Book Review: With Liberty and Justice for Some

With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, by Glenn Greenwald (2011, Metropolitan Books, New York) reports the news: powerful people have attacked a founding principle of the United States, equality under law. These people, politicians and corporate interests, have reached a point where they dismiss Federal laws and international agreements openly, even boastfully. Greenwald provides in-text sources for the modern-day events and quotes the Founding Fathers or gives Constitutional sources for his background references. However, he does not give footnotes or endnotes should a reader wish to check the references.

Greenwald’s communication strength rests on his passion. He does very well at saying, “This happened, here’s proof it happened, and it’s wrong because it’s against the Constitution and the intentions of the Founding Fathers!” He makes this statement in reference to equality under the law very thoroughly, focusing on events from the President Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon to President Obama’s refusal to investigate or prosecute either Bush Administration torturers or Wall Street’s grand-scale fraudsters.

Greenwald spares neither parties nor personalities; liberals, conservatives, and moderates will each find some discomfort here. He also removes the illusions of those who still see the media as eager to expose wrongdoing. Greenwald concludes with a contrasting chapter on the lot of the less powerful, pointing out that the US prison population is huge and tends to be minorities and poor people. He points out that this growing prison population, largely non-violent drug users, does not correlate to either lower crime rates or reductions in drug use. In this chapter, he gives a good background to suggest why this continues despite its inability to achieve the stated results.

The flaws in Greenwald’s communication derive from his failure to go beyond passion. Except in the last chapter, he gives little background for his characters or their times. For example, why would Nixon do something as desperate as the Watergate break-in when he was leading in the polls and very likely to be re-elected without that? Why do people who make millions of dollars annually seek to make more millions by violating the law?

More importantly, he only cries foul; he does not suggest changes to make or even consequences of the current course. This negates his passion. Moving people to strong feelings without asking them to do something brings them depression and frustration, not understanding and satisfaction.

In short, With Liberty and Justice for Some gives a clear and impassioned picture of the decay of equality under law in the United States, but does little to help one understand why this is happening or what to do about it.

Trusting souls

Dislcaimer: I am ordained through the Universal Life Church. I don't encourage you to blindly take my word any more than I want you to do that with anyone else.

Well, now it's the Pope. He's only accused of letting it go on, but now there's no level of the Catholic Church not touched by the child-molesting scandals. Just to add to the cringe factor, a preacher close to "Il Papa" recently compared the continued accusations of priestly assaults on children to centuries of persecution of the Jews. The self-righteousness is no news in child-molesting cases, especially by clergy, but this level of it truly brings nausea. There's still more underneath, though, and it's not limited to Catholics or to Christians in general. This failing doesn't really have anything to do with religious beliefs; it's about belief in people, not gods.

Mixing faith with money and power is a mistake that plagues the human race. Starting from fields that focus on money, we can at least suggest regulating banks, brokers and insurance companies so that we don't have to depend upon the honesty of the Bernie Madoffs of this world. Even at that level, the people don't want to accept regulation, but we can talk about it and in many places succeed in regulating rather than blindly trusting.

Moving right along to power, political regimes vary widely. Whereever one person or group is in charge, corruption and abuse are predictable. Having two parties, as in the USA, improves the situation somewhat because the parties will keep an eye on each other in order to get ammunition for election campaigns. Sometimes it's possible to pass regulations that limit the excesses of campaigns and other abuses, and occasionally those laws require transparency, leading to the possibility of exposure of abuses outside the framework of parties by "cause" organizations or people with a personal interest. Other countries with more parties and/or more transparency may do a better job; I would need extensive research to know.

Then there's faith. Oh, boy. People who claim to speak for God, the gods, or whatever you worship can be sincere. It gets more difficult to stay that way when they realize that the aura of deity can conceal any number of past sins and current issues. A priest in Wisconsin took young boys to his cabin in the woods for some private time, as did the priest in my home town with his own cabin, both many years ago now. Were either of these men a banker, politician or ordinary person, the parents could have threatened exposure based simply on the appearance or possibility of molesting, and that very likely would have happened. Clergy has the cover of the parents' blind belief not in their gods but in the people who claim to represent those gods. The priests' activities came to light decades later. The one in Wisconsin died well before anyone asked questions, and he had long ago been removed from ministry over the same issue, but apparently the Church did not see fit to follow up or warn anyone about him. He had a more comfortable life than almost any other child molester simply because he was clergy.

School teachers, these days, are watched closely. Scout leaders too. It's past time to bring organizations of religion (any religion) into the clear light of day. We need to keep believing in the values of education, nature and spirituality. We just can't go on trusting anyone blindly.