As a followup to the “I’m from the government” posts, here’s a link to H. L. Mencken’s 1924 essay on how to deal with jobholders (government employees) who are doing their jobs poorly. Some highlights:
I announce without further ado that such a system, after due prayer, I have devised. It is simple, it is unhackneyed, and I believe that it would work. It is divided into two halves. The first half takes the detection and punishment of the crimes of jobholders away from courts of impeachment, congressional smelling committees, and all the other existing agencies-i.e., away from other jobholders-and vests it in the whole body of free citizens, male and female. The second half provides that any member of that body, having looked into the acts of a jobholder and found him delinquent, may punish him instantly and on the spot, and in any manner that seems appropriate and convenient-and that, in case this punishment involves physical damage to the jobholder, the ensuing inquiry by a grand jury or coroner shall confine itself strictly to the question of whether the jobholder deserved what he got. In other words, I propose that it shall be no longer malum in se for a citizen to pummel, cowhide, kick, gouge, cut, wound, bruise, maim, burn, club, bastinado, flay, or even lynch a jobholder, and that it shall be malum prohibitum only to the extent that the punishment exceeds the jobholder’s deserts. The amount of this excess, if any, may be determined very conveniently by a petit jury, as other questions of guilt are now determined. The flogged judge, or Congressman, or other jobholder, on being discharged from hospital-or his chief heir, in case he has perished-goes before a grand jury and makes a complaint, and, if a true bill is found, a petit jury is empaneled and all the evidence is put before it. If it decides that the jobholder deserves the punishment inflicted upon him, the citizen who inflicted it is acquitted with honor. If, on the contrary, it decides that this punishment was excessive, then the citizen is adjudged guilty of assault, mayhem, murder, or whatever it is, in a degree apportioned to the difference between what the jobholder deserved and what he got, and punishment for that excess follows in the usual course.
5 Responses to “The Malevolent Jobholder”
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Sounds good. Does this apply, Scott, to a President who declared that he himself could authorize classification of an American citizen detained on American soil as an “enemy combatant,” and deny them due process, a lawyer, access to evidence, communications with family, deprive them of sleep, move them to interrogation (presumably of the “enhanced” variety) in chains, blindfold and earplugs until they have so lost their faculties that they suspect their own (eventually permitted) counsel of being in collusion with the government? It only takes one instance to establish a legal precedent, right?
“With the first link the chain is forged; the first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.” Picard, “The Drumhead”
“Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” Ben Franklin
> Does this apply, Scott, to a President
It would seem to apply to *any* government employee. Including Presidents who send main battle tanks against American children, or Presidents who demand trillions of dollars of new “stimulus” spending that will enslave current and future generations to the IRS.
What’s the “tanks against children” reference to? 1960s ghetto riots?
Oh…I’m dense. You mean Waco. You’re mad about Waco?
Sending main battle tanks against US citizens who are not in open rebellion is at best pretty damend strange, and is basically illegal. it is illegal to use regular Army forces against citizens; so “borrowing” a tank should be equally as illegal. Granted, it would have been funnier’n hell had Bush sent Apache attack helicopters – manned, of course, by a corps of Cheneyclones – against Code Pink, but even *that* would have been nominally illegal.