Pursuing praxis

Nicholas Provenzo of the Capitalism Center will be speaking at the Berkeley City Council meeting regarding the Council’s actions against the local Marine recruiting center. You can read his recap of the situation here, and what he will present at the meeting here. Mr. Provenzo started an on-line petition, which can be read here. Unlike most other positions and views, the petition addresses the legal and constitutional issues involved. The petition has garnered a surprising amount of signatories and attention, and Mr. Provenzo has been asked to speak at the Berkeley City Council meeting tomorrow night.

I, for my part, decided to write a letter to the editor (or three). If published, they won’t be as timely as would be ideal, but hopefully this situation doesn’t just evaporate overnight - and since when does anything associated with the war in Iraq evaporate quickly in Berkeley? So, we’ll see.

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            The considerable local and national attention paid to the Berkeley City Council’s resolution to eject the Marine recruiters is thoroughly warranted – but not for the reasons so far discussed. The Council’s actions should not be evaluated in terms of the war in Iraq, or in terms of freedom of speech or assembly. There is a more fundamental issue involved: the power of local government to oppose the raising of the US military. 

            This issue is described in a national petition that has quickly garnered broad support. The petition was drafted by Marine veteran Nicholas Provenzo. As he points out, no local government can oppose the national government in its task of building a military. Article I, Section VIII* of the Constitution charges Congress with the responsibility of raising and supporting an army. Running the recruiters out of town would hinder a legitimate function of the national government and thwart a mandate of the US Constitution. This is no small matter.

            By its nature, the military as such is a non-political entity. It is charged with upholding the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress – whatever laws those may be. To point out the obvious, as a national organ of defense, the military continually protects and defends of all areas of the US, in wartime and in peacetime, regardless of residents’ political views. Additionally, recruiters cannot recruit for specific wars or missions per se, and few if any military personnel are assigned to only one mission in the course of their service. The Council’s actions are therefore short-sighted in the extreme, if not selectively blind. Such actions, whether concrete or symbolic, suggest that the Council and its supporters wish to have their cake and eat it too.

            When different levels of government disagree, the proper place to resolve it is in the courts. Political opinions, no matter how strongly held, cannot trump the proper organization and delimitation of duties among levels of government. To do so willfully would be an act of lawlessness and subversion. After two weeks of passionate disagreement, one can only hope that all parties will remember that “reason is the life of the law” - at all levels of government.

* edited 2/16/08. Originally I had written Article I, Section VII, which was a typo in my source information. Thanks to a reader for pointing it out to me.