The recent leakage of an apparently genuine opinion contra-abortion by conservative Justice Alito in advance of the Court’s decision relating to the issue seems an obvious attempt to subvert the integrity of the high court for political purposes. That is, with public opinion running against Democrats keeping control of Congress in the November election the Democrat Party base needed to be motivated, and females for abortion are motivated by the immanent loss of the right to kill fetuses. It is another court case, a civil suit moving ahead against the government of Tulsa Oklahoma in regard to a near century old event that was an American pogrom against a black neighborhood, that brings up the interesting and rather philosophical question of government being usually competent and responsible enough to be held accountable for populist riots, mayhem and murders on a macro-social scale.
The first great subversion of a tentative Supreme Court decision occurred just after another Democrat female from Harvard reached the court. D.C. is so partisan these days that for Democrats at least, the Democrat agenda overcomes truth or law whenever needed to consolidate control. Some will associate the leak with the new justice though she is not likely to have been the agent of subversion. Instead, it is probable that a Democrat female minion chose the moment to subvert the conservative court and go over the heads of conservative justices directly in hope of changing the political landscape before the normal June issuance of SCOTUS decisions. I think it unlikely that a Republican perpetrated the crime unless he was a homosymp worried that the next great reversal after abortion would be homosexual marriage. Homosexual marriage enables the adoption of strait infants for queer socialization; Democrats will fight to keep that perversity the new normal American way, including the ostensibly Republican Chief Justice.
Chief Justice Roberts was the crucial, decisive swing vote for queer marriage. Since he has launched an investigation into the abortion leak the integrity of the investigation is dubious. If the retiring Justice; a liberal Democrat made a parting shot at the conservative court Chief Justice Roberts may bury the information anyway. The nation may never learn who the court’s five finger discount artist was. To find the truth the court might need to be relocated to GITMO for water-boarding members until someone spills. That outlaw location is tolerated by the court so objections should be quickly drowned.
In the era of quantum encryption the ability to control and censor, isolate or obfuscate information with partisan import will rise. Social media bloggers and readers may never encounter one another as exact control of data is implemented by Google and other social media giants via quantum computing. At any rate, only particular members of the public will encounter information decrypted for their eyes only. All social media data will be specifically addressed and restricted as artificial intelligence deems appropriate.
If courts are supposed to be neutral and honest decision makers concerning the legality of issues brought before them, the role of governments are somewhat vaguer. It is presumed they are responsible for public safety and utility services yet there are dissenters to the existence of government entirely known variously as libertarians or anarchists. Politicians elected to government may be shills for the rich and powerful or alternatively they may represent the will of the majority without concern for minority rights. As in the present era of blue-red extremism, being a politician on the fence may be a dangerous and precarious place to sit.
Issues of statutes of limitations aside, can city governments, state or federal governments too, be held accountable for their institutional actions decades into the future, when the political will and composition of the majority may differ from that when the actions or lack of actions by a government in question occurred? A broader question concerning government accountability rests on the expectation of government agents being normally competent; are they? Do people expect governments to be competent? Are the actions of the U.S. Government in regard to sponsoring wars internationally in the post World War Two era generally competent or effective, and are they, or were they expected to be?
During the Trump administration Black Lives Matter protests and riots were fairly usual. It is said that Antifah travelers and professional protest and riot coordination occurred. Those people were strongly anti-Trump agitators. Antifah listed its address on its internet site as the White House; 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, after the election of the Democrat Joe Biden. During the Trump administration the Federal Courthouse in Portland Oregon was besieged by BLM and Antifah protesters creating extra costs for federal defense personnel. Few people participating in the siege ever were charged or convicted and of course the city of Portland did not face legal actions to pay for their lack of action in permitting rioters and attackers to besiege the Federal Courthouse. The government of Portland was Democrat and the Biden administration was Democrat; no one expects legal actions to collect costs by the U.S. Government from the Portland Oregon city government therefore.
The city government of Seattle Washington could have taken stronger action against rioters that briefly seceded the Capitol Hill neighborhood from the city with barricades. It isn’t likely that many people that took part in that activity were charged by a left-leaning municipal government later. Harm to those that did not support the barricades did occur to those that lived in the neighborhood because of the restriction of their ability to safely go about their lives free of barricades. People may not expect the government to be held accountable for failing to swiftly remove the barricades and arrest rioters simply because the government and rioters were generally on the same side. That is what is commonly expected of government perhaps; that it is entirely partisan, biased and usually unfair trampling on the rights of minorities and individuals whenever they can get away with it.
A theory of expectations for governments to be competent, honest and impartial in their administration of legally commissioned duties is a substantive one. Philosophically speaking it is one of the basic questions for free societies as opposed to non-free societies where the expectation is that government agencies reflect solely the will of the ruling power.
People might expect government to be competent and held accountable for material public works such as plumbing, roads, utilities etc yet to falter at the level of abstract political theory. The economist eminence gris of western civilization is of course Adam Smith; author of The Wealth of Nations. I believe that Adam Smith’s work is often misunderstood or misapplied. Modern politicians tend to regard the idea of pursuing narrow self-interests as good not only in economics, but also in governance. The Biden administration and Democrats so closely follow that interpretation as to be comprehensively partisan.
The Wealth of Nations provided the insight that individuals pursuing their narrow self-interests find the most efficient path to economic progress for themselves; better even than government. Concatenated, the net effect of a society of individuals pursuing their self-interests comprises the most efficient method for advancing economic interests of a nation; nationally and internationally. The method described in The Wealth of Nations was not intended to be the way government should work as an operating manual for it, or one might have something like Thomas Hobbes’ absolute monarch of The Leviathan developing as the monarch saw his narrow self-interest actualized in taking absolute power for-himself. Government was to support citizen empowerment for free trade and limit its role of concentrated power and wealth to that of maintaining necessary functions to support the public that the public or free trade and business could not do itself.
The role of a democratic government should be to reinforce equal protection of the law and to support the maximum good for the nation in compliance with the will of the citizens. To be consistent with the Wealth of Nations it should not act to interfere with free trade. Adam Smith sought for the English government to stop interfering with free trade. It should not decide what nation Brits could trade with putting sanctions on some and licensing other. President Biden should not put sanctions on foreign nations and interfere with free trade and people creating personal relations with foreigners including Russians, except perhaps in direct weapons sales. If free trade rather than sanctions prevail wars may be avoided as better human relationships would be the usual rather than the abstract and limited by government circumstance. U.S. government ought not act like the pre-Wealth of Nations England with overly concentrated wealth dictating business and foreign trade relationships. Adequately taxing the rich can keep free enterprise alive. Free trade need be allowed by the government rather than prevented by imperious decree. Politicians should not fear that free trade would curtail their ability to wage immoral war and/or religious wars. Lunatic monomaniacal aggression and religious wars, with media support, could continue concurrent with free trade, although traders might need to wear helmets, check their smart phones for bombing updates and finance extra insurance.
Obviously the Socratic paradigm for deciding what good is can arise. That aside, government’s basic task is to be a vigilant manager of the infrastructure tasks given to it within constitutional, lawful authority rather than an existential agent pursuing its narrow self-interest within an evolving social dialectic. Does any U.S. municipal government rise to that level of actualization, or can even the federal government accomplish that when it is of limited intelligence pursuing the narrow self-interests of majorities holding political power?
Individuals like Bradley/Chelsea Manning may take power into their own hands and leak classified information from government and receive rather light punishment from sympathetic fellow travelers in government in support of Democrat party platform planks. That seems to be the way of the world. It will be interesting to learn who the leaker of the Alito paper ion abortion turns out to be, if the document is genuine. It will be equally interesting to watch the course of events of the Tulsa race pogrom civil suit. A decision will be difficult in favor of the plaintiffs if there is not an actual smoking gun of government support for the pogrom as leaders of it in fact. In that era the city government may not have had the military ability to restrain an armed citizenry from taking action against a minority, especially if they were led by traveling riot coordinators. Who expects government to be competent or impartial any more rather than pretending to be? The very ability to revolt against government, against corrupt government, is a two edged sword, the alternative to which is submission to despotism, anarchy or authoritarianism.
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