T. M. Lemos — American personhood in the era of Trump

Why is this important? Liberalism is based on equality of personhood, distinguishing individuals, whose qualities differ in degree, with personhood as universal. Owing to universality of personhood, all are equal before the law, for example.

Equality of personhood underlies the key assertion of liberalism in 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."

Rights under liberalism are both civil, that is institutionally guaranteed, and also human, transcending governments and institutions.

This liberal conception of rights rests on the foundation of universal personhood as the basis of equality, not numerical but moral. This concept has been extended globally through the United Nations and its charter as the basis for international relations and law.

This view stands in contrast to the evolutionary traits that humans have inherited from the past, primacy of kinship, dominance and submission in relationships, and might is right.

This article suggests that Donald Trump and his followers represent these raw evolutionary traits and as such are anti-liberal.

Some represent this as a form of "traditionalism," and there is reason to hold that view. However, traditionalism is varies over wide range from the extreme of harkening back to animal origins to the most lofty ideals of perennial wisdom.

For example, the liberal view of personhood is based on the concept of the human "soul" derived from traditionalism. The proximate case with respect to liberalism was Christian doctrine. Liberalism was a secularization of the Western intellectual tradition, which was influenced by Greek thought and culture, the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition, Roman law, and the scientific revolution. Liberalism involves the attempt to combine the naturalism of science with the antecedent Western intellectual tradition.

It would be a grave mistake not to make this distinction among different types of traditionalism in approaching traditionalism, just as it is a grave mistake to approach liberalism without distinguishing between individuals, who obviously are different in many respects, from persons that are assumed to be identical in nature.

Liberalism and traditionalism are compatible at one extreme as a result of an exalted level of collective consciousness based on love and incompatible at the other based on evolutionary traits. The historical development of liberalism lies along the range between these extremes in its manifestations to date.

If President Trump should resemble the picture that the author draws, the world may be in trouble.

OUPblog
American personhood in the era of Trump

T. M. Lemos

Eric Schliesser — On The Right to Work in Adam Smith and The Origin Of the Harm Principle

Quotes from J. S. Mill and Adam Smith.

Digressions&Impressions
On The Right to Work in Adam Smith and The Origin Of the Harm Principle
Eric Schliesser | Professor of Political Science, University of Amsterdam’s (UvA) Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences

Marc Lee — Climate Justice and the Good Life, for Everyone

If there is one phrase that sums up what's wrong with economics, it is "specious assumptions." The most specious assumption is that science is an independent disciple that investigates reality in order to discover natural invariances that can be modeled formally, similar to physics.

This involves denial that economics is a social science with emphasis on social. The social aspect of economics implies, first, that the subject matter is different from natural science, which also implies the need to employ different methodology in approaching it. 

Secondly, as an implication of the assumption that economics is natural science, it is also assumed that outcomes are "natural" as long as natural processes, here market forces, are not interfered with artificially. 

This is based on a concept of human being, called homo economicus, that does not accord with the findings of other disciplines about human being as homo socialis. It also puts economics at odds with widely accepted norms of social justice based on liberal principles grounded in equality of persons and the fairness this implies as the basis for rights.

There are good argument against government imposing any particular moral code in a liberal society. But to conclude from this that society is therefore immoral would be a violation of the fundamental principles of liberalism, which include egality and solidarity along with freedom.

Morality and ethics are imposed socially by political decisions taken democratically in a liberal society and promulaged through positive law and rights based on a concept of justice that is founded on the liberal principles of equality of persons before the law and due process. This implies lack of privilege and social fairness.

A growing body of research into well-being and happiness tells us to look beyond money and consumption. While income matters a great deal at lower levels – when one is poor, a little money makes a big difference – but once basic needs are met, higher income does not necessarily translate into gains in happiness. Research points to substantial benefits to be had from a more equitable distribution of wealth – inequality manifests in weaker performance on a range of social and health indicators. Social fairness in terms of income and employment distribution may, in fact, be vital for achieving the changes required for a transition to a sustainable economy. 

Some key insights into well-being relevant to a new conception of “the good life” include (key references at end): 

• Full employment and decent work....
• Time use and work-life balance....
• Community and social cohesion.... 

One major report to the French government from two Nobel laureates [Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen] in economics argues that progress should be understood by assessing a diverse array of well-being indicators to capture a more comprehensive understanding of people’s lives, spanning key areas of: health, education, environment, employment, material comfort, interpersonal connectedness and political engagement. 

The Canadian Index for Wellbeing (CIW) was launched only recently in 2010 as a counterweight to the gross domestic product numbers. It aims to measure and track the quality of life of Canadians and is comprised of 64 indicators. The CIW has demonstrated that Canadians’ quality of life has not kept pace with the country’s economic growth from 1994 to 2008, where although GDP grew 31%, CIW rose only 11% in the same period. A key reason is that Canadians are spending less and less time on healthy social and leisure activities, and the state of the environment has declined.
This growing body of research is broadly consistent with the notion of climate action and climate justice....

The Progressive Economics Forum

Climate Justice and the Good Life, for Everyone
Marc Lee

Edward Martin And Mateo Pimentel — The Inadequacies of Liberalism: The Centrality of Socio-Economic rights for Marxism and the Catholic Social Justice Tradition

Weekend reading.

Counterpunch
The Inadequacies of Liberalism – The Centrality of Socio-Economic rights for Marxism and the Catholic Social Justice Tradition
Edward Martin And Mateo Pimentel

Edward Martin is Professor of Public Policy and Administration, Graduate Center for Public Policy and Administration at California State University, Long Beach, and co-author of Savage State: Welfare Capitalism and Inequality.

Mateo Pimentel lives on the Mexican-US border. You can follow him on Twitter @mateo_pimentel, or read more at www.guerrillaprose.info.

Jon Perr — American religious freedom is a shield, not a sword Jon Perr

When does "liberalism" become illiberal? When conservative masquerade as liberals and use a political majority to impose authoritarianism because freedom.

No, democracy left to itself doesn't work as advertised. That's why it is important to have a bill of rights and an impartial judicial system to protect minority rights.

Daily Kos
American religious freedom is a shield, not a sword
Jon Perr

Bill Mitchell — Neo-liberalism has compromised the concept of a citizen

This is the key failing of neoliberal capitalism, as well as any social, political and economic system based on individualism. The assumption of homo economicus as rational utility maximizer by nature is wrong. This assumption underlies the so-called "laws of economics" that are supposedly similar to the laws of (19th century) physics based on atomism. Human being are not like atoms and don't behave like atoms.

The more correct conception is homo socialis, in the Greek of Aristotle, zoon politikon, that was developed millennia ago. For Aristotle the end or goal (telos) of humans is living a good life in a good society. Then question becomes what is a good life and what is a good society, and how do they relate to each other to result in a full human life.

The rule of law and rights are fundamental to this, along with the recognition of universality along with individuality, that is, all people share the same nature as human persons even through each is unique as an individual.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Neo-liberalism has compromised the concept of a citizen
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at the Charles Darwin University, Northern Territory, Australia

Oleg Komlik — Ulrich Beck has died. His powerful concept of ‘Risk society’ is relevant as never was before

His 1986 book Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity is a scholarly (and political) bestseller which was translated into 35 languages, with about 24,000 academic citations. While firm in criticising those who claim Western societies are “postmodern”, Beck also offers an immanent critique of modernity’s failed promises. Due to its own successes, modern society now faces failure: while in the past experiments were conducted in a lab, now the whole world is a test bed. Whether nuclear plants, genetically modified organisms, nanotechnology – if any of these experiments went wrong, the consequences would have a global impact and would be irreversible.… 

Risk society is ‘an inescapable structural condition of advanced industrialization”. Modern society has become a risk society in the sense that it is increasingly occupied with debating, preventing and managing risks that it itself has produced. The changing nature of society’s relation to production and distribution is related to the environmental impact as a totalizing, globalizing economy based on scientific and technical knowledge becomes more central to social organization and social conflict. Whereas in earlier class-based societies only the proletariat was victimized, in the emerging worldwide risk society all groups – even the rich – are threatened.… 

“After all, the ecological issue, considered politically and sociologically, focuses at heart on a systematic, legalized violation of fundamental civil rights – the citizen’s right to life and freedom from bodily harm… In the ecological crisis we are dealing with a breach of fundamental rights that is cushioned and disguised during prosperity but that has socially destabilizing long-term effects that can scarcely be overestimated.” (quoted from: Beck, Ulrich. 1995. Ecological Enlightenment: Essays on the Politics of the Risk Society. Humanities Press. P. 8)

Economic Sociology and Political Economy
Ulrich Beck has died. His powerful concept of ‘Risk society’ is relevant as never was before
Oleg Komlik

Gita Sahgal — Who wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ?

The Declaration of Human Rights was adopted on this day, December 10, in 1948.

This 2012 post explores some of the paradoxes of liberalism, which is founded on the concept of rights, that emerged in the fashioning of the document.

Open Democracy
Who wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
Gita Sahgal

Roman Krznaric — The one thing that could save the world: Why we need empathy now more than ever

The passion versus reason dichotomy is bogus. They are inextricably linked in brain function.

As the cognitive linguist George Lakoff puts it, “Empathy is at the heart of real rationality, because it goes to the heart of our values, which are the basis of our sense of justice. Empathy is the reason we have the principles of freedom and fairness, which are necessary components of justice.”

Empathy is the affective component of apprehension of universality, as invariance is the cognitive basis of it. Equal rights are based on the feeling of oneness with others as members of the same species and the knowledge that beyond individual differences there is an invariant aspect of humanity as shared nature. While everyone is unique as an individual, all are the same as persons who are equal before the law and possess equal rights.

Salon
The one thing that could save the world: Why we need empathy now more than ever
Roman Krznaric

Vladimir Putin got this right.

In an unexpected remark Friday, the Russian president spoke of the “meaning of life,” saying that for him “in general” it is love that matters.

Briefly digressing from politics, Putin ventured a philiosophical observation that “multifaceted” love is the basis of all actions and the essence of being.

"The meaning of our whole life and existence is love," Putin told his audience at the 15th Congress of the Russian Geographical Society. "It is love for the family, for the children, for the motherland. This is a multifaceted phenomenon; it lies at heart of any of our behaviors."

RT, Putin: ‘Love is the meaning of life’

Spiritual maturity is determined by the universality of one's love. An expanded heart encompasses all.

Stanley Ibe — Yes, economic and social rights really are human rights

Are rights an exclusively legal construct or are they embedded elsewhere. It is difficult to argue for "natural" rights, since history reveals that the concept of right is a social construct not found universally in nature but as a product of human development. However, positive law does not spring from nowhere fully formed. Law grow out of custom and much law is grounded in moral conviction, a sense of equity, and other factors, both rational and extra-rational.

Open Democracy
Yes, economic and social rights really are human rights
Stanley Ibe

Glenn Greenwald — What Excuse Remains for Obama’s Failure to Close GITMO?

The sole excuse now offered by Democratic loyalists for this failure has been that Congress prevented him from closing the camp. But here, the Obama White House appears to be arguing that Congress lacks the authority to constrain the President’s power to release detainees when he wants. What other excuse is there for his clear violation of a law that requires 30-day notice to Congress before any detainees are released? 

But once you take the position that Obama can override — i.e., ignore — Congressional restrictions on his power to release Guantanamo detainees, then what possible excuse is left for his failure to close the camp? ...

Obama defenders seem to have two choices here: either the president broke the law in releasing these five detainees, or Congress cannot bind the commander-in-chief’s power to transfer detainees when he wants, thus leaving Obama free to make those decisions himself. Which is it?

The Intercept
What Excuse Remains for Obama’s Failure to Close GITMO?
Glenn Greenwald

Gaius Publius: IRS is Using NSA Data Too. Who in Town Isn’t?

Summary of the sorry state that has come to pass in the US by trading faux security for liberty and constitutional rights.

Naked Capitalism

Gaius Publius: IRS is Using NSA Data Too. Who in Town Isn’t?

Lars P. Syll — Neoclassical economics – the true picture

ROFLMAO

To understand the joke you have to know that the picture on Noah Smith's blog is in the neoclassical architectural style.

Neoclassical economics – the true picture

Lars P. Syll

On a less humorous note:

Ayn Rand’s perversion of American History

Human rights? Nah. Just the all-inclusive property right that covers everything. As Lars says, sickening, and still going on in many part of the world, especially Africa and Latin America.

Compare with:

"Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."—Matthew 22:35-40

"And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like,namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these."—Mark 12:28-31

"And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live."— Luke 10:25-28

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might."—Deuteronomy 6:4-5

"Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD".—Leviticus 19:18

No wonder Ayn Rand dismissed religion as superstition standing in the way of her debased version of Nietzsche's Übermensch**, in which her "hero" is a sociopath.

She headed for Hollywood, where she set out to write stories that expressed her philosophy—a body of thought she said was the polar opposite of communism. She announced that the world was divided between a small minority of Supermen who are productive and "the naked, twisted, mindless figure of the human Incompetent" who, like the Leninists, try to feed off them. He is "mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned." It is evil to show kindness to these "lice": The "only virtue" is "selfishness." 

She meant it. Her diaries from that time, while she worked as a receptionist and an extra, lay out the Nietzschean mentality that underpins all her later writings. The newspapers were filled for months with stories about serial killer called William Hickman, who kidnapped a 12-year-old girl called Marion Parker from her junior high school, raped her, and dismembered her body, which he sent mockingly to the police in pieces. Rand wrote great stretches of praise for him, saying he represented "the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatsoever for all that a society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. A man who really stands alone, in action and in soul. … Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should." She called him "a brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy," shimmering with "immense, explicit egotism." Rand had only one regret: "A strong man can eventually trample society under its feet. That boy [Hickman] was not strong enough."

It's not hard to see this as a kind of political post-traumatic stress disorder. Rand believed the Bolshevik lie that they represented the people, so she wanted to strike back at them—through theft and murder. In a nasty irony, she was copying their tactics. She started to write her first novel, We the Living(1936), and in the early drafts her central character—a crude proxy for Rand herself—says to a Bolshevik: "I loathe your ideals. I admire your methods. If one believes one's right, one shouldn't wait to convince millions of fools, one might just as well force them."

Slate — November 2, 2009
How Ayn Rand Became an American Icon: The perverse allure of a damaged woman.
Johann Hari

** I would translate Übermensch as "supra-human," the one who has surpassed mere humanity. "Man is to be surpassed; what have you done to surpass him" (Also Sprach Zarathustra). In Nieztsche, the Übermensch refers to the hero, e.g, Wagner's Siegfried as the person who does not know what fear is. Wagner seriously upset Nietzsche with the culmination of his depiction of the genuine hero in Parsifal, the "pure fool" made wise by trial and compassion.

E.J. Dionne, Jr. — A New Balance Toward Liberty

The hardest thing in an argument is to acknowledge competing truths. We know that our government will continue with large-scale surveillance programs to prevent future terrorist attacks. We also know that such programs have operated up to now with too little public scrutiny and insufficient concern over their long-term implications for our rights and our privacy.

The response to Edward Snowden’s leaks about what our government has been up to should thus be a quest for a new and more sustainable balance among security, privacy and liberty. And the fact that some people in each of our political parties have switched sides on these questions is actually an opportunity. We can have a debate on the merits, liberated from the worst aspects of partisanship.

truthdig

A New Balance Toward Liberty

E.J. Dionne, Jr.

Paul Ryan — Our rights come from nature and God, not government

“I think this at the end of the day is a big philosophy difference,” he continued. “What Ms. Kennedy and others were saying is that this is a new government-granted right. We disagree with the notion that our rights come from government, that the government can now grant us and define our rights. Those are ours, they come from nature and God, according to the Declaration of Independence — a huge difference in philosophy.”

Read it at Raw Story
Paul Ryan: Repeal health law because rights come from God
by David Edwards

Rep. Ryan doesn't get that empirically rights are human social constructs that are ratified by law. These constructs are basically normative. Nature is not normative and prescriptive, and statements relating to God are matters of belief.

There are opposing arguments over the basis of rights, and Ryan's position is one of the many possible views, none of which can be justified empirically because the premises are essentially normative. 

That anything "comes from God" is a matter of belief rather than reason or observation. And who speaks for God in matters like these?

"Natural" means either found in nature or, in the sense of "natural law," a norm that is specially privileged by its universality, or self-evident. But no right is not found universally in nature. What does it mean to say that something is self-evident if it is not universally agreed upon, and even disputed?

Historically, rights are ideas — social constructs — that develop over time in certain cultures first as customs and then they get ratified by law as formal statements of institutional arrangement. The conception of rights differs among cultures and social groups.

On one hand, there are good consequentialist arguments for rights. On the other hand, Ryan's position is deontological insofar as it is categorical, being based on dogmatic belief, and it also commits the naturalistic fallacy, that is, deriving an "ought" from an "is." 

The "founding fathers" justification is an argument from authority based on the authority of 18th century social and political liberalism stemming from the writings of John Locke. Hardly authoritative philosophically, and not a very secure basis for a convincing argument.

But to his credit, Ryan admits that this is a difference in philosophy, that is, not subject to scientific verification. So the argument, in his opinion is basically a moral argument, in which consequences do not apply given his categorical methodology.

There is nothing wrong with subscribing to Ryan's view if it is one's preference as long as one admits it is a preference. However, it is a weak position in mixed company, where not everyone agrees with the presuppositions.

Balkin — Corporations and the Thirteenth Amendment

How the Thirteen Amendment could be used against "corporate personhood" if interpreted as broadly as the Fourteenth.

Read it at Balkinization
Corporations and the Thirteenth Amendment
by jb

Thirteen Amendment
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

UPDATE:
More on Corporations as Slaves
by JB

The noose tightens

The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, if signed into law, will signal the death knell of our constitutional republic and the formal inception of a legalized police state in the United States. Passed by the House on May 26, 2011 (HR 1540), the Senate version (S. 1867) was passed on Dec. 1, 2011. Now only one man -- Barack Obama, a scholar of constitutional law -- will make the decision as to whether the Bill of Rights he went to Harvard to study will be superceded by a law that abrogates it.

First, let's be clear what is at stake. Most critical are Sections 1031 and 1032 of the Act, which authorize detaining U.S. citizens indefinitely without charge or trial if deemed necessary by the president. The bill would allow federal officials to take these steps based on suspicions only, without having to demonstrate to any judicial official that there is solid evidence to justify their actions. No reasonable proof will any longer be required for the government to suspend an American citizen's constitutional rights. Detentions can follow mere membership, past or present, in "suspect organizations." Government agents would have unchecked authority to arrest, interrogate, and indefinitely detain law-abiding citizens if accused of potentially posing a threat to "national security." Further, military personnel anywhere in the world would be authorized to seize U.S. citizens without due process. As Senator Lindsay Graham put it, under this Act the U.S. homeland is considered a "battlefield."

What is at stake is more than the Constitution itself, as central as that document has been to the American experiment in democracy. What is a stake is nothing short of the basic fundamentals of western jurisprudence. Central to civilized law is the notion that a person cannot be held without a charge and cannot be detained indefinitely without a trial. These principles date back to Greco-Roman times, were developed by English common law beginning in 1215 with the Magna Carta, and were universalized by the Enlightenment in the century before the American Constitution and Bill of Rights were fought for and adopted as the supreme law of the land.For more than two centuries of constitutional development since then, the United States has been heralded as the light to the world precisely because of the liberties it enshrined in its Declaration of Independence and Constitution as inalienable. It now seems as if the events of 9/11 have been determined to be of such a threatening magnitude that our national leaders feel justified to abrogate in their entirety the very inalienable principles upon which our Republic was founded.

At the heart of this Act is the most fundamental question we must ask ourselves as a free people: is 9/11 worth the Republic? The question screaming at us through this bill is whether the war on terror is a better model around which to shape our destiny than our constitutional liberties. It compels the question of whether we remain an ongoing experiment in democracy, pioneering new frontiers in the name of liberty and justice for all, or have we become a national security state, having financially corrupted and militarized our democracy to such an extent that we define ourselves, as Sparta did, only through the exigencies of war?

Read the rest at The Huffington Post

Obama's Most Fateful Decision

by Jim Garrison

President, State of the World Forum and Wisdom University; Author, 'America as Empire'

Of course, it is already OK to assassinate US citizens, commit war crimes, and torture with impunity. What next?

UPDATE:

 Imagine my surprise this morning when, without warning, my shiny new Twitter account (@d_seaman) was suspended and taken offline.

No more tweets for you. You now have 0 followers.

My crime? Talking too much about Occupy Wall Street (I'm not an Occupier, but as a blogger and journalist it strikes me as one of the most important stories out there -- hence the constant coverage), and talking too much about the controversial detainment without trial provisions contained in the FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which would basically shred the Bill of Rights and subject American citizens to military police forces. The same level of civil rights protection that enemy combatants in a cave in Afghanistan receive!

But no, my tweets were 'annoying our users,' according to Twitter's suspension notice.

Read the rest at Business Insider
Welcome To The United Police States of America, Sponsored By Twitter
David Seaman, Credit Card Outlaw

Bizarre!

Neo-fascism alive and well — in the US Senate

While nearly all Americans head to family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving, the Senate is gearing up for a vote on Monday or Tuesday that goes to the very heart of who we are as Americans. The Senate will be voting on a bill that will direct American military resources not at an enemy shooting at our military in a war zone, but at American citizens and other civilians far from any battlefield — even people in the United States itself.

Senators need to hear from you, on whether you think your front yard is part of a “battlefield” and if any president can send the military anywhere in the world to imprison civilians without charge or trial.

The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. Even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during last night’s Republican debate. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.

The worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial provision is in S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which will be on the Senate floor on Monday.The bill was drafted in secret by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and passed in a closed-door committee meeting, without even a single hearing.

I know it sounds incredible. New powers to use the military worldwide, even within the United States? Hasn’t anyone told the Senate that Osama bin Laden is dead, that the president is pulling all of the combat troops out of Iraq and trying to figure out how to get combat troops out of Afghanistan too? And American citizens and people picked up on American or Canadian or British streets being sent to military prisons indefinitely without even being charged with a crime. Really? Does anyone think this is a good idea? And why now?

The answer on why now is nothing more than election season politics. The White House, the Secretary of Defense, and the Attorney General have all said that the indefinite detention provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act are harmful and counterproductive. The White House has even threatened a veto. But Senate politics has propelled this bad legislation to the Senate floor.

But there is a way to stop this dangerous legislation. Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) is offering the Udall Amendment that will delete the harmful provisions and replace them with a requirement for an orderly Congressional review of detention power. The Udall Amendment will make sure that the bill matches up with American values.

In support of this harmful bill, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) explained that the bill will “basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield” and people can be imprisoned without charge or trial “American citizen or not.” Another supporter, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) also declared that the bill is needed because “America is part of the battlefield.”

The solution is the Udall Amendment; a way for the Senate to say no to indefinite detention without charge or trial anywhere in the world where any president decides to use the military. Instead of simply going along with a bill that was drafted in secret and is being jammed through the Senate, the Udall Amendment deletes the provisions and sets up an orderly review of detention power. It tries to take the politics out and put American values back in.

In response to proponents of the indefinite detention legislation who contend that the bill “applies to American citizens and designates the world as the battlefield,” and that the “heart of the issue is whether or not the United States is part of the battlefield,” Sen. Udall disagrees, and says that we can win this fight without worldwide war and worldwide indefinite detention.

The senators pushing the indefinite detention proposal have made their goals very clear that they want an okay for a worldwide military battlefield, that even extends to your hometown. That is an extreme position that will forever change our country.

Now is the time to stop this bad idea. Please urge your senators to vote YES on the Udall Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act.

Senators Demand the Military Lock Up American Citizens in a “Battlefield” They Define as Being Right Outside Your Window
Posted by Chris Anders, Washington Legislative Office, on the ACLU Blog of Rights