This chapter is based upon a presentation delivered in Chicago on 3 June 2006 during "9/11:  Revealing the Truth, Reclaiming our Future".  It considers some of the most important moral, political, and religious aspects of the events of 9/11, including the contribution that moral theory can make to understanding them.  An effort has been made to retain the quality of the original with only slight revisions in this version.
 

The questions I want to discuss include: why was 9/11 wrong? For that matter, what's wrong with murder, robbery kidnapping and rape? Now we all know that murder, robbery, kidnapping, and rape are wrong, but could be explain why?  It's not simply a question of legality.  You could say it's against the law, but, during the history of the United States slavery has been perfectly legal.  It wasn't against the law, and yet slavery is immoral if anything is immoral.  Consuming alcohol as a beverage by the drink, so far as I can see, is perfectly moral—as opposed to public drunkenness or drunk driving—and yet during "The Noble Experiment" it was illegal.  So you can't answer the question of why something is wrong merely by referring to the law.  

1.  Is biology the source of morality?

Several answers have been proposed to this question.  For example, Michael Ruse, a Canadian philosopher of biology and E. O. Wilson, the noted naturalist from Harvard, have suggested there are three alternatives for founding morality: one is biology, the second is religion, and the third is some abstract domain (Ruse and Wilson 1986).  From biology we can derive ideas such as selfish genes.  The idea that genes want to perpetuate themselves from generation to generation is a possible source of morality, but obviously it could also motivate, for example, a serial rapist, which means it is clearly not an adequate foundation for an understanding of morality.  

Another is the notion of kin selection, namely:  that you tend to favor or give preference to individuals in relation to their genetic proximity to you.  But that's certainly compatible with, say, hiring a cousin who's incompetent over a more qualified stranger for a job, and that's certainly not moral.  A third is the idea of reciprocal altruism, or "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours".  A typical example that contradicts that notion is insider trading.  Martha Stewart went to jail and Bill Frist may well yet for insider trading. Well, that's certainly no basis for morality. 

A forth is social cooperation.  Social cooperation sounds promising until you consider that there are many organizations such as the Mafia or the Third Reich that show a high degree of social cooperation.  And yet it is very clear that what they are doing is not moral acts.  So the idea of founding morality on biology does not appear to be especially promising.

2.  Is religion the source of morality?

So what about religion?  Well, we seem to have three alternatives when it comes to religion: we have religious leaders; we have religious books; and we have religious doctrines.  I'll never forget the day after 9/11, standing in my kitchen with my wife, we had the 700 club on and Jerry Falwell was there talking with Pat Robertson about the events of the previous day. And Jerry was saying to Pat, "Well, you know, Pat, I think that it's just God's punishment because we have too many lesbians and homosexuals, too many abortions and the ACLU."  

And I turned to my wife and I said, "What's this ACLU thing?"  And I will tell you, I am going to explain it, but it took me a while to sort it out, and it certainly wasn't obvious on the face of it.  So you have one of these religious leaders, Pat Robertson, who has advocated the assassination of Hugo Chavez.  Now this is very peculiar to me because we have here an exemplification of what I call "Old Testament Christians": they seem to remember all the punitive doctrines of the Old Testament where God is a God of vengeance and revenge, and none of the doctrines of love and compassion that Christ taught. So I find this a very anomalous attitude or display of values to be coming from persons who pose as Christian ministers.
 
What about books?  You can find a lot of moral maxims in the Bible.  The Bible is an interesting work because it is central to both Judaism and Christianity.  But you might want to ask yourself about the morality of some of the maxims you can find there, for example: Leviticus 20:10 says:  "If a man commits adultery with another man's wife, with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and adulteress must be put to death."  Now some may think that's a high price to pay for an affair, but there it is.

Or compare Leviticus 20:27:  "A man or a woman who is a medium or a spiritualist among you must be put to death."  And I think of Dionne Warwick and the psychic network, which I have seen promoted on television and I think, "I guess they must be written off!"  Here's one of my favorites.  Leviticus 20:9:  "If anyone curses his father or mother he must"—not be grounded, not sent to his room, not be deprived of television for a week, no, no, no—"be put to death"!  And I wonder how many sitting in this room today would be here if we had implemented that moral maxim.  

3.  What about religious doctrines?

What that suggests of course is that we cannot take what we hear from religious leaders or what we find in good books for granted.  We are going to have to exercise our intellect.  Here's another illustration, as far as doctrines are concerned.  Islam maintains that there should be no sex outside of marriage, and no consumption of alcohol on any occasion. But when I shared this with my college students, I found a noticeable lack of enthusiasm for conversion.

Osama, of course, told us why he was angry with us a long time ago, namely that our policy towards Palestine is so lopsided in favor of Israel on the one hand and because American forces were station in Saudi Arabia, the home of Mecca and Medina, which he considered to be a sacrilege.  To me, those are perfectly legitimate reasons to have a beef with the United States.  Yet, of course, when 9/11 transpired, an event which Osama would deny having any role in bringing about, the President of the United States and his cronies immediately started assailing those "evil doers" who hate America because of our freedom.  

When we ponder the whole situation, as I'll develop it here, this remark from the President of the United States has many ironic dimensions.  A book like the Bible can be used to justify doctrines such as slavery, sexism, homophobia, . . .  Does any of this sound familiar?  How about the idea that women should be completely subservient to their husbands?  That's something that the Bible has been frequently used to support.  

4.  Empirically untestable beliefs.

Perhaps we can turn to religious doctrines then, the problem is that we confront the difficulty that all of these theological beliefs are empirically untestable.  So if you believe there is one God or no God, no one can show you wrong either way.  I have often suggested to my students that it makes at least as much sense to envision God as a woman as to envision God as a man, for the obvious reasons that, if God is the creator, then at least women can give birth which is something no man can do.  

If I stand here before you now and say that there are exactly 327 gods, who among you can show that I am wrong? The fact of the matter is that you can believe any thing you want as an article of faith and there is no evidence that impacts upon it.  The scientific and religious attitudes are completely different, by the way, because scientific claims are conditional, testable, and held in a tentative fashion, whereas these articles of faith are unconditional, non-testable, and held as absolute truths.

Ultimately, it turns out that religion provides a motive for morality but not a source of morality. Indeed even the Catholic Church has admonished us to exercise our reason to discover what is true with respect to morality so that we can know what God would have us do, predicated on an ancient debate about whether an action is right because God wills it or God wills it because it is right.  If God could will slavery, sexism, or racism, for example, would that make them morally right?  Pretty clearly no, so what theologians refer to as "the Goodness of God" would have us contemplate through the exercise of our own reason what is moral so that we should know thereby, what God would have us do.

5.  Is morality based in an abstract domain?

Ruse and Wilson thought that the idea of appealing to an abstract domain was an unsatisfactory foundation for morality, but I think that they simply did not understand the process of going back and forth in assessing moral principles in relation to clear cases which are not in doubt.  If, for example, murder, kidnapping, robbery, and rape are cases of immoral action, as we would all agree, then any theory that does not qualify them as immoral actions should be rejected on that basis alone.  

So what have philosophers done? They have tried to develop theories about the nature of morality that can help clarify and illuminate what goes on here, not only in moral discourse but as a guide for action.  Three of the most important moral theories are so-called "consequentialist accounts", which evaluate the rightness or wrongness of an action in terms of its production of The Good. The nature of The Good has been subject of debate, where happiness, pleasure, power, knowledge, and money have all been advanced as candidates.  

But some of those are obviously inadequate.  For example, The Good is suppose to be that which is intrinsically valuable, that is, valuable in and of itself. Money obviously does not qualify.  Money is valued strictly as a means for what it can do in terms of accomplishing goals. Suppose, for example, I said, "I'm going to give you a million dollars, but there's one constraint:  You can't spend it!"  Most of us would say, "Why bother?"  So money is not a very plausible candidate.

Most philosophers contemplating these issues are inclined to think that happiness is the proper conception of The Good and that one action is preferable to another when it produces more happiness.  On the other hand, we'll find attitudes towards power make a difference to understanding contemporary events.  Thus, if you talk about making decisions and maximizing happiness the question becomes, "For whom?" 

6.  The Consequentialist Accounts.

We have three different possible candidates:  the individual himself, the group with which he identifies, or everyone.  And you respectively produce the moral theories known as Ethical Egoism, Limited Utilitarianism, and Classic Utilitarianism.  An Ethical Egoist is someone is someone who acts so as to maximize his happiness regardless of the consequences for others.  Nice examples that show that this theory does not define the nature of morality include Ted Bundy, John Gacy, Jeffrey Damler, or (I would suggest) Larry Silverstein.  

Limited Utilitarianism expands for the group and defines an action as morally right when it produces as much happiness for a group as any alternative.  Now counter examples of Limited Utilitarianism include The Third Reich, the Mafia, and General Motors.  Look at The Third Reich, for example:  it exploited military aggression, territorial conquest, and systematic genocide to advance the interests of a group, the Aryan Nation, including Hitler and his Cronies.  

The reason why Limited Utilitarianism is so much more dangerous than ethical egoism is because groups of individuals can exercise vastly more power and influence than single person can by themselves.  Thus, I consider Limited Utilitarianism to be the most dangerous of moral philosophies.  But it tends to correspond to what we find exemplified by our own government's attitudes and policies, such as its intervention in the Middle East, which appears to be driven out of motives related to oil, ideology, and Israel.  About which I shall have more to say.

7.  The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number.

Classic Utilitarianism then says an action is right that maximizes happiness for everyone.  Now what that means is you have to take into account how much happiness it produces and subtract how much unhappiness it produces.  So you are dealing with net quantities in order to determine the net happiness produced from subtracting one from the other.  This is a very appealing position about moral philosophy, which is exemplified in the writings of John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, namely, the idea of the greatest happiness for the greatest number.  

As you probably know, Classic Utilitarianism is the foundation for rationale for the democratic political process.  But pause and consider:  the greatest happiness for the greatest number might be attained by, say, a slave-based society in which 85% are masters and 15% are slaves.  Well, the slaves may not be very happy about it, but the masters might be so much more elated to have someone to mow there lawns, change the diapers, do the dishes—everything else you can imagine you might want a slave to do.  Possibly if you get the proportion just right at 85/15, maybe that's the maximally happiness-producing arrangement in society.  On the basis of Classic Utilitarianism, if that were true, it would be the right way to organize a society.  

Consider as an illustration on a smaller scale a lynch mob.  We had a lynching in Duluth not all that long ago. Three young black men were strung up.  I assure you that by lynching those three young men that mob derived more happiness than any other action that they may have taken at that point.  Well, the three young men were not very happy but I can assure you that the calculus would show that the lynching produced a net happiness maximizing action at the time.  

Here's another I like to suggest to my students.  Suppose the government were to take a hundred random smokers, put them on television and shoot them each year?  What would happen as a consequence?  It would be very reasonable to surmise that enthusiasm for smoking would diminish.  There would be fewer incidents of lung cancer, cancer of the throat, mouth, tongue.  People would live longer lives.  Health premiums would come down.  There might be an awful lot of happiness-producing consequences if the government were to put a hundred smokers on television each year and shoot them.  But I think we can all agree that neither shooting smokers at random or lynching young men or creating a slave based society is moral, so something has gone wrong.

8.  The Need for Individual Rights.

The problem appears to be the failure to consider individual rights.  The most defensible moral theory appears to be one that is rooted in a theory of individual rights by virtue of being a human being.  It's commonly know as the Deontological Moral Theory.  A particular version maintains that morality requires you treat other persons with respect and you never treat them merely as means.  A more technical formulation says, "Always treat other people as ends—in other words, as intrinsically valuable, in and of themselves—and never merely as means."  

The word "merely" is the key part, because we treat one another as means all the time.  Take, for example, employers and employees.  The employer is treating the employee as a means to run a business and to make a profit.  The employees are using the employer as a means of earning an income and making a living.  As long as they are treating one another with respect, means/means relationships are perfectly moral.  Suppose however that the employee is stealing from the employer by clocking in and getting paid for work he did not do.  Or, for example, if he works in a health related industry, coming in to work sick and contaminating food or patients.  

That's obviously being disrespectful.  Alternatively, if an employer pays employee a substandard wage or subjects them to excessive work hours or to unsafe working conditions, that is not treating him with respect.  A perfect exemplification thereby becomes the classic sweat shop, where large number of women are working excessive hours for meager wages in unsafe work environments. We still have the phenomenon occurring intermittently, say in Southeast Asia, where a fire sweeps through and hundreds are killed in a single stroke.  

Its interesting to observe, by the way, that the idea of paying, for example, a living wage, indicates that morality can be measures in terms of degrees.  If, for example, a living wage were $10 an hour, where one employer paid $9.95 and the other paid only $5 an hour.  Then clearly, while the one may not be fulfilling all of his moral obligation in paying $9.95, the employer that is only paying $5 is being far more exploitative.  So we can see here that there can be grades and degrees of morality.

9.  Majority Rule combined with Minority Rights.

And this is what has to be combined with classic utilitarianism to have a viable political system.  Once you understand the nature of deontological moral rights, it becomes obvious that all humans are entitled to be treated with respect and to the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, provided they aren't violating the rights of their fellow humans.  You begin to appreciate why a democratic political process cannot simply be justified on the basis of majority rule; it has to be combined with minority rights.  

Here, of course, is one way in which the ACLU enters in.  Because the ACLU goes out of its way to defend the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution, typically referred to as "The Bill of Rights", which include freedoms of speech and freedom of religion.  Now here we get a clue as to why Jerry Falwell would put the ACLU on his hit list.  Falwell and Robertson don't actually believe in a democracy with freedom of religion and freedom of belief; they actually would impose their religious beliefs on the entire community, and therefore they dissent from the ACLU.

But at least now we are beginning to gain an understanding of why murder, robbery, kidnapping, and rape are immoral acts.  They involve treating other persons merely as means.  We have also gained the moral understanding to see why 9/11 should be viewed as a moral atrocity.  Now the question becomes, "Is the Bush administration a Limited Utilitarian entity?"  

10.  The Bush Administration as a Limited Utilitarian Entity.

When I was a young man, I had many conversations with my father who majored in political science at UCLA, and he would explain to me the principles that define the Republican party.  They included a commitment to balanced budgets, Constitutional government, a non-interventionist foreign policy, keeping the government out of our personal lives, and states' rights.  These may be respectable positions for a political party to uphold, but they are not those implemented by the Bush administration.

I have been fond of observing this administration violates everyone of those principles.  We've run up massive deficits, greater then any in the history of this county; they are violating and subverting the Constitution, especially through The Patriot Act, which has essentially eviscerated the First, the Fourth and the Sixth Amendments.  They are engaging in so called "preventative" wars, not merely "preemptive".  Indeed, it acts more like The Third Reich than it does any American government of the past.

Actually, under the United Nations Charter, a preemptive war is one where you are in danger from an imminent threat.  A nation is entitled to respond to an imminent threat, but in these cases there were no immanent threats for mass destruction from Afghanistan or from Iraq.  Indeed the rationale that went into justifying the attack on Afghanistan and especially Iraq is precisely the same as that Emperor Hirohito used in calculating it was in the Japanese best interest to attack us at pearl harbor.  So the Bush Doctrine has a precursor, The Hirohito Doctrine, so that if indeed December 7th, 1941, is "a day that will live in infamy", then what will historians record about our intervention in Iraq?
  
11.  Why do Principled Republicans support Bush?

When you stop and pause and look at this government, you realize it is very different then any other traditional Republican government.  This is not an administration that principled Republicans ought to support.  And it is therefore extraordinarily puzzling why they continue to do so.  What do we actually have here?  It was well described by Benito Mussolini:  we have a merger of big government with big business, which highlights nationalism and militarism.  It's a situation in which the leader tends to be identified with the state so that any criticism of the leader is treated as unpatriotic or even treasonous.  

It appears to be rooted in the background motive of globalization where corporations rule the world through the world trade organization.  It involves the violation of national sovereignty, workers' rights, and environmental protection.  Exploitation of the natural resources and cheap labor of other nations around the world typify the scope and nature of globalization.  The whole reason the Dubai ports deal has become an issue is that the major corporations don't even want to bother with security rights for any nation, and yet the United States Congress finally took a stand.  Because, after all, if everything the government has been telling us for the past five years is true, then putting our ports under control of an Arab corporation is simply absurd.  So if it is not absurd to put our ports under control of an Arab corporation, then evidentially everything they have been telling us the past five years has been false.

George W. Bush describes himself as "the security president" but national security has three distinct branches.  One is economic security, but with 9 trillion dollars in debt and growing, Bush has bankrupt the nation, so that leg of national security is null and void.  The second is military strength.  By running our army and our national guard divisions in and out of Iraq, Bush has greatly sapped our military capacity to conduct warfare.  General after General has made this observation.  

In the third and most important place is our moral standing.  The greatest source the security of the United States of America in the past has been that every nation in the world has admired us and respected us for our good work in the past, typified, for example, by our sacrifices during World War II and the Marshall Plan.  Today, all of that moral capital has been squandered and spent, so that we are now the most reviled, detested, and despised nation in the world.  Thus, our national security has commensurately shrunk to such a stunning degree that, for this guy to describe himself as "the security president" is nothing more then a sick joke.

12.  Noam Chomsky, "Why it's Over for America".

Some commentators, as notable as Noam Chomsky, have suggested that there are problems here in the United States and I am so gratified that he noticed.  In a piece that just appeared in the Independent in the U.K., "Why it's Over for America" (Chomsky 2006), Chomsky enumerates three principles that are typical of a failed state that he attributes to the U.S.  One is the inability or unwillingness to protect their citizens from violence and perhaps even destruction.  Another is the tendency to regard themselves as beyond the reach of domestic or international law, and hence free to carry out aggression and violence.  And third, if they have democratic forums, they suffer from a democratic deficit that deprives their institutions of any real substance.  

What, then, are Chomsky's prescriptions?  One, accept the jurisdiction of the international criminal court.  Two, sign and carry forward the Kyoto protocol.  Three, let the U.N. take the lead in international crisis.  Four, rely on diplomatic and economic measures rather then military ones when confronting terror.  Five, keep the traditional interpretation of the U.N. Charter.  Six, give up the Security Council veto and have a decent respect for the opinion of mankind, as the Declaration of Independence advises, even as powers tend to disagree. And, seven, cutback sharply on military spending and sharply increase on social spending.  

Those are all fine prescriptions if we live in a civil society, but the threat we confront is far more immanent and ominous.  Consider, all of those recommendations would be in place had Al Gore been rightly in his place as President of the United States.  They all are in jeopardy precisely because we are in the grip of a regime that does not have that "common respect for the opinions of mankind."

Here's an email from a Nicholas Otten (2006) in response to a petition we have on Scholars for 9/11 Truth asking the government to release evidence in 12 categories.  It seems as if Nicholas Otten has captured more of the situation in which we find ourselves than has Noam Chomsky.  "What's the point of a petition?", says Nicholas. "What would be the outcome when 10 million have signed?" Why is this being treated as if a group of girl scouts are trying to save an old camp group from development? This is the worst crime in history, there is evidence laws are broken, demolition without permit notification, negligence of FAA airport regulations, illegal rubble debris removed, significant damage, innocent lives destroyed, mass murder."  Well, I think Nicholas has a point.

13.  Jim Loeb, "Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception".

We need a deeper understanding of what is going on with this administration.  Jim Loeb of AlterNet has published a nice piece entitled, "Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception" (2006).  I just want to point out to you that here is a way of recognizing and realizing what's really going on.  Leo Strauss was a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, who has captivated many of the Neo-Cons with his political philosophy.  I will illuminate and enumerate the defining principles of Leo Strauss' theory as Jim Loeb has done, relying on the work of Shadria Drury, among others.  

Strauss suggests that "deception is the norm in political life and the hope, to say nothing of the expectation, of establishing a politics that can dispense with it is the exception".  So the first principle of the Straussian political philosophy is deception.  Second, Strauss believed that society "should be hierarchical, divided between an elite who should lead and the masses who should follow."  Strauss believed that those who are fit to lead "are those who realize that there is no morality and that there is only one natural right—the right of the superior to rule over the inferior" or elitism.  "

"The people are told what they need to know and no more, while the elite few are capable of absorbing the absence of no moral truth."  Strauss thought that the masses could not cope "If exposed to the absence of absolute truth, they would quickly fall into nihilism or anarchy", hence the need for authoritarianism.  Strauss had a huge contempt for secular democracy.  A "major mistake" he thought was the insistence of the Founding Fathers on separation of church and state.  And why? Because Strauss saw religion as "absolutely essential in order to impose moral law on the masses which otherwise would be out of control," hence the need for paternalism.  

"Religion was for the masses alone," he stressed; "the rulers need not be bound by it.  Indeed it would be absurd if they were because the truths proclaimed by religions are a pious fraud," hence the need for hypocrisy.  Secular society in the Straussian view is "the worst possible thing" because "it leads to individualism, liberalism, and relativism, precisely the traits which could promote dissent and thereby dangerously weaken societies ability to cope with external threats," hence the necessity for anti- secularism, another point on which Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson would agree with Leo Strauss.  

Human beings can only be restrained by a powerful nationalistic state.  "Because mankind is intrinsically wicked he has to be governed," Strauss once wrote.  "Such governance can only be established when men are united—and they can only be united against other people," hence the need for a powerful anti-democratic strand.  "Strauss thinks that a political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat.  Following Machiavelli, he maintains, "if no external threat exists, then one has to be manufactured.'"  Liars, cheaters, thieves—shades of the Northwoods Operation.  

Finally, the Straussians "really have no need for liberalism and democracy, even though they are conquering the world in the name of liberalism and democracy."  We go to Iraq and claim we are going to spread democracy and freedom abroad while we are at the same time contracting freedom and liberty at home!  Perhaps Bush thinks that he can resolve these conflicts, which, he insists, are motivated by the fact that Osama hates our freedom.  If we no longer have freedom, he will no longer hate us! 

14.  "The Ten Signs of an Impending Police State".

Now, I would expand upon this to illustrate how Chomsky doesn't get it in relation to the famous piece, "Fascism Anyone?", where Laurence Britt illuminates the fourteen characteristics of fascism (Britt 2003).  And anyone who measures where the United States stands today against his fourteen criteria can well appreciate that we satisfy at least a dozen of those fourteen.  But even more interesting for our occasion here is a piece by Alan Uthman (2006) talking the top ten signs of an impending U.S. police state, which in my judgment reflects where we appear to be heading.  Listen to these ten, which I have reordered to emphasize the points that I consider most important:

(10)  Free speech zones.

I'll never forget when Vice President Cheney came to Duluth to speak, and they had a designated area where they put all the protesters—someplace where he could not even see them from the highway—as he came into town.  Free speech zones?  The whole United States is supposed to be "a free speech zone".  

(9)  Electronic Voting Machines.

Like the "No Child Left Behind Act", which I am fairly convinced is a covert plan for resegregating American schools, the "Help America Vote" act requires communities to purchase electronic voting machines, which just happen to be under the control of a small number of corporations with direct ties to the GOP.  We have had elections stolen from us using these machines in Florida in 2000, Georgia in 2002, and Ohio in 2004 most massively.  They have changed the course of history by using these electronic theft machines, and yet the manufactures claim they cannot produce a responsible and reliable voting machine when they can produce the most efficient, detailed, and exact ATM in the world.  

The same company that claims it cannot produce voting machines produced your ATM.  The next time you use one, take a look at the name on the machine: Diebold.  The software for these machines cannot be simpler: take a number n and add one to it to produce a new number n'.  Anyone who represents that these voting machines are complicated or that the software is proprietary is lying to you to your face.  The only thing that could possibly be proprietary here would be if in fact they have a sophisticated aspect for reallocating the votes.  Electronic voting machines must be abolished.  

(8)  The long war.

Great benefits derive from substituting terrorism as the successor for communism.  Communism was great for the military industrial complex because it created the motivation for demand which they—the military/industrial/intelligence complex— were more then willing to supply.  At the demise of the Cold War, they ended up scrambling to find a substitute.  Nothing could possibly work better then terrorism.  Terrorism is so vague and nebulous that merely assembling to discuss these matters could be construed as "a terrorist act," mark my words.  You can perpetrate any act, like a Bali bombing, for example, or something going on in New York, or something else going on in Palestine, and you can blame it on the terrorists even though it was carried out by American intelligence operatives.  Who in the world is going to know better? 

(7)  The USA Patriot Act.

The USA Patriot Act, as I have already stated, has gutted the First, Fourth, and Sixth amendments.   The Constitution is in shambles.

(6) Signing Statements.

As if this were not enough, this president has had he audacity to imposed his interpretation upon 750 laws.  I just want you to stop and ponder what this means. We have a tripartite division between the legislature, which passes the laws, the executive, which enforces them, and the judiciary, which interprets them.  He has preempted unto himself all three functions.  

If you want a good sign of tendency towards dictatorship, then I say you cannot do better than these signing statements, where the president thereby imposes his own interpretation on the law—in essence making him the person who passes the law and the one who interprets the law—thus preempting the powers of the judiciary and co-opting the power of the legislature.  

(5)  High-ranking whistle blowers.

It appears that the only individuals that this administration ever demotes, punished, or fires are those who speak the truth.  I would say that the single easiest yard stick to measure how far one can go in the Bush administration is just how big of a lie they are willing to tell the American People with a straight face.  And some of these are stunningly appalling. Take, for example, Christy Whitman of the EPA telling first responders in New York City that the toxic dust cloud released by the World Trade Towers demolition was "safe to breathe".  Those clouds included very fine concrete particles, thermate residue  (the explosive that appears to have been used in the demolition), asbestos, various heavy metals and components from computers, which is not to mention the miasma of pulverized human beings hellishly mixed in with the detritus of the demolished offices. I've had first responders call me—barely being able to gasp a breath—to explain how they are suffering due to the acute effects of this and ultimately dying by the thousands.

(4)  Warrentless Wiretapping.

The kind of wiretapping that's taking place happens to be no good for identifying terrorists but excellent for identifying your political opponents and their network of associates.  Here's a nice piece by Floyd Rudmin in Counterpunch, "Why does the NSA engage in mass surveillance of Americans when its statistically impossible for such spying to detect terrorists?" (Rudmin 2006). Stop and think about it. They are doing this one a massive scale.  There is a tiny percentage of the population that has a terrorist orientation—and they are smart enough to read the headlines and watch television that says there's a massive surveillance program going on.  They have always operated in encoded and encrypted messages which are few and far in between, and are not accessible to the public communication.  You're not going to catch terrorists in the kind of data mining operation that is taking place.  

(3)  The CIA Shakeup.

By sending General Michael Hayden over to the CIA, what is actually taking place is a consolidation of the single last independent intelligence agency that stood up to this administration.  Ironically, for years I have argued for the abolition of the CIA on the ground that its operations are secret. If  American citizens are kept in the dark on an agency that is a significant aspect of our foreign policy, then how can we know if we approve of our own nation's foreign policy?  With this appointment, we see that the Department of Defense has extended its reach over the CIA, which has ironically been our last bastion against the falsehoods being perpetrated by this administration.

While Hayden has claimed that he is going to sever his connections to the Pentagon, when he was sworn in he was wearing his uniform with four stars polished brightly.
The CIA shakeup was in part impartial, Porter Gauss apparently wasn't working fast enough for the Bush administration so he was brought in and the surveillance was consolidated.

(2)  Prison Camps.

This last January the Army Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton subsidiary, Brown and Root, 400 million dollars to build detention centers in the United States for the purpose of unspecified programs.  There are or will be anywhere from 40 to 400 of these camps.  I have often wondered what Donald Rumsfeld was doing with the 2.3 trillion dollars he reported to congress was missing from the Pentagon's budget that he could not account for on.  

This "accounting glitch" was reported on no other day than September 10, 2001.  No. I say that's an exquisite sense of timing if you have some news like this and you would like to have it obliterated from the consciousness of the American public or even the Congress, so you can come back and ask for more.  I cannot imagine a better arrangement or sequence of events.  

So we have 2.3 trillion they cannot account for and in addition we have base closings.  I find this very peculiar.  How can we in the middle of this war be closing bases?  One thing you don't know about when you get involved in war is what resources you need and where they need to be located.  As a former Marine Corps' officer, the last thing I would expect in a time of foreign engagement is the closing of any bases.  As far as I can ascertain, they were closing those bases because they needed more detention facilities and those bases were very appropriate to be adapted for that purpose.

We also hear unsettling reports about the importation of guillotines made in China into these detention facilities.  I have seen too many reports of this coupled with a person who was petrified calling me up to talk about this but, as Steve Jones has observed, we need "hard evidence".  There's something very peculiar going on here, and I hesitate to even mention it, but what is going on in our country is like cancer.  Anyone who has had cancer, as I have had, knows that the claim that what you don't know cannot hurt you is as false as could possibly be.  What we are dealing with in this country is a cancer on the body politick, and we have to confront it and excise it if we are going to be restored to a state of health.
 

(1)  Internet Clampdown.

And tenth and finally—and I am sure you can recognize each of these as components of the current state of affairs in U.S. domestic politics—is the internet clampdown.
I'll tell you media consolidation has been so great that basically five corporations control 90% of everything you and I ever hear on the radio, read in the newspaper, or watch on the television.  The only true sources of free information that is remaining in this country are talk radio and the internet.  And we all know that if it weren't for the internet, we would not be discussing these matters today.  

Scholars for 9/11 Truth is an example of a virtual society. I had not even met any members of S9/11T until yesterday when I met my co-chair Steve Jones.  The reason I mention it last is that, when the internet goes, you will know that freedom and democracy are being extinguished.  It's the old story of the frog in a pot which is rising in temperature gradually one degree at a time.  The frog really doesn't notice that it's cooked until its too late.  This is where we are.

There is a convergence of opinion on the state of mind of our leaders.  Paul Craig Roberts, for example, a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and a noted public intellectual, who seems to me to be reflecting a greater degree of awareness that others of that type,  has served that in a 17 March 2006 editorial, William Rivers Pitt, the editor of Truthout, one of the most reliable and useful sources on the internet for current events, wrote that Bush is "deranged, disconnected, and dangerous".  Paul Craig Roberts is saying that Bush's recent public addresses are confirming it (Roberts 2006).  

Roberts adds, "Bush gave a delusional speech that shows he's detached from reality.  'We're going to help the Iraqis build a democracy which will be an inspiration throughout the Middle East, a democracy that will be a partner in the global war on terrorism.'"  Bush goes onto say that American security is directly related to democracy in Iraq.  But Paul Crag Roberts asks, "How realistic is it that this puny weak little country in the Middle East could pose a threat to American security?"

It brought to mind a thought I have had many times before:  Why do we fear weapons of mass destruction?  There was one country that had more weapons of mass destruction than the rest of the world combined other then the United States, the Soviet Union.  We lived in a certain kind of uncertain harmony with the Soviet Union because of an understanding of the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction.  We knew if the Soviets hit us, we could obliterate them-—and they knew it, too; we knew if we hit them, they could obliterate us—and we knew it, too.  Neither nation would threaten to attack the other for fear of obliteration.  

Well if that's true of the Soviet Union with its massive supply of intercontinental ballistic missiles, what then of some solitary petty little dictator like Saddam Hussein or Iran?  Does anyone seriously think that even if Iraq had a nuclear weapon that it would actually use it against the United States, an act that would assure or guarantee its obliteration?  We have lost our way here.  The doctrine that gave us a sane policy of defense in a nuclear world has simply been jettisoned and ignored.  

There's no reason whatever to suppose that if North Korea, Iran, or Iraq gained nuclear weapons that they would actually use them against the United States:  it would be suicide on a national scale.  Well, of course, they want to suggest that these people are demented or even insane.  However demented Saddam Hussein was, he ran a much better Iraq then the United States by almost every measure affecting the quality of life of the average Iraqi.

We are going to have to assume, I think, that our leaders are demented.  Indeed, there is a convergence of opinion here.  Another voice drawing similar conclusions is that of Sydney Blumenthal (2006). The question we have to consider, which can be very unpleasant and even terrifying, is this:  Just what can happen when the lunatics are running the asylum?  I want to offer several scenarios here which have resulted from my efforts to think about the unthinkable by trying "to get into the mind" of the demented.  This will be very disturbing.

First Scenario:  Insanity Prevails

Rumors of detention facilities are true; surveillance is used to identify political enemies; the population is docile and resistors simply disappear.  Call this "the sheeple version": we are sheep, we simply disappear.  Here's a variation on the sheeple hypothesis:  they use the threat of bird flu to demand inoculation of every citizen of the United States, but because of the surveillance they know exactly who they are inoculating and, although we don't know it, there are two different vaccines on that protects you from bird flu and the other that gives it to you.  

And they argue later that it was only one half of one percent that actually got the bird flu, and then we realize belatedly that what we thought was one half of one percent, included David Ray Griffin, Alex Jones, Steve Jones, Jim Fetzer, . . .  What in God's name is going on here?  This isn't rocket science but it is a very real—an all too real—possibility, I am sorry to say.  

Second Scenario: Non-Sheeple Scenario

People realize what's going on; we take up arms to resist our own army which is supplemented by mercenary forces; a civil war breaks out; and we fight a second revolutionary war in an effort to restore democracy to our country.  

This is the non-sheeple—it might even be called the "Patriot"—alternative.  Some may say that both of these scenarios make the assumption that insane moves are going to be made by this administration.  Do I think there are any alternatives, other than a second "false flag" operation like 9/11 to suspend the Constitution and put the nation under military control?  

Third Scenario:  Sanity Prevails.

Suppose saner heads prevail; electronic voting machines are abandoned; Congress is reconstituted: and Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld face impeachment.  But this is not an outcome that they would willing to accept.  So they stage another "false flag" attack to regain control.  Which means even a sane scenario carries us back to insane scenarios. 

Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst, has suggested that an Iran strike is set for the next few months and that staged terrorist attacks across Europe and in the United States are probable to justify the invasion of Iran.  The propaganda has been laid; the aircraft carriers are in place; and it doesn't take much to fly the bombers out of British and US bases; cruise missiles are at the ready; and Israel is egging us on.  

The likely consequences of this scenario, he has said: mobilizing worldwide terror cells, which make al-Qaeda look like a girl's net ball team; utilizing a cruise missile arsenal that could take out US ships; sending fighters into Iraq to take out US forces, where three divisions of Iranian fighters in Iraq could pretty much decimate all of our military presence.  And it would probably have Russian and Chinese support.

What can we do? What can be done? 

Number one:  Inform others, get the word out tell them what we are learning and piecing together.  

Number two:  See if we can instruct the military, that they have not only an obligation not to follow immoral orders, they have a positive duty not to follow them.  

Number three:  Reconstitute Congress, get rid of all the Democrats and all the Republicans.  Congress is so corrupt it's unbelievable; get people in there who can stand up for the nation.  In order to accomplish that, however, 

Number four:  We have to jettison electronic voting machines; otherwise they are going to continue to steal elections right under our noses.   Every American could know what's going on and vote for the right candidate and these guys could still find themselves in control of Congress, if we do not get rid of these voting machines.

Number five:  I do not understand why district attorneys or attorneys general are not picking up the about the crimes committed in their states.  The Attorneys General in New York, in Virginia, and in Pennsylvania, are all in a position where there is more than sufficient evidence to justify launching a criminal investigation.  And I assure them that members of Scholars for 9/11 Truth would be willing to come into court and testify under oath in support of criminal actions.  

Number six:  Impeach Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld it should be done, but mind you, that is going to provoke a reaction from them to defend themselves and we may find ourselves back in the midst of one of the insane scenarios.  

Number seven:  Arm the population.  It dismays me in the extreme that I am compelled to side with the NRA, but I must tell you that an armed citizen may ultimately be our last bastion of defense against a tyrannical government.  

Now you may find these things difficult to imagine, but if our research is right, this administration has already committed mass murder by killing approximately 3000 innocent Americans on 9/11.  I am personally convinced that during the campaign of 2002, it was responsible for the death of an admirable United States Senator named Paul Wellstone.  Paul Wellstone had the courage to stand up against them and was threatened by the Vice President of the United States, who told him that, if he opposed them on Iraq, there would be severe ramifications for him personally and for the state of Minnesota.  And I cannot imagine more severe ramifications then taking him and his wife out. And the reason they took out Sheila Wellstone was because she then could not stand up for him as had happened with Mel Carnahan.  The people of Missouri would sooner vote for a dead man than return John Ashcroft to the Senate.  

If worse comes to worst, what are going to be the signs?  They're going to go after the militias.  These armed groups may be fierce in their determination and commitment but, helicopter gunships . . .—it's just horrible the effect they have on human beings and other living things.  After the militants, they're going to come after 9/11 skeptics, because we know too much—we threat to contaminate the rest of the world with truth.  War critics, anti-war protestors, the Greens, the progressives, the liberals, the Unitarians, the Congregationalists, and maybe even eventually those few principled Republicans!  

Don't think things like this cannot happen here.  They already are.  Can we prevail?  I wish I knew, but we have to try.  The stakes could not be higher.

* I am indebted to my student, Jeremiah Haynes, for transcribing the original for my editing.

REFERENCES

Blumenthal, S. (2006), "A State of Emergency", The Guardian, UK (1 June 2006).

Britt, L. W. (2003), "Fascism Anyone?", Free Inquiry Magazine 22/2 (15 July 2003).

Chomsky, N. (2006), "Why it's Over for America", The Independent, UK (30 May 2006), republished by the Common Dreams NewsCenter. 

Loeb, J. (2006), "Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception", alternet.org (28 May 2006; originally posted on 19 May 2003).

Otten, N. (2006), "Petition?", nottenatocua@yahoo.com email to jfetzer@d.umn.edu (31 May 2006).

Roberts, P. C. (2006), "President Bush is showing signs that he is deranged, disconnected, and dangerous", SmirkingChimp.com (31 May 2006).

Rudmin, F. (2006), "Why Does the NSA Engage in Mass Surveillance of Americans When It's Statistically Impossible for Such Spying to Detect Terrorists?", Counterpunch (24 May 2006).

Ruse, M. and E.O. Wilson (1986), "Moral Philosophy as Applied Science", Philosophy 61 (1986).

Uthman, A. (2006), "Top 10 Signs of the Impending U.S. Police State", alternet.org (26 May 2006).

James H. Fetzer, founder and co-chair of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, recently retired as McKnight Professor Emeritus from the University of Minnesota Duluth after 35 years teaching logic, critical thinking, and scientific reasoning.  A former officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, he has published more than 24 books in the philosophy of science and on the theoretical foundations of computer science, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science. 

James H. Fetzer, Ph.D.
Founder and Co-Chair
Scholars for 9/11 Truth
email:  jfetzer@d.umn.edu
http://www.d.umn.edu/~jfetzer/
http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org (st911.org)