THIS PAGE
TO A FRIEND
We're Allowing Dissolution
of Our Civil LibertiesThursday, October 26, 2006
By Paul Craig Roberts
During my professional lifetime, liberals and the left wing have focused on failures and misdeeds of the private sector, while libertarians and conservatives have focused on the failures and misdeeds of the public sector or government. It turns out that both sides are right.
The Enron case and the other accounting scandals of this new century are testimony to misdeeds driven by private sector greed, just as the unjustifiable war in Iraq is testimony to the abusive behavior of government.
Justice demands that we be always on guard against a prosecutor's case. However, the devastation wrought by fraud committed by a few at the top of Enron seems real. Thousands of employees lost jobs and pensions, and shareholders took a large hit.
We now know that fraud on the part of the Bush administration launched the ill-fated Iraqi war. The war's financial and human cost dwarfs the Enron catastrophe. The out-of-pocket cost of the war to date is $337 billion, with steep future costs for veterans' care and replacement of military equipment.
Approximately 3,000 U.S. troops have been killed, and Department of Veterans Affairs documents show that 100,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have been granted disability compensation. Estimates of Iraqi civilian "collateral damage" range from 30,000 to 655,000 deaths. America's reputation has been shattered, and the prospects for terrorist "blow-back" are higher.
The most important difference between these two fraud cases, however, is in accountability. The Enron executives have been brought to justice with prison sentences, multimillion-dollar fines and, in one case, death from a heart attack brought on, perhaps, by the stress of prosecution.
Even if the Bush administration and the rubber-stamp Congress are held accountable in next month's election, the ringleaders of the war are unlikely to be brought to justice. Polls indicate that the November election - if votes are honestly counted, an uncertainty with the electronic voting machines -- will hold Bush and the Republicans accountable by ending one-party rule.
A number of commentators have noted that with the Democrats as complicit in the war as the Republicans, a change in party control over one or both houses of Congress is not exactly accountability. But the problem is larger than that.
When government officials are held accountable, they are merely voted out of office and not generally prosecuted. They do not suffer the same severe punishments as their counterparts in the private sector. Enron destroyed jobs, not people's lives, and the financial cost was inconsequential compared to Iraq. The disparities in accountability and punishment for misdeeds in government and private sectors are striking.
So far in history no private sector interest has been able to achieve power over a population comparable to the power wielded by Stalin or Hitler, and no private sector power has been able to set aside civil liberties as Bush has done. The liberal-left notion that government is our protector from the private sector is as naive as the libertarian-right view that all wrong resides in the government. The common denominator of wrong is the fallibility of man.
The Founding Fathers gave us a government infused with sufficient power to deliver justice to a people who believe in justice, but structured to be incapable of enslaving the people. The government's powers were separated, dispersed and tied down with the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Law was made a shield of the innocent rather than a weapon in the hands of government.
This Blackstonian concept of law was gradually eroded by the Benthamite conception. In a nutshell, Jeremy Bentham's argument is that once democracy had triumphed over monarchy, people no longer had reason to fear government that was now the product of self-rule. Bentham argued that Blackstonian concepts constrained government from using its power to do good and that the restraints should be removed in the interests of the greatest good for the greatest number.
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For further information please refer to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml