askeptic, what arrogance of power, you ask.
Let me suggest that a justice of the Supreme Court going on a hunting trip with the Vice-president while a case to which the Vice-president is a substantive party and in which the Vice-president has a political interest and then saying that the rules do not prohibit it when the rules are written by that justice and enforced by that justice, is arrogant and that arrogance derives from the justices’ position of power. When a person is expected to police his own behavior, as is the case with justices of the Supreme Court, decided that the rules either do not apply to him or that he is exempt from the rules, that is the arrogance of power.
Let me suggest that when a elected official chooses to go on an expensive trip with a justice of the Supreme Court when there is pending before the Court a case in which the elected official is a party and has a substantial interest but can not recognize that reasonable men might reasonably question the propriety of the whole thing, that is an example of arrogance derived from power.
Let me suggest that when a high official insists that chemical, biological and nuclear weapons will turn up in a conquered and occupied country, when the conquest and occupation was premised on the country’s possession and potential use or distribution of those weapons, when a year of searching has turned up not so much as forensic traces of such weapons, that is arrogance derived from power.
Let me suggest when hundreds of men are imprisoned at an off shore military (naval) base, and a citizen is imprisoned on a domestic military base, without access to the basic tools provided by the organic law and the legal tradition of this country to challenge their imprisonment under the claim that those men are members of a class heretofore unknown to the law for whom there is no legal recourse, that is the arrogance of power.
Let me suggest that to now claim that a foreign sovereign nation which now appears to have had little or nothing to do with an irregular attack of the domestic territory and little or no capability to do the nation harm was invaded and occupied in order to rid the foreign nation of a bad ruler and to bring that foreign the blessings of liberty is the arrogance of power when the justification for the invasion was that the foreign nation was complicit in the irregular attack and was on the verge of attacking the us and that immediate action was needed to forestall such and attack.
Let me suggest that for the national leaders to publicly insist that tax cuts that facilitate national budget deficits and which independent government agencies conclude will have negligible effects on economic growth will cause the nation to become prosperous is the arrogance of power.
Let me suggest that when the national leader beats the drum for free trade, and with it the necessary flow of employment to foreign shores in search of cheap labor, while doing little or nothing to regulate the rate of outflow of employment or assuage the plight of those displaced by the outflow and proclaims the whole works a good thing, that is the arrogance of power.
Let me suggest that when a government agency requires a native born middle aged man of portly physique and clean shaven face to traipse around domestic airports in his stocking feet in the name of combating air piracy and terrorist attack, that is the arrogance of power.
Let me suggest that when ever a government does unproductive stuff that benefits the few a the cost of the many, comforts the comfortable and afflicts the afflicted, panders to the political donor class, purports to think that people really pay $1500.00 for the privilege of eating a hot dog and a small bag of potato chips while listening to one public official or another expound on their own fitness for office, and claims that their feelings are hurt when someone suggests that the hot dog eaters might just be buying access to the corridors of power, that is the arrogance of power.
Goodness, I enjoy a flight of rhetoric.
