Call to Liberty is an effort to heal dialog in America, not to espouse specific issues and answers. Some feedback I’ve received has asked: “Is unity really the goal?” The answer is no. Call to Liberty is not about unity, but rather about civic dialog in the context of our families, businesses, schools, and churches.
On specific issues, I have a viewpoint and sometimes express it. I encourage others to do the same, hopefully right here on this blog. (Deeper inquiries into the issues appear in our forums.) And yet, we need to recognize when we are going beyond a mere difference of opinion. Sometimes we demonize each other. Sometimes we challenge and attack the foundational principles of America, which are steeped in and arise from a modern liberal worldview—“liberal” as used in the phrase “western liberal democracy.” We need to recognize these as mistakes, and identify them as such. But a healthy discussion of the issues based on American liberal principle is the central theme of Call to Liberty.
Readers should view blog entries in this context. The entries are fodder for discussion and an ongoing conversation. In many cases, a blog entry written one day may be updated at a later date due to discussion and debate. Call to Liberty is about discussion. Please, come in. Sit down. Let’s converse.
I wrote after last weeks’ shooting of Iraqis by Blackwater people, of the dangers associated with privately contracting so-called “security” in a war zone. Our experience in Indochina 40 years go showed that when government funds operations like these, they don’t ever go away, and they almost always become corrupt. And that’s exactly what appears to be the case with Blackwater and the “private security contractors” in Iraq.
Now we are finding that the 190,000 or so weapons that disappeared into enemy hands may have gotten there through Blackwater USA. No surprise here. The CIA had any number of private contractors working in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, many of whom were making and selling drugs to US GIs to fund their operations because Congress had cut them off. These are the kinds of things shadow security organizations do. They are hidden, under private control, and owe allegiance to no one. Everywhere else in the world, they are called paramilitary group and warlord militias. That’s exactly what we are creating here.
Neoconservatives seem to prefer this kind of military, ostensibly because they must believe they can control it without the pesky influence of Congress. The free market fundamentalists sell us this approach based on an idea, but fail to recognize that military work is and always must be a state activity. But look at the worst, most corrupt countries in the world, and they are full of paramilitaries, militias following a single person, death squads, and the like. Americans enjoy freedom from these kinds of activities precisely because they are NOT developed in the private sector, except in crime families and gangs.
No doubt, Blackwater supporters will try to pin the problem on a few rogue elements, once again. And maybe they are correct. It won’t matter. There is a deeper question we need to be pondering: Should we have paramilitary and security contractors at all? Such a development is extremely dangerous to the strength of our democracy.
Sorry everyone. I’ve been away with business lately and unable to comment. But the work goes on anyway. Our forums on the Free and Fair Elections Amendment raised this interesting issue on who should be able to vote. I penned this response. Try www.calltoliberty.net/forum to see the full discussion.
Let's be careful here. Racism has been an ugly and abhorrent part of American life for a long time. And some have used our laws to disenfranchise others on the basis of race. But let's not have that fact and history preclude us from having a reasoned discussion of a serious question: Who should be allowed to elect the leaders of our government? That is, who are “We the people”?
You have made a serious argument that those who live under the laws should be able to vote in elections of people who make those laws. Under this notion, residency is the determining factor. There is an intuitive sense to this notion, but does it change when the law under consideration is not about taxation, but rather about foreign policy, particularly with regard to US foreign policy vis-à-vis the country the voter is actually a citizen of? In other words, do we want citizens of a different nation electing representatives of our government who will have to make decisions regarding that nation? It seems like a serious conflict of interest to me.
While residency is a compelling argument, so is citizenship. I think we can all agree that citizens of the United States should be able to vote, no matter where they live. We can also all agree that citizens of other countries who do not live in the United States should not be allowed to vote. The question arises when we confront the phenomena of people who live here who are not citizens of the United States. They fall into two groups--those who are here by legal means, and those who broke laws in order to enter the country. I’d like to hear other input, but I tend to lean toward citizenship as the proper standard if a people are to be self-governing and sovereign.
Anthony Signorelli is the author of Call to Liberty: Bridging the Divide Between Liberals and Conservatives
