell me--in what upside down universe is it required for an anti-Nazi to necessarily be a Communist? Tell that to Churchill and his party; tell that to the veterans of WWII.

Why on earth aren't all Trump supporters and Republicans laughing at the Nazis for attempting to "Unite the Right" with their ideology, and ridiculing them for thinking that anyone's interested? Why on earth are you attacking those against the Nazis and the KKK, rather than turning all your rhetorical fire on the enemies of humanity that marched in Charlottesville? This is an easy win for conservatives everywhere--laugh the racists to scorn, because they're not conservative. They're politically homeless.

My key frustration and main point is simply--why isn't every Republican ridiculing the notion that the "Unite the Right" rally had actually attracted anyone on the right? Why aren't y'all just joining the condemnations of the neo-Nazis and the KKK, saying, "Yeah, the lunatic nightmares from the past are rearing their ugly heads again. Boy, if I'd have been there, I might have punched them, as well! Not the best reaction, but perfectly understandable, given the past. Thank God things didn't get worse than they did--Nazis and KKK members on the march have historically gone hand in hand with violence, after all!"

On Charlottesville, Catholicism, and Why I Care So Much

Well, this has been one heck of a week in light of Charlottesville, hasn't it?

I guess I never really expected to see the sorts of pictures and headlines I've been seeing--neo-Nazis marching in a torchlit parade, chanting slogans straight from the 1930s, awaiting the rise of an American fuhrer--not Trump, says one writer for The Stormer in the documentary below, because he's not racist enough; he has a Jewish son-in-law--marching in support of Confederate monuments.

Warning: NSFW; strong language; racism; violence.

And that brings home that there's a reason why any number of black activists call for the removal of these Confederate monuments. They commemorate a very specific political entity that was dedicated to the cause of white supremacy and black enslavement. Nobody has to read anything into history to find that; it's just a blunt statement of fact. The fact that General Lee was a man of noted virtue and excellence as a soldier just makes him all the more a tragic figure. The corruption of the best is the worst, after all.

Nazism is something to be absolutely opposed, as the Catholic philosopher and fervent anti-Nazi Dietrich von Hildebrand argued tirelessly in the 1920s and 1930s, and as was made plain in Pope Pius XI's encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge.

Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community - however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things - whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds. ...

None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, of a national religion; or attempt to lock within the frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a single race, God, the Creator of the universe, King and Legislator of all nations before whose immensity they are "as a drop of a bucket" (Isaiah xI, 15). ...

The Bishops of the Church of Christ, "ordained in the things that appertain to God (Heb. v, 1) must watch that pernicious errors of this sort, and consequent practices more pernicious still, shall not gain a footing among their flock. ...

He also condemned fascism in Non Abbiamo Bisogno. His successor, Pope Pius XII, taught against the fundamental principles of Nazism in Summi Pontificatus and Mystici Corporis Cbristi, as well as protecting Jews to the best of his ability and assisting the various assassination attempts against Hitler.

Nazism is to be resisted. Period. So, then, is the KKK, which falls under many of the same condemnations as were issued against Nazism. Racism is wrong and forbidden to Catholics. Supremacist movements are similarly wrong and forbidden to Catholics.

On the question of leftist violence at Charlottesville:

You know, there are any number of instances you could usefully point to in order to condemn violence from the left. The attack on the National Geographic building a few years ago, for instance, or the man who shot at members of Congress practicing for a baseball game from earlier this year.

Charlottesville isn't the instance you need to usefully make your point. In Charlottesville, the Nazis showed up. Those still attached to the Confederacy, in many cases with all their ideals of white supremacy and the subjugation of other races, showed up.

Previously, the United States has responded to both those groups with its military. And not just its military, but an all-out, national effort for the defeat of both the Nazis and the Confederacy.

This is not the test case you want, if you really want to rally people against violence from the left.

Now, Pius XI also condemned communism; many on the left hold to Marxist-inspired ideologies, all of which are more or less problematic.

But Nazism is a menace to everyone, just as a rabid dog is a menace to everyone. Something has gone incredibly wrong in the lives and minds of those who subscribe to it, for it always, always ends in the charnel house of the serial killers. That, after all, is the goal of the ideology. The cure? Truth and love, but it takes tremendous courage, and grace.

So when human beings fail in the face of the hungry beast of Nazism and the KKK; when the Nazis and the Communists get punched first before they can get to punching, well, I'm inclined to say that though the reaction was wrong, still it's understandable. I'm not going to say the left was needlessly inciting violence when they were confronted with the actual Nazis and the actual KKK--I'm going to say that the Nazis and the KKK got what they wanted out of the encounter, and that a normal human being may react to an existential threat in wrong, but understandable ways.

The strength of our democracy is best shown by ignoring these demonstrations and arresting Nazis and the KKK when they do break the law, as they will inevitably do, given the nature of their belief systems. At the same time, constant vigilance is demanded, for the Death Eaters and servants of the powers of darkness have not gone away. They do mean the death and/or enslavement of many, many people. We are obliged to respond, as many bishops of the Church have responded.

Bishop Conley of Lincoln, Nebraska:

Racism, white supremacy, and anti-Semitism are absolutely opposed to the truth of the Gospel. Racism is a dangerous evil: a lie sown by Satan, which seduces, and confuses, and ensnares. The Evil One seeks to divide us from one another and from the Lord, by sowing and exploiting prejudice, stereotypes, and fear.

Regrettably, the white supremacists were not the only ones sowing violence in Charlottesville. A small number of the counter-protestors, but not most of them, were violent, anarchist members of the “antifa” movement, who opposed their racist counterparts with violence.

We should all be disgusted by the racism of white supremacists. But hatred, expressed in anarchic violence, is the wrong response to injustice. Hatred begets hatred. Violence begets violence. Christians know that evil cannot overcome evil. Only grace can conquer evil.

This weekend, Archbishop Chaput wrote that “Charlottesville matters. It’s a snapshot of our public unraveling into real hatreds brutally expressed; a collapse of restraint and mutual respect now taking place across the country... If we want a different kind of country in the future, we need to start today with a conversion in our own hearts, and an insistence on the same in others. That may sound simple. But the history of our nation and its tortured attitudes toward race proves exactly the opposite.”

Today, our call is to oppose the evil of racism, and the violence begotten by hatred, with the Gospel of Jesus Christ—with the love of the One who came to redeem every human heart. Jesus Christ can free the captives of racism, and Jesus Christ can heal racism’s victims. Our job is to proclaim the truth, mercy, and freedom of life in Jesus Christ. We should not be naïve about how difficult that job really is.

It should be absolutely clear to us that without a massive spiritual renewal in our country, violence, hatred, and chaos will continue unabated. In fact, each one of us must guard our hearts, to ensure that Satan does not sow within us the lie of racism, or use our disgust for racism to make us hateful, vengeful, or violent.

The only Christian response to the evil that unfolded in Charlottesville is to redouble our prayers for our nation, and to redouble our efforts to build a civilization of love. ...

Bishop Robert Barron writes:

Friends, there can be no equivocation or nuance when it comes to racism. The Church's teaching is clear: "It is necessary to guard against the rise of new forms of racism or xenophobic behavior which attempt to make our brothers and sisters into scapegoats" (St. John Paul II). We must vehemently oppose the resurgence of an "insane, racist ideology born of neopaganism" (Benedict XVI). The Church stands against and condemns all racist ideologies and warns those who would propagate such horrors to repent. Please join me in praying for the victims of the shocking violence in Charlottesville and for the conversion of its perpetrators.

Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Bishop Frank Dewane of Venice, Florida, Chairman of the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development:

As we learn more about the horrible events of yesterday, our prayer turns today, on the Lord's Day, to the people of Charlottesville who offered a counter example to the hate marching in the streets. Let us unite ourselves in the spirit of hope offered by the clergy, people of faith, and all people of good will who peacefully defended their city and country.

We stand against the evil of racism, white supremacy and neo-nazism. We stand with our sisters and brothers united in the sacrifice of Jesus, by which love's victory over every form of evil is assured. At Mass, let us offer a special prayer of gratitude for the brave souls who sought to protect us from the violent ideology displayed yesterday. Let us especially remember those who lost their lives. Let us join their witness and stand against every form of oppression.

One final note: I've been amazed that there wasn't simple unanimity in the country condemning the Nazis and KKK members, deriding white supremacist movements, and pointing out that the event that brought all these people together, a "Unite the Right" rally, was badly named because no one from the conservative movement or the Republican Party would ever have anything to do with such a thing. And yet people keep speaking as though there were actually sides represented, as though the left and the right showed up, had a dust up, and now we're all seeking out who to blame.

Let us be clear: when your platform is extermination, enslavement, and the destruction of humanity, you aren't on the left or the right. You've run right off into insanity.

The Nazis and the KKK aren't on the political spectrum. They're enemies of humanity, and to be opposed always and everywhere by right thinking people. It shouldn't be that hard! I've heard some people express serious concern that the left attempts to demonize their enemies, and so this is just the beginning of the left attacking people.

The problem with that argument? These are actual Nazis and actual KKK members. The left doesn't need to do a darn thing to demonize them; these guys have embraced the nightmares of days gone by and sought to become them. They have embraced the demonic. Everyone ought to oppose Nazism and the KKK, and the right should be disgusted by their attempt to claim the label "right-wing." Kudos to National Review for making just such a repudiation:

We categorically repudiate not only the specific acts of violence but also the broader cause in which this violence was deployed. The rally in question was advertised as a project to “Unite the Right.” We flatter ourselves that we have a little something to say about that, and our answer is: No. We do not wish to be united with Jew-haters, bigots, racists, and the morally and intellectually defective specimens on such sad display in Charlottesville, waving their Nazi banners and Confederate flags.

My Catholic Hipsterdom

So this may totally be my pride speaking, but I think I may have been doing the Pope Francis thing before Pope Francis.

And by the "Pope Francis thing," I mean bewildering the left, infuriating the right, and befriending all of them at the same time.

Friends and former classmates, feel free to tell me I'm tooting my own horn or misremembering, but I distinctly remember at least one meeting of fellow Catholics, at which one professor looked at me rather confusedly and said of me that he wasn't sure what I was, some sort of double or triple agent or whatever. I was delighted.

Why? Because really, to be Catholic is to break all the boundaries of the American political mindset.

The most important things in this world aren't political positions, but people. The most important characteristic of those people isn't their political position, but that they have been made in the image and likeness of God. We are all brethren at root, all family, and every conflict, every struggle between human beings is always, always, a family affair.

So politics takes a very distant place behind loving my neighbor, whatever they might claim as their politics. Heck, as Chesterton said, "The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.”

So I wasn't a conservative at GU in my writings; nor was I a liberal. I wasn't even a libertarian, or some even more exotic stripe of political animal. I was simply Catholic first, and so I wrote, by turns, against the Iraq war, against abortion, for voting third party, for freedom of expression ... a whole range of things. I believe I may have bewildered many people by my consistency. After all, the kneejerk reaction from many people would be, "No! Catholics are conservative! You must fit the stereotype! It's easy that way--I can categorize you and dismiss you/assume you will stand behind everything the Republicans stand for!"

Yeah, no. Catholics are any number of things, including left, right, center, and right outside of any political party of the U.S. What binds them together? Jesus Christ. His Church. The faith handed on by the apostles.

David Mills put this beautifully in a recent piece. Excerpts:

“Give me a Catholic who is as radical as Dorothy Day but has her fidelity to the Church and I’m totally cool with it, even if I might disagree.”

...You have to spend a lot of your day reading Christian culture-warring to know how unusual that is. For Peter, the shared faith is everything. Politics — yeah, okay, whatever.

... In seminary people would ask, “Are you a liturgy guy or a social-justice guy?” [Bishop] Barron answers by invoking Dorothy Day.

“She was radically devoted to social change, care for the poor and an end to violence,” he says. “Yet she was converted to a very pious Catholicism rooted in the Eucharist, the Mass, the Rosary, Benediction, retreats and an intense interiority. She brought these two [strands] together in her life, and one fed the other; one returned to the other. That is the model you want.” ...

As you may be able to tell from past entries on this blog, I'm a big fan of Dorothy Day. She's a model for Catholics of every political stripe because she was Catholic first and political second. She believed in the Real Presence. She believed in the interior life, in the deifying effects of sanctification, in the supernatural, in a God of miracles as well as a God who hid behind the distressing disguise of the poor. She believed, and lived, and loved. And so she changed the world.

She melded a very distinctive political philosophy with a fervent interior life and a serious Christian commitment, lived determinedly and fully, as best she knew how. She's a Servant of God now, and will probably some day be declared a saint.

And that, my friends, is what matters most.

Yes, there are non-negotiables in the Christian faith, some of which have very specific political consequences. The condemnations of Nazism (in its basic tenets, if not by name) handed down by Popes Pius XI and XII still stand, still have force and effect; the condemnations of atheistic Communism, of Stalin's totalitarianism and the consistent Soviet disregard for human rights and freedoms, have not gone away.

And yet the social teaching of the Catholic Church is an endorsement of portions of many different party platforms, and a challenge to many other parts of those same party platforms. Catholics ought to be, like Dorothy Day, salt and light even to those with whom they largely agree; we are to be the grit that causes the oysters of the world to produce pearls, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, St. John Paul II, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, William Wilberforce, and so many other members of the Body of Christ have been. We have a role as irritants, as prophets, pricking the comfortable and comforting the wounded, standing up for those chained in place and speaking for those who have been silenced. We have a role in defense of the family, of the unborn, of the elderly, of the minorities, of the oppressed, of those denied their rightful place, pay, and dignity.

We are strangers and sojourners upon this earth, if we live the Catholic faith rightly, and like the Son of Man, have no place to rest our heads, not even in a political party with like-minded folks. We are here, not for comfort (much as I would love that!), but to be like Jesus; to be branches of the vine, spreading the divine life and love throughout all the world, helping make it come true that God is all in all.

And so we'll love everybody, and argue with everybody, and eat together with tax collectors and prostitutes, and forgive our enemies as they crucify us, and raise the dead, and proclaim the Good News of God's love to everybody.

And we'll vote. And sometimes we'll march. And sometimes, we may even celebrate a win in the cause of doing good and avoiding evil.

And we'll refuse the great temptation to do "anything in the name of" something good, because to use the One Ring is always to unleash a great evil. And we'll refuse to make an idol of a political party, or of even a very good political position, because God is one, and He is not a political party or a position. And we won't place our trust in princes, because that's actually in the Bible, so we won't be disappointed when politicians aren't Jesus come again, because they never will be.

But always, we'll love our neighbors and seek the common good.

Syria, Peace, and Prayer

Elizabeth Scalia, as always, is awesome.  Excerpts:

...When I read that we weren’t even looking at accurate images coming from Syria, I must admit to getting chills. We don’t know what’s real, anymore, and if the Secretary of State is using bad images, that’s bad enough; if he doesn’t even know he’s using them, that’s even worse, because it suggests a level of systemic incompetence that is terrifying to contemplate. It feels like no one actually has a good handle on any of our steering mechanisms, anywhere — like gyres are widening and centers are not holding. And what rough beast is slouching forward while our wheels are spinning?

But back to my original question: is the president being publicly goaded into attacking, by Assad? And if so, to what purpose? If “precise” US bombs are flying in Syria, does it give cover to Assad and “justify” a destructive responsive action? How big is this damned thing going to get? If we learned nothing from Iraq, we should have learned that strategies and tactics in the twenty-first century are not what they were in the twentieth; predictability has diminished, particularly in that region, and I’m not sure how many war historians and tacticians even get a full and thoughtful hearing in Obama’s very protective, very insulated, very politicized White House...

She ends with a call to prayer, reiterated by other sources.

...Feel helpless in the face of so much violence and hatred around the world? Don't know how to respond to such information? There's no time for that! Those who love Mary have been given a special role to play in bringing peace to the world.

"At Fatima, Our Lady didn't ask us to go to Mass daily," said Fr. Dan. "She didn't ask us to make pilgrimages. She didn't ask us to read a lot of books. She asked us to do something that was easy and accessible to everyone — to children; to the educated; to the uneducated; each of us in our own way: to pray the Rosary for peace in the world."

Our Lady said to the three shepherd children at Fatima, Portugal, on July 13, 1917, "Continue to say the Rosary every day in honor of Our Lady of the Rosary, to obtain the peace of the world and the end of the war, because only she can obtain it."

She reiterated that call throughout her apparitions there, saying in May 1917, "Say the Rosary every day, to bring peace to the world and an end to the war [World War I]," and in September, "Continue the Rosary, my children. Say it every day that the war may end."...In these days when people are using chemical weapons against each other, Christians across the world are being savagely persecuted, and wars and rumors of wars abound every day, let all Marian Helpers live up to their name — help Mary bring peace to the world! Pray the rosary for peace in the world and spread devotion to Mary's Immaculate Heart...

And the Pope has spoken. Excerpts:

...Speaking ahead of the traditional Angelus prayer with pilgrims gathered in St Peter’s Square this Sunday, Pope Francis said, “On [Saturday] the 7^th of September, here [in St Peter’s Square], from 7 PM until midnight, we will gather together in prayer, in a spirit of penitence, to ask from God this great gift [of peace] for the beloved Syrian nation and for all the situations of conflict and violence in the world.” The Holy Father also invited non-Catholic Christians and non-Christian believers to participate in ways they feel are appropriate. “Never again war!” said Pope Francis. “We want a peaceful world,” he said, “we want to be men and women of peace...."

Infrastructure of Tyranny--A Citizenry That Excuses or Ignores These Things

In the first part of this survey of what Conor Friedersdorf has called the "infrastructure of tyranny,"  we looked at the practice of extraordinary rendition, which is basically the art of making people disappear.  In the second part of this survey, we looked at black site prisons, or where people have been disappeared to.  In the third part of the series, we looked at secret detention, or simply not acknowledging that a person is in your hands.  In the fourth part, we looked at indefinite detention without trial.  In the fifth part, we looked at assassination without trial.  In the sixth installment, we looked at the goal of Total Information Awareness.  In the seventh installment, we examined the repeated enactment of legal decisions secretly without public knowledge or review.  In the eighth installment, we took a look at the seemingly innocuous spread of political correctness throughout the Western world.  In this ninth post, we'll examine perhaps the most dangerous and deadly part of the infrastructure of tyranny out of all of them: a citizenry that excuses or ignores these things.

Let us begin by observing what should be obvious by now: what once was unthinkably crazy, the realm of the mentally ill and irrationally paranoid, is far from impossible or unthinkable today. Go back through the series, and recognize that I have not touched up all the bits and bobs of the infrastructure of tyranny. Perhaps I'll add more to the series before too long and discuss civil forfeiture, the dangers of eminent domain, or the peculiarities of the Bilderberg gatherings. But I think I've gathered enough information on enough troubling realities to point out that something has gone badly wrong with the way the West works.

The question is whether anyone cares enough to change the direction in which the country is going.  Consider, for instance, the following:

There are columnists reassuring us that Big Brother isn't watching.  Note also the way in which the left vociferously criticized President Bush's Patriot Act and other policies which pursued an "anything in the name of National Security" course, but have remained astoundingly silent in the face of President Obama's expansion of Bush era policies.  The right embraced the notion of anything in the name of National Security under President Bush and are having a hard time doing anything differently under President Obama.  Opposition to these policies, then, are unlikely to come from the institutional right or left.

h/t George W. Obama

To whom, then, shall we go?

There are signs of rising opposition from the USCCB to certain of the government's policies when it comes to religious liberty.  Add to that the religious witness against abortion, the consistent opposition to torture across administrations, and the triumphant religious stances against slavery and for civil rights, and I think the best hope for a renewal of civil liberties and freedoms in this country lies with a religious or at least philosophically motivated defense of human rights and freedoms against the potential for abuse in so many of the structures discussed throughout this series.

Remember a society will either have a citizenry with highly honed consciences or it will have a high level of cops.  But we live in an age which claims for conscience the right to decree good and evil, not merely the responsibility of recognizing right and wrong.  We live in a rising tide of the dictatorship of relativism, identified by Pope Benedict XVI when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger.  As Mussolini purportedly put it:

...Everything I have said and done in these last years is relativism by intuition.
If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and those who claim to be the bearers of objective immortal truth ... then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity... From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable. --Diuturna [The Lasting] (1921) as quoted in Rational Man : A Modern Interpretation of Aristotelian Ethics (1962) by H. B. Veatch

So it may be increasingly difficult to defend human rights when the citizenry doesn't believe in the existence of human nature or the natural law.  It may be impossible to defend that antiquated notion which resides in so quintessentially modern a document as the Declaration of Independence:

...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. ..

The texture of the moment may be seen more clearly when one takes a look at the dystopias of the past and discovers how closely they resemble our daily news, our daily realities.  See, for instance, the following, and mark which moment you finally realize what year it supposedly is referring to:

...It is impossible at this time to determine their whereabouts, due primarily to a policy of total media blackout regarding the more extreme government activities (illegal arrests, incarceration without due process of law, torture and grotesque executions—most of which are carried out in secret). Add to this the media disinformation about the more visible government activities which the public can hardly fail to notice (forced closure of churches and schools, arrests on unsubstantiated charges of treason, and the more socially acceptable forms of execution — all of which are apparently “legal” under the new statutes). It is widely believed that our people are being held in “civilian internment camps”, the euphemistic term for concentration camps used in the president’s Omnibus Anti-Terrorism Act of March, 2108.

How has this come to pass? How has the unthinkable become the ordinary? Although Americans are very different from us, they are human after all, and thus quite susceptible to the psychology of perception. The average citizen strolling down an average street in a totalitarian state does not experience his world in terms of continuous absolute madness. However distressed it may be, the passage of months and years gives to even the most extreme of situations a certain semblance of normality. The image Americans once had of their society was a mental construct. And when more than a century ago it began to mutate, they found it extremely difficult to believe that the land of the brave and the home of the free was becoming a landscape of secret nightmare where millions of children were murdered annually, discreetly, hygienically in the clinics and hospitals of their land. Legalized murder, loss of the transcendent vision, and the death of authentic culture should have been sufficient warning to them, for each is a key symptom of a society’s collapse into totalitarianism. But democracies are not immune from self-delusion, although they tend to forms of oppression which are not overtly violent. Democracies in the final stages of decline, however, will degenerate into overt oppression, but they will do so in the name of freedom. That Americans began to realize this fact only when it was far too late, played no small part in the development of outright tyranny...--Michael O'Brien, "Three Views of the Future: The Church in A.D. 2109"

Still far fetched, thank God.  Still far future speculation, and perhaps a nightmare never to come.  But the powers that have been turned against Al Qaeda and other jihadist terrorists could well some day be turned against other international religious organizations.  The infrastructure exists.  It has been used against American citizens without trial.  Why are we safe, if these others weren't?  Why should we assume that we have done no wrong, that we will never trigger a datamining operation, never be flagged on a no fly list or a kill list, never be indefinitely detained on suspicion of being suspicious, never be disappeared and judged too dangerous to ever be released?  What safeguards do you have against this apparatus?  Innocence?  Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was innocent of anything other than being the son of an extremist cleric who exhorted other men to violence.  Abdulrahman was innocent.  It did nothing to protect him from sudden death from the sky.  No arrest.  No trial.  No Miranda rights.  No chance to prove innocence in court.  No protection of any kind.  Why should you be any different?  Why should I?

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.--attributed to Martin Niemöller

No. We must respond--and that response is the subject of the last post in the series.

Infrastructure of Tyranny--Indefinite Detention without Trial

In the first part of this survey of what Conor Friedersdorf has called the "infrastructure of tyranny,"  we looked at the practice of extraordinary rendition, which is basically the art of making people disappear.  In the second part of this survey, we looked at black site prisons, or where people have been disappeared to.  In the third part of the series, we looked at secret detention, or simply not acknowledging that a person is in your hands.  In the fourth part, we'll look at indefinite detention without trial, also known in some circles as "locking them up and throwing away the key."

There are people being indefinitely detained in Guantanamo Bay right now.  Excerpts:

The US Government has for the first time released the identities of 46 terror suspects being held at Guantánamo Bay as “indefinite detainees” — men considered too dangerous to transfer from the jail but ineligible for trial because of insufficient or tainted evidence...

Indefinite detention of American citizens is not impossible, especially in light of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) brouhaha in 2012, the willingness of a number of senators to include language in the bill which would authorize the federal government to indefinitely detain US citizens without recourse to a trial, and the concatenation of events laid out in this series.  The proposed Senate language (which was rejected):

"Offered to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal 2012 (S.1867), amendment No. 1274 would have allowed the U.S. government to detain an American citizen indefinitely, even after they had been tried and found not guilty, until Congress declares an end to the war on terror."

Sponsored by Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. Voted for by 41 members of the US Senate, including two Democrats, one Independent, and the rest Republicans.

Some would say it's already happened.  Excerpts:

...The threat that the U.S. government would detain indefinitely — or even kill — an American citizen without formal charges or judicial proceeding is hardly theoretical. The appellate court that struck down the injunction acknowledged that fact:

Presidents Bush and Obama have asserted the right to place certain individuals in military detention, without trial, in furtherance of their authorized use of force. That is, whom did Congress authorize the President to detain when it passed the AUMF [Authorization for the Use of Military Force]? On December 31, 2011, President Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. Section 1021 of that statute, which fits on a single page, is Congress’ first — and, to date, only — foray into providing further clarity on that question. Of particular importance for our purposes, Section 1021(b)(2) appears to permit the President to detain anyone who was part of, or has substantially supported, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces.

Both President Obama and George W. Bush have authorized the detention or killing of American citizens without any due process.

U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki had been deemed a terrorist by the Obama administration for essentially maintaining a YouTube site that called for attacks against Americans from Awlaki's Yemeni home. Awlaki — an American citizen — was later killed in a September 30, 2011 drone strike authorized by President Obama but without any judicial proceeding. No evidence of his actual involvement in any terrorist incident was ever made public, and no charges were ever brought in any court against Awlaki. Two weeks later Awlaki's Colorado-born 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, was killed in a separate drone strike authorized by the president. And President Obama is widely known to have a “kill list” that includes American citizens.

President Bush detained at least four American citizens without trial: U.S. Navy Veteran Donald Vance, Nathan Ertel, Yaser Hamdi, and Jose Padilla. Although Vance and Ertel were released after a few months of torture (they were innocent), the Bush administration fought giving Hamdi and Padilla a trial — and even a habeas corpus hearing — all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Court challenges to the NDAA passed in 2012 have recently failed.  Excerpts:

...When Hedges, a war correspondent who has interviewed members of al-Qaida and the Taliban, first filed his lawsuit in January 2012, he suggested Section 1021 of the NDAA could have a chilling effect on the First Amendment, which protects free speech and freedom of the press.

The Pulitzer Prize winner reacted to the Appeals Court decision with disdain.

“It means there is no recourse now either within the executive, legislative or judicial branches of government to halt the steady assault on our civil liberties and most basic Constitutional rights,” Hedges said in a statement to TruthDig, where he is a columnist.

He suggested the NDAA has helped blur the lines between domestic policing and military counter-terrorism operations.

“It means that the state can use the military, overturning over two centuries of domestic law, to use troops on the streets to seize U.S. citizens, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military detention centers,” he wrote...

After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the U.S. passed a series of laws to give law enforcement agencies greater ability to gather intelligence on, and take action against, alleged terrorist threats. The National Defense Authorization Act, which outlines the Defense Department budget and spending plan, is part of that effort.

President Barack Obama signed the act in 2012, he said, “with serious reservations” about provisions related to the treatment of terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay. At the signing, he also addressed concerns about the treatment of U.S. citizens.

“My Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens. Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation,” he said. “My Administration will interpret section 1021 in a manner that ensures that any detention it authorizes complies with the Constitution, the laws of war, and all other applicable law.”

The U.S. government has not said whether it has held any U.S. citizen under section 1021 of the NDAA...

More on the decision.  Excerpts:

..."We thus conclude, consistent with the text and buttressed in part by the legislative history, that Section 1021 [of the 2012 NDAA] means this: With respect to individuals who are not citizens, are not lawful resident aliens, and are not captured or arrested within the United States, the President’s [Authorization for Use of Military Force] authority includes the authority to detain those responsible for 9/11 as well as those who were a part of, or substantially supported, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners—a detention authority that Section 1021 concludes was granted by the original AUMF. But with respect to citizens, lawful resident aliens, or individuals captured or arrested in the United States, Section 1021 simply says nothing at all," Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote on behalf of Judges Amalya Kearse and Raymond Lohier...

The President has more recently signed a new version of the NDAA in 2013.  Salon has more.  Excerpts:

...This year, the same provisions over which he was so reserved remain in the 2013 version of the bill, along with a number of brand-new problematic amendments. The president threatened a veto on the new bill’s prohibitions on closing Guantánamo Bay detention center. But he didn’t veto; he signed the bill again on Thursday.

Once again, Obama expressed his misgivings in a signing statement, but stressed that “the need to renew critical defense authorities and funding was too great” to reject the bill, which approved a $633 billion armed forces budget for the 2013 fiscal year. Also approved in the NDAA are controversial provisions that will likely make closing Guantánamo Bay detention center impossible in Obama’s presidency, and provisions elsewhere in the act that allow for the indefinite military detention of U.S. citizens.

“It’s the second time that the president has promised to veto a piece of a very controversial national security legislation only to sign it,” said Shahid Buttar, executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, according to HuffPo. “He has a habit of promising resistance to national security initiatives that he ultimately ends up supporting and enabling...

Despite stating last year that his administration “worked tirelessly to reform or remove the provisions” relating to indefinite detention of U.S. citizens, Obama’s attorneys this year quashed federal injunctions made against these provisions as the result of an ongoing lawsuit brought against the president by Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg and six other plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Naomi Wolf. The president’s signing statement Thursday unsurprisingly made no such mention of tireless work to remove the controversial provisions...

More on the new NDAA.

Given the existence of secret detention, it would be difficult if not impossible to determine where or not the US is currently detaining any citizens indefinitely, where they are, how they are being treated, and whether or not they are in fact guilty of those acts for which they are being held.  Even if only non-citizens were indefinitely detained, the US would still be in breach of fundamental principles of human rights and due process of law.

Infrastructure of Tyranny--Extraordinary Rendition

Black helicopter theory, according to the Urban Dictionary, is as follows:

Black helicopters are part of a conspiracy theory that claims that special silent running "black" helicopters are used by secret agents of the New World Order, United Nations troops preparing to invade the United States of America, and/or the Men in Black. Parapsychologist John Keel has argued that this theory has similar origins to those regarding UFO's, ghosts and fairies; that they are part of modern mythology; in this case, representing a fear of the government and its technology.

Black helicopters without FAA-required running lights are regularly used by the drug interdiction office DEA. In addition, most US Army helicopters (such as the Black Hawk) are finished in a very dark chocolate or olive matt paint. With the progressive development of night vision goggles, the need for helicopters to be lit when moving as a planned formation has been reduced.

See also: TACMAR

in short, any farfetched theory concerning any government or other conspiracy, can be espoused by either those of right or left wing persuasions.
Noam Chomsky's theory about Soap operas being geared to lure women from politics sure is a black helicopter theory.

What follows would once have been firmly in the realm of black helicopter theory. But it is real.

Extraordinary rendition, according to the ACLU in a document from 2005, is as follows:

Beginning in the early 1990s and continuing to this day, the Central Intelligence Agency, together with other U.S. government agencies, has utilized an intelligence-gathering program involving the transfer of foreign nationals suspected of involvement in terrorism to detention and interrogation in countries where -- in the CIA's view -- federal and international legal safeguards do not apply. Suspects are detained and interrogated either by U.S. personnel at U.S.-run detention facilities outside U.S. sovereign territory or, alternatively, are handed over to the custody of foreign agents for interrogation. In both instances, interrogation methods are employed that do not comport with federal and internationally recognized standards. This program is commonly known as "extraordinary rendition."

The current policy traces its roots to the administration of former President Bill Clinton. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, however, what had been a limited program expanded dramatically, with some experts estimating that 150 foreign nationals have been victims of rendition in the last few years alone. Foreign nationals suspected of terrorism have been transported to detention and interrogation facilities in Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Diego Garcia, Afghanistan, Guantánamo, and elsewhere. In the words of former CIA agent Robert Baer: "If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear -- never to see them again -- you send them to Egypt..."

The Washington Post dates the first renditions even further back than the Clinton administration.  Excerpts:

...George W. Bush was still struggling to coax oil out of the ground when the United States "rendered to justice" its first suspect from abroad. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan authorized an operation that lured Lebanese hijacker Fawaz Younis to a boat off the coast of Cyprus, where FBI agents arrested him. (Younis had participated in the 1985 hijacking of a Jordanian plane and was implicated in the hijacking of TWA Flight 847, which left a U.S. Navy diver dead.) President George H.W. Bush approved the kidnapping in 1990 of Mexican physician Humberto Alvarez Machain, who was believed to be involved in the torture and killing of a Drug Enforcement Administration official. Nothing says that renditions can involve only suspected terrorists; Israel's abduction of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960 could be called a rendition, though the term was not yet in use.

Beginning in 1995, the Clinton administration turned up the speed with a full-fledged program to use rendition to disrupt terrorist plotting abroad. According to former director of central intelligence George J. Tenet, about 70 renditions were carried out before Sept. 11, 2001, most of them during the Clinton years...

The program received a new impetus and direction after 9/11.  Excerpts:

The Key Events timeline begins less than one week after the attacks of 11 September 2001. On 17 September 2001, President Bush sent a 14-page memorandum to the Director of the CIA. While the exact contents of this memo are still classified, a summary has been declassified by the CIA: it pertains to the approval of ‘clandestine intelligence activity’, and it specifically contains an authorisation for the CIA’s ‘terrorist detention and interrogation program’.

Less than two months later, on 13 November 2001, President Bush issued an Executive Order on the Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism. This Order provided the Pentagon with the authority to detain indefinitely any non-American in the world, in any place in the world, as long as they were determined by the US Government to pose a terrorist threat to US interests. Together with the September 2001 memo to the CIA, this Order laid the foundations for the development of a global system of rendition and secret detention, as well as the official military detentions in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Key Events timeline traces the significant events that have shaped this system in the years following these two directives...

You can track the flights and locate the known prison sites here.  The program has been used throughout the course of the war on terror with the collaboration of many US allies around the world.  Excerpts:

Police in Scotland will look into allegations that CIA “extraordinary rendition” flights passed through airports in the country, they said Thursday.

Police will examine new research into the flights, in which people suspected of being terrorists by the United States were held covertly at undisclosed locations around the world without recourse to legal process.

According to a report published February by the Open Society Justice Initiative, a human rights advocacy group, as many as 54 nations aided the CIA's rendition and detention operations. It said more than 130 people were detained and detailed allegations of harsh treatment of some of the suspects...

That report may be downloaded here. Key findings include:

...8. After being extraordinarily rendered by the United States to Egypt in 2002, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under threat of torture at the hands of Egyptian officials, fabricated information relating to Iraq’s provision of chemical and biological weapons training to Al Qaeda. In 2003, then Secretary of State Colin Powell relied on this fabricated information in his speech to the United Nations that made the case for war against Iraq.

9. Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times by the CIA. FBI interrogator Ali Soufan testified before Congress that he elicited “actionable intelligence” from Zubaydah using rapport-building techniques but that Zubaydah “shut down” after he was waterboarded.

10. Torture is prohibited in all circumstances under international law and allegations of torture must be investigated and criminally punished. The United States prosecuted Japanese interrogators for “waterboarding” U.S. prisoners during World War II.

11. On November 20, 2002, Gul Rahman froze to death in a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan called the “Salt Pit,” after a CIA case officer ordered guards to strip him naked, chain him to the concrete floor, and leave him there overnight without blankets.

12. Fatima Bouchar was abused by the CIA, and by persons believed to be Thai authorities, for several days in the Bangkok airport. Bouchar reported she was chained to a wall and not fed for five days, at a time when she was four-and-a-half months pregnant. After that she was extraordinarily rendered to Libya.

13. Syria was one of the “most common destinations for rendered suspects,” as were Egypt and Jordan. One Syrian prison facility contained individual cells that were roughly the size of coffins. Detainees report incidents of torture involving a chair frame used to stretch the spine (the “German chair”) and beatings.

14. Muhammed al-Zery and Ahmed Agiza, while seeking asylum in Sweden, were extraordinarily rendered to Egypt where they were tortured with shocks to their genitals. Al-Zery was also forced to lie on an electrified bed frame.

15. Abu Omar, an Italian resident, was abducted from the streets of Milan, extraordinarily rendered to Egypt, and secretly detained for fourteen months while Egyptian agents interrogated and tortured him by subjecting him to electric shocks. An Italian court convicted in absentia 22 CIA agents and one Air Force pilot for their roles in the extraordinary rendition of Abu Omar.

16. Known black sites—secret prisons run by the CIA on foreign soil—existed in Afghanistan, Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Romania, and Thailand.

17. Abd al Rahim al Nashiri was secretly detained in various black sites. While secretly detained in Poland, U.S. interrogators subjected al Nashiri to a mock execution with a power drill as he stood naked and hooded; racked a semi-automatic handgun close to his head as he sat shackled before them; held him in “standing stress positions;” and threatened to bring in his mother and sexually abuse her in front of him.

18.  President Obama’s 2009 Executive Order repudiating torture does not repudiate the CIA extraordinary rendition program.  It was specifically crafted to preserve the CIA’s authority to detain terrorist suspects on a short-term, transitory basis prior to rendering them to another country for interrogation or trial...

It's a program deep in the world of national security and the spy versus spy realm of secrets, so of course, speaking precisely about what's currently going on is difficult.  But when people try, the results are not reassuring.  Excerpts:

...The use of renditions appears to have reached its apogee after the September 11 attacks, when President Bush expanded the program to include indefinite periods of detention in third-party countries, according to the report. While the Obama administration has taken measures to impose more oversight on the process, renditions appear to continue, according to the report.

President Obama issued an executive order 2009 that directed that the CIA close its secret detention facilities in order to “promote the safe, lawful, and humane treatment of individuals” held by the United States. But the order specified that the closures did not apply to facilities used to hold terror suspects “on a short-term, transitory basis.” A task force established by the order produced recommendations in 2009 that would allow rendition to continue, but with measures to prevent “the transfer of individuals to face torture.”

Due to continued secrecy over the CIA’s extraction and detention of suspects, estimates on the total number of detainees have been imprecise.  The catalog of 136 people identified in the new report as detained or transferred by the CIA is the largest such list to be compiled to date. The report notes that the total number of people subject to rendition, detention, or interrogation will not be known until the countries involved release that information.

Countries assisting the United States included Afghanistan, Germany, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the United Kingdom. Some of the countries hosted facilities used by the CIA on their soil, according to the report, while others provided intelligence or aided in the capture, transport, or detention of individuals.

“The 54 governments basically enabled these operations,” Singh said. “Without the participation of these governments, the programs would not have been possible...”

PBS's Frontline did a show on extraordinary rendition.  Sometimes, the people who do the rendering are brought before a court.  Sometimes.  Excerpts:

On the crisp morning of Feb. 17, 2003, Abu Omar, a Muslim cleric in Milan, was walking near his mosque when a group of men suddenly grabbed him, tossed him in the back of a van, drove him to NATO's Aviano Air Base and flew him to Cairo, where he claims he was tortured for seven months.

On Friday, a Milan appeals court sentenced a former CIA station chief to seven years in jail, convicting him in the cleric's kidnapping, which was part of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program. Two six-year sentences were also handed out to two American officials for the same crime.

Jeff Castelli, a former CIA station chief in Rome, along with Betnie Medero and Ralph Russomando, had been acquitted due to their dimplomatic immunity in the 2009 trial, while 23 other U.S. citizens were sentenced to prison in absentia...

Oh, to be sure, many of those being taken are Al Qaeda folk, terrorists intent upon warfare with the rest of the world until all submit to their religion's supremacy. One might even call them enemies of humanity. And yet, what does it mean when that which was once unthinkable now is both done and rarely thought about?  And with such a covert operation, what sort of guarantee do we have that all those who are made to disappear into prisons for indefinite detention are guilty of a crime, or aren't being vanished because of political motives?  Such a system is probably unjust even in the hands of the good and honorable.  Such a system in the hands of the venal, the evil, the power-hungry?  It is not to be considered--yet consider it we must.  The system exists.  It is real.

Further leads for research:

• The Rendition Project
• Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition
• Torture, Rendition, and other Abuses against Captives in US Custody
  

Part One of the Infrastructure of Tyranny Series.

We Live in a Novel

Why? Because Jay Carney, the master of the three ring circus which is the media covering an administration that's been hacking their computers, seizing phone records, and treating them like enemies of the state, is denouncing Snowden, the spy who came in from the cold, who now finds himself trapped in a Catch-22.

Speaking of media phone records...  Excerpts:

...At one point, when asked about whether the Department of Justice might have seized records of other news organizations, Carney told the reporter posing the question that he’d have to ask someone at the DoJ.

NPR did just that with Attorney General Eric Holder, the top man at Justice. And Holder says he can’t quite recall how many times he’s seized reporter phone records...

And then there's this.  Excerpts:

...Hastings’ final story, “Why Democrats Love to Spy on Americans,” was a searing take on the NSA snooping scandal, which Hastings described as “North Korea-esque.” Hastings pulled no punches as he linked the NSA scandal to the Department of Justice’s spying on reporters and the IRS abuse scandal. Hastings built a case that the same Democrats who turned Bush-era anti-terrorism techniques into wedge issues that helped them capture Congress and the White House in 2006 and 2008 were now defending much worse and more widespread spying on American citizens by the Obama administration....

At the end of the story, Hastings mentions by name several Americans who have come under questionable government scrutiny in the Obama years. Several are household names, but some are not.

Hastings died in a fatal single-car crash at 4:25 on Tuesday morning. A witness said his car “suddenly jackknifed” before crossing the median and hitting a tree, causing a ferocious explosion that reportedly threw the engine block of the brand new Mercedes Hastings was driving 30 or 40 yards from the car. Mercedes engine blocks typically weigh between 290 and 540 pounds. It would take tremendous speed or force to throw one nearly half the length of a football field.

“It sounded like a bomb went off in the middle of the night,” another witness told the TV station. “The house shook, my windows were rattling.”

Hastings’ body was burned “beyond recognition,” according to reports." Message to the media: "Be ve-e-ery careful what you write about us. We wouldn't want anyone to get hurt, now would we?"...

Insinuation only, as of right now.  So far as I've heard, nothing has been proved.  But then, as Jon Stewart pointed out, the burden of proof has been shifted to the government when it comes to such things.  As has been pointed out, the US now has all the infrastructure a tyrant would need.  The left and the right are coming together in places to speak out about the recent revelations.  The Anchoress on the media response:

...According to Howard Kurtz: Glenn Greenwald says surveillance source came to him because of “supine, subservient behavior” by American media “when it comes to the govt”

Duh. And, yeah. Our “watchdog**” media surrendered its teeth to this administration in 2007 and has been rolled over waiting for belly rubs ever since. They gave up all of their credibility to be able to ask Obama how he got so great, and what “enchants” him. They couldn’t even sustain their outrage about the DOJ spying on the AP, or calling James Rosen a criminal for doing his job...

This in a nation where the IRS inquires about the prayers of pro-life groups, or requires them to guarantee they won't stand vigil outside abortion clinics.

Too many scandals to keep track of--which may be the point (heh).  The President taking the "didn't know" route.  A roundup of scandal news.  The Anchoress explaining the roots of the media's shock at the current round of scandals.  The IRS apparently targeting HIPAA-protected records without appropriate warrants--millions of them

In other words--heck, it's like living in a novel...

Saint Thomas More, LGBT Pride Month, and What Does Silence Betoken?

The Ruth Blog has interesting excerpts up from a rather fascinating piece. Excerpts:

...Our sources have provided Liberty Counsel an internal DOJ document titled: “LGBT Inclusion at Work: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Managers.” It was emailed to DOJ managers in advance of the left’s so-called “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month.”

The document is chilling. It’s riddled with directives that grossly violate – prima facie –employees’ First Amendment liberties.

Following are excerpts from the “DOJ Pride” decree. When it comes to “LGBT pride,” employees are ordered:

“DON’T judge or remain silent. Silence will be interpreted as disapproval.” (Italics mine)

That’s a threat.

And not even a subtle one.

Got it? For Christians and other morals-minded federal employees, it’s no longer enough to just shut up and “stay in the closet” – to live your life in silent recognition of biblical principles (which, by itself, is unlawful constraint). When it comes to mandatory celebration of homosexual and cross-dressing behaviors, “silence will be interpreted as disapproval.”

Another excerpt:

“DO assume that LGBT employees and their allies are listening to what you’re saying (whether in a meeting or around the proverbial water cooler) and will read what you’re writing (whether in a casual email or in a formal document), and make sure the language you use is inclusive and respectful.”...

Now, I'm all in favor of workplaces where everyone is treated respectfully and due courtesy. So is the Church.  Excerpts:

It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church's pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.

And yet at the same time, the above sounds hugely like the sort of policy statement that might have been circulated amongst the British Civil Service in the wake of King Henry VIII's establishment of Anglicanism:

Following are excerpts from the “Star Chamber King's Matter” decree. When it comes to “King Henry's Divorce,” employees are ordered:

“DON’T judge or remain silent. Silence will be interpreted as disapproval.”

Methinks its time to start sharing "A Man for All Seasons" with all and sundry.

Update:  In context, the "silence" thing makes more sense.

Know How to Respond If an Employee Comes Out to You

DON’T judge or remain silent. Silence will be interpreted as disapproval.

At the same time, some of the criticisms above still hold. How do we balance religious liberty with an absence of unjust discrimination in the workplace?