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Recent
Stories
July
3, 2003
Stan
Goff
"Bring 'Em On?": a Former
Special Forces Soldier Responds to Bush's Invitation for Iraqis
to Attack US Troops
David
Lindorff
Outlawing Subversives: Hong Kong
and the US
John
Chuckman
Lessons from the American Revolution
Jackson
Thoreau
New Far-Right Scheme: Impeach Supreme Court Justices
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Meaning of Gettysburg
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/2
July 2, 2003
Diane
Christian
Good Killing and Bad Killing
Richard
Falk
After Iraq, Does UN War Prevention Have a Future?
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Bush Administration: Causing Repetitive Stress
Justin
Podur
Uribe's Onslaught Across Colombia
Reuven
Kaviner
Prosecuting Ben-Artzi, the Refusenik
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/2
July
1, 2003
Sasan
Fayamanesh
Weapon of Choice: Nukes, Israel and
Iran
Elaine
Cassel
Sex and the Supreme Moralizer: Scalia
and the Sodomy Cops
Susan
Block
A Love Supreme: Our Assholes Belong
to Ourselves
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: No, No Bono
David Lindorff
Weapons in Search of a Name
Gary
Leupp
Occupation, Resistance and the Plight of the GIs
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/1
June
30, 2003
Karyn
Strickler
The Do-Nothings: an Exposé
of Progressive Politics in America
Col. Dan
Smith
The Occupation of Iraq: Descending into the Quagmire
Tim
Wise
Race and Destruction in Black and White
Neve Gordon
The Roadmap and the Wall
Chris
Floyd
The Revelation of St. George: "God Told Me to Strike Saddam"
Elaine
Cassel
Kentucky Woman
Uri
Avnery
Hope in Dark Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/30
Website
of the Day
Bush El Hombre
June
28 / 29, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside
Man
Laura
Carlsen
Democracy's Future: From the Polls or the Populace?
Alan Maass
You Call These Democrats an Alternative?
C.Y.
Gopinath
Bush and Kindergarten
Noah Leavitt
Bush, the Death Penalty and International Law
Joanne
Mariner
Rehnquist Family Values
Ignacio
Chapela
Tenure, Censorship and Biotech at Berkeley
Bob
Scowcroft
Bush's Squeeze on Organic Farmers
Jon Brown
Tom Delay: "I am the Government"
Kam
Zarrabi
Keep Your Hands Off Iran, Please!
Ron Jacobs
Big Bill Broonzy's Conversation with the Blues
Julie
Hilden
Fear Factor: Art, Terror and the First Amendment
Adrien
Rain Burke
The Anarchists' Wedding Guide
Adam
Engel
US Troops Outta Times Square
Poets'
Basement
Witherup, Guthrie, Albert, Hamod
June
27, 2003
Jason
Leopold
CIA: Seven Months Prior to 9/11 Iraq
Posed No Threat to US
David
Vest
Supreme Silence: Bush's Bunker-Hunker
David
Lindorff
The Catch and Release of "Comical
Ali"
Ray McGovern
Cheney, Forgery and the CIA
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/26
Website
of the Day
John Kerry, Teresa Heinz & Ken Lay: The Politics of Hypocrisy
June
26, 2003
Sen.
Robert Byrd
The Road of Cover-Up is a Road to Ruin
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Instructed the CIA to Investigate
Hans Blix
Paul
de Rooij
Ambient Death in Palestine
Chris Floyd
Mass Graves and Burned Meat in Bush's New Iraq
Elaine
Cassel
Wolfowitz as Lord High Executioner
CounterPunch
Wire
Musicians Unite Against Sweatshops
Sheldon
Hull
Squatting in Mansions
Ben Tripp
A Guide to Hating Almost Anyone
Uri
Avnery
The Best Show in Town
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
Ordinary Vistas:
The Photographs of Kurt Nimmo
June
25, 2003
Bruce
Jackson
Buffalo Cops Wage War on Pedal Pushers
Mickey
Z.
The New Dark Ages
David Lindorff
Indonesia's War on Journalists
Dan
Bacher
Butterflies and Farmworkers Confront USDA and Riot Cops
Adam Federman
"Success is Not the Issue Here"
Elaine
Cassel
"Ain't No Justice": Fed Judge Quits, Assails Sentencing
Guidelines
Bill Kauffman
My America vs. the Empire
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
You Are Being Watched:
Elevator Moods
June
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Supreme Indemnity
Holocaust Denial at the High Court
Roya
Monajem
A Message from Tehran: Is It Worth
It to Risk One's Life?
John
Chuckman
The Real Clash of Civilizations
David Lindorff
WMD Damage Control at the Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/24
June
23, 2003
Marc
Pritzke
Washington Lied: an Interview with
Ray McGovern
Conn
Hallinan
The Consistency of Sharon
Wayne Madsen
Commercials, Disney & Amistad
Edward
Said
The Meaning of Rachel Corrie
Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23
June
21 / 22, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
June 20, 2003
Walter
Brasch
Down on Our Knees
Robert
Meeropol
The Son of the Rosenbergs on His Parents Death and Bush's America
Russell
Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Grannies and Baby Bells
Norman
Madarasz
Pierre Bourgault: the Life of a
Quebec Radical
Gary
Leupp
Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies
Marathon: the Finale
Hot Stories
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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July
4, 2003
Free Enough to Turn
Things Around
How Free Are
We?
By BEN TRIPP
My fellow Americans, it's time to take stock again:
how free are we? It is an appropriate time to ask such questions,
for it is Independence Day, the day America declared itself a
free country (some restrictions may apply). How free, I ask
again for emphasis, are we? How free is anybody, for that matter?
Us humans can't fly, for example, without the use of special
equipment such as airplanes or Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, so
we're inherently not completely free. In order to determine
just how free we Americans are, we must define freedom, or I
must, seeing as you are just the passive reader and I am actually
doing the writing. In fact, that seems like a violation of your
freedoms right there so I'll give you some space to define freedom,
and then I'll define freedom after you've had your say. Please
do not write directly on your computer monitor.
There, that was cathartic, wasn't it?
Please email your definition of freedom along with twenty dollars
to the address below, or if you don't have email and you're reading
this through someone else's window while they've stepped out
of the room, simply mail your definition to:
John 'Freedom Eagle' Ashcroft
US Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20530
--along with six yards of second-hand toilet paper.
My definition of freedom is as follows:
the absence of restrictions. Naturally this is a ridiculously
broad definition and suggests all manner of libertinous horseplay
ought to be allowed outright; by my definition a truly free people
would be allowed to rape, loot, pillage, and slaughter each other
in the street-- or worse, loiter. Thus it is reasonable to suppose
that a 'free people', as the term is normally construed, is only
free by degree; that is, its persons are free to act within the
context of what is generally considered to be acceptable behavior,
and not free to commit acts heinous or injurious. This restrictive
notion of freedom might seem to contradict the very notion of
freedom, and it certainly does fly in the face of my own definition, but that's why I'm not a Supreme
Court Justice. That and some other reasons we won't get into
here. Suffice it to say I was framed. But absolute freedom
of every individual to act as he pleases (and it is usually a
'he') will inevitably encroach on every other individual's freedom
to do same, and chaos results (see the Fall of Rome, also see
the Democratic National Convention of 1968). After all, if I'm
free to shoot the Hungarian electrician next door, he is no longer
free to practice the electrical arts, is he? Thus we must be
less than absolutely free if we are to remain free at all. This
is, however, a slippery slope (see also Sumo Wrestling).
The rather blushingly named HyperDic
of Internet fame has a more useful definition of freedom, primarily
because it breaks freedom down into two different senses:
1. The condition of being free. The
power to act or speak or think without externally imposed restraints.
2. Immunity from an obligation or duty.
Lucky for me, because that's where I
was going with this and I never would have gotten there on my
own. The nub of the crux of the essence of this matter is as
follows: here it is Independence Day, the day when we celebrate
our freedom as Americans. Nobody ever said we individual Americans
were absolutely free; robbery, jaywalking, and anthropophagy
are illegal in most states (unless you're a congressman or a
Catholic bishop). But we are collectively a free country, that's
the point, gist, and quiddity of it. Nobody tells America what
to do, and that was the original sense of the holiday, or in
other words, sense #1 above. We are a free country, mofugga,
watch out. This is also the type of freedom we defend to a lesser
degree as individuals: salient bit being the freedom to act,
speak, or think without EXTERNALLY IMPOSED RESTRAINTS. All caps
there, so you know it's a big deal. Just as America isn't run
by Germany, Americans aren't run by a police state (hypothetically
speaking; in practice, the Man will put you down, to coin a phrase).
The social contract suggests we should be free of external restraints,
as long as our behavior doesn't infringe on the freedoms of others,
which I think is what the Constitution was driving at. This
is the important freedom. The problem I see is that people have
gotten confused about this, and are starting to think the freedom
that matters is freedom #2. Immunity from an obligation or duty.
Here the old-school conservatives agree
with me: the problem with society today is nobody gives a f____
about their duty as citizens, parents, etc. (Conservatives always
put naughty words in lines that you have to fill in yourself,
which I think is way dirtier somehow than just coming right out
with the expletive, in this case 'fiddle'. What a bunch of silly
c____.) So what you get is an idea that freedom means freedom
from consequences. Now the conservatives and me will diverge
again back to our natural polar removes. To proceed: consequences
include if you infringe on somebody's freedom to be alive, you
go to jail. Everybody agrees with this except sociopaths and
certain parties over at the State Department. Laws are really
just a map defining the boundaries of freedom. The more laws,
the less free you are. America has, between the federal and
state levels, enough laws so that if they were printed on ordinary
typing paper (if you can even get ordinary typing paper any more)
and bound in a single book, it would take eight thousand years
to read the resulting volume, and even longer if you were a kangaroo.
In Illinois, for example, it is illegal to give a lit cigar
to a domesticated pet. But laws aren't the only boundary to
freedom. They're just boundaries with direct consequences.
Cultural boundaries work like laws except all you really get
for transgressing them is dirty looks.
With cultural boundaries, or taboos,
your freedom is restricted by the generally accepted idea of
acceptable behavior. Thus you are free to listen to Vanilla
Ice albums, as there is not yet any law against it. But it is
taboo to play the same albums outdoors at great volume between
the hours of 10:00 PM and 8:00 AM, at least not on my block.
However this is a source of great fun, which is what taboos
are all about for those who flaunt them. It is perhaps the central
struggle of our times that the reigning neo-conservatives want
to make our current taboos into laws, and make our current laws
into taboos. Rather a glib epigram, but there it is; quote at
your peril. In other words, neo-conservatives want to be immune
from obligations or duties they consider unpleasant, such as
electoral reforms, corporate law, or restrictions on the concentration
of money and power. Meanwhile, arrest anybody who speaks ill
of the Fed or engages in alternate lifestyle practices (except
sodomy- someone on the Supreme Court, probably William 'Wild
Bill' Rehnquist, has a secret life, methinks) and make the vices
of people worth less than eight million dollars illegal. Unfortunately,
the American idea of what freedom means has been so warped by
the discourse of these powerful individuals that everybody, not
just them, has come to regard immunity from obligation as the
same thing as the absence of restrictions.
This still seems like a fuzzy line to
draw, so I'll scribble over it with crayon. What is immunity
from obligation? Example: you are free to put your 130-pound
ass in a 6,500 pound vehicle to drive across town, although the
biosphere will eventually die. No law against it. I do not
suggest there should be; it's a matter of conscience. Example:
If you are a person or corporation rich enough to afford the
shell game, you can avoid paying taxes. However in due time
you will have marauding gangs of illiterate nine-year-olds burning
down your house. People who think freedom means immunity are
fooling themselves. They suffer skin cancer and muggings and
the breakdown of society just like everybody else does. When
Enron was free to do as it pleased, it caused rolling blackouts.
Then even the shareholders weren't free, because they were stuck
in the dark and couldn't operate the garage door opener. You
see? There is freedom to do whatever is permissible by law,
but there are taboos that restrict certain legally acceptable
behaviors (shaving a goat in a public fountain), and consequences
for other legally acceptable behaviors, so in the end the primary
restrictions upon our freedoms are internal ones. We don't want
to be despised and reviled (most of us don't) and we don't want
to die of skin cancer or attacks by marauding third-grade dropouts.
So we moderate our behavior as intelligent and caring citizens,
respectful of the freedoms of our fellow Americans.
Let us, to beat a dead horse, look at
Donald Rumsfeld's definition of freedom in Iraq: "It's untidy,
and freedom's untidy. Free people are free to make mistakes
and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live
their lives and do wonderful things." Yet it is this very
notion of freedom that is being eroded here at home just as fast
as this administration can pump the vitriol. Americans, ordinary
Americans, are less free than at any time in the last eighty
years: we are told to "watch what you say" (Ari Fleischer)
and the USA PATRIOT Act and its satellites have placed unmeasured
power into the hands of prurient puritanical lawmen with agendas
far removed from the expected course of their duties. We are
free to indulge ourselves as long as the indulgence suits the
powers that be. But freedom is not an indulgence, it is a privilege,
hard-won and easily lost, like the keys to Dad's car. Freedom
from obligations or duty? Freedom not to vote. Freedom to devour
and consume. Freedom to get fat and die of diabetes. Freedom
to hate and fear. Freedom to dodge Air National Guard duty.
This is the wrong kind of freedom, although there should be
no restrictions upon it except the internal bounds of decency
and common sense: conscience, in a word.
So while we celebrate our freedoms this
great day, blowing off our hands and barbecuing like Mongols,
let us remember that the freedom which matters most, the freedom
from externally imposed restraints, is going away fast. A people
afraid to dissent, afraid to speak out, and under threat of detention
for the simple act of being different, is not a free people.
But we are sedated, glutted on the other kind of freedom- the
freedom from obligation, or in other words the freedom of inaction.
(Speech! Speech! Cue music!) We don't feel obliged to our world,
its peoples, or our own bodies. We refuse our duties to history
and the future. And all the while our important freedoms- freedoms
of thought and speech and action- are being infringed upon like
crazy.
So how free are we? I'll finally answer
the question. We're not as free as we were, but we're still
free enough to make things turn around. Find a fight and stay
in it while you're still free to do so. Make yourself heard,
make yourself known. Start today, on the day we Americans celebrate
our freedom as a country, our national freedom from externally
imposed restraints. Because if we Americans start behaving with
conscience and accept our duties and obligations as citizens,
so will America. And then we can all get on with the business
of being truly free. Now excuse me, I have to go drink a large
quantity of beer and burn my eyebrows off with a Roman Candle.
May God, Goddess, natural selection or happenstance bless us
all, and happy 227th birthday, America!
Ben Tripp
is a screenwriter and cartoonist. Ben also has a
lot of outrageously priced crap for sale here. If his
writing starts to grate on your nerves, buy some and maybe he'll
flee to Mexico. If all else fails, he can be reached at: credel@earthlink.net
Weekend Edition
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M.
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Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry?
Jeffrey
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Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside
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Laura
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Alan Maass
You Call These Democrats an Alternative?
C.Y.
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Bush and Kindergarten
Noah Leavitt
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Joanne
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Ignacio
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Tenure, Censorship and Biotech at Berkeley
Bob
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Bush's Squeeze on Organic Farmers
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Big Bill Broonzy's Conversation with the Blues
Julie
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Fear Factor: Art, Terror and the First Amendment
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Engel
US Troops Outta Times Square
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Witherup, Guthrie, Albert, Hamod
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