I feel the need to pinch myself to believe that US Congress actually passed a law (NDAA 2012) empowering the military to hold without charge or trial, and presumably torture, anyone it accuses of terrorism. The language of the Act certainly makes it sound nicer, but that is how the government’s power has expanded. I suspect that this law makes US citizens the most vulnerable to their government that they have been since the formation of their nation, if not before. The existence of such powers of arrest and detention would have been an excellent justification for armed rebellion against Britain, much more so than unsavoury taxation.
Even with a value neutral outlook, it is evident that a seismic shift has taken place in American political ideology. A familiar mixture of Nationalism and Fascism appears to have supplanted Liberalism’s hegemony within the American political elite. (Using the F word here should not be controversial. Fascism is fairly clearly defined, and modern America, with the passage of this legislation, exhibits the major criteria that justify the use of the word.)
Can the Act be justified?
I do not think so, and here is why: the coercive power of the modern state is unrivalled throughout history, and as such people have never been more vulnerable to its excesses. The growth of this power is not necessarily bad or good. It has taken the form of free education and health care, the formation of standing armies, of comprehensive macroeconomic management, social security, and efficient taxation. Individuals’ security from the government has persisted because a steady increase in the government’s accountability and transparency has occurred, and this has generally been commensurate to the growth of the state’s role in its citizens’ lives. Thus due process and civil rights have generally (and sensibly) become more entrenched as a counterweight to the state’s growing power.
It is eminently reasonable to assert that given the past and present trend to increasing state power, civil liberties should be experiencing a complimentary and commensurate fortification. Reforms that further secure civil liberty include: increased judicial oversight of government; reducing government discretion in its exercise of the state’s power; restricting clandestine government activity; presenting clearer and greater information to the public; and reducing special interest groups’ ability to influence decision makers, for example by regulating campaign funding. Only extreme circumstances could justify deviation from this path on utilitarian grounds. No justification exists to do so under the absolute principles of a liberal society.
I subscribe to utilitarian morality, so I can conceive of a threat so extraordinarily meanacing that it would justify a government temporarilly revoking individual liberty. However, no such threat exists. No country on Earth is more existentially secure than the United States of America, nor has it ever been this secure, excluding the contemporary threat posed by nuclear warfare. Those ostensibly targetted by this law (“terrorists”) certainly pose no threat to the country. Only an impotent few would support the violent overthrow of the state. Certainly the predicted effects of a changing climate are much more serious — but that is beside the point: there is no human force on this planet that realistically threatens America besides its government (and excluding nuclear weaponry).
So I find myself bewildered. This is a timely reminder that despite the fact that Africa looks like it is finally achieving sustained economic growth, that the Somalian famine could be the last major famine, that AIDS infection rates are dropping, that wars of all kinds are declining in frequency, and that several Arab countries have changed so positively in the past twelve months — that despite all this progress, regression also takes place. And this move by America’s legislature is a clear case of regression.
Disclaimer: it is possible that a significant portion of the internet commentariat has misread the NDDA, and/or judicial review would rule it to be unconsitutional;
Nevertheless: it is evident that Fascism has gained the ascendancy over Liberalism in the USA, and at a time in its history when increasing state power, and the absence of existential threats, demand the reverse.
