{"id":2862,"date":"2011-06-28T11:52:53","date_gmt":"2011-06-28T16:52:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=2862"},"modified":"2011-06-28T15:07:33","modified_gmt":"2011-06-28T20:07:33","slug":"idolizing-absolute-power-assassination-bloodlust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2011\/06\/28\/idolizing-absolute-power-assassination-bloodlust\/","title":{"rendered":"Idolizing Absolute Power: Assassination Bloodlust"},"content":{"rendered":"

From today’s Counterpunch<\/strong><\/a> – <\/p>\n

Assassination Bloodlust
\nIdolizing Absolute Power<\/strong><\/p>\n

by JAMES BOVARD<\/p>\n

The Christian Science Monitor published a piece I wrote last month wrote opposing allowing the U.S. government to kill Americans without a warrant, trial, or any judicial niceties. The article, \u201cAssassination Nation: Are there any limits on President Obama’s license to kill?,\u201d <\/strong> <\/a>spurred a torrent of feedback on Yahoo.com that vividly illustrates how some Americans now view absolute power.<\/p>\n

Some folks believed that opposing \u201cextrajudicial killings\u201d should be a capital offense. My article mentioned an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit pressuring the Obama administration \u201cto disclose the legal standard it uses to place U.S. citizens on government kill lists.\u201d \u201cWill R.\u201d was indignant: \u201cWe need to send Bovard and the ACLU to Iran. You shoot traders and the ACLU are a bunch of traders.\u201d (I\u2019m not aware that the ACLU is engaged in either interstate or international commerce). \u201cJeff\u201d took the high ground: “Hopefully there will soon be enough to add James Bovard to the [targeted killing] list.” Another commenter – self-labeled as \u201cIdiot Savant\u201d – saw a grand opportunity: “Now if we can only convince [Obama] to use this [assassination] authority on the media, who have done more harm than any single terror target could ever dream of…” <\/p>\n

Many folks feared that any restrictions on U.S. government killing could be fatal. As \u201cRogmac\u201d groused: \u201cYou guys who are against killing these guys are going to be the death of all of us.\u201d Other commenters started from the self-evident truth that, as \u201cBert\u201d declared, \u201cIn the best interest of the United Sates and it’s citizen’s, someone has to be the judge, jury and executioner.\u201d This theory of government differs significantly from that proffered in the Federalist Papers. \u201cRich\u201d was sure everything had been done properly: \u201cThe warrants have already been signed, the execution orders have all been approved now we just need to find them and eradicate them.\u201d Having a president approve his own execution orders is more efficient than the procedures used by the U.S. government in earlier times. \u201cCoder Cable\u201d joined the pro-power parade: \u201cIn a time of war, the military (ie: President) is allowed to execute anyone for the crime of treason, assuming there is strong evidence to backup the claim.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was practically the only pro-assassination comment that referred to a standard of evidence. The question of whether government officials can be trusted to arbitrarily label Americans as enemies did not arise. Instead, most commenters favored \u201cfaith-based killings,\u201d blindly accepting the assertions of any political appointee as the ultimate evidence. \u201cDark Ruby Moon\u201d wrote: \u201cI won’t loose a minutes sleep over these people being eliminated…. One of the reasons presidential elections are so important is we are picking someone who must make such difficult decisions and who is in the end accountable for those decisions.\u201d Perhaps future presidential races will feature campaign promises such as \u201cVote for Smith – he won\u2019t have you killed unless all his top advisers agree you deserve to die\u201d? <\/p>\n

Commenter \u201cFU\u201d played the race card: \u201cJames bovard, I don’t think the killing started with Obama but I wonder if you would write the same article if the cowboy from Texas was pulling the trigger? Or is it that you are angry because the existence of plantations run with blacks are done in this country and Obama managed to become president? We would all be better off if bigots like you stopped writing crap.\u201d Bigotry is the only reason to oppose permitting a black president to kill Americans of all races and ethnicities. <\/p>\n

For \u201cRocketman1945,\u201d the fact that I opposed unlimited presidential power proved I was a foreigner: \u201cWOW! You can sure tell what side of the political spectrum this article came from. Not one word of support for the currant American President. Who are these people that write this drivel? Not Americans that’s for sure.\u201d <\/p>\n

The newspaper won few fans on Yahoo for publishing that piece. \u201cZaria\u201d said it was no surprise that an article that was \u201call nonesense\u201d came from the Monitor. \u201cNomadd\u201d denounced the Monitor as a \u201csocialist rag\u201d that should be \u201cput in supermarket checkout lines.\u201d Perhaps \u201cNomadd\u201d assumed that only left-wingers had anything to fear from this new power. (I never saw socialist rags in grocery checkout lines, except maybe at the Boston Food Co-op). <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the primary difference between some assassination advocates and Washington apologists for targeted killing is that the latter use spellcheckers. For both groups, \u201cdue process\u201d is an anachronism – if not a terrorist ploy. And for both groups, boundless groveling to the Commander-in-Chief is the new trademark of a good American. Anything less is national suicide. <\/p>\n

James Bovard is a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation<\/strong><\/a> and is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy, The Bush Betrayal, Terrorism and Tyranny, and other books. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From today’s Counterpunch – Assassination Bloodlust Idolizing Absolute Power by JAMES BOVARD The Christian Science Monitor published a piece I wrote last month wrote opposing allowing the U.S. government to kill Americans without a warrant, trial, or any judicial niceties. The article, \u201cAssassination Nation: Are there any limits on President Obama’s license to kill?,\u201d spurred […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[10,9,38,669,657,41],"class_list":{"0":"post-2862","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"tag-bush","7":"tag-lese-majeste","8":"tag-obama","10":"tag-rule-of-law","11":"tag-war-crimes"},"yoast_head":"\nIdolizing Absolute Power: Assassination Bloodlust - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2011\/06\/28\/idolizing-absolute-power-assassination-bloodlust\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Idolizing Absolute Power: Assassination Bloodlust - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From today’s Counterpunch – Assassination Bloodlust Idolizing Absolute Power by JAMES BOVARD The Christian Science Monitor published a piece I wrote last month wrote opposing allowing the U.S. government to kill Americans without a warrant, trial, or any judicial niceties. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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