nomodifier's blog

A Klee painting named "Angelus Novus" shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed.

A First Amendment-destroying bill that did pass is the comically titled USA Patriot Act, a gargantuan assault on the entire Constitution and the notion of justice in general. Much has been made of this law – which was passed in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks – especially its destruction of judicial process and attorney-client privilege, its expansion of surveillance and secret searches, and its green light for the CIA to conduct domestic operations. But one new power under the law has been almost completely overlooked.

A First Amendment-destroying bill that did pass is the comically titled USA Patriot Act, a gargantuan assault on the entire Constitution and the notion of justice in general. Much has been made of this law – which was passed in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks – especially its destruction of judicial process and attorney-client privilege, its expansion of surveillance and secret searches, and its green light for the CIA to conduct domestic operations. But one new power under the law has been almost completely overlooked.

If we look beneath the surface of our public affairs, we can discern one fundamental fact, namely: a great redistribution of power between society and the State. This is the fact that interests the student of civilization. He has only a secondary or derived interest in matters like price-fixing, wage-fixing, inflation, political banking, "agricultural adjustment," and similar items of State policy that fill the pages of newspapers and the mouths of publicists and politicians. All these can be run up under one head.

If we look beneath the surface of our public affairs, we can discern one fundamental fact, namely: a great redistribution of power between society and the State. This is the fact that interests the student of civilization. He has only a secondary or derived interest in matters like price-fixing, wage-fixing, inflation, political banking, "agricultural adjustment," and similar items of State policy that fill the pages of newspapers and the mouths of publicists and politicians. All these can be run up under one head.