"Yung & Easily Freudened"

"Bernard Shaw says in Man and Superman: ‘This creature Man, who in his own selfish affairs is a coward to the backbone, will fight for an idea like a hero.’ Of course, we would not call Fascism or Hitlerism ideas. They are archetypes, and so we would say: Give an archetype to the people and the whole crowd moves like one man, there is no resisting it." – C. G. Jung

One of my best friends called me today, and we discussed the attempts by certain interests in this country to manipulate the public by the use of images. Before the invasion of Iraq, this group used the images of 9/11 and mushroom clouds, over and over, and connected these with messages about the threat that Saddam’s Iraq posed to our safety.

Today we are seeing those same interests attempting to connect the image of the fellow from Iran, and to send mixed messages about how the surge is working, but Iran is threatening, over and over and over again.

On October 4, 1935, C.G. Jung delivered the 5th in a series of lectures to the Institute of Medical Psychology at the Tavistock Clinic in London. In it, he spoke about the insights he had in the period before WW1. This was the period where his friendship with Sigmund Freud became strained. Henri Ellenberger called it Jung’s period of creative illness.

"I take the archetypal images and a suitable form of their projection seriously," Jung told his audience, "because the collective unconscious is really a serious factor in the human psyche. All those personal things like incestuous tendencies and other childish tunes are mere surface; what the unconscious really contains are the great collective events of the time. In the collective unconscious of the individual, history prepares itself; and when the archetypes are activated in a number of individuals and come to the surface, we are in the midst of history, as we are at present. The archetypal image which the moment requires gets into life, and everybody is seized by it. That is what we see today. I saw it coming, I said in 1918 that the ‘blond beast’ is stirring in its sleep and something will happen in Germany. No psychologist then understood at all what I meant, because people had simply no idea that our personal psychology is just a thin skin, a ripple on the collective psychology. The powerful factor, the factor which changes our whole life, which changes the surface of our known world, which makes history, is collective psychology, and collective psychology moves to laws entirely different from those of our consciousness. The archetypes are the great decisive forces, they bring about real events, and not our personal reasoning and practical intellect. Before the Great War all intelligent people said: ‘We shall not have any more war, we are far too reasonable to let it happen, and our commerce and finance are so interlaced internationally that war is absolutely out of the question.’ And then we produced the most gorgeous war ever seen."

Our country has been involved in two wars since 9/11, and recent reports document what many of us already knew: that Vice President Cheney and friends are hoping to create the tensions needed to justify a war with Iran.

Our nation was tricked by the threats of mushroom clouds and yellow cake because, to borrow a line from James Joyce, we were "yung and easily freudened." Today, we should know better. Be awake. Be aware. Do not let this happen again.

The Right to Dissent

{1} " ….there shall be a new election of the members of the Grand Council every three years; and, on the death or resignation of any member, his place should be supplied by a new choice at the next sitting of the Assembly of the Colony he represented."
--Ben Franklin; Albany Plan of Union; 1754

There was a lot of tension in the colonies in the 1750s. There was the series of battles that are known as the French and Indian, including the Seven Year’s War. These had to do with the control of trade, and the ability to exploit the natural resources of the Native American people. As a result, the people of the colonies began to think of ways to protect their rights.

Franklin used the concept of a Grand Council, which came directly from the Haudenosaunee, or Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy. He had experience in dealing with the Iroquois, as would several of the other Founding Fathers, including Jefferson and Madison. The Iroquois Confederacy was a method for rational people to deal with the tensions that always arise in society in a rational manner that attempts to exclude violence.

After the conflicts between France and England subsided, the tensions between the colonists and the crown increased. Those tensions led to the Declaration of Independence, which remains one of the most powerful revolutionary statements in modern history. It is so powerful, that although Americans are encouraged to celebrate it every July 4th, it is rarely read in its entirety.

{2} "The Articles provided for a unicameral Congress with no separate executive or judiciary. Congress, which could act only on the states, not on individuals, was to be elected annually in a manner to be determined by each state legislature."
--The Oxford Companion to United States History; 2001; page 51

The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was the first constitution of the United States. It was drafted in 1777, adopted by the 2nd Continental Congress that same year, and ratified in 1781.

Almost immediately, there were tensions associated with it. These were the serious disagreements between those who favored a stronger central government, and those who opposed that concept. There were also conflicts between states regarding the amount of representation each state would have in the federal government, because of the differences in population from state to state.

In 1786, there was a move to revise or even replace the Articles of Confederation. There continued to be significant disagreements between the federalists and the anti-federalists. The more enlightened among the Founding Fathers wanted to avoid making the new nation into a carbon copy of England, but there was also tensions brewing about the ability to tax. There were also different interests looking to control commerce, not only between states, but between the US and other nations.

The Constitution of 1787 remains the central document in American government. It strikes a balance between federal and state powers. More, it divided the federal government into three co-equal branches: the legislative, the executive, and the judicial. By its nature, the Constitution recognizes that there will be on-going tension, both between the state and federal levels, and within the three federal branches. Tension can be a good thing, when all parties agree to go by the guidelines provided by the Constitution to resolve the various problems that arise.

{3} "I believe that the great mass of the people who opposed (the Constitution), disliked it because it did not contain effectual provision against encroachment on particular rights, and those safeguards which they have long been accustomed to have interposed between them and the magistrate who exercised sovereign power: nor ought we consider them safe, while a great number of our citizens think these securities necessary."
--James Madison

Within a year of the Constitution being ratified, some of the progressive Founding Fathers began to point out that much of the promise of the Declaration of Independence was lacking from the document. They were focused on another level of tensions in society: those between the government and the individual.

In 1789, James Madison began to draft a dozen "articles" which were considered for additions to the Constitution. The first two were removed (#2 resurfaced later as the 27th Amendment), and the other ten became the Bill of Rights. They were ratified in 1791.

These rights, which are sometimes said to be tiered (with the most important being found in Amendment #1), indicate an understanding that there are times when the tensions in society can cause the government to try to restrict citizens’ rights.

In "The Imperial Presidency," historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., documented how the executive branch of the federal government has attempted to expand its powers during times of war. The presidents from both parties have attempted to exploit international tensions to grab powers that the Constitution has deemed belong to the congress, or even the judiciary.

Likewise, it is in times of international tension when the federal government tends to attempt to deny groups and individuals of their Constitutional rights found in Amendment #1. This does not mean that these rights are not infringed upon in times of relative peace, because they certainly have been. And, in fact, other rights have been infringed upon by the federal, state, and local governments.

However, some of the most important areas of Constitutional law involve cases decided by the federal courts, which pit the government against the individual.

{4} "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." –Amendment #1

For the sake of this discussion, I want to concentrate on the last four rights found in Amendment #1: (a) free speech, (b) a free press, (c ) the right to assemble in public, (d) and the right to petition the government. As Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court Abe Fortas noted in his 1968 book "Concerning Dissent and Civil Disobedience," these are the rights that not only guarantee citizens’ right to disagree with the government, but they outline how that dissent is to proceed for the benefit of the individual and society.

Freedom of speech implies freedom of thought. More, it allows free-thinkers to submit their ideas to what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes called "the marketplace of ideas" (Abrams v United States). Freedom of speech is also referred to as freedom of expression, and involves more than a person’s right to speak their mind with words. It also applies to other ways that creative people communicate their beliefs, including high school students wearing tee-shirts with political messages.

Freedom of the press has to do with the right to have people (groups or individuals) who gather information, report the news, and provide opinion pieces. In the days of the Founding Fathers, it involved the printing press. In time, it came to include the radio and television airwaves. Today, it has expanded to include the internet.

The right to assemble and the right to petition the government with grievances are so closely related that they are often mistakenly assumed to be one right. Public assembly can be a way to get the attention of elected officials, but it is also an important way to communicate ideas to the public at large. And petitioning the government includes everything from an anti-war rally in Washington DC, to a high school student taking up a petition, to an elderly person writing a letter to a senator, to a person sending an e-mail to the White House.

Ultimately, as Fortas pointed out, these freedoms are ways for citizens to have an impact upon the single most powerful form of protest that we have, which is the ballot box. We can use our free speech, the free press, political rallies and petitions to encourage elected leaders to be responsive to our demands, or we will work to have them replaced.

{5} "Freedom does not mean license." -- Erich Fromm; foreword to "Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing"; page xiii.

The freedoms guaranteed by Amendment #1 are not without restriction. The best-known restriction comes from Justice Holmes noting that a person does not have the right to falsely yell, "Fire!" in a crowded theater. There are other examples of limitations of free speech that include sedition, slander, and as Scooter Libby found out, lying to police investigators or while under an oath in a court setting.

The freedoms of the press have some related limitations. The 1917 Espionage Act has been used to discourage those who would engage in "spying" to benefit another country. An example of this is found in the neocon/AIPAC espionage case, where a group of intelligence operatives attempted to use the free press as part of an effort to pass highly classified military secrets to a foreign country.

The right to hold peaceful public assemblies can be restricted by permits, and the right to petition the government with grievances is restricted by free speech zones. In one of the most important cases of the civil rights movement (Walker v Birmingham; 1967) the US Supreme Court ruled against Rev Martin Luther King, Jr., after he violated an order restricting what Martin felt was an obligation to assemble and participate in a march to express grievances.

The majority of the overt attempts by the government to restrict citizens’ rights guaranteed by Amendment #1 are found during times of international tensions. As noted, our history shows that it is during times of war that the executive branch has frequently attempted to grab power from the other branches of government. This isn’t a coincidence. It is important that informed citizens are aware that times of war have always been, and continue to be, when our nation risks losing the very things that make us a Constitutional democracy.

{6} "It is the courts – the independent judiciary – which have, time and again, rebuked the legislatures and executive authorities when, under the stress of war, emergency, or fear of Communism or revolution, they have sought to suppress the rights of dissenters. In the famous case of Exparte Milligus, the Supreme Court held that President Lincoln’s suspension of the civil courts and the writ of habeas corpus were unconstitutional.

"Although we were in a desperate war against Nazi Germany, the Supreme Court in 1943 reversed the conviction of persons who distributed literature condemning the war and the draft and opposing the flag salute. (Taylor v. Mississippi, 319 US 583)

"Time and again, the Court has rebuked and rejected efforts to deprive people of their jobs in state and federal government for their mere beliefs or mere membership in unpopular or even essentially subversive groups."
--Abe Fortas; Concerning Dissent and Civil Disobedience; pages 46-47.

The famous "shouting fire in a crowded theater" statement came from Schenck v United States, a case involving anti-war fliers during WW1. In the 1919 case of Debs v United States, political activist Eugene Debs’s conviction was upheld, not because he presented any "clear and present danger," but because his ideas had a "natural tendency" to convince others to refuse to serve in the military when placed in that marketplace of ideas. And there are numerous other examples of cases that define our Constitutional law which restrict our ability to exercise the rights guaranteed by Amendment #1.

The Bush-Cheney administration has taken the concept of an imperial presidency to new lows, and their attempts to subvert the Constitution have made this the revolutionary presidency that Schlesinger warned of. The congress has shown no evidence of the will or ability to confront the administration in any meaningful way. Instead, they focus attention on attacking a MoveOn.org ad.

The federal courts have been the source of the only limitations on the executive branch’s abuses of power. I say that with a full awareness of the imperfections of today’s federal courts, which too often represent the corporate interests of the republicans who have appointed the judges to their positions.

Henry David Thoreau wrote that we must be human beings first, and subjects afterwards. To do this, we risk having those stuffed shirts in Washington DC question our patriotism. "As I have already told you," Camus reminds us, "if at times we seemed to prefer justice to our country, this is because we simply wanted to love our country in justice, as we wanted to love her in truth and in hope."

Fromm warned that "human history began with an act of disobedience – it is likely to end with an act of obedience." It is our duty to say, "Not on our turn." We need to exercise those Amendment #1 rights that guarantee that we keep our Constitutional democracy alive, even against the aggression of the executive and the cowardice of the legislative branch.

"In a democratic society law is the form which free men give to justice. The glory of justice and the majesty of law are created not just by the Constitution – nor by the courts – nor by the officers of the law – nor by the lawyers – but by the men and women who constitute our society – who are the protectors of the law as they are themselves protected by the law." – Robert F. Kennedy

Attack of the Flying Nun

"Surely this [award] belongs to all the mothers of the world. May they be seen, may their work be valued and raised. Especially to the mothers who stand with an open heart and wait. Wait for their children to come home from danger, from harm’s way, and from war. I am proud to be one of those women. If mothers ruled the world, there would be no god-damn wars in the first place." – Sally Fields

The Flying Nun joining the growing list of American citizens that we need to stop listening to last night. If only the House Judiciary Committee could go back to a time before the Committee on Internal Security, and once again become that fox guarding the hen house, the House Un-American Activities Committee, we might sleep better as a nation.

Instead, we have Flying Nuns, MoveOn.org, and Code Pink causing trouble. I knew it would come to this when they refused to put Cindy Sheehan in jail for questioning the president, which should be illegal in any democracy. I’m not prone to conspiracies, unless they meet some inner need of mine, but I think that the answer is that Cindy Sheehan found a vulnerable Sally Fields, and took advantage of her.

Proof of this is found in "Values Matter Most," Ben Wattenberg’s 1995 warning to America that both democrats and republicans needed to embrace the doctrine of neoconservatism, that we might survive as a nation. Ben had gone from working for LBJ to Hubert Humphrey to "Scoop" Jackson.

On pages 5 to 6, he explains why he could not vote for George McGovern in 1972: the democratic candidate "preached ‘Come Home America’ while there was still an evil empire out there." In a 2006 essay, Ben attacked John Kerry for comparing Iraq to Vietnam, and explained how despite losers like Kerry losing the war in ‘Nam, Uncle Sam defeated the evil empire.

Ben also exposes the continuing threat of the democrats: "In the 1980s most liberals refused to see the Soviet hand in Central America. Speaker Tip O’Neill was against helping the Contras in Nicaragua because (he said) he had always taken guidance from the Maryknoll Sisters (by then a very radical organization), and because he remembered that, fifty years earlier, a friend had told him that the United Fruit Company had exploited the peasants in Central America."

Thanks, Ben. Not only was Tip O’Neill slandering United Fruit, but we need to be aware of the threat posed to democracy by radicals like Maura Clarke, Ita Ford, Jean Donovan, and Dorothy Kazal. These four Maryknoll sisters were brutally raped, tortured, and murdered by the El Salvador death squads trained by the Reagan administration to deliver democracy to Central America.

While many of Ben’s buddies from those "Scoop" Jackson days joined the republican party in the Reagan era, he bravely remained a democrat. I’m confident that he did it for all the right reasons. Though he has been closely associated with Paul Wolfowitz, Newt Gingrich, John Bolton, Lynn Cheney and Fred Thompson at the American Enterprise Institute, he only wants what is best for the democratic party.

Dare we ignore his warning? Isn’t it obvious that Cindy Sheehan is a Maryknoll sister, and that she has indoctrinated the once pure Flying Nun with her liberation theology? As democrats, we need to reject Sally Fields – she will embarrass the party with her unpatriotic calls for peace. We will pay a heavy price in the 2008 elections if we are associated with such nonsense.

Postcard from Chestnut Lodge

{1} "A function of free speech ….is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces ….unrest ….or even stirs people to anger."
--Justice Douglas

I found the above quote in Associate Justice Abe Fortas’s 1968 book, "Concerning Dissent and Civil Disobedience (We have an Alternative to Violence)." I had been thinking about Fortas’s book, after reading some of the curious reactions to the recent ad by MoveOn.org and the protest by Code Pink.

Sometimes I think it would be nice if other people read the book that the Washington Evening Sun recommended "that every demonstrator ought to carry around in his hip pocket. It is small enough, and it is important enough." Maybe they could loan it to the DUers who find MoveOn and Code Pink unsettling. It might even stir people to discuss the variety of options open to people to express their discontent.

My friend Phoebe Loosinhouse wrote a post on DU:GD:Politics yesterday about Code Pink. Phoebe compared Code Pink to rodeo clowns of the left, and said that, "Both groups are brave people in funny outfits who put themselves at risk in precarious and unpredictable situations in order to save others." I liked that, though a few people were stirred to anger by it.

Years ago, Norman Mailer compared Abbie Hoffman to a chimney sweep. "I don’t know what chimney sweeps looked like, but I always imagined them as having a manic integrity that glared out of their eyes through all the soot and darked-up skin. It was the knowledge that they were doing an essential job that no one else would do. Without them, everybody in the house would slowly, over the years, suffocated from the smoke."

{2} "The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism ….
--Justice Davis; 1866

The above quote is also found in Abe Fortas’s book, in chapter 3: "The Rights of the State and Its Duty in War as well as Peace." I am hopeful that even if people disagree about specific forms of public protest, that we can agree on the importance that the protections provided for protest by the Bill of Rights.

A while back, some Catholic Workers engaged in an act of civil disobedience, based upon the example set by Philip and Daniel Berrigan during the Vietnam War era. They were tried as the "St. Patrick’s Four" in federal court in Binghamton, NY. I can remember that some people on DU found their actions unsettling, and were as willing to say mean things about them, as they are to say negative things about MoveOn and Code Pink.

I attended part of their trial in Binghamton. Early on, there were many police, keeping the pro-war and anti-war groups separate outside the court house. Things were tense. But after a few days, everyone had become familiar with one another, and there were some very interesting discussions involving the pro-war and anti-war people. Although there were significant differences of opinion about the war in Iraq, by the end of the trial, everyone was able to agree that it is important for citizens to exercise their Constitutional rights.

We all probably have own ideas of what type of public protests would best advance our views on the war in Iraq. My own thought is of a large group of people who would stand, sit, and/or kneel in a public place, and remain silent while they read the Constitution, or the bible, koran, or gita, or even one of Erich Fromm’s books. I would hope that the people could pray, meditate, fantasize, and smile.

Of course, that is just my idea of a nice form of protest. I recognize that other people would view such a thing differently than I do. And that is one of the interesting things about attempts to communicate: people may intend one message, and others often interpret it differently.
If you could participate in any one type of public demonstration, what would it be like? What message would you intend to get across? How would other people view it?

Peace,
H2O Man