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I am an American expat living abroad. One thing that bugs me about this is that there is a shrill hyperpartisanship that underlies a lot of this discussion. Y

I am an American expat living abroad. One thing that bugs me about this is that there is a shrill hyperpartisanship that underlies a lot of this discussion. Yes, we should be prosecuting torturers, their bosses, and those who aided and abetted this via existing CIA programs or via extraordinary rendition during the current and last two administrations. But Democrats won't sign on to something that will implicate Democratic party Presidents, nor will the GOP sign onto anything that will implicate a Republican president, no matter how despised he is by the Republican base. The result is a lawless government and a strict reminder that there is no such thing as a "government of laws." In the end, all governments are "governments of men."

MCRed 12y ago
As an norte american who was an expat for many years I agree. IT's amazing how different the perspective is when you get out of the US media bubble. Nobody, not CNN, not Fox, not MSNBC, etc, none of them really are critical of the US government. It's all whitewashed in a way that's hard to see when you're inside the bubble. And that whitewash is not just to defend the national government, but to defend the parties. I believe this is exactly the reason that the founders didn't want to have a party system. Some of their choices (like the original make up of the senate) I believe were specifically to prevent this. Further, the entire goal of having strong state governments and a weak federal government was to prevent these kinds of crimes. For the very reason that the federal government will not prosecute itself, a strong federal government is bad. (Principle agent problem.) Can you imagine if states were doing extraordinary rendition and torture? Highly unlikely. While at the same time, for a real war, there would be no problem fighting with a bunch of state militias banding together (and it would cost us a lot less... much of our problem is due to the adventurism of our permanent military-- hard to justify keeping it around if you aren't constantly finding wars to start, er, fight.)
- einhverfr 12y ago
  It isn't just defending the parties. It is defending the corporations who effectively control the parties. In short the media is an important part of the power structure of the US. Why I read The "American Conservative," "Mother Jones," and "The Nation" more than I read The New York Times.
  - CWuestefeld 12y ago
    the corporations who effectively control the parties While I don't entirely disagree, I'd note that the control runs in both directions. The only reason that corporate interests steer the government is that the government controls the corporations. By creating regulations that favor a company or the industry, they improve corporate returns. Even regulations that damage a company, but damage competitors worse, may enable rent-seeking and be a good long-term investment for a corporation. So when the people, aghast at the kinds of problems they see, demand that the government must do something, and allow the government to gather more power in order to do so, this makes more power available for capture by the corporate interests, and so in the long run, makes the problem worse.
- rayiner 12y ago
  > Can you imagine if states were doing extraordinary rendition and torture? The decline of state versus federal power has been punctuated by events that arose because the states did far worse. There's slavery and the civil war, of course, but more recently state governments were throwing black Americans in jail or executing them with no evidence, turning a blind eye to lynchings and hangings and other atrocities. And every time the states proved that they could not be trusted, the Supreme Court gave the federal government a little more power over them. Eisenhower sending federal troops (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a0/101st_Airborne_at_Little_Rock_Central_High.jpg/2560px-101st_Airborne_at_Little_Rock_Central_High.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a0/101...) into Arkansas to forcibly integrate a school would've been decried as a reprehensible infringement of state sovereignty if it wasn't so throughly justified.
  - einhverfr 12y ago
    Unfortunately the Federal Government was hardly blameless in the racial issues. The single greatest tragedy in the history of race in the US was when the administration of Andrew Johnson rejected Sherman's efforts at land reform in the South. This would have lead to a very segregated South, but former slaves would have had means of production so the segregation could not have been pernicious, as it was (and still is as de facto segregation based on massive economic inequality). The federal government, effectively, has been a party to the worst of these problems, by advocating for the last 150 years, that black folks "getting a job" will solve the issue. It never has and it never will. Give a man a fish and he'll be back tomorrow, which is why Sherman was more interested in giving them metaphorical fishing boats. I have now lived in areas where there is a lot more racial separatism than there is in the US. In the absence of massive economic inequality, that poses very little problems. The problems in the US have been racial separatism backed by massive inequality out of the starting gate, something bolstered more than hindered by federal policy (though the states have been bad guys here too). But because we can pick and choose which bad guys we want to condemn, we can imagine that the feds messed up everything or that they saved people from the evil states. In reality there is plenty of blame to go around. I like the Scandinavian model: most taxes go to the local level and most social programs are run at the local level. Sweden and Denmark, for example, have no national single payer systems (rather municipalities set up single payer systems). However on the spectrum of American politics that makes Scandinavians both far-left and far-far right....
- nl 12y ago
  As someone outside the US, when I see someone attempting to frame this as a "states rights" issue I see that framing as adding to the problem by making it an even-more-political-issue than it already is. I sometimes find it useful to try to keep some kind of perspective with this kind of issue. Realistically all governments have issues policing themselves. I don't think this is unique to the US at all, nor does it represent some kind of break down of the US system of government.
  - einhverfr 12y ago
    Everything regarding everything government does is incredibly political. But I don't see this as a states' rights issue directly. It is an issue with a large secret federal government (and stronger states or better yet, local governments, would make that less of an issue). But transferring power from the federal government to the states by itself has no impact at all except making the policies both affect fewer people and the government accountable to the fewer that are affected. That may be a win but it isn't by itself much of anything. After all, it isn't like the FBI are the ones in the cross-hairs of the anti-police protests...

MCRed 12y ago

As an norte american who was an expat for many years I agree. IT's amazing how different the perspective is when you get out of the US media bubble. Nobody, not CNN, not Fox, not MSNBC, etc, none of them really are critical of the US government. It's all whitewashed in a way that's hard to see when you're inside the bubble. And that whitewash is not just to defend the national government, but to defend the parties. I believe this is exactly the reason that the founders didn't want to have a party system. Some of their choices (like the original make up of the senate) I believe were specifically to prevent this. Further, the entire goal of having strong state governments and a weak federal government was to prevent these kinds of crimes. For the very reason that the federal government will not prosecute itself, a strong federal government is bad. (Principle agent problem.) Can you imagine if states were doing extraordinary rendition and torture? Highly unlikely. While at the same time, for a real war, there would be no problem fighting with a bunch of state militias banding together (and it would cost us a lot less... much of our problem is due to the adventurism of our permanent military-- hard to justify keeping it around if you aren't constantly finding wars to start, er, fight.)

einhverfr 12y ago
It isn't just defending the parties. It is defending the corporations who effectively control the parties. In short the media is an important part of the power structure of the US. Why I read The "American Conservative," "Mother Jones," and "The Nation" more than I read The New York Times.
- CWuestefeld 12y ago
  the corporations who effectively control the parties While I don't entirely disagree, I'd note that the control runs in both directions. The only reason that corporate interests steer the government is that the government controls the corporations. By creating regulations that favor a company or the industry, they improve corporate returns. Even regulations that damage a company, but damage competitors worse, may enable rent-seeking and be a good long-term investment for a corporation. So when the people, aghast at the kinds of problems they see, demand that the government must do something, and allow the government to gather more power in order to do so, this makes more power available for capture by the corporate interests, and so in the long run, makes the problem worse.
rayiner 12y ago
> Can you imagine if states were doing extraordinary rendition and torture? The decline of state versus federal power has been punctuated by events that arose because the states did far worse. There's slavery and the civil war, of course, but more recently state governments were throwing black Americans in jail or executing them with no evidence, turning a blind eye to lynchings and hangings and other atrocities. And every time the states proved that they could not be trusted, the Supreme Court gave the federal government a little more power over them. Eisenhower sending federal troops (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a0/101st_Airborne_at_Little_Rock_Central_High.jpg/2560px-101st_Airborne_at_Little_Rock_Central_High.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a0/101...) into Arkansas to forcibly integrate a school would've been decried as a reprehensible infringement of state sovereignty if it wasn't so throughly justified.
- einhverfr 12y ago
  Unfortunately the Federal Government was hardly blameless in the racial issues. The single greatest tragedy in the history of race in the US was when the administration of Andrew Johnson rejected Sherman's efforts at land reform in the South. This would have lead to a very segregated South, but former slaves would have had means of production so the segregation could not have been pernicious, as it was (and still is as de facto segregation based on massive economic inequality). The federal government, effectively, has been a party to the worst of these problems, by advocating for the last 150 years, that black folks "getting a job" will solve the issue. It never has and it never will. Give a man a fish and he'll be back tomorrow, which is why Sherman was more interested in giving them metaphorical fishing boats. I have now lived in areas where there is a lot more racial separatism than there is in the US. In the absence of massive economic inequality, that poses very little problems. The problems in the US have been racial separatism backed by massive inequality out of the starting gate, something bolstered more than hindered by federal policy (though the states have been bad guys here too). But because we can pick and choose which bad guys we want to condemn, we can imagine that the feds messed up everything or that they saved people from the evil states. In reality there is plenty of blame to go around. I like the Scandinavian model: most taxes go to the local level and most social programs are run at the local level. Sweden and Denmark, for example, have no national single payer systems (rather municipalities set up single payer systems). However on the spectrum of American politics that makes Scandinavians both far-left and far-far right....
nl 12y ago
As someone outside the US, when I see someone attempting to frame this as a "states rights" issue I see that framing as adding to the problem by making it an even-more-political-issue than it already is. I sometimes find it useful to try to keep some kind of perspective with this kind of issue. Realistically all governments have issues policing themselves. I don't think this is unique to the US at all, nor does it represent some kind of break down of the US system of government.
- einhverfr 12y ago
  Everything regarding everything government does is incredibly political. But I don't see this as a states' rights issue directly. It is an issue with a large secret federal government (and stronger states or better yet, local governments, would make that less of an issue). But transferring power from the federal government to the states by itself has no impact at all except making the policies both affect fewer people and the government accountable to the fewer that are affected. That may be a win but it isn't by itself much of anything. After all, it isn't like the FBI are the ones in the cross-hairs of the anti-police protests...