Similar reasoning seems to be at stake in the present financial crisis. In nearly as direct a catch-phrase, we are warned that leaving financial obligations untouched as they are would be an economic “suicide pact,” leading to unpredictable, though likely dire, consequences for the country as a whole. (Bernanke: action is “urgently required to stabilize the situation and avert what otherwise could be very serious consequences for our financial markets and our economy.”) In times of threat to the overall security of the economy, background beliefs in individual economic decisions and legal obligations (more or less, some version of laissez faire capitalism) should not be deployed to constrain the necessary actions of executive officials. Why? Because structural security of the economy is a necessary condition for the good of us all. Thus, when economic times are particularly tough, we should empower executive officials to act as necessary to protect economic security.

Both of these rationales depend on a form of transcendental argument: the necessary condition for the possibility of X (enjoying liberty), is Y (the provision for security). My central question is: Can We Think Transcendentally about Something Other Than Security?

I do not question the rationality of relying on transcendental argument in these situations. Of course, there can be no civil liberties without security (but, naturally, there cannot be a whole lot of other things either). Likewise, naturally, there can be no individual economic prosperity without a sound economic system. So because national and economic security are necessary conditions for the enjoyment of other aspects of everyday life (economic and civil), their protection, in an important respect, gets priority. How that priority gets realized—whether, for example, particular civil liberties must have diminished protection—has to be worked out in all the intricate details of the particular circumstances of particular security threats.

My question is not with the calibration of the details, but with the limited occasions we have for deploying transcendental arguments in the first place. Why do we use them (and give them credit) only in the context of threats to security? There are many other potential uses of the transcendental argument for public policy. Educational opportunities, healthcare, minimum wages, adequate housing—to name a few features of everyday life—are also necessary conditions on which the good of all depends, I would argue. Without adequate provision for and distribution of these goods, we fail to provide the necessary conditions for individuals to pursue happiness or to realize the blessings of liberty. Liberty may not be worthwhile if one has joined a “suicide pact” (as the national security argument suggests), but neither is it worth so very much if one has been forced into a different kind of “suicide pact” for want of proper access to health care.

As a rhetorical matter, one reason transcendental arguments work well with security is that they are bolstered by fear. We fear the unknown consequences of not taking adequate precautionary action to protect the necessary condition and avoid the predicted dire consequences. If we don’t give up some of our liberties, we are told, we may suffer a “mushroom cloud” over an American city. It is a lot more difficult to motivate through fear the necessity of providing adequate educational opportunities (Fear of what? Long term social destabilization and democratic failure? These are considerations that are too abstract and long-term to serve as effective motivations.).

As a substantive matter, necessity seems less acute for other social goods. No dramatic events like terrorist attacks or market crashes mark the failure to provide for education and healthcare as they do for security. The effects of ignoring necessary social conditions are cumulative and too often invisible. Cumulative and dispersed as they may be, goods necessary for the enjoyment of everyday life are nonetheless necessary. Thus, both security and social goods can set conditions under which the enjoyment of everyday life and liberty becomes possible. To say this is not to establish whether government has the obligation to protect or provide for these other conditions in the way government is assumed to have the obligation to provide for security (I happen to think government does). I do wish to suggest, however, that as we contemplate acting on the basis of a transcendental argument to allocate resources on behalf of economic security, we might begin to think anew about whether we should act on other transcendental arguments to allocate resources in support of equally important social conditions necessary for the public good.

Tom Walsh has identified a key issue relating to democratic participation in light of police tactics at public gatherings: must individuals choose between facing arrest, or participating in (or reporting on) democratic interaction only from a distance? At political events—where public discussion and dissent might occur—government authorities have increasingly insisted on distance, in the name of order and property protection. Distance is a concept at home with the rhetoric of “out of touch” employed by both presidential candidates. A conundrum emerges, so it seems. “Out of touch” suggests that a candidate has not interacted with ordinary people closely enough to understand the issues and problems they face. Yet, when the people try to approach, to close the distance in an unscripted, more immediate personal encounter, they risk arrest and riot charges. No doubt, when public encounters are used to disrupt legitimate democratic participation by others, the need for public order prevails. Order, however, is how authorities justify maintaining democratic distance. When the public is prevented from drawing near on the grounds that officials wish to avoid “verbal tumult, discord, and even offensive utterance,” as Justice Harlan puts it in Cohen v. California, being advised that one can participate in democracy only at a distance, is a sign of democratic weakness, not strength (to invert Justice Harlan’s formula—“That the air may at times seem filled with verbal cacophony is, in this sense not a sign of weakness but of strength”). In light of the demand for distance, I think governing officials need reminding that sometimes democracy’s a riot, and that’s a good thing.

These revitalized voters are reported to be religiously-motivated voters, more specific than the general “values-voter.” (Is it even possible to be a “non-values voter”? After all, voting is always about values, the only questions are whose values and which ones). What do they expect from Gov. Palin, and what do they see in her? What conception of church-state relations does she have? How might her specific religious beliefs inform her worldview as a Vice President or President? Tracing her roots in the charismatic beliefs of the Assemblies of God Church, and her comments this summer to the Wasilla Assembly of God Church, I offer some reflections.

In her recorded talk to the Wasilla Assembly of God Church, she leaves no doubt that the Church has continuing importance to her, telling the Master’s Commission graduates to whom she is speaking, that as Governor she is “where God has sent me from underneath the umbrella of this Church.” She also articulates a view of religion’s role in ordinary politics. She wants to build a natural gas pipeline. This is a matter of ordinary political policy about which there may be differing views based on economic, social, environmental, or other public concerns. Gov. Palin adds that “God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gasline built . . . so pray for that.” I take this to be an expression that her policy preferences are God’s policy preferences. Other versions of the relation between policy and prayer would approach the issue with more humility: this is my best judgment of what would be the right policy for the people of Alaska, and let’s pray that I have the wisdom to make the right choice, and that God will bless Alaska. This version does not equate ex ante a specific policy preference with God’s will. Gov. Palin’s version does.

In the same speech, Gov. Palin continues by claiming that “I can do my job” to develop Alaska’s natural resources, to get roads paved, to provide guns for state police, and to fund public schools, as she explains. But, “all of that stuff doesn’t do any good if the people of Alaska’s heart isn’t right with God” [sic]. Already, this statement reveals a distinctive view about the relation between government policy and specific religious practice (one in which it is necessary to have one’s heart right with God). She continues: “That’s gonna be your job. As I’m doing my job—let’s strike this deal—your job is gonna be to be out there reaching the people, hurting people throughout Alaska, and we can work together to make sure God’s will be done here.” Putting the two thoughts together, Gov. Palin—as a sitting Governor—is suggesting that successful governance doesn’t matter unless government works together with active religious practitioners to ensure that God’s will is done. She does not ask her audience to go out into their communities and volunteer to provide services for the needy, or to work on developing creative ways government might better serve the people. She asks them to attend to the people’s hearts, and she’ll take care of the rest (fulfill God’s will). Moreover, it would seem that for Gov. Palin prayer and active religious activity of “reaching the people” are necessary conditions for successful governance. She and Assemblies of God believers can work together to impose God’s will on Alaska. By way of contrast, remember John F. Kennedy’s speech on religion where he states, “I believe in an America . . . where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials.” I hear Gov. Palin speaking in direct conflict with President Kennedy.

What motivates such a vision of the relations between governing and religious belief? I think some motivation must derive from the Assemblies of God (“AG”) belief in speaking in tongues. Although she has not stated whether she participated in the practice, speaking in tongues is a fundamental AG practice, and by growing up in and attending the church until just a few years ago, she would no doubt have regularly experienced services in which individuals spoke in tongues. What follows is a brief account of the practice. The AG believe that after Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, he sent the Holy Spirit to comfort his church. They believe that the Holy Spirit is manifest through the speaking in tongues. The first example of this is in the Book of Acts 2:1-4 on the day of Pentecost (thus the Assemblies of God are “Pentecostals”). The passage states that, “[a]ll of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages [tongues], as the Spirit gave them ability.” (New Revised Standard Version). On the basis of this miracle and other Pauline exhortations, the practice of speaking in tongues through baptism in the spirit is central to the AG. Baptism in the spirit manifests one’s obedience to God and one’s availability to serve as a vessel for God’s will. The fact that one speaks “in tongues” is a manifestation of the absence of conscious control over the voice of God who speaks through the sounds or “language” of tongues; the speaker, however, will not understand the content of what God says. Every person can be baptized in the spirit, but only some persons have the gift from God that allow them to address a congregation in tongues, requiring someone else gifted as an “interpreter” to deliver the message of the Spirit.

If every member of the church can speak in tongues, and if speaking in tongues is the ultimate manifestation of one’s belief in Christ and one’s salvation (another key AG belief), then it seems to follow that the ultimate manifestation of one’s relation to God is to become a vessel for God’s will. In fulfilling God’s will, one makes oneself available to God, giving up conscious control even of one’s own voice in order to allow the Spirit to direct one’s life. Applied to governing, it seems that under this view, one would want to become the vehicle for fulfilling God’s will on earth. One need have no agency over the process of governing itself. By way of obedience to God, one relies on content-independent reasons for action because one is simply obeying God, not conducting an independent inquiry into what the right action would be. Here’s where governing from the gut must appeal to many, when “the gut” is a euphemism for God’s will. One does not need to rely on content-dependent reasons for policies if one is fulfilling God’s will. Greater certainty can attend one’s decisions if they are manifestations of God’s will or God’s plans. Such a view is manifest in another of Gov. Palin’s remarks, this one later spun to Charles Gibson as inspired by Lincoln. Gov. Palin asked the AG audience to pray, “[a]lso for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending them out on a task that is from God. That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for — that there is a plan, and that plan is God’s plan.” The plan is not the people’s plan for which it might be thought desirable by some to have God’s post hoc blessing (and perhaps God’s process-wisdom and guidance in having devised the plan in the first place); rather it is God’s plan, God’s task, for which our national leaders and soldiers are the vehicles. This religious worldview is a long way from the more traditional invocation of God’s blessings or guidance in human decisions, or President Kennedy’s claim that there be no imposition by a religious body (or God?) on official actions.

From this one video, we have only a small sample from which to draw conclusions about Gov. Palin’s views on the relation between government and religion. Yet, her views appear to be remarkably consistent with what one might expect from an Assemblies of God political theory (has anyone ever developed such a theory?). The primary goals are to render people’s hearts “right with God,” and to use the institutions of State as vessels for manifesting God’s will (like using oneself as a vessel for God’s will). They are also remarkably consistent with a view that distrusts and despises government as (spiritually) corrupt. If the modern Republican Party is partially based on the fundamental idea that government corrupts the freedom of private markets, some religiously-motivated voters see government as often a barrier to fulfilling God’s will (notice how God’s will in Alaska is market-friendly). If one can get rid of many governing decision-making processes (which are supposed to be market inefficient anyway), and provide a more immediate way of manifesting God’s will (through prayer), then all the better. Who needs knowledge-based, content-dependent reasons – especially when the process of governing by and for the people is thought to be one of the very problems in the first place?

It is clear that she follows the current administration in opposition to President Kennedy, who “believe[d] in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.” Beyond this clear fact, there is a pressing question: in whose tongue(s) would Gov. Palin speak? Would she speak with the voice of the people, or with the purported voice of God? What role would own her voice play in the process of governing?

These pictures from the NY Times tell the story: a “free speech” cage constructed for “free speech,” a convention location completely fenced for security, riot-gear police controlling public space. These kinds of “free speech” tactics have become a staple at President Bush’s venues, rendering dissent invisible, and were used at convention sites in 2004, surviving judicial challenges. Timothy Zick has written about this problem here at CoOp in posts like this one, and I have written about this issue here. There is something discordant in the idea of free speech located in a guarded cage. There is also something discordant about a public sphere ringed by riot police. Yet, there is also something that has become increasingly ineffectual about politics in public – at least spontaneous public politics.

Hannah Arendt, for one, proclaimed the central importance of public speech and the public appearance of persons who could engage each other in discourse over public matters. Without the place of public appearances, she argued, we lose something central to both politics and personal identity. I think she was right about this, which is why I find the riot police, the cages, and the control of public space troubling. It is easy to find these official practices of no moment. As I’ve already suggested, it is not as if we expect any of the public appearances led by protesters to amount to much practically speaking. But our expectations are shaped by the very scripting of political events as they occur in carefully controlled environments like each political party’s conventions. Nothing, or very little, spontaneous happens, and there is no place in which undifferentiated members of the public encounter each other in a political setting. I do not intend to criticize conventions on this score – of course they want to control message, allow only party stalwarts to speak, etc. But the very event of the convention becomes a place of politics, and thus a place where others – call them dissenters, or those who want to emphasize their views – would like to make their views visible, even if only on the fringes. One group, the Iraq War Veterans Against the War led a peaceful “protest” march through Denver. Yet, the LA Times reports that the protest, as it approached the Pepsi Center, was increasingly enclosed by riot police, and unable to approach close to the venue. Here’s where the riot police, isolating the main political attraction and dominating all other public places, seem discordant with democratic practice. It becomes difficult to tell whether the show of state force is meant to provide security against the “threatening hordes” outside, or to say that politics shall only happen here, in the Pepsi Center, and nowhere else.

The importance of speech at specific places, and the form of public address, are ineliminable parts of our democratic practice. Martin Luther King’s speech on the mall was surely significant in part because of where it occurred and because of the number of people who could hear it in person. In this vein, Sen. Obama’s speech at the Democratic Convention at Mile High Stadium to over 75,000 people was significant for the public appearance in the presence of so many people. Public presence matters to our politics. This fact is why we cannot replace a politics of presence with a digital politics. Many people like me watched Sen. Obama’s speech on television, others on the web. One might argue that for us it did not matter whether Obama gave the speech in a studio or in a stadium. Yet it does matter – a lot – because presence and place matter to speech and politics.

Public presence, on the more spontaneous, small scale, has become relatively ineffectual, I would argue, because of the increased use of state power to control politics in public. Who wants to risk getting rounded up when the police decide to conduct a mass arrest? When they do so, because the arrests are not individualized, everyone in the area gets arrested, participant and observer alike. The persistence of these kind of practices make dissent more costly, and therefore less likely. No doubt, public dissent can become public disorder, creating risks for injuries and property as Seattle in 1999 demonstrated. Just the same, however, political dissent and discussion rendered publicly invisible creates its own risks for the vitality of our democracy. These latter risks are of far more consequence.

Would it not violate Due Process to hold Hamdan indefinitely after completing his sentence for a criminal conviction? Under the reasoning provided by the Supreme Court in Hamdi, perhaps not.

Finding authority for detentions for the duration of the conflict against Taliban forces in Afghanistan under the Authorization to Use Military Force, the Hamdi Court concluded: “The United States may detain, for the duration of these hostilities, individuals legitimately determined to be Taliban combatants who ‘engaged in an armed conflict against the United States.’ If the record establishes that United States troops are still involved in active combat in Afghanistan, those detentions are part of the exercise of ‘necessary and appropriate force,’ and therefore are authorized by the AUMF.” Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507, 521 (2004).

I would assume that a conviction for material support of terrorism, in addition to the Combatant Status Review Tribunal determinations, would support the claim that Hamdan has been “legitimately determined to be [a] Taliban combatant[].” Thus, there will be an argument that Hamdan’s status has not changed as someone properly designated an enemy combatant, even if he has completed a sentence for a criminal conviction. With hostilities continuing, if not worsening, in Afghanistan, the scene is set for the ugly possibility that having failed to obtain a sought-after life sentence, the government might resume its practice of merely holding individuals for the duration of conflict under the AUMF. With both Presidential candidates vowing increased military activity in Afghanistan, in the near term, such detention would be indefinite.

There has been no shortage of criticism for this flawed system from human rights groups as well as governments abroad. This weekend President Bush gave a speech in Bangkok in which he spoke of his “deep concerns over religious freedom and human rights” in China. Putting pressure on other nations over their human rights abuses has been an important part of our foreign policy for over half a century, which has required the U.S. to present itself as that beacon of freedom and liberty. As many others have said many times, U.S. practices that have included torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, indefinite detentions, the attempt to evade constitutional checks by courts or Congress, and military tribunals have all undermined our international standing to speak about the human rights abuses of others. Becuase of these policies and practices, the President has undermined some of the moral authority that would ground his remarks about China’s human rights record.

For the reader who has made it to the end of this post, here is where John Edwards’ recent revelation of marital infidelity is relevant. Maureen Dowd comments on Edwards in the NY Times: “He has an affair with Hunter, while he’s honing his speech on the imperative to ‘live in a moral, honest, just America.’” Edwards receives particular condemnation not simply for his infidelity (and not simply for having placed the whole Democratic Party at risk), but for what the apparent hypocrisy might reveal about his character. If we translate at the national level “constitutional culture” for personal character, the worry is that our own apparent hypocrisy reveals something very troubling about our own constitutional culture. Tabloid T.V. apologies won’t do at the national level, but a new administration’s commitment to releasing Hamdan after serving his sentence, and shutting down further military tribunals in favor of civilian or military courts just might.