Category Archives: culture

A Thought on “Citizen”

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Mark Lilla’s essay in the New York Review of Books regarding France’s response to the series of Islamic terrorist attacks against the Republic carried out on Metropolitan French soil has sparked a thought in me regarding the nature of “citizen” for a nation. The passage in question is this [via Power Line; the full essay is behind the NYRB‘s paywall]:

The Hollande government responded in kind [to public Islamist threats]…. Most controversially he called for binationals convicted of terrorist crimes to be stripped of French nationality, a proposal that runs up against current constitutional and European jurisprudence but has been Hollande’s most popular move since being elected.

Withdraw the terrorist’s citizenship and throw him out of the country. What’s wrong with that? International law makes it illegal to create a stateless person, hence the Hollande administration’s decision to limit withdrawal of French citizenship to those already possessing another nation’s citizenship status also—a binational.

American citizenship under existing domestic statutes and case law also cannot be withdrawn; see, for instance, Afroyim v Rusk, a 1967 Supreme Court ruling which denied the ability of the government to rescind the citizenship of an established citizen. There is a constitutional question attached.

However. The underlying philosophy of our political nation, our concept of social compact, is very much a Lockean philosophy, and our Constitution is steeped in that view: a consensual government, yes, but also very much a matter of discriminating between those within our social compact and abiding by our compact’s rules—those who are members of the compact and those only resident here with the compact’s permission (and by whose residence have agreed to abide by our compact’s rules)—and those outside out social compact, whether physically or otherwise.

Herein lies my thought. An earlier definition of “outlaw” is in Locke’s Second Treatise of Government: a man who is within a social compact but who by his criminal actions has placed himself outside the compact. In Locke’s view, any criminal act, whether directed particularly against an individual member of the compact or against the compact as an entity, was an attack on the compact as a whole; hence the criminal’s outlaw status. That outlaw status had an important outcome apart from his simple eligibility for suitable punishment for his actions: outlaw status also placed the criminal outside the protections of the social compact; the outlaw had no recourse to the compact’s laws or courts or anything else.

We Americans, though, have parsed criminal acts into two key categories, attacks against individuals and attacks against government or society. Only criminality directed at our society or government are attacks against our compact as a whole. Clearly, though, terrorist attacks against Americans—individually or in groups—are attacks against our society, are attacks against our social compact. American citizens who are terrorists, by their actions, place themselves outside our social compact and thereby lose the protections of our compact.

We should acknowledge that wholly voluntary self-placement: withdraw citizenship from such an erstwhile American in addition to the existing sanctions against his terrorism. After the terrorist has served out that sanction, he should be ejected from our nation.

Obviously, there are some mechanics that would need to be grunted through to enact this sort of thing, not least of which is that constitutionality question. But that doesn’t refute the principle; it’s only a barrier on the path to be corrected and overcome. One expression of the barrier, from Afroyim v Rusk, was expressed by Justice Hugo Black, writing for the Court, said in part

In our country the people are sovereign and the Government cannot sever its relationship to the people by taking away their citizenship.

Certainly. But We the People can instruct our employee government to enact a law that severs our relationship with an outlaw by taking away his citizenship, his right to be among us and to enjoy the protections of our compact. If it’s cleaner for us to make our instruction via the Constitution’s Article V, then so be it. Again, though, the means is a speed bump, not an impenetrable barrier.

International law? That enjoins against creating a stateless person. It does not, though, obligate us in any way to find this outlaw a place to be somewhere else before we acknowledge his decision to stop being a member of our compact. In addition to enjoining us, it obligates other nations to find a place within them for him to be. That’s a moral obligation, to be sure, and not a legal one. Thus, international law needs to be corrected and updated to deal with terrorists as outlaws. Or we need to withdraw from this law.

An Academic’s Self-Importance

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Professor Cal Newport, a Georgetown University Computer Science professor, has some interesting ideas regarding how Americans should work and how we should communicate with each other. He laid out these views in a recent Harvard Business Review piece.

This unstructured workflow arose from the core properties of email technology—namely, the standard practice of associating addresses with individuals (and not, say, teams, or request type, or project)….

This is bad, of course, because the individuals doing the work didn’t actually do that. Someboedy else did—those nebulous “teams,” or this thing called a “request type.”

But the big demonstration of an Academic’s self-importance is in this:

But just because this unstructured approach is standard and easy doesn’t mean it’s smart. It’s important to remember that no blue ribbon committee or brilliant executive ever sat down and decided that this workflow would make businesses more productive or employees more satisfied.

Yeah. No Betters told these plebes what to do. They just stumbled around in the dark, using this complex new tool—email!—without guidance, without an Expert’s or a Blue Ribbon Committee’s instruction. Never mind that they got the work done, and better, using this new tool (among others) their way instead of in the Approved Way.

A consequence of this workflow is that an organization’s tasks become entangled in a complicated network of dependencies with inbox-enslaved individuals sited at each node. The only way to keep productive energy flowing through this network is for everyone to continually check, send, and reply to the multitude of messages flowing past—all in an attempt to drive tasks, in an ad hoc manner, toward completion.

Now he’s projecting and assuming everyone shares his shortcomings. Of course in serious work, this isn’t the case. It certainly wasn’t the way we worked—with email and instant messaging—at a major defense contractor that was my latest employer.

Newport’s piece goes on in this vein, but you get the idea.

Racism on the Left?

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Hillary Clinton ratcheted up Democrats’ criticism of Senate Republicans in the debate over filling the Supreme Court’s sudden vacancy, suggesting Tuesday that those calling on President Obama not to nominate someone are motivated by race.

After all, it takes a strong measure of racism to manufacture a racist beef where no racism exists. She, and the Left who are silent on her slur, are also racist in this way: it isn’t possible to criticize a President’s policies or politics when he’s a black man because—he’s black. He can’t handle the criticism, Clinton and her cronies seem to be saying.

Hypocrisy at the State Level

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Congresswoman Mary Lou Marzian (D, Louisville, KY) has proposed—and she’s serious about it—House Bill 396, under which

Kentucky men would have to visit a doctor twice and have signed permission from their wives before obtaining a prescription for Viagra or other such drugs for erectile dysfunction[.]

She insisted

it is merely an effort to protect men’s health and ensure they are informed about a drug with potentially dangerous side effects.

“I want to protect these men from themselves,” said Marzian[.]

She compounded her hypocrisy:

This is about family values[.]

Leaving aside the fact that it isn’t government’s role to protect anyone from himself—only a Democrat insists on so intrusive a government—the lie in her claim of concern about men’s health is shown in her subsequent comments about her purpose in proposing this bill.

[S]he acknowledged the bill is a pointed response to several anti-abortion measures in the current legislative session, including Senate Bill 4, which requires a woman seeking an abortion to get counseling 24 hours in advance of the procedure from a health professional.

This bill is about family values and about men’s health? She wrote in a related op-ed for the Louisville, KY, Courier-Journal:

A rash of anti-abortion bills have been filed, and one is now law, that places extreme hardship and emotional stress upon women and strips away their rights to make choices about their health, future and well being.

And

The conservative movement sweeping Kentucky has put women in the cross hairs of its battle to take over government at all levels, and it’s time we recognize this hypocrisy for what it is.

As these legislators and our governor increase efforts to mandate their presence in our doctor’s examining rooms I believe it is time we regulate men’s reproductive choices.

No, Marzian is simply railing at those who oppose abortion, and being logically inconsistent in her plaints—and as a highly intelligent and accomplished woman she knows she’s being inconsistent, hence her hypocrisy—and placing those who oppose abortion in Kentucky in the cross hairs of her battle to intrude government into the lives of Kentucky citizens—including Kentucky’s babies.

There’s nothing in opposing abortion that concerns women’s health or their reproductive choices, there’s only concern for a human’s life, that baby’s life who hasn’t yet been born. That tale takes up after the “reproductive choice,” made voluntarily or otherwise, already has been made. Now there’s a baby whose right to life must be addressed.

Family values? Nonsense. The baby is as much a part of that family as are the mother and father. Marzian’s bill is simply another Liberal shot at those who oppose abortion; it has nothing at all to do with family values. As far as she’s concerned, the unborn baby is unimportant; the baby’s extreme hardship and emotional stress, his choices about his health, future and well being are beneath her notice.

An Appropriate Response

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Freedom from Religion Foundation cried foul after the group noticed a “God Bless America” banner that employees at a post office in Pittsburg, KS, had erected after Sep 11, 2001. A lawsuit filed by FFRF on behalf of a Pittsburg resident forced the banner down in late January[.]

This is the timidity of the local postmaster, or perhaps it’s the political correctness of his bosses up the government food chain.

However.

When news of the banner’s banishment spread, a business in the area, Jake’s Fireworks, printed 1,200 “God Bless America” yard signs and 300 banners. Jake’s gave away all of the signs within 45 minutes, according to the Post.

This is entirely appropriate.