Blogging for America

I attended the "Thinking in Dark Times: The Legacy of Hannah Arendt" conference at Bard College this weekend (www.bard.edu/Arendt). I was struck by the relevancy of her thinking to the times we live in. Arendt valued constitutional republics, of which the US was once the premiere example.
I was also struck by the disconnect between some of the presenters analysis of her work as a public intellectual thinking in dark times --she thought and wrote on the political issues of her time from the Holocaust through the Pentagon Papers--and the dark times we are living in today.
We live in dark times for our constitutional republic: our constitution has been decimated. The president not only is dismissive of international treaties and documents [for instance, the ABM Treaty --see: archives.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/12/13/rec.bush.abm/, and the "pesky" according to Bush (9/17/06) Geneva Conventions] , he has called the Constitution "a god damned piece of paper" (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmc60JmaLbE)

• We no longer have the checks and balances of the three branches of government a la Montesquieu, Instead we have an Imperial Presidency. (one who can declare war, (re-)define torture, who disregards the Constitution).
• We no longer afford non-citizens --resident aliens or illegal aliens, no difference-- the protections of our Bill of Rights (see the US Patriot Act).
• Habeas Corpus, the corner stone of our democracy, has been eliminated for anyone who the President declares is an "enemy combatant" or is against the administration.
• The right of free speech and the right to dissent have been virtually eliminated by being boxed in "free speech zones" far from the President's eyes and ears, or that of the media and the public's.
• Civil disobedience once thought to be a prime tool for change has been legislated out of existence--one needs a permit, one needs to stay in cordoned off zones, paying attention to street lights, fearful of arrest and deportation if one is not a citizen.
• Our elections are contested, voter registrations are disappeared, and now with voting machines that leave no paper trial and are designed by friends of this administration's (Diebold) [see, for instance: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm].
• Immigrants, the life blood of our country--for who among us do not have some immigrant blood--are being so othered that we are building fences to keep out certain immigrants by equating them with terrorists. None of the 9/11 terrorists came into the country illegally. See the Cato Institute's article http://www.freetrade.org/node/260.

We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis. These are very dark times for our constitutional republic.