Continuing with our Oscar theme, we bring you the second part of our conversation with whistleblower, anti-war activist, and documentary film subject Daniel Ellsberg. Since the 1960s, Ellsberg has been fighting to stop war and bring government secrets into the open, and he knows firsthand how much power citizens can wield against the government.
Ellsberg is headed to the Oscars himself with the crew of the film, and he sat down with Laura recently to talk about his experience releasing the Pentagon Papers to the press, what's changed from the 60s and Vietnam--and what hasn't.
Ellsberg said last week at New School “we have to get back to our Constitution” at the Limiting Knowledge in a Democracy conference.
Is he unaware of the minority rule baked into that constitution with the Senate and other factors like Electoral College and Filibuster? All in the name of protecting “property rights” from mass democracy. Those were put there to protect slave owners from mass democracy which would have freed their slaves on day one with one-man one-vote. Philadelphia and Boston were full of abolitionists, and PA abolished slavery in 1780. That precedent in the constitution is what the Supreme Court uses to justify such rulings as Buckley vs Valeo, Citizen’s United, and state Veggie Libel laws, etc. With what he saw in the 1960s, he should know very well there wasn’t much blocking military industrial shareholders’ prerogative to start wars, just like Kings, Tsars, Kaisers, and Cardinals, and military industrial capos in NAZI Germany.
Those privileges went to shareholders of military industrial companies, dynastic families now trading under many different surnames. He may be right we had more active democracy back then, with more democratic institutions like:
1. a freer press with “fairness doctrines” for all FCC airwave licenses,
2. universities educating millions without interference by Trustees meddling in econ, polysci and soc departments a la Lewis Powell memo,
3. trade unions organizing working people against military shareholders, and
4. no Buckley vs Valeo which allows unlimited free propagandizing by the rich and powerful against the less educated, and economically vulnerable.
But, those had very little to do with the constitution. Those judges managed to figure out how to get precednet back to the way they originally intended. These are the levers that need to get dissected. This mess didn’t just emerge in a cloud like the combined speakers at New School would lead us to believe.
By planckbrandt on March 8th, 2010 at 3:23 pm
Hi Laura/Grit-TV,Thanks for all you do.Thanks for having Mr.Ellsberg on again.Your interview was very good.The best way for people to hurt this system,is to have the mind-set-”Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death”. THANKS
By jessie taylor on March 9th, 2010 at 7:08 pm
I think we find ourselves today in much the same situation as people were in at the time if the civil war. That crisis, like the crisis now, was largely caused by the deficiencies of the Constitution. “Planckbrandt” is correct ( except about filibusters–they are per Senate Rule, not Const–this nation was set up by and for rich white men. Although even that is now under attack by persons and institutions fir whom the original contract is no longer juicy enough, while defending what is genuinely progressive in it (mostly it’s firstten amendments!), we need not slip into the error of defending the original document. To do so would be equivalent to “restoring the union” in Lincoln’s time–to have done so would be to ensure future upheavals only, and be as futile as respirating a corpse.
We need–again to quote Lincoln, who saw the need for revolution in response to a rebellion, a “new birth of freedom”. BTW, I am not calling Lincoln a revolutionary in any contemporary sense, but it is true that the USA of 1866 was fundamentally a different nation than existed in1860. (
Different ENOUGH, no, and even THAT difference was erased and reversed by jim crow and the undermining of Reconstruction).
We need to leap BEYOND the Constitution. Just as the civil war ‘overruled’ the Dred Scott decision, we must reconstruct our society so that Citizens United (and Roe, because it conceded ANY “compelling interest” to the State) become historical curiosities.
By Ronald G. Linville on March 10th, 2010 at 6:36 am