Apparently, no one teaches civics in high school anymore.

I feel a little out of touch with the mainstream here. My early schooling took place under the "Founding Fathers" revival of the Bicentennial, so I had an early respect for the Constitution and ideals of our democracy. However, it was post-Civil Rights era, and there was a lot of examination of the nation's failings to live up to its creed (slavery, Jim Crow, Japanese-American internment). In other words, it's not enough to wave those documents around: you have actually to practice what those documents preach.

Fortunately, I also was raised on writers like Thoreau and Emerson, who were both rigorous and skeptical. To wit, from Emerson's essay "Self Reliance": "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness." Emerson also discusses the ways in which the needs of society call for a certain level of conformity, and how the overall impulse of society is conformity.

That's pretty heavy stuff, because Emerson is not throwing out society for the sake of the individual: unlike libertarians, he understands that you simply can't do that. He warns, however, against the impulse toward conformity and urges everyone to question the received truths and published goods.

Thoreau is even more radical:

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with
their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens.

This excerpt from "Civil Disobedience" (aka "Resistance to Civil Government"). Thoreau picks at the base of society, the respect for the "rule of law" that we are constantly reminded separates our democracy from an autocracy. Thoreau's objection is that over-respect for the law creates automatons who may excuse their actions as outcomes of application of the law [see Milgram Experiment, the Stanford Prison Experiment, or Abu Ghraib].

The bottom line for both Emerson and Thoreau -- and they're not alone -- is that blind obedience to government, uncritical acceptance of received "truths," and unwillingness to challenge and reflect upon experience signal a dehumanization of sorts, a regression not only in the individual, but also in society (which paradoxically strives toward conformity).

While it has always existed to some degree, I see in both major parties an intense refusal to examine their own positions or to cross party lines. The Karl Rove debacle is the latest instance of this impulse. Rove, a master of dirty tricks from way back, has finally been caught in what might be one of the dirtiest tricks of them all: exposing a CIA field operative. In addition to ending Plame's career, Rove proved that vindictive politics for him trumped any concerns for national security.

Unlike Mark Felt, whose impulse may have been vindictiveness but whose leaks protected the nation by exposing wrongdoing at 1600 Pennsylvania, Rove's leaks uncovered no wrongdoing but rather were meted out as punishment for Plame's husband, Joe Wilson, who had strongly critiqued BushCo's rush to war on shaky evidence.

By all rights, Rove should be gone already. President Bush, who once claimed he would *wink wink* find the source of the leaks and then *nudge nudge* fire the source, apparently thinks better of the decision to try to operate without his brain. This government is what we're left with when we rally around the banners of "family values" and "faith" and "patriotism" without examining the actual practices of those carrying the banners.

Rove needs to be run out of town on a rail, and Bush should get going right after him.