The Other Side of the Diatribe.
The Catholic blog world is aflame with protest over Notre Dame Law School giving an honorary degree to the US President Barach Obama because of his perceived hostility to the anti-abortion legislative agenda. It's getting ugly.
Here is what I hope Notre Dame meant by it in keeping with it's Catholic mission. I am an alumn of another "Catholic" law school, Georgetown, and have no particular dog in this fight. But there is obviously another side to the diatribe.
For the last 8 years we have had an administration openly hostile to the Rule of Law and even in some cases attorneys themselves. Attorneys who represented in civil rights cases muslims persecuted in the wake of the 9-11 anti-muslim phobia found themselves targetted by the administration and some extreme cases persecuted by the Justice Department. The feds suspended the Rule of law in the "war on terror" by recreating wild interpretations of the Geneva Conventions to justify the morally obscene practice of torture, they refused normal counsel to anyone deemed an "enemy combattant" after neighbors sold neighbors for the land once we put bounties and rewards out on turning in "taliban" and others deemed hostile to ruling tribes or opposing muslim groups. People were slandered and tortured without justice. The rule of Habeus Corpus was suspended. People languished in Guatanamo for literally years without any credible evidence against them, without benefit of trial or even competent representation. The law became victim to a political agenda.
For the last 6 years at least we have engaged in Diplomacy by War rather than Diplomacy by Diplomacy. We have alientated the planet, we have bullied the world. The world was disgusted with us. It was no longer safe to be an American in parts of the world for the first time in the nation's history.
The basic normal civil liberties that make one feel comfortably American like the right to basic privacy was violated by a rampant secret program wherein the NSA violated the FISA laws and spied on American citizens because they were peace activists or democratic activists, scanning, reading and archiving their emails after diverting them to NSA servers without their knowledge or permission. Phone records and calls were tapped by the government without permission and in violation of FISA warrant requirements. Again, the law fell victim to a political agenda.
Bush was a President first appointed by fiat of the Supreme Court against the Popular vote that Gore won in 2000 after he nobly conceeded to a very dubious Supreme Court precedent concerning Florida election law and the mysterious phenomenon of the largely Jewish population of West Palm Beach punching butterflies in hanging chad ballots for Pat Buchanan. Go Figure. Then in 2004, for the re-election Bush, it is widely now believed, won only by an E-Coup involving what some believe firmly was deliberate election fraud in electronic machinery and blatant suppression tactics in Ohio and elsewhere suppressing the African American, liberal student and other democratic votes through a variety of tricks of the trade which were well documented and litigated. Again, the Bush administration appeared to be flaunting the laws. Again, the law fell victim to a political agenda.
For the last 8 years, the Bush Administration in the eyes of International Law was a renegade deviant flaunting the well established acceptable standards of and rules of law in civilized nations engaging in oil wars and war profiteering at the expense of people who didn't deserve to die- and the rest of the world was deeply outraged. We didn't get the news coverage here, but if you were in Europe when the Iraq war broke out you didn't miss the press coverage of literally millions and millions of europeans taking to the streets with signs saying "Americans go Home" and the like. Parts of the German government actually branded Rumsfeld as a "war criminal."
We killed literally hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Bush lied about why.
When hundreds of thousands of people die for a lie, you must ask why until you get to the truth.
Barach Obama is an attorney. He is an attorney who was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. His wife is an attorney. His Vice President is an attorney.
He is an attorney who stands for the resurrection of the Rule of Law. He is an attorney who respects the Law.
He has announced a plan to shut down the war and Gitmo and bring our troops home with responsible redeploymnet. He has just by his to date pronouncements and initiatives put us on the road to a restored respected international place in the neighborhood of nations.
Because he stands for the Rule of Law against the abuses of a lawless society, which can quickly degenerate, and did, into war and torture, and because he has a commitment to restoring human rights of those abused everywhere, I assume a Catholic Law School feels elated to have the opportunity to give this most distinguished man an honorary degree.
As for the abortion legislative agenda, he is committed to making sure that abortion is not a choice anyone has to make.
It is really time to grow up. It is really time to see that the subtlety of the issue is deeper than the screaming blogosphere understands.
The sitting President of the United States is being given an honorary degree by a law school. I say Horrah. God bless Notre Dame.
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