Remora

In the seventies, Christopher Hill published an excellent book about the Protestant radicals who provided the ideological shock troops in the overthrow of Charles I in the English Civil War. The title of the book was World Turned Upside Down, which is the refrain in this ballad of the war:

"Old Christmas is kickt out of Town.

Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn'd upside down.


Let's talk about Old Christmas being kickt out of Town, shall we? Or rather, let's talk about kicking the bejesus out of Old Christmas, the bill of rights, common sense, the spirit of dissent, the independence of the legislature, the standards of right action, and other assorted matters of spiritual and political import.

We've come to such a pretty pass in this country, re the warmongering attitude, the stripping away of Civil Service protections in place since Chester Allan Arthur's time, and other such trivial supports of the national polity, that LI is forced to turn to the business press for some measure of dissent. Business Week, of all papers, the old Taft Republican Business Week, publishes a column by their Washington correspondent, Howard Gleckman, that hectors congress for surrendering its perogatives, right and left, to the executive. Gleckman presents a list of abdications: the fast track legislation Bush will be signing tomorrow, for instance; or the astonishing anomolies written into the act to make Heimat security a cabinet post. The latter is a really bad piece of legislation anyway -- there is no need for this re-organization, there's no need to add this cabinet post at all, given the Department of Defense, and certainly the composition of the law is outrageous. The discussion of the provisions entitling appointed officials to hire and fire at will has remained at this low level: conservatives: this is just to get the guv'mint out of the grip of civil service unions; liberals: this is an insult to civil service unions. Without any seeming consciousness of the reason why civil service was given a measure of autonomy vis a vis the executive in the first place, i.e. corruption. That's right, when hiring and firing can be done at will by elected officials, guess what? You soon have a system in which hiriign and firing becomes a marketable service. If commentators think that Bush is too high minded, and has employed cabinet members who are too high minded, to engage in corrupt practices (oh my! not our Commander in Chief!), they might want to investigate Ken Lay's ability to get the old head of FERC replaced, in 2001, by a more Enron pliable figure of Pat Wood III -- who moved from his Texas post, the path to which had also been paved by the ubiquitous Lay, to the national post after Lay reportedly threatened the old FERC head, Curtis Herbert, over the issue of deregulating the California Electrical Power market. But this is an issue that goes beyond Bush. It goes back to U.S. Grant, and it is an endemic illness to which democracies are heir. But trust the right to have no consciousness of the political tradition going back to Montesquieu -- which used to be called, in fact, the Burkean tradition, since its font was Burke's suspicion about ideological schemes designed to improve society by way of the government. Burke would likely have been appalled at the Homeland Security re-organization, but then again -- what right winger is even aware of Burke anymore?

Ah, LI is getting into a temper. But to return to Gleckman's column. The juice in it is in the last three grafs, which are directed against the inevitable drift to war against Iraq. Here it is:

"But the real test will come in foreign affairs. The nation is already fighting an undeclared war against terrorism. Not only are U.S. forces at risk in Afghanistan, but they are also fighting in the Philippines and most likely other nations as well.

The need for formal congressional approval for such a shadow war is admittedly murky. But there should be no confusion when it comes to what the White House has led us all to believe is its next step: a war against Iraq. Congress has a responsibility to enact a declaration of war before such an operation begins. Bush's father was wise enough to seek a congressional OK for his 1991 attack on Iraq. Now, the current President Bush should do the same.

There is little sign, though, that he will do that. And, sadly, there is even less indication that Congress will insist upon it. If Bush's Iraqi invasion goes badly, we will all come to regret both the President's power grab and the Congress' acquiescence. And, like LBJ and FDR before him, Bush will learn a costly lesson about the limits of the Imperial Presidency. "

Well, he might learn a lesson. We don't care about Mr. Bush's education. It failed to make a mark on him in the impressionable years, obviously, and we doubt any imminent changes are in the offing. The man's level has been exposed for all of us to see for some time now. We are more concerned with the lack of any good reason for this war. There is no reason to think that war is the best way to accomplish disarming Saddam Hussein, if that is really what the U.S. wants to accomplish. And we are concerned about who will bear the brunt of the inevitable bad consequences of a war fought by the U.S. alone -- in spite of the American press' assurances, via no doubt unnamed sources in the administration, that Europe and several Middle Eastern allies will just be all tickled pink about the deal. We are concerned that the U.S. is following a visibly incompetent leader as he pursues a comic book foreign policy against the "axis of evil."