Guns of Litigation have begun to
Parting Thoughts
Are we entering the peace before the chaos?
For just about 24 hours, the people of the United States will be happy and at peace. That will be between 10 P.M. on Monday, November 1, and approximately 10 P.M. on Tuesday, November 2. We'll be happy because the carping will have stopped, and the guns of litigation will not have begun to fire.
Bill Clinton was going to win that election. This time, no one knows who will win, but the contenders haven't suggested that they will go on speaking past midnight to catch the attention of late-night celebrants of All Saints?’ Day. On the assumption that CBS doesn't come up with evidence that George Bush cheated in grade school, the hours of political contention will have ended.
What are we left with? The New York Times, so vibrant with partisanship, is nevertheless scrupulous in its effort to isolate and document the bones of contention. One week before the election, the paper published a supplement, ?“Voter Guide 2004.?” The 10-page section attempts to touch down on the political issues raised during the campaign. One especially useful page is introduced as ''Where They Stand, What They've Done.'' There divisions are described on the full range of issues before the voters. Abortion, Death Penalty, Economy, Education, Environment, Foreign Policy, Gay Rights, Gun Control, Health Care, Homeland Security & Defense, and Social Security.
If the reader still has the energy to analyze, he is quickly given the opportunity to do so. Under Death Penalty, the two candidates are given only a single line each: Bush: ''Supports the death penalty.'' Kerry: ''Opposes the death penalty, except for terrorists.''
You feel that little pre-gag clutch in the throat.
Why ''except for terrorists''?
After the bombing in Oklahoma City, President Clinton inveighed against the perpetrators. They will be hunted down, they will be tried, and they will be executed, he promised. As much was done to Timothy McVeigh.
Yet the purist experiences once again the philosophical slouchiness of the candidate. If capital punishment is wrong, then it is wrong. Why is the murderer less heinous if he shoots his own mother, than if he shoots someone else's when engaged in terrorist activity? There are historical examples of definitions defied. The State of Israel disallows execution ?— but executed the chief Jew-killer Adolf Eichmann. capital punishment, but nothing's too much for terrorists.
There are shadings to be done on the question of abortion ?— and education, and gay rights, and homeland security and defense. The lists go on, and caviling is endless, but then so are the demands of democracy, which is best thought of as a means by which public policy makers are elected, not a means by which epistemological progress is made in moral or philosophical thought. Those who are finicky can plausibly conclude that neither one of the contenders has earned complete confidence. Okay. But be ready, then, to proceed to the corollary: that political democracy is organically defective.
We shrink from that. And will have to worry mostly about whether the chaos ahead will be generated by chaddism.
Let us hope somebody wins decisively.
By George Bush cheated in grade sch
