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Political Observer comments: Is the ‘Judicial Reasoning’ hard to follow? Of course it is! This is ‘The Law’ the provence of ‘Juriprudential Reasoning’, the product of a Corrupt Technocracy!

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Aug 09, 2025

Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025) 1 Opinion of the Court SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES No. 24A884

DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, ET AL. v. CASA, INC., ET AL. ON APPLICATION FOR PARTIAL STAY _________________ No. 24A885

DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, ET AL. v. WASHINGTON, ET AL. ON APPLICATION FOR PARTIAL STAY _________________ No. 24A886

DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, ET AL. v. NEW JERSEY, ET AL. ON APPLICATION FOR PARTIAL STAY [June 27, 2025]

JUSTICE BARRETT delivered the opinion of the Court.

…

The principal dissent focuses on conventional legal terrain, like the Judiciary Act of 1789 and our cases on equity. JUSTICE JACKSON, however, chooses a startling line of attack that is tethered neither to these sources nor, frankly, to any doctrine whatsoever. Waving away attention to the limits on judicial power as a “mind-numbingly technical query,” post, at 3 (dissenting opinion), she offers a vision of ——————

16Acknowledging these problems, the principal dissent admits that “[t]here may be good reasons not to issue universal injunctions in the typical case.” Post, at 23 (opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J.). This concession, while welcome, is inconsistent with the position that the universal injunction is a “nothing to see here” extension of the kind of decree obtained on a bill of peace. Neither the principal dissent nor respondents have pointed to any evidence that such decrees presented any of the universal injunction’s systemic problems or that they were reserved for situations in which the defendant’s conduct was “patently unconstitutional” and risked “exceptional” harm. Post, at 22–23. It is precisely because the universal injunction is a new, potent remedy that it poses new, potent risks. Our observation in Grupo Mexicano rings true here: “Even when sitting as a court in equity, we have no authority to craft a ‘nuclear weapon’ of the law.” 527 U. S., at 332.

the judicial role that would make even the most ardent defender of judicial supremacy blush. In her telling, the fundamental role of courts is to “order everyone (including the Executive) to follow the law—full stop.” Post, at 2; see also post, at 10 (“[T]he function of the courts—both in theory and in practice—necessarily includes announcing what the law requires in . . . suits for the benefit of all who are protected by the Constitution, not merely doling out relief to injured private parties”); see also post, at 11, n. 3, 15. And, she warns, if courts lack the power to “require the Executive to adhere to law universally,” post, at 15, courts will leave a “gash in the basic tenets of our founding charter that could turn out to be a mortal wound,” post, at 12.

Rhetoric aside, JUSTICE JACKSON’s position is difficult to pin down. She might be arguing that universal injunctions are appropriate—even required—whenever the defendant is part of the Executive Branch. See, e.g., post, at 3, 10–12, 16–18. If so, her position goes far beyond the mainstream defense of universal injunctions. See, e.g., Frost, 93 N. Y. U. L. Rev., at 1069 (“Nationwide injunctions come with significant costs and should never be the default remedy in cases challenging federal executive action”). As best we can tell, though, her argument is more extreme still, because its logic does not depend on the entry of a universal injunction: JUSTICE JACKSON appears to believe that the reasoning behind any court order demands “universal adherence,” at least where the Executive is concerned. Post, at 2 (dissenting opinion). In her law-declaring vision of the judicial function, a district court’s opinion is not just persuasive, but has the legal force of a judgment. But see Haaland v. Brackeen, 599 U. S. 255, 294 (2023) (“It is a federal court’s judgment, not its opinion, that remedies an injury”). Once a single district court deems executive conduct unlawful, it has stated what the law requires. And the Executive must conform to that view, ceasing its enforcement of the law against anyone, anywhere.17 We will not dwell on JUSTICE JACKSON’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: JUSTICE JACKSON decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary. No one disputes that the Executive has a duty to follow the law. But the Judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation—in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the Judiciary from doing so. See, e.g., Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 (1803) (concluding that James Madison had violated the law but holding that the Court lacked jurisdiction to issue a writ of mandamus ordering him to follow it). But see post, at 15 (JACKSON, J., dissenting) (“If courts do not have the authority to require the Executive to adhere to law universally, . . . compliance with law sometimes becomes a matter of Executive prerogative”). Observing the limits on judicial authority—including, as relevant here, the boundaries of the Judiciary Act of 1789—is required by a judge’s oath to follow the law. JUSTICE JACKSON skips over that part. Because analyzing the governing statute involves boring “legalese,” post, at 3, she seeks to answer “a far more basic question of enormous practical significance: May a federal court in the United States of America order the Executive to follow the law?” Ibid. In other words, it is unecessary to consider whether Congress has constrained the Judiciary; what matters is how the Judiciary may constrain the Executive. JUSTICE JACKSON would do well to heed her own admonition: “[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law.” Ibid. That goes for judges too.

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Political Observer.

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Editor: Justice Jackson demands to be read in full!

 I agree with every word of Justice Sotomayor’s dissent. I write separately to emphasize a key conceptual point: The Court’s decision to permit the Executive to violate the Constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law.

 It is important to recognize that the Executive’s bid to vanquish so-called “universal injunctions” is, at bottom, a request for this Court’s permission to engage in unlawful behavior. When the Government says “do not allow the lower courts to enjoin executive action universally as a remedy for unconstitutional conduct,” what it is actually saying is that the Executive wants to continue doing something that a court has determined violates the Constitution—please allow this. That is some solicitation. With its ruling today, the majority largely grants the Government’s wish. But, in my view, if this country is going to persist as a Nation of laws and not men, the Judiciary has no choice but to deny it.

Stated simply, what it means to have a system of government that is bounded by law is that everyone is constrained by the law, no exceptions. And for that to actually happen, courts must have the power to order everyone (including the Executive) to follow the law—full stop. To conclude otherwise is to endorse the creation of a zone of lawlessness within which the Executive has the prerogative to take or leave the law as it wishes, and where individuals who would otherwise be entitled to the law’s protection become subject to the Executive’s whims instead.

 The majority cannot deny that our Constitution was designed to split the powers of a monarch between the governing branches to protect the People. Nor is it debatable that the role of the Judiciary in our constitutional scheme is to ensure fidelity to law. But these core values are strangely absent from today’s decision. Focusing on inapt comparisons to impotent English tribunals, the majority ignores the Judiciary’s foundational duty to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States. The majority’s ruling thus not only diverges from first principles, it is also profoundly dangerous, since it gives the Executive the go-ahead to sometimes wield the kind of unchecked, arbitrary power the Founders crafted our Constitution to eradicate. The very institution our founding charter charges with the duty to ensure universal adherence to the law now requires judges to shrug and turn their backs to intermittent lawlessness. With deep disillusionment, I dissent.

I

To hear the majority tell it, this suit raises a mind-numbingly technical query: Are universal injunctions “sufficiently ‘analogous’ to the relief issued ‘by the High Court of Chancery in England at the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the enactment of the original Judiciary Act’ ” to fall within the equitable authority Congress granted federal courts in the Judiciary Act of 1789? Ante, at 6. But that legalese is a smokescreen. It obscures a far more basic question of enormous legal and practical significance: May a federal court in the United States of America order the Executive to follow the law?

A

To ask this question is to answer it. In a constitutional Republic such as ours, a federal court has the power to order the Executive to follow the law—and it must. It is axiomatic that the Constitution of the United States and the statutes that the People’s representatives have enacted govern in our system of government. Thus, everyone, from the President on down, is bound by law. By duty and nature, federal courts say what the law is (if there is a genuine dispute), and require those who are subject to the law to conform their behavior to what the law requires. This is the essence of the rule of law.

Do not take my word for it. Venerated figures in our Nation’s history have repeatedly emphasized that “[t]he essence of our free Government is ‘leave to live by no man’s leave, underneath the law’—to be governed by those impersonal forces which we call law.” Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U. S. 579, 654 (1952) (R. Jackson, J., concurring). “Our Government is fashioned to fulfill this concept so far as humanly possible.” Id., at 654–655. Put differently, the United States of America has “ ‘ “a government of laws and not of men.” ’ ” Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U. S. 1, 23 (1958) (Frankfurter, J., concurring) (quoting United States v. Mine Workers, 330 U. S. 258, 307 (1947) (Frankfurter, J., concurring in judgment)); see also, e.g., Mass. Const., pt. 1, Art. XXX (1780), in 3 Federal and State Constitutions 1893 (F. Thorpe ed. 1909) (J. Adams); Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 163 (1803) (Marshall, C. J., for the Court); United States v. Dickson, 15 Pet. 141, 162 (1841) (Story, J., for the Court).

That familiar adage is more than just mere “ ‘rhetorical flourish.’ ” Cooper, 358 U. S., at 23. It is “ ‘the rejection in positive terms of rule by fiat, whether by the fiat of governmental or private power.’ ” Ibid. Indeed, “constitutionalism has one essential quality: it is a legal limitation on government; it is the antithesis of arbitrary rule; its opposite is despotic government, the government of will instead of law.” C. McIlwain, Constitutionalism: Ancient and Modern 21–22 (rev. ed. 1947); see also id., at 21 (“All constitutional government is by definition limited government”).

Those who birthed our Nation limited the power of government to preserve freedom. As they knew all too well, “constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.” Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, in 38 Great Books of the Western World 69 (T. Nugent transl., R. Hutchins ed. 1952). But the Founders reasoned that the vice of human ambition could be channeled to prevent the country from devolving into despotism—ambition could be “made to counteract ambition.” The Federalist No. 51, p. 322 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (J. Madison). If there were, say, a Constitution that divided power across institutions “in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other,” then it could be possible to establish Government by and for the People and thus stave off autocracy. Ibid.; see also Myers v. United States, 272 U. S. 52, 293 (1926) (Brandeis, J., dissenting) (“The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the Convention of 1787, not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power”). Through such separated institutions, power checks power. See Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, at 69. Our system of institutional checks thus exists for a reason: so that “the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.” The Federalist No. 51, at 322.

B

The distribution of power between the Judiciary and the Executive is of particular importance to the operation of a society governed by law. Made up of “ ‘free, impartial, and independent’ ” judges and justices, the Judiciary checks the political branches of Government by explaining what the law is and “securing obedience” with it. Mine Workers, 330 U. S., at 308, 312 (opinion of Frankfurter, J.); see Marbury, 1 Cranch, at 177. The federal courts were thus established “not only to decide upon the controverted rights of the citizens as against each other, but also upon rights in controversy between them and the government.” United States v. Lee, 106 U. S. 196, 220 (1882).

Quite unlike a rule-of-kings governing system, in a rule-of-law regime, nearly “[e]very act of government may be challenged by an appeal to law.” Cooper, 358 U. S., at 23 (opinion of Frankfurter, J.). In this country, the Executive does not stand above or outside of the law. Consequently, when courts are called upon to adjudicate the lawfulness of the actions of the other branches of Government, the Judiciary plays “an essential part of the democratic process.” Mine Workers, 330 U. S., at 312. Were it otherwise—were courts unable or unwilling to command the Government to follow the law—they would “sanctio[n] a tyranny” that has no place in a country committed to “well-regulated liberty and the protection of personal rights.” Lee, 106 U. S., at 221. It is law—and “ ‘Law alone’ ”—that “ ‘saves a society from being rent by internecine strife or ruled by mere brute power however disguised.’ ” Cooper, 358 U. S., at 23 (quoting Mine Workers, 330 U. S., at 308).

 The power to compel the Executive to follow the law is particularly vital where the relevant law is the Constitution. When the Executive transgresses an Act of Congress, there are mechanisms through which Congress can assert its check against the Executive unilaterally—such as, for example, asserting the power of the purse. See K. Stith, Congress’ Power of the Purse, 97 Yale L. J. 1343, 1360 (1988) (describing Congress’s ability to “regulat[e] executive branch activities by limitations on appropriations”). But when the Executive violates the Constitution, the only recourse is the courts. Eliminate that check, and our government ceases to be one of “limited powers.” Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U. S. 452, 457 (1991). After all, a limit that “do[es] not confine the perso[n] on whom [it is] imposed” is no limit at all. Marbury, 1 Cranch, at 176.¹

II

With that background, we can now turn to this suit and focus on the ways in which the majority’s ruling undermines our constitutional system. Justice Sotomayor has laid out the relevant facts, see ante, at 9–13 (dissenting opinion), and I will not repeat what she has said. It suffices for my purposes to reiterate that, before these applications arrived here, three District Courts had concluded that Executive Order No. 14160—which attempts to alter the Constitution’s express conferral of citizenship on all who are born in this Nation, Amdt. 14, §1—likely violates the Constitution. Those courts each thus enjoined the Executive from enforcing that order anywhere, against anyone. See 763 F. Supp. 3d 723 (Md. 2025), appeal pending, No. 25–1153 (CA4); 765 F. Supp. 3d 1142 (WD Wash. 2025), appeal pending, No. 25–807 (CA9); Doe v. Trump, 766 F. Supp. 3d 266 (Mass. 2025), appeal pending, No. 25–1170 (CA1). Three Courts of Appeals then declined to upset these injunctions during the pendency of the Government’s appeals. See 2025 WL 654902 (CA4, Feb. 28, 2025); 2025 WL 553485 (CA9, Feb. 19, 2025); 131 F. 4th 27 (CA1 2025).

The majority now does what none of the lower courts that have considered Executive Order No. 14160 would do: It allows the Executive’s constitutionally dubious mandate to go into effect with respect to anyone who is not already a plaintiff in one of the existing legal actions. Notably, the Court has not determined that any of the lower courts were wrong about their conclusion that the executive order likely violates the Constitution—the Executive has not asked us to rule on the lawfulness of Executive Order No. 14160. But the majority allows the Executive to implement this order (which lower courts have so far uniformly declared likely unconstitutional) nonetheless.

 Given the critical role of the Judiciary in maintaining the rule of law, see Part I, supra, it is odd, to say the least, that the Court would grant the Executive’s wish to be freed from the constraints of law by prohibiting district courts from ordering complete compliance with the Constitution. But the majority goes there. It holds that, even assuming that Executive Order No. 14160 violates the Constitution, federal courts lack the power to prevent the Executive from continuing to implement that unconstitutional directive.

As I understand the concern, in this clash over the respective powers of two coordinate branches of Government, the majority sees a power grab—but not by a presumably lawless Executive choosing to act in a manner that flouts the plain text of the Constitution. Instead, to the majority, the power-hungry actors are . . . (wait for it) . . . the district courts. See ante, at 1 (admonishing district courts for daring to “asser[t] the power” to order the Executive to follow the law universally). In the majority’s view, federal courts only have the power to “afford the plaintiff complete relief ” in the cases brought before them; they can do nothing more. Ante, at 16. And the majority thinks a so-called universal injunction—that is, a court order requiring the Executive to follow the law across the board and not just with respect to the plaintiff—“grant[s] relief to nonparties.” See ante, at 6–8. Therefore, the majority reasons, issuing such orders exceeds district courts’ authority. See ante, at 21.

 So many questions arise.² The majority’s analysis is fully interrogated, and countered, in Justice Sotomayor’s dissent. My objective is to expose the core conceptual fallacy underlying the majority’s reasoning, which, to me, also tends to demonstrate why, and how, today’s ruling threatens the rule of law.

The pillar upon which today’s ruling rests is the majority’s contention that the remedial power of the federal courts is limited to granting “complete relief ” to the parties. Ante, at 15–16. And the majority’s sole basis for that prop osition is the practice of the High Court of Chancery in England. Ante, at 6–7. But this cramped characterization of the Judiciary’s function is highly questionable when it comes to suits against the Executive. That is, even if the majority is correct that courts in England at the time of the founding were so limited—and I have my doubts, see ante, at 18–20 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting)—why would courts in our constitutional system be limited in the same way?

The Founders of the United States of America squarely rejected a governing system in which the King ruled all, and all others, including the courts, were his subordinates. In our Constitution-centered system, the People are the rulers and we have the rule of law. So, it makes little sense to look to the relationship between English courts and the King for guidance on the power of our Nation’s Judiciary vis-à-vis its Executive. See The Federalist No. 69, at 416 (A. Hamilton) (explaining how the President differs from the King, including because “[t]he person of the King of Great Britain is sacred and inviolable; there is no constitutional tribunal to which he is amenable”). Indeed, it is precisely because the law constrains the Government in our system that the Judiciary’s assignment is so broad, per the Constitution. Federal courts entertain suits against the Government claiming constitutional violations. Thus, the function of the courts—both in theory and in practice—necessarily includes announcing what the law requires in such suits for the benefit of all who are protected by the Constitution, not merely doling out relief to injured private parties.

Put differently, the majority views the Judiciary’s power through an aperture that is much too small, leading it to think that the only function of our courts is to provide “complete relief ” to private parties. Sure, federal courts do that, and they do it well. But they also diligently maintain the rule of law itself. When it comes to upholding the law, federal courts ensure that all comers—i.e., everyone to whom the law applies and over whom the court has personal jurisdiction (including and perhaps especially the Executive)—know what the law is and, most important, follow it.³

III

(Editor my italics)

Still, upon reading the Court’s opinion, the majority’s foundational mistake in mischaracterizing the true scope and nature of a federal court’s power might seem only marginally impactful. Indeed, one might wonder: Why all the fuss? After all, the majority recognizes that district courts can still issue universal injunctions in some circumstances. See ante, at 16–18. It even acknowledges that the lower courts may reimpose the same universal injunctions at issue in these cases, if the courts find on remand that doing so is necessary to provide complete relief to the named plaintiffs. See ante, at 19. From the standpoint of outcomes, that’s all welcome news. But, as I explain below, from the perspective of constitutional theory and actual practice, disaster looms.

What I mean by this is that our rights-based legal system can only function properly if the Executive, and everyone else, is always bound by law. Today’s decision is a seismic shock to that foundational norm. Allowing the Executive to violate the law at its prerogative with respect to anyone who has not yet sued carves out a huge exception—a gash in the basic tenets of our founding charter that could turn out to be a mortal wound. What is more, to me, requiring courts themselves to provide the dagger (by giving their imprimatur to the Executive Branch’s intermittent lawlessness) makes a mockery of the Judiciary’s solemn duty to safeguard the rule of law.

A

Do remember: The Executive has not asked this Court to determine whether Executive Order No. 14160 complies with the Constitution. Rather, it has come to us seeking the right to continue enforcing that order regardless—i.e., even though six courts have now said the order is likely unconstitutional. What the Executive wants, in effect, is for this Court to bless and facilitate its desire to operate in two different zones moving forward: one in which it is required to follow the law (because a particular plaintiff has secured a personal injunction prohibiting its unlawful conduct), and another in which it can choose to violate the law with respect to certain people (those who have yet to sue).

In the first zone, law reigns. For the named plaintiffs in the suits before us, for example, the lower courts’ determi nation that Executive Order No. 14160 is likely unconstitutional and cannot be implemented has teeth. Per the courts’ orders, the Executive is prohibited from denying citizenship to the offspring of the named plaintiffs. See ante, at 26 (leaving the injunctions in place to the extent “necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue”). Within this zone, the courts’ rule of decision—that Executive Order No. 14160 is likely unconstitutional—applies.

But with its ruling today, the majority endorses the creation of a second zone—one in which that rule of decision has no effect. In this zone, which is populated by those who lack the wherewithal or ability to go to court, all bets are off. There is no court-issued mandate requiring the Executive to honor birthright citizenship in compliance with the Constitution, so the people within this zone are left to the prerogatives of the Executive as to whether their constitutional rights will be respected. It does not matter what six federal courts have said about Executive Order No. 14160; those courts are powerless to make the Executive stop enforcing that order altogether. In effect, then, that powerlessness creates a void that renders the Constitution’s constraints irrelevant to the Executive’s actions. Of course, the Executive might choose to follow the law in this zone as well—but that is left to its discretion. And the Solicitor General has now confirmed that, in the absence of a personal injunction secured by a particular plaintiff, this Executive’s view is that compliance with lower court rulings on matters of constitutional significance is optional.⁴

I am not the first to observe that a legal system that operates on two different tracks (one of which grants to the Executive the prerogative to disregard the law) is anathema to the rule of law.⁵ Thus, the law-free zone that results from this Court’s near elimination of universal injunctions is not an unfamiliar archetype. Also eerily echoing history’s horrors is the fact that today’s prerogative zone is unlikely to impact the public in a randomly distributed manner. Those in the good graces of the Executive have nothing to fear; the new prerogative that the Executive has to act unlawfully will not be exercised with respect to them. Those who accede to the Executive’s demands, too, will be in the clear. The wealthy and the well connected will have little difficulty securing legal representation, going to court, and obtaining injunctive relief in their own name if the Executive violates their rights.

Consequently, the zone of lawlessness the majority has now authorized will disproportionately impact the poor, the uneducated, and the unpopular—i.e., those who may not have the wherewithal to lawyer up, and will all too often find themselves beholden to the Executive’s whims. This is yet another crack in the foundation of the rule of law, which requires “equality and justice in its application.” Papachristou v. Jacksonville, 405 U. S. 156, 171 (1972). In the end, though, everyone will be affected, because it is law’s evenhanded application—“to minorities as well as majorities, to the poor as well as the rich”—that “holds society together.” Ibid.

The majority “skips over” these consequences. Ante, at 23. No one denies that the power of federal courts is limited—both by the Constitution and by Congress. But the majority seems to forget (or ignores) that the Constitution and Congress also limit the power of the Executive. In addition, it is indisputable that the Executive’s power to leverage physical force in a manner that directly threatens to deprive people of life, liberty, or property creates uniquely harmful risks when unconstrained by law. But the majority today roots its holding in a purported statutory limitation, not a constitutional one. Ante, at 5, n. 4. And, as I have explained, our Constitution gives federal courts the authority to order the Executive to stop acting unlawfully. See Part I, supra. To the extent Congress has attempted to strip federal courts of that power via the Judiciary Act (and, to be clear, I do not think it has, for the reasons Justice Sotomayor discusses, see ante, at 23–31), it is powerless to do so.

(Editor: italics mine!)

The bottom line is this: If courts do not have the authority to require the Executive to adhere to law universally, a dual-track system develops in which courts are ousted as guardians in some situations and compliance with law sometimes becomes a matter of executive prerogative. But “[t]here can be no free society without law administered through an independent judiciary.” Mine Workers, 330 U. S., at 312 (opinion of Frankfurter, J.). “If one man”— even a very important man, and even a democratically elected man—“can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny.” Ibid.

B

This leads me to another potentially destructive aspect of today’s decision—the Court’s dismissive treatment of the solemn duties and responsibilities of the lower courts. Sworn judicial officers must now put on blinders and take a see-no-evil stance with respect to harmful executive conduct, even though those same officials have already announced that such conduct is likely unconstitutional. Yes, certain named plaintiffs have brought particular lawsuits seeking protection of their legal rights. But their claim is that Executive Order No. 14160 violates the Constitution. If the court agrees with them, why on Earth must it permit that unconstitutional government action to take effect at all?

I have already explained why the majority’s answer—because the court is powerless to do anything but give “complete relief ” to those parties—is wrong in terms of the actual scope of federal courts’ authority. See Part I, supra. I now observe that this response also erroneously suggests that a court does something wrongful when it imposes a universal injunction in a single plaintiff ’s lawsuit—akin to giving a windfall to those who do not deserve the law’s protection because they have not sued. Ante, at 8–9, 12–15. This way of conceptualizing universal injunctions mistakes that remedy for the unearned spoils of particular adversarial engagements, rather than a necessary tool employed to defend the Constitution by reinforcing pre-existing rights.

Here is what I mean. Our Constitution indisputably con fers individual rights that operate as unequivocal protections against government action.⁶ Thus, a constrained Executive—i.e., one who is bound by the Constitution not to violate people’s rights—is a public benefit, guaranteed to all from the start, without regard to the nature or existence of any particular enforcement action.⁷ Properly understood, then, when the Executive violates those pre-existing rights in a nonparticularized manner, a universal injunction merely restores what the People were always owed; that remedy does not improperly distribute an unearned benefit to those who did not have the temerity to secure it for themselves by filing a lawsuit.

Or consider it the other way: When a court is prevented from enjoining the Executive universally after the Executive establishes a universal practice of stripping people’s constitutional rights, anyone who is entitled to the Constitution’s protection but will instead be subjected to the Executive’s whims is improperly divested of their inheritance. The Constitution is flipped on its head, for its promises are essentially nullified.⁸ So, rather than having a governing system characterized by protected rights, the default becomes an Executive that can do whatever it wants to whomever it wants, unless and until each affected individual affirmatively invokes the law’s protection.

A concrete example helps to illustrate why this turnabout undermines the rule of law. Imagine an Executive who issues a blanket order that is blatantly unconstitutional—demanding, say, that any and all of its political foes be summarily and indefinitely incarcerated in a prison outside the jurisdiction of the United States, without any hearing or chance to be heard in court. Shortly after learning of this edict, one such political rival rushes into court with his lawyer, claims the Executive’s order violates the Constitution, and secures an injunction that prohibits the Executive from enforcing that unconstitutional mandate. The upshot of today’s decision is that, despite that rival’s success in persuading a judge of the unconstitutional nature of the Executive’s proclamation, the court’s ruling and injunction can only require the Executive to shelve any no-process incarceration plan that targets that particular individual (the named plaintiff ); the Executive can keep right on rounding up its other foes, despite the court’s clear and unequivocal pronouncement that the executive order is unlawful.

The majority today says that, unless and until the other political rivals seek and secure their own personal injunctions, the Executive can carry on acting unconstitutionally with respect to each of them, as if the Constitution’s due process requirement does not exist. For those who get to court in time, their right not to be indefinitely imprisoned without due process will be protected. But if they are unable to sue or get to the courthouse too late, the majority says, oh well, there is nothing to be done, despite the fact that their detention without due process is plainly prohibited by law.

(Editor: Justice Jackson’s humor is most welcome!)

A Martian arriving here from another planet would see these circumstances and surely wonder: “what good is the Constitution, then?” What, really, is this system for protecting people’s rights if it amounts to this—placing the onus on the victims to invoke the law’s protection, and rendering the very institution that has the singular function of ensuring compliance with the Constitution powerless to prevent the Government from violating it? “Those things Americans call constitutional rights seem hardly worth the paper they are written on!”

(Editor: italics mine)

These observations are indictments, especially for a Nation that prides itself on being fair and free. But, after today, that is where we are. What the majority has done is allow the Executive to nullify the statutory and constitutional rights of the uncounseled, the underresourced, and the unwary, by prohibiting the lower courts from ordering the Executive to follow the law across the board. Moreover, officers who have sworn an oath to uphold the law are now required to allow the Executive to blatantly violate it. Federal judges pledge to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic. 5 U. S. C. §3331. They do not agree to permit unconstitutional behavior by the Executive (or anyone else). But the majority forgets (or ignores) this duty, eagerly imposing a limit on the power of courts that, in essence, prevents judges from doing what their oaths require.⁹

(Editor: I will simply quote the remainder of Justice Jackons invaluable dissent!)

I view the demise of the notion that a federal judge can order the Executive to adhere to the Constitution—full stop—as a sad day for America. The majority’s unpersuasive effort to justify this result makes it sadder still. It is the responsibility of each and every jurist to hold the line. But the Court now requires judges to look the other way after finding that the Executive is violating the law, shamefully permitting unlawful conduct to continue unabated.

 Today’s ruling thus surreptitiously stymies the Judiciary’s core duty to protect and defend constitutional rights. It does this indirectly, by preventing lower courts from telling the Executive that it has to stop engaging in conduct that violates the Constitution. Instead, now, a court’s power to prevent constitutional violations comes with an asterisk—a court can make the Executive cease its unconstitutional conduct *but only with respect to the particular plaintiffs named in the lawsuit before them, leaving the Executive free to violate the constitutional rights of anyone and everyone else.

* * *

( Editor: No wonder the collection of political hacks who self-present as The Masters of American Law, attacked with such juriprudenial ferosity, Justice Jackson telling, not to speak of unrelenting critique! )

Make no mistake: Today’s ruling allows the Executive to deny people rights that the Founders plainly wrote into our Constitution, so long as those individuals have not found a lawyer or asked a court in a particular manner to have their rights protected. This perverse burden shifting cannot coexist with the rule of law. In essence, the Court has now shoved lower court judges out of the way in cases where executive action is challenged, and has gifted the Executive with the prerogative of sometimes disregarding the law. As a result, the Judiciary—the one institution that is solely responsible for ensuring our Republic endures as a Nation of laws—has put both our legal system, and our system of government, in grave jeopardy.

“The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day.” Youngstown, 343 U. S., at 594 (opinion of Frankfurter, J.). But “[i]t does come,” “from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority.” Ibid. By needlessly granting the Government’s emergency application to prohibit universal injunctions, the Court has cleared a path for the Executive to choose law-free action at this perilous moment for our Constitution—right when the Judiciary should be hunkering down to do all it can to preserve the law’s constraints. I have no doubt that, if judges must allow the Executive to act unlawfully in some circumstances, as the Court concludes today, executive lawlessness will flourish, and from there, it is not difficult to predict how this all ends. Eventually, executive power will become completely uncontainable, and our beloved constitutional Republic will be no more.

Perhaps the degradation of our rule-of-law regime would happen anyway. But this Court’s complicity in the creation of a culture of disdain for lower courts, their rulings, and the law (as they interpret it) will surely hasten the downfall of our governing institutions, enabling our collective demise. At the very least, I lament that the majority is so caught up in minutiae of the Government’s self-serving, finger-pointing arguments that it misses the plot. The majority forgets (or ignores) that “[w]ith all its defects, delays and inconveniences, men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the Executive be under the law, and that the law be made by parliamentary deliberations.” Id., at 655 (opinion of R. Jackson, J.). Tragically, the majority also shuns this prescient warning: Even if “[s]uch institutions may be destined to pass away,” “it is the duty of the Court to be last, not first, to give them up.” Ibid.

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Political Observer

Political Cynic wades in the muck!

stephenkmacksd.com/

Aug 09, 2025

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Political Cynic!

Political Cynic offers a rebuke to this Political Poser!

stephenkmacksd.com/

Aug 08, 2025

Headline: Why More People in the World Are Feeling Hopeful (Except Us)

Editor: Reader recall Mr. Brooks’ War Propganda ‘The Collapse of the Dream Palases’? Or has time weakened your recolective powers? Reader let me just present the first four paragraphs of his latest rancid, but celebratory, political chatter

I hope you don’t mind if I pierce the general gloom with a piece of wonderful news. More people around the world report that they are living better lives than before. Plus they are becoming more hopeful about the future. In a new survey, the Gallup organization interviewed people across 142 countries and asked them a series of questions to determine whether they felt they were thriving in their lives or struggling or, worst of all, suffering.

The number of people who say they are thriving has been rising steadily for a decade. The number of people who say they are suffering is down to 7 percent globally, tying with the lowest level since 2007. This trend is truly worldwide, with strong gains in well-being in countries as far-flung as Kosovo, Vietnam, Kazakhstan and Paraguay.

Unfortunately, there is a little bad news. Some people reported sharp declines in well-being. That would be us. The share of the population that is thriving is falling in America, Canada, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand. In 2007, 67 percent of Americans and Canadians said they were thriving. Now it’s down to 49 percent.

To put it another way, the nations with some of the highest standards of living are seeing the greatest declines in well-being. We still enjoy higher absolute levels of well-being than nations in the developing world do, but the trend lines are terrible.

…

Political Cynic.

Political Observer comments.

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Aug 05, 2025

Headline: Opinion

David French

Israel Must Open Its Eyes

Aug. 3, 2025

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Political Observer povides a running comentary on Mr. French’s long Zionist Apologetic

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Paragraph 1

I think it’s fair to describe me as a Christian Zionist. I believe in the necessity of the Jewish people to have their own safe, secure homeland. And while I have never thought Israel was perfect (far from it), I have seen the antisemitism and genocidal intent animating its enemies in the Middle East, including Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.

Editor Mr. Frenches self-reports

I think it’s fair to describe me as a Christian Zionist. I believe in the necessity of the Jewish people to have their own safe, secure homeland. And while I have never thought Israel was perfect (far from it), I have seen the antisemitism and genocidal intent animating its enemies in the Middle East, including Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.

Paragraph 2

I can see the extraordinary antisemitism and bias in the larger international community. When a United Nations that includes North Korea, Syria, Russia and China condemns Israel more than any other nation in the world (by far), you know that the Jewish state is being singled out.

Editor: Antisemitism is the tool of first and last resort of the Christian Zionist?

Paragraph 3

I’m also a veteran of the Iraq war who served as judge advocate for an armored cavalry regiment during the surge in Iraq in 2007 and 2008. Before I became a journalist, I was part of a legal team that defended Israel from war crime accusations after Operation Cast Lead, the Gaza war of 2008 and 2009.

Editor Mr French offers more to the reader, more of his particular politics! ‘I was part of a legal team that defended Israel from war crime accusations after Operation Cast Lead, the Gaza war of 2008 and 2009.’

Paragraph 4

I know that Israel had the right under international law to destroy Hamas’s military and to remove Hamas from power after the massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7. In other words, Israel had the right to respond to a terrorist force like Hamas the way the United States and its allies responded to a terrorist force like ISIS after ISIS launched its terrorist campaign across the Middle East and across Europe.

Editor: Mr French offers more of his politics, or just name it political fellow traveling. Not to speak of more carefilly managed political conformity, a recurring leitmotif !

Paragraph 5

So, yes, I consider myself a friend of Israel. But now its friends need to stage an intervention. The Israeli government has gone too far. It has engineered a staggering humanitarian crisis, and that crisis is both a moral atrocity and a long-term threat to Israel itself.

Editor: Mr. French So, yes, I consider myself a friend of Israel, with a caveat !

Paragraph 6

Civilian casualties were inevitable when Israel responded to Hamas, but the suffering of Palestinian civilians is far beyond the bounds of military necessity. The people of Gaza, already grieving the loss of thousands of children, now face a famine — and children once again will bear the brunt of the pain.

Editor:Mr. French provides more hand wringing, equivocation etc.

Paragraph 7

If you’re skeptical of this claim (and I know many supporters of Israel are), consider two factors — the numbers and the timing. As The Times documented in an article on Friday, the amount of aid flowing into Gaza has sharply diminished.

Paragraph 8

Before Israel ended its cease-fire with Hamas and blocked aid shipments in March, the amount of aid entering Gaza had soared to well over 200,000 tons per month. Then it dropped to virtually nothing, and even after Israel lifted its blockade in May, the amount of aid flowing into Gaza was a small fraction of what it had been.

Editor: Mr. French can’t quite seem to come to terms with enforced famine: Christian Zionism is elastic in its many permutations and self willed forgetting!

Paragraph 9

Compounding the problem, the method of distributing what little aid is available requires thousands of Palestinians to travel long distances, which imposes an extreme hardship on the most vulnerable people — the very old, the very sick and the very young. Palestinians also have to cross military lines, which creates its own risk of violence as thousands upon thousands of hungry civilians encounter heavily armed soldiers who are on high alert.

Editor: Mr. French never reaches the point of realizing that the Famine, was a tool of Genocide practised Netanyahu and his cadre!

Paragraph 10

In Iraq, I participated in humanitarian missions that involved far fewer people, and I can tell you that these missions can be remarkably tense. It takes extreme discipline to keep the peace. Consequently, even as the amount of aid has diminished, the number of violent incidents during aid distribution has skyrocketed. Hundreds of Palestinians in search of food have been killed, many of them by Israeli soldiers.

Editor: Mr. French seems always to be almost upon the point of realization, though carefully checked by his political conformity?

………………………………………………………………………………………….

Editor: Reader some times I lose all patience with Mr. French and will simply highlight certain portions of his commentary!

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

Paragraph 11

So there is less aid, and it’s harder and more dangerous to obtain.

Paragraph 12

The decrease in aid would be dreadful on its own, but what makes it incalculably worse is the timing. Israel’s aid blockade came after a year and a half of war, when Hamas is decimated, Gaza’s government is largely dismantled and chaos reigns.

Editor:Hand-Wringing!

Paragraph 13

The dominant power in Gaza is Israel, not Hamas, and Israel, not Hamas, is the only entity with both the power to control aid distribution and the ability to obtain and distribute aid in the Gaza Strip. There is no way for Gazans to feed themselves. They are utterly dependent on Israel, and Israel removed the United Nations from the aid distribution network without replacing it with an effective alternative.

Paragraph 14

Anyone who has spent time fighting Al Qaeda or ISIS or Hamas knows that those groups think civilian suffering advances their cause. They don’t burrow into cities and wear civilian clothes and hide behind hospitals and mosques simply to conceal themselves; they do so knowing that any military response will also kill civilians. They want the world to see images of civilian death and suffering.

Editor: Mr. French carefully follows the Party Line as this is again The New York Times: ‘Anyone who has spent time fighting Al Qaeda or ISIS or Hamas knows that those groups think civilian suffering advances their cause’ . Mr. French dons the soldiers’ garb?

Editor:

Paragraph 15

So why is Israel giving Hamas what it wants?

Paragraph: 16

Hamas should lay down its arms. It should release every hostage. But Hamas’s war crimes — including its murders, its hostage taking and its concealment among civilians and civilian buildings — do not relieve Israel of its own moral and legal obligations.

Paragraph 17

There has always been a better way to defeat Hamas, and no one knows this better than veterans of the Iraq war. We’ve watched Israel make the same mistakes we made early in the war, when we repeatedly attacked and destroyed terrorist cells but the terrorists always came back.

Paragraph 18

We played a deadly and destructive version of Whac-a-Mole, reducing neighborhoods and streets to ruin, only to bomb the rubble weeks and months later when Al Qaeda returned. The only way to stop the cycle was to seize ground, hold it and protect and secure the civilian population until we could hand control over to local authorities.

Paragraph 19

That approach has a double virtue. It’s not just kinder to civilians; it’s far more effective militarily. I’m not just saying this. Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of American forces in Iraq during the surge — when we turned the tide of the Iraq war in part by protecting the Iraqi population — has made this argument over and over and over again since Oct. 7.

Editor: Mr. French features the pussy-whipped Gen. David Petraeus!

Paragraph 20

This is a moment of short-term strength and long-term vulnerability for Israel. Its triumphs in its fights with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran mean that its foes are militarily the weakest they’ve been in more than a generation. At the same time, however, European and American public support for Israel is in a state of collapse.

Editor: Mr. French does not qualify as competent! But like Friedman, Brooks and Stephens, as New York Times propaganda foot soldiers!

Paragraph 21

A May YouGov poll found that public support for Israel in Western Europe was the lowest it had ever recorded. A July Gallup poll found that only 32 percent of Americans approved of Israel’s military actions in Gaza.

Editor: A resort to Polling as the measure of the Gaza Genocide: The New York Times knows it readerships!

Paragraph 22

But don’t take collapsing support for Israel as proof that nations support Hamas. On Tuesday all 22 members of the Arab League and all 27 members of the European Union called on Hamas to disarm, release all remaining hostages and surrender control of Gaza. This was a vitally important step — a clear indication that key nations in the world utterly reject Hamas.

Editor: Mr. French offers the soothing political bath of ‘The Middle Way’ ?

Paragraph 23

It matters when President Trump — the man who ordered U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities — describes what’s happening in Gaza as “real starvation” and says, “I told Israel maybe they have to do it a different way.”

Editor: Mr. French offers another ‘walk-on’ for that beguiling ‘Middle Way’!

Paragraph 24

Israel’s defenders can rightfully complain that nations with far worse human rights violations receive far less scrutiny. Where are the protests, they ask, against North Korean gulags? Or against the Chinese oppression of the Uyghurs? But again, Israel has moral responsibilities, regardless of Western hypocrisy, and it still needs those Western friends.

Editor: Mr. French offers a collection of Political Culprits, in the above! In sum Israel is not so bad? The only Democracy in the region merde!

Paragraph 25

No nation — not even the United States — can thrive without allies, and Israel (despite its nuclear weapons) is far more vulnerable and dependent on international friendship than the United States or Britain or France. If Israel creates a lasting rift with its European allies and shatters the longstanding bipartisan American consensus on aiding Israel, then the long-term consequences could be grave.

Paragraph 26

It’s easy to forget that it was President Barack Obama, a Democrat, who signed the largest-ever American military aid package with Israel — a $38 billion, 10-year deal that helped supply Israel with many of the weapons it has used in this war. It’s easy to forget that President Joe Biden, a Democrat, twice deployed American forces to help defend Israel from Iranian drone and missile attacks.

Editor: Mr. French offers Barack Obama and Joe Biden as exemplars of enlightened political support for the Zionist Fascist State. The whole of America’s Political Class is Owned by AIPAC!

Paragraph 27

Is Israel better off if its alliance with America depends on whether a Republican is in the White House? Can it even count on Republican support in the long run? Putting aside for the moment the rise of antisemitism in the online right, “America First” has never been a concept hospitable to foreign aid or alliances.

Paragraph 28

One of the most frustrating aspects of our political discourse is the expectation that once you’re identified on a side, you are somehow betraying your side if you speak up when it goes terribly wrong. Partisans are used to ignoring their opponents, but there might be a chance they will listen to their friends.

Editor: Mr. French self-presents as a ‘Truth Teller’ while he ignores the World Court and:

Ms. Francesca Albanese was appointed the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, by the Human Rights Council at its 49th session in March 2022 and has taken up her function as of 1 May 2022. Ms. Albanese is an Affiliate Scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, as well as a Senior Advisor on Migration and Forced Displacement for a think-tank, Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD). She has widely published on the legal situation in Israel and the State of Palestine and regularly teaches and lectures on international law and forced displacement at universities in Europe and the Arab region. Ms. Albanese has also worked as a human rights expert for the United Nations, including the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-palestine

Editor: Reader I’ve utterly lost patience with Mr. French and The New York Times!

Paragraph 29

Israel’s friends must speak with one voice: End the famine in Gaza. Drop any talk of annexation. Protect the civilian population.

Paragraph 30

Defeating Hamas does not require starving a single child.

Political Observer.

Political Observer almost grasps the Colvile Methodology?

stephenkmacksd.com/

Aug 03, 2025

Headline: Keir Starmer’s not the issue. But nor were Johnson, May, Brown…

Sub-headline: This time last year the prime minister was at his height but he has steadily become more and more disliked. Who’s to blame for this sorry state of affairs?

https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/of-course-keirs-not-the-problem-but-nor-were-boris-gordon-mwgkgjxnv

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Editor: The Reader who attemps to come to terms with Robert Colvile latest historically inflected essay: it’s full of self-serving references of an Oxbridger, who brings to bear the very weight of that History, in near capital letters? These paragrasphs almost sings of Telegraph Myopia?

The end is Nige.” That was how The Sun’s front page reported my discovery, in 2017, that “Nigel” had fallen off the official list of baby names. At the time, it seemed not just striking but symbolic: with Ukip at 2 per cent in the polls, and its former leader out of frontline politics, Nigel’s best days really did seem to lie in the past.

Last week, the list came out again. In the register office as in public life, Nigel was firmly back, with five boys both this year and last — one of whom even joined the Reform leader on the campaign trail in Clacton. Rishi was there, and Kemi too. But poor old Keir had disappeared.

Again, the symbolism was irresistible. This time last year, Starmer was at his height as prime minister, delivering a muscular response to the riots that captured the national mood. But he has steadily become more and more disliked. Today, only 19 per cent of voters tell YouGov he is doing a good job, against 69 per cent who disagree. As of the latest polls, he is in the negatives even among Labour voters.

…

Editor : Mr. Colevie’s pastisch of History is meant to ensorsel the reader!

But the second tradition is far older. Indeed, it’s one of the oldest patterns in political history. In Britain, as in many other countries and cultures, it was not just treason but verging on heresy to criticise a divinely appointed king. So the discontented would always stress that their complaints were not about the wise and goodly monarch, but the evil counsellors around them. As late as the Civil War, the Roundheads blamed the outbreak of hostilities not on Charles I himself, but “an abounding malignity in those parties and Factions; who doe still labour to foment Jealosies betwixt the King and this Parliament” — godless bishops, sinister Jesuits and treacherous nobles. It took six full years of war for them to adopt the literally revolutionary position that the blame truly lay with “Charles Stuart, that man of blood”

…

But the problem for the government is that it’s never the advisers. It’s always the king. Just like it was for King John or Charles I or any of the others. Indeed, one of the peculiarities of the British state is that there are surprisingly few formal, institutional structures around the prime minister. Instead, Downing Street functions almost like a royal court, moulding itself around the personality of each new incumbent.

Editor: Historical Reiteration, via Mrs. Thatcher.

Ironically, for all her intractable reputation, one of the few to manage it is arguably Margaret Thatcher, who retooled her administration in 1981-2 after receiving perhaps the most wounding memo ever sent to a PM by their underlings. (“Your own management competence, like that of most of your colleagues, is almost non-existent … You break every rule of good man-management. You bully your weaker colleagues. You criticise colleagues in front of each other and in front of their officials…”).

Recently, on the train back from Kyiv, my colleague Josh Glancy asked Starmer about standing in the spotlight of history. The PM, he wrote, bristled impatiently: “I don’t do all this self-analysis bit. I thought you’d picked that up a year ago. You’re still desperately trying to get in there. Come on.”

Starmer’s position is that his job is not to construct fancy theories. It is to sit down and do the work — to make decision after decision until there are no more problems left to solve.

Editor: The Reader arrives at the final evaluation of what Starmer is, via a shopworn quote from Bismark ‘a Sphinx without a riddle’. Note the tone of self-congatulation, as somehow the point, yet what the reader confronts is an Oxbridger wallowing in political kitsch!

But all truly successful politicians tell a story about themselves. Whitehall, too, works best when everyone can buy into a single shared narrative, imposed from the centre. Starmer not only hasn’t done that, but actively resists it. The result, to steal a put-down from Bismarck, is that he ends up seeming like a Sphinx without a riddle. And the government ends up with a majority but no mission. It may be that the PM can turn things around — that by the time he leaves office, maternity wards will be packed with little Keirs, Morgans and Angelas. But I can’t help feeling that progressive Keir will soon be discarded alongside change Keir, growth Keir, and tough decisions Keir with kung-fu grip. Because if there’s one lesson from history for our leaders, it’s that the fault lies not in their advisers, but in themselves.

Political Observer

Political Observer comments.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Aug 02, 2025

Editor: Reader recall Mr. Brooks War Mongering of April 28, 2003? That led to his ascent to position at The New York Times? The War in Iraq was a lie and a crime and the stepping stone for Brooks!

The Collapse of the Dream Palaces

The Collapse of the Dream Palaces

April 28, 2003 4:00 am

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Reading ‘The Collapse of the Dream Palaces’ in July 2019: American Writer’s selective commentary

Posted on July 10, 2019 by stephenkmacksd

‘ Now that the war in Iraq is over, we’ll find out how many people around the world are capable of facing unpleasant facts.’

https://www.weeklystandard.com/david-brooks/the-collapse-of-the-dream-palaces

What to make of Mr. Brooks’ assertion in 2019? In the present, America is an Occupying power in Iraq, the white phosphorous attack on Falluja, Abu Ghraib and an American embassy that is 104 acres in size, are historically verifiable facts.

The embassy has extensive housing and infrastructure facilities in addition to the usual diplomatic buildings. The buildings include:[10]

Six apartment buildings for employees
Water and waste treatment facilities
A power station
Two “major diplomatic office buildings”
Recreation, including a gym, cinema, several tennis courts and an Olympic-size swimming pool
The complex is heavily fortified, even by the standards of the Green Zone. The details are largely secret, but it is likely to include a significant US Marine Security Guard detachment. Fortifications include deep security perimeters, buildings reinforced beyond the usual standard, and five highly guarded entrances.[citation needed]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_the_United_States,_Baghdad

Not to forget Sec. Powell’s pivotal UN speech, about non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction, Sec. Rice’s looming ‘mushroom cloud’ and Judith Miller’s New York Times propaganda. Brooks makes up his list of heretics, whose collective abode were those ‘dream palaces‘.

There is first the dream palace of the Arabists.

Then there is the dream palace of the Europeans.

Finally, there is the dream palace of the American Bush haters.

Mr. Brooks’ literary invention of Joey Tabula-Rasa allows him to add a strategic distance between his bellicose sensibility, and that of 20 year old Joey T-B. Who is a manufactured political naif, whose uncritical acceptance of the Wise Political Elders judgement is an inept propaganda device.

Invent a representative 20-year-old, Joey Tabula-Rasa, and try to imagine how he would have perceived the events of the past month.

This essay was written for an audience of Weekly Standard readers looking for a set of political rationalizations for the ‘Iraq War’ : an endeavor of the now defunct Project for a New American Century. Its Statement of Principals and its signatories:

June 3, 1997

American foreign and defense policy is adrift. Conservatives have criticized the incoherent policies of the Clinton Administration. They have also resisted isolationist impulses from within their own ranks. But conservatives have not confidently advanced a strategic vision of America’s role in the world. They have not set forth guiding principles for American foreign policy. They have allowed differences over tactics to obscure potential agreement on strategic objectives. And they have not fought for a defense budget that would maintain American security and advance American interests in the new century.

We aim to change this. We aim to make the case and rally support for American global leadership.
As the 20th century draws to a close, the United States stands as the world’s preeminent power. Having led the West to victory in the Cold War, America faces an opportunity and a challenge: Does the United States have the vision to build upon the achievements of past decades? Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests?
We are in danger of squandering the opportunity and failing the challenge. We are living off the capital — both the military investments and the foreign policy achievements — built up by past administrations. Cuts in foreign affairs and defense spending, inattention to the tools of statecraft, and inconstant leadership are making it increasingly difficult to sustain American influence around the world. And the promise of short-term commercial benefits threatens to override strategic considerations. As a consequence, we are jeopardizing the nation’s ability to meet present threats and to deal with potentially greater challenges that lie ahead.

We seem to have forgotten the essential elements of the Reagan Administration’s success: a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States’ global responsibilities.
Of course, the United States must be prudent in how it exercises its power. But we cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of global leadership or the costs that are associated with its exercise. America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests. The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire. The history of this century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership.

Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their consequences for today. Here are four consequences:

• we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global
  responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;
• we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;
• we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;
• we need to accept responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.

Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next.

…

Elliott Abrams, Gary Bauer, William J. Bennett , Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Eliot A. Cohen, Midge Decter, Paula Dobriansky,Steve Forbes Aaron Friedberg, Francis Fukuyama, Frank Gaffney, Fred C. Ikle, Donald Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby, Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle, Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen, Henry S. Rowen, Donald Rumsfeld, Vin Weber, George Weigel, Paul Wolfowitz

https://web.archive.org/web/20050205041635/http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm

Editor: Mr. Brooks’ evolution/de-evolution from Neo-Conservative war monger, to a self-appointed Political/Moral Prophet, with his books , riffing on the themes of an ersatz Sociology made to measure: The Social Animal, The Road to Character and The Second Mountain places this essay, in a past that Mr. Brooks might find inconvenient? Although, like the adroit grifter, he might characterize this essay as a part of his moral/political evolution to his current point of enlightenment.

American Writer

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Editor: Mr. Brooks offers his cast of chatacters:

Donald Trump

Ronald Reagan

David Frum

Simone Weil

Russell Kirk

Jon Allsop

JD Vance

Edmund Burke

Editor: Reader note the Cast of Characters in Mr. David Brooks latest pronouncement, finally reaching the point of the failure of the Democrats: Yet Trump is about the utter failure of the whole American Political Class! Mr. Brooks, in his haste, in his final paragraphs failes to look in the Political Mirror, he has construted, to place the sole blame on the Democrats!

…

Since the progressive era, Democrats have seen society through a government policy lens that is often oblivious to the pre-political social fabric that holds or does not hold society together from the bottom. Democrats have often been technocratic, relying excessively on social science, policy wonkery; they are prone to the kind of thinking that does not see the sinews of our common life — the stuff that cannot be quantified.

Democrats are the party of the elite managerial class, and it’s hard for us affluent, educated types in blue cities to really understand the gut-wrenching disgust, rage and alienation that envelops the less privileged as they watch their social order collapse.

I’ve read dozens of pieces from Democratic pols on how their party can turn things around. Each one — promoting this or that policy — is more pathetic than the last. These people still act and think as if it’s the 20th century and everything will be better if we can have another New Deal. They aren’t even willing to confront the core Democratic question: How does the party of the managerial elite adapt to a populist age?

The Democratic opportunity comes from the fact that, as always, Trump doesn’t try to solve the problems he addresses; he just provides a show business simulacra of a solution. If Democrats can come up with an alternative vision of how to repair the social and moral order, they might be relevant in the years ahead.

Political Observer.

Political Observer.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jul 31, 2025

Headline: Starmer’s spineless pandering to the Gaza vote is coming at a terrible cost

Sub-headline: Palestinianism is a creed that is entrenching divisions and transforming our culture for the worse

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/30/britain-now-west-capital-sectarian-politics/

Editor: Mr. Murray point of political arrival is articulated in the these paragraphs.

…

Within Starmer’s own ranks similar pressures reign.

We now have a number of MPs who have been elected to Parliament purely for their ability to speak to the Palestinian issue, and they have done so because the issue is – as they know – one of the two foreign policy issues which most ignites opinion among Britain’s growing Muslim electorate (the other issue being Kashmir).

Much of the Muslim world – even those hailing from the Indian sub-continent – have imbibed anti-Israeli and indeed anti-Semitic views from birth. And they have decided that the creation of another Muslim state, and the eradication of the world’s one Jewish state, should be a priority.

As well as the “Gaza independents” in Parliament, Starmer also needs to head off the considerable number of his own MPs who share much of their sentiment or pander to the same electorate. He also has to head off the new oddballs party which is being set up by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana – someone who is expert (as so many radical Leftists are) at playing both bully and victim at the same time.

Although Corbyn’s new movement may not be significant in the House of Commons at present, it is perfectly possible that at a future election a party like his which makes Palestinianism its first priority could hoover up dozens of seats.

Starmer’s Labour Party would then be squeezed not only by Reform that is leading them in the polls, but by this other force to his Left. Were these two forces to come at Labour simultaneously it is perfectly possible that they could push the air out of the inflated Labour majority and lead to the party losing its majority in Parliament. With the Conservatives not yet seeing any meaningful uplift in their own popularity, this messy outcome starts to look like the most likely way that Starmer’s massive majority would deflate.

Some people will think that what Starmer has done is clever politicking. It may be in the short term. But in the long term it is yet another demonstration of a dangerous trend in our country. That is the way in which religious, sectarian conflicts from abroad have been brought into the heart of our own nation, a trend which sees blocks voting along ethno-religious lines.

Starmer may have no way to lead this country to a positive future. But this week he has given us another glimpse into a future which is just as fractured and divided as some of us long warned it could be.

Editor: Mr. Murray trades on the toxin of ‘The Other’, that threatens the indigious British populations? The once British Empire, and its explotation of subjugated populatons, across the Globe, has now become the home of many, who came to Britain, in search of a better life, and opportunities unavalable to them in those former Colonies. Mr. Murray is the voice of those former Colonizers.

Political Observer.

American Observer comments.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jul 31, 2025

Under the rubric : Europe | Charlemagne

Headline: Cigarettes, booze and petrol bankroll Europe’s welfare empire

Sub-headline: But what if people give up their sinful ways?

https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/07/24/cigarettes-booze-and-petrol-bankroll-europes-welfare-empire

Editor: Systembolaget is equal to a state liquor store in Swedish: is the Neo-Liberal swear wordsword allied to the a riff on Puratanism, that can’t let go of its tradition of scolding the impure, and the sinfulness in British Life. That leads to a usable political pastisch of that inherent Sinfiulness via an attack on The Welfare State as a partner to that sinfullnes, rendered as satire of the bleakist kind. Notice how Systembolaget metaticises under the hand of the Economist writers/editors/curators of political content! Note the fact religious metphores and similes abound, and are continually repurposed as need be! In each of these parigraphs let me hilight the use of those metphores and similes!

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Is it possible to feel the burden of sin in a continent that is all but godless, as Europe is these days? Prostitution barely generates a frisson in Belgium, a land of unionised hookers. Puffing cannabis is legal in Germany, of all places. Gambling via lotteries or mobile apps is uncontentious just about everywhere. But to feel the weight of social disapproval, try buying a bottle of wine in Sweden. Since 1955 a state-run monopoly has begrudgingly dispensed alcohol to those who insist on drinking it. The Systembolaget, as it is known, oozes disapproval. Stores are sparse and closed on Sundays. If you find one, forget posters of appealing vineyards as you browse the shelves: the decor is part Albanian government office, part pharmacy. There are no discounts to be had, nor a loyalty programme. Wine is left unchilled lest a customer be tempted to down it on a whim. As they queue to pay, shoppers are made to trudge past a “regret basket” that primly suggests they leave some of their hoard behind. The road to Swedish hell is, apparently, lined with lukewarm bottles of sauvignon blanc.

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Editor: The above paragraph demonstrates that the real target, here revealed in the title is about ‘The Welfare State’, that attempts to ameliorate the bad habits of its Citizens! But note that the methology of the writer of this essay.

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A dozen European countries including France and Poland impose tithes on sugary drinks. Energy taxes clobber motorists whose cars are fuelled by planet-warming petrol. Such “sin taxes” allow European politicians to indulge in their two great passions: nannying the public and filling public coffers. Alas the two are in opposition, seeing that pricey sinning makes for fewer sinners.

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Europe has a special (and arguably dubious) rationale for taxing the unholy trinity that are booze, cigs and petrol: its publicly funded health-care systems ultimately pick up the tab for citizens’ bad habits, and society at large will pay the cost of adapting to global warming.

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Young Europeans are on a straighter path than their parents were, including when it comes to untaxed activities like sex and illegal drugs

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Though the gains made from falling sales of accessories to sin will be felt years in the future, the fiscal pain of shrinking revenue hits immediately.

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Taxing sin has other issues. It often disproportionately burdens the poor, who smoke, drink and gamble more as a share of their income and drive older petrol-guzzling cars.

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In 2018 a rise in fuel duties sparked the “yellow jackets” protests in France.

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The EU is brimming with ideas of new sins to tax, not least as it hopes some might fund its budget directly. Levies on unrecycled plastics already flow to its coffers. On July 16th the European Commission proposed to extend excise on tobacco beyond cigarettes to vapes, as well as receiving some of the proceeds of carbon credits.

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Editor: The final paragraph of this ‘essay’ is chock-a-block with Ideas for further actions that the Anti-Statest might take, when confronting the out of hand bureaucracy! Yet nowhere does their appear the realiable ‘Free Market’ that was once the answer to all questions, except the burning Question of Faith, here exercisised in its most etiolated expression? The Reader might also note that the Economist employee is given to wandering about, that is indicative of a lack of focus, she/he waxes and wanes…

Why stop there? Smoking, drinking and boiling the planet are bad, certainly. But policymakers might usefully update the list of sins to be tackled. Would any sane European oppose tripling the income taxes of people who blithely watch videos on public transport without earphones? Charlemagne would happily vote for tourism levies targeting social-media influencers who turn perfectly good Parisian cafés into Instagram backdrops. Electric scooters are a nuisance, too. The problem with taxes on addiction is it is easy for politicians to end up addicted to them.

https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/07/24/cigarettes-booze-and-petrol-bankroll-europes-welfare-empire

American Observer.

Political Reporter.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jul 29, 2025

Editor: It seems that all the current political chatter about Zbigniew Brzezinski has missed this from 2015, by Charles Gati, ed. !

April 01, 2015:

Zbig: The Strategy and Statecraft of Zbigniew Brzezinski: Charles Gati, ed. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press 2013

April 01 2015 in Journal of Cold War Studies (2015) 17 (2): 140–142.

https://doi.org/10.1162/JCWS_r_00535

In the years since Zbigniew Brzezinski published his first book, The Permanent Purge, nearly six decades ago, he has been in turn a prominent scholar of the Cold War, one of the leading foreign policy public intellectuals in the United States, National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter, and, increasingly after the turn of the century, a critic of U.S. foreign policy. Still an active presence and a strong voice in international affairs, he published his latest book, Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power, in 2012 and continues to scrutinize U.S. engagement around the globe with a keen, skeptical eye. Brzezinski has never been afraid to speak his mind and remains for some a controversial figure.

Charles Gati has produced a valuable, informative book that examines the many facets of Brzezinski’s life and works and seeks to place the man, his era, and his writings within the broader context of the United States, along with its adversaries and partners, adapting to a changing world. The book is also a classic immigrant success story. Part personal reminiscences and part academic analysis, the volume features chapters by scholars, former officials, journalists, former students, and—at the end—a section in which Gati interviews Brzezinski about his life. This is not a conventional Festschrift, and it contains some chapters that are critical of Brzezinski’s writings and policies. But it succeeds in highlighting the unique contributions made by this scholar/practitioner.

Like his fellow Central European immigrant Henry Kissinger (with whom, the book argues, he has enjoyed a collegial, not an antagonistic, relationship over many decades), Brzezinski was able with perseverance and strong willpower to rise up in the traditional foreign policy establishment, constantly contending with suspicions that his Polish background made it impossible for him to view the Soviet Union objectively. Indeed, when Jimmy Carter appointed Brzezinski, former Defense Secretary Robert Lovett opined: “We shouldn’t have a National Security Adviser like that who’s not really an American. I can’t imagine anyone negotiating with the Russians with his loathing and suspicion” (p. 17).

Brzezinski’s record as an analyst of the Soviet system and its strengths and weaknesses has largely been vindicated by history, even though some of his ideas were contested at the time. His early writings focused on the theory of totalitarianism, which he modified to explain the post-Stalinist evolution. He understood the weaknesses of the command economy and the rigid party organization and its obsession with control, eventually predicting in his book The Grand Failure that the system had inherent weaknesses that would facilitate its collapse. Mark Kramer reminds us that Brzezinski’s analysis of Soviet-style regimes remains a “rich, provocative, stimulating source” (p. 58).

Brzezinski’s works were roundly denounced—and avidly read—in the USSR, as was clear during a unique U.S.-Soviet conference on Eastern Europe, organized by Charles Gati and Oleg Bogomolov, that took place under the auspices of the International Research and Exchange Council in the turbulent fall of 1989. I was part of the delegation with Gati and Brzezinski, who was making his first visit ever to the Soviet Union. Also in the delegation was Marin Strmecki, who vividly recounts the scene in his chapter here. Lecturing to a hushed, standing-room-only crowd at the venerable Soviet Diplomatic Academy, Brzezinski told his audience that the USSR must recognize that its East European allies had the right to self-determination, and he praised Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberalizing actions to date but said they had to go further. At the end of his speech, the auditorium erupted in thunderous applause. He went on from there to visit Katyń, the place that symbolized the massacres of Polish officers by Soviet troops at the beginning of World War II. The USSR had only just begun to admit the truth about Katyń, and he held a groundbreaking televised meeting with Soviet and Polish officials. The critic of Communism had become a player in the system’s demise.

Brzezinski’s years in the White House coincided with some of the most dramatic moments in U.S. foreign policy—the normalization of relations with China, the signing of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, the Arab-Israeli Camp David peace accords, the Iran hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the signing of the Panama Canal Treaty. The book argues that more was achieved in these years than in many other administrations; it also discusses the rivalry between Brzezinski and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance for the president’s ear and for control of the agenda.

The legacy of Brzezinski’s White House years remains controversial. He was the author of the policy of arming the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet occupation. Although this policy undoubtedly helped accelerate the Soviet Union’s collapse, the Mujahideen were the forbearers of the Taliban and ultimately of al Qaida. Brzezinski says he has no regrets about his support of the Mujahideen. Others might disagree.

In the 21st century, Brzezinski became a harsh critic of the invasion of Iraq and many other aspects of the foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration. He also believes that the decision to stay in Afghanistan and try to modernize it was a mistake—as Soviet leaders had found out in the 1980s at great cost. Brzezinski has also been increasingly outspoken in his criticism of Israel’s policies in recent years, although he tells Gati that the only foreign country in which he feels at home—apart from Poland—is Israel. He argues for a long-term view of Russia’s evolution beyond the shadow of Putin and continues to believe that the younger generation will eventually change Russia for the better. (The Levada Center’s periodic surveys of Russian young people raise questions about this optimistic notion.)

Brzezinski’s rise and continuing influence are a testimony to the unrivaled opportunities the United States offers its immigrants, especially those with his talents, intellectual strengths, and drive. As Brzezinski himself points out at the end of the book, America is the only country in which someone called “Zbigniew Brzezinski” can make a name for himself without changing his name.

© 2015 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Editor: From The Economist of June 19th 2025 offer shopworn hagiography: Charles Gati offering was a minimalist approach to The Great Man?

Headline: Was Zbigniew Brzezinski America’s most important foreign-policy guru?

Sub-Headline: He recognised—and exploited—the weakness of the Soviet Union, a new biography shows

https://www.economist.com/culture/2025/06/19/was-zbigniew-brzezinski-americas-most-important-foreign-policy-guru

Book title: Zbig By Edward Luce. Avid Reader Press; 560 pages; $35. Bloomsbury; £30

Editor: These paragraphs attempt to inflate the political reputation of Brzezinski, as the ghost like apparition as Kissinger fades from popular memory! This sentence offer clues to what Luce’s politcs are about:

…

Editor: Please note my placing some sentences in italics for emphasis!

Brzezinski further tightened the screws by picking up where Kissinger had left off, persuading Carter to normalise relations with China. The Soviet leadership’s feeling of isolation seemed to curb their behaviour. And after Russians invaded Afghanistan in 1979, he financed the mujahideen insurgency which, over the next decade, weakened the Kremlin.

As the sun went down on the Soviet Union, Brzezinski’s reward was to be treated in Poland as a national hero. More surprising was a visit to Moscow in 1989. Addressing the foreign service’s Diplomatic Academy, Brzezinski was his usual uncompromising self, laying out the need for a market economy, democracy and a loose federation of republics. When he finished he was met with raucous applause. To the Americans in the room, that moment marked the cold war’s end.

The question of why Brzezinski’s accomplishments are not more recognised has many answers. Kissinger was deceitful and charming; Brzezinski honest and too often rude. One was a brilliant self-publicist; the other had no time for Washington games. Nobody ever doubted who commanded Kissinger’s loyalty: himself. Brzezinski was thought by the WASP establishment to be putting Poland first. Whenever Carter was critical of Israel—and tensions were high in the lead-up to the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel in 1978—Brzezinski was accused of antisemitism, a charge this book refutes.

But the main reason is that Carter’s presidency was overshadowed by the mishandling of the Iranian revolution in 1979 and the hostage-taking that blighted his last year in office. Mr Luce argues that, in the run up to the revolution, Brzezinski’s advice was ignored. That does not quite wash: on other matters he was usually able to bulldoze the State Department aside. The Iranians delayed the release of the hostages until five minutes after Ronald Reagan took office. This ensured Reagan got the credit—just as he did for the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Neither Brzezinski nor Kissinger ever served in government again, but both retained a taste for power. During the presidential campaign, Kissinger had sought to ingratiate himself with Reagan by blaming the mess in Iran on Carter’s preference for human rights. When he heard of Kissinger’s muck-spreading, Brzezinski’s mordant retort was typical: “I conclude that, although power corrupts, the absence of power corrupts absolutely.”

https://www.economist.com/culture/2025/06/19/was-zbigniew-brzezinski-americas-most-important-foreign-policy-guru

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Editor: This is Brzezinski after the depeat the defeat of Carter by Reagan.

The American Mission?

William Pfaff

April 8, 2004 issue

The American Mission?

Zbigniew Brzezinski’s The Choice is superficially an election-year foreign policy tour d’horizon, more sophisticated in analysis and recommendations, and certainly more statesmanlike in temper, than current writings by the Bush administration’s supporters. It is a nuanced expression of the conventional wisdom among American foreign policy experts, and a condemnation of the self-defeating arrogance of the Bush administration’s conduct during the past two and a half years.

“‘Globalization’ in its essence means global interdependence,” Brzezinski writes. Therefore the American choice today is between attempting to create “a new global system based on shared interests,” or attempting to “use its sovereign global power primarily to entrench its own security.” The latter risks ending in “self-isolation, growing national paranoia, and increasing vulnerability to a globally spreading anti-American virus.” There would even be a risk of the United States becoming a garrison state.

One might think there are other, wider possibilities for a United States uneasily enjoying its “unilateral moment” (as the neoconservatives put it), while seeing itself as “the indispensable nation…standing taller because it sees further” (as the last Democratic secretary of state said). However, Brzezinski implicitly rejects the notion that the United States might be better off if it modified its notion of national mission and concomitant aggrandizement of national power in acknowledgment of the good sense in George Kennan’s counsel (in this journal over four years ago) that for Americans “to see ourselves as the center of political enlightenment and as teachers to a great part of the rest of the world [is] unthought-through, vainglorious, and undesirable.” Kennan added that “this planet is never going to be ruled from any single political center, whatever its military power.”

Brzezinski’s book therefore needs to be considered at two levels. The first is within the political assumptions in which it has been written, undoubtedly shared by most American foreign policy analysts and political figures today. The second would take account of the skeptical perspective articulated by Kennan and question the assumptions widely held among American officials and experts concerning the desirability or happy inevitability, and benevolent consequences, of American global hegemony.

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This developed against a background of anxiety about the growing hostility of the Islamic states toward the US, coincident with Samuel Huntington’s argument that a war between civilizations was on its way. The attacks of September 2001 brought uncertainty to an end. The Bush administration launched its “War on Terror,” which despite President Bush’s explicit denial that Islam was at fault, was widely and emotionally seen as resembling a war between civilizations, with Islamic militants taken as representative of much of Islam and the United States as champion of the West (uneasily followed by its traditional allies).

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Brzezinski deplores the administration’s determination to disconnect the war it had declared from its political and historical sources. He writes that The US inclination, in the spring of 2002, to embrace even the more extreme forms of Israeli suppression of the Palestinians as part of the struggle against terrorism is a case in point. The unwillingness to recognize a historical connection between the rise of anti-American terrorism and America’s involvement in the Middle East makes the formulation of an effective strategic response to terrorism that much more difficult.

Thus, he writes, an initial surge of solidarity with the United States that found expression in Europe and elsewhere just after the attacks waned as the Bush administration revealed its view of the struggle and of the appropriate response:

Culminating in the “axis of evil” formulation, the American perspective on terrorism increasingly came to be viewed as divorced from terrorism’s political context. The nearly unanimous global support for America gave way to increasing skepticism regarding the official US formulations of the shared threat.

Combined with the administration’s treatment of its supposed allies and its attacks on the United Nations and other international institutions, this skepticism was responsible for the international isolation in which the United States found itself by the time it decided to invade Iraq.

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Editor: the final paragraphs of William Pfaff essay are instructive of Brzezinski’s Foreign Policy.

The ultimate criticism to be made of the position Brzezinski shares with many other foreign policy experts is that it ignores or denies the importance of what historically has been the principal force in international relations—the competitive assertion of national interests, founded on divergent values and ambitions among nations, assuredly including democratic ones.

His argument presumes that such differences will find resolution in some version of an end of history, achieved through convergence with the United States. Brzezinski and those who share his views would seem to believe in what has been called the Whig interpretation of history: that history’s purpose has been to lead up to us. The pursuit of national interest by other states produces the “global chaos” against which he warns. Condoleezza Rice made the identical argument, as in a speech last year to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, saying that policies based on balance of power are the road to war.

This position rejects both the classical Western view of history, which is not progressive, and the realist school of political philosophy dominant in past Western political thought, which traditionally has taken a disabused view of human nature and political possibility. The progressive view is a manifestation of hope, or of faith. It amounts to an ideology, teleological in nature. It denies the proposition that hegemony produces hubris, inviting the attention of Nemesis, ending in destitution.

The notion that the United States has an exemplary national mission has always been central to American political thought and rhetoric. In Woodrow Wilson’s view (and that of many in the US today) this mission was divine in origin. Wilson (a president respected by today’s notably secular neoconservatives) held that the hand of God “has led us in this way,” and that we are the mortal instruments of His will—a view that has repeatedly found an echo in the discourse of George W. Bush. This sense of mission lies behind the American claim to an exceptional role in international society.

Brzezinski argues that the practical consequence today of America’s global security role and its extraordinary global ubiquity [is to give the United States] the right to seek more security than other countries. It needs forces with a decisive worldwide deployment capability. It must enhance its intelligence (rather than waste resources on a huge homeland security bureaucracy) so that threats to America can be forestalled. It must maintain a comprehensive technological edge over all potential rivals…. But it should also define its security in ways that help mobilize the self-interest of others. That comprehensive task can be pursued more effectively if the world understands that the trajectory of America’s grand strategy is toward a global community of shared interest.

This belief that the United States has a unique historical mission—whether or not divinely commissioned—is not open to logical refutation. But an American policy that rests on a self-indulgent fiction must be expected to come to a bad end.

Every country has a “story” it tells itself about its place in the contemporary world. We are familiar enough with the American story, beginning with the City on a Hill and progressing through Manifest Destiny toward Woodrow Wilson’s conviction we are “to show the way to the nations of the world how they shall walk in the paths of liberty…. It was of this that we dreamed at our birth.” The current version of the story says that this exalted destiny is fatefully challenged by rogue nations with nuclear weapons, failed states, and the menace of Islamic extremists. Something close to Huntington’s war of civilizations has begun. National mobilization has already taken place. Years of struggle lie ahead.

The “isolation” of the United States today is caused by the fact that its claims about the threat of terrorism seem to others grossly exaggerated, and its reaction, as Brzezinski himself argues, dangerously disproportionate. Most advanced societies have already had, or have, their wars with “terrorism”: the British with the IRA, the Spanish with the Basque separatist ETA, the Germans, Italians, and Japanese with their Red Brigades, the French with Palestinian and Algerian terrorists, Greeks, Latin Americans, and Asians with their own varieties of extremists.

America’s principal allies no longer believe its national “story.” They have tried to believe in it, and have been courteous about it even while skepticism grew. They are alarmed about what has happened to the United States under the Bush administration, and see no good coming from it. They are struck by how impervious Americans seem to be to the notion that our September 11 was not the defining event of the age, after which “nothing could be the same.” They are inclined to think that the international condition, like the human condition, is in fact very much the same as it has always been. It is the United States that has changed. They are disturbed that American leaders seem unable to understand this.

When American officials and policy experts come to Europe saying that “everything has changed,” warning that allied governments must “do something” about the anti-Americanism displayed last year in connection with the Iraq invasion, the Western European reaction is often to marvel at the Americans’ inability to appreciate that the source of the problem lies in how the United States has conducted itself since September 2001. They find this changed United States rather menacing. An Irish international banker recently observed to me that when Europeans suggest to visiting Americans that things have changed in Europe too, as a direct result of America’s policies, “it’s as if the Americans can’t hear.” A French writer has put it this way: it has been like discovering that a respected, even beloved, uncle has slipped into schizophrenia. When you visit him, his words no longer connect with the reality around him. It seems futile to talk about it with him. The family, embarrassed, is even reluctant to talk about it among themselves.

—March 10, 2004

The American Mission?

Political Reporter.

Philosophical Apprentice.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jul 28, 2025

In this inventive book, Peter Fritzsche explores how Europeans and Americans saw themselves in the drama of history, how they took possession of a past thought to be slipping away, and how they generated countless stories about the sorrowful, eventful paths they chose to follow.

In the aftermath of the French Revolution, contemporaries saw themselves as occupants of an utterly new period. Increasingly disconnected from an irretrievable past, worried about an unknown and dangerous future, they described themselves as indisputably modern. To be cast in the new time of the nineteenth century was to recognize the weird shapes of historical change, to see landscapes scattered with ruins, and to mourn the remains of a bygone era.

Tracing the scars of history, writers and painters, revolutionaries and exiles, soldiers and widows, and ordinary home dwellers took a passionate, even flamboyant, interest in the past. They argued politics, wrote diaries, devoured memoirs, and collected antiques, all the time charting their private paths against the tremors of public life. These nostalgic histories take place on battlefields trampled by Napoleon, along bucolic English hedges, against the fairytale silhouettes of the Grimms’ beloved Germany, and in the newly constructed parlors of America’s western territories.

This eloquent book takes a surprising, completely original look at the modern age: our possessions, our heritage, and our newly considered selves.

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Praise

• Peter Fritzsche’s prose is both elegant and arresting, his insights always interesting. Stranded in the Present will attract a wide audience not only of experts but of general readers interested in how modern culture constructs its own past.—James Sheehan, Stanford University
• An elegantly written book on an important and long neglected topic. Peter Fritzsche weaves a fascinating tale of how we came to our sense of modern time and the consequences of it. I expect this book to become a standard point of reference for the argument that the notion of modern time had an abrupt ‘beginning’ in the French revolutionary and especially Napoleonic wars. These upheavals created a kind of nostalgia about the past, that is, for what was lost in the transition to the modern. Thus melancholy and the conviction that our times are distinctly modern go hand in hand. Stranded in the Present provides an accessible, thoughtful, and even beautiful example of how to think about the category of time. It will be much discussed in many different circles.—Lynn Hunt, University of California, Los Angeles
• In an evocatively titled work, Fritzsche conveys the disruption of time-honored social customs and intellectual assumptions in Prussia, France, Britain, and the United States caused by the French Revolution. More profound and ideological than its predecessor in the American Colonies, the French Revolution was similar to World War I in the proportion of civilian and military casualties, the collapse of old political systems, the new visibility given to the military in cultural life, and the anomie induced among writers and common folk alike. Drawing upon letters, journals, and resurgent fairy tales by the likes of the Brothers Grimm, Fritzsche reveals how many people recognized their contemporaries as fellow ‘time comrades,’ affected by a new concept of history that was no longer circular but linear.—Frederick J. Augustyn, Library Journal
• Fritzsche argues forcefully and convincingly for the revolutionary mindsets that accompanied the events of the [French] Revolution and its seemingly endless aftershocks. The creation of a new sensibility about the place of the individual in the drama of history provides the impetus for Fritzsche’s work, which traces the dislocations experienced by individuals living through these literally unsettling times…A rich cultural history that draws upon an impressive array of sources to create a tapestry of this new historical awareness…The work is written quite well, making it accessible to a wide readership beyond specialists in modern history. Its style is evocative, eloquent, at times poetic. The author effectively captures the richness of the period under investigation, roughly 1780-1850. We meet some lesser-known figures in the history of Western Europe and the United States, as well as some more familiar names whose stories are told in intriguing ways. Fritzsche’s readings of primary sources are sound, at times quite illuminating, and his mastery of secondary literature on a wide variety of topics stands out, revealing the challenge and reward of writing this type of cultural history. In a word, Stranded in the Present is an enjoyable and informative work whose relatively short length disguises its richness and depth.—Matthew E. Brown, H-Net Reviews
• Fritzsche’s book surveys the culture of everyday, postrevolutionary life, turning up a surprising range of provocative details about the melancholy that the rupture of the French Revolution effected, creating the sense of the past as lost. Drawing mainly from letters, memoirs, biographies, journals, fiction, and poetry, rather than “official documents” of the period, Fritzsche’s study brings us closer to the intimate effects of large-scale historical change, above all to the self-conscious “historicization of private life.”…What is most exciting about the study, however, is cumulative: The way in which Fritzsche imagines an alternative to the choice between rupture and continuity in the sense of history. The sense of rupture, Fritzsche’s study helps us to see, was the necessary predecessor to self-conscious engagement with the past, and the only creative means forward.—Emily Rohrbach, Studies in Romanticism
• Stranded in the Present offers an insightful treatment of the modern period and the changing concept of historical time.—Bette W. Oliver, Libraries and Culture
• [An] inspiring book…A brilliant study on the history of the making of remembrance and of our feelings toward the past.—Hasso Spode, Journal of Social History
• Peter Fritzsche has given us a bold and ambitious book which will confirm his status as one of the leading intellectual and cultural historians of modern Europe…Fritzsche marshals a fascinating array of evidence, ranging from well-known products of the Romantic period like the writings of Francois-Rene Chateaubriand, William Cobbett, the Grimm Brothers, and Sir Walter Scott to those of more obscure but no less interesting personalities, such as the German art collector Sulpiz Boisserée and Friedrich Schlegel’s wife Dorothea, whose correspondence Fritzsche mines to good effect…Who, after finishing Fritzsche’s book, will be able to think about the early nineteenth century as other than lost, fragmented, ruptured, shipwrecked, dispossessed, melancholic, broken, nostalgic.—Robert Wohl, Modernism/modernity

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674045873

Philosophical Apprentice.