I had not planned to do another blog till at Pantheacon, but upon reflection, I am making an exception.  I was one of many who rejoiced when Barack Obama won the presidency, bringing I hoped an end to the lawlessness and Caesarism now endorsed by the Republican Party.  I still rejoice, but not quite so enthusiastically.

The Obama administration has acted to defend some of the worst excesses by the Bush administration regarding torture and executive overreach.  Basically, he defends placing Presidents and their aides  above the rule of law, enabling them to break the law and then prevent their victims
— or anyone else — from holding them accountable in court by invoking the magic words “state secrets.” That Obama is a more decent man than George Bush is irrelevant.  We are talking about preserving our constitutional order, which should trump the desires of any person.

Many of us voted and campaigned for Obama because of our disgust with the moral depravity that had come to characterize rule by thugs.  A depravity that still dominates the Republican Party.  Now on one very important point Obama is seeking to enshrine a principle of Caesarism as a principle of American government that is alien to te Bill of Rights and our Founding Fathers. For a good overview, see Glenn Greenwald’s excellent analysis here  and here   at Salon, and if you, like me, think of people of good will should take care of the world we live in, human and more-than-human alike, go to this  ACLU site and register your opposition.

Even a fundamentally decent man like Barrack Obama can be mesmerized by the allure of power.  That is why we have a constitution.  But we need to defend it against decent men as well as against the most venal.  Decent men may be even more dangerous in this regard, for they create the precedents that bad men later use to do more harm than they otherwise would.