WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT?
The looming of DP began with two images from 2011: the vicious pepper spraying of a small group of students who were attempting to slow the transformation of their university into a delivery system for banking services; and the pinched face of Jon Corzine, who had engaged in what seemed a massively fraudulent transfer of wealth from the many to the one – himself.
As of this writing, the recipients of the large dose of oleoresin capsicum have been awarded a million dollar settlement for their troubles, while Mr. Corzine remains at large. We hereby nominate Jon Corzine as the Poster Boy for our increasingly bifurcated legal system, one where the poor receive instant incarceration while the rich pay fines or make donations to the coffers of political campaigns, and then return with impunity to the Grand Casino.
For much of the year, we have been digging into the deformed conscience of the American imagination; forensic archaeology in search of clues for how a republic founded on the celebration of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness could transform itself, all too seamlessly, into a rogue state that sanctions torture and remote control murder, executed in the name of “national security”. What begins in secret rendition and foreign black sites gradually becomes domestically mainstreamed, with the treatment of Bradley Manning offering a transitional experiment in how much the sleepwalking American public is willing to accommodate.
In this final DP post for 2012, we submit a montage of excerpts from an excellent essay by the tenacious and skilled attorney Gareth Peirce, author of Dispatches from the Dark Side: On Torture and the Death of Justice:
EARLY EXAMPLE OF A STRESS POSITION
By reviewing the 17th century case of the revolutionary Leveller John Lilburne (“Freedom John”), Ms. Peirce urges our consideration of the deep relationship between the rejection of barbarous and tyrannical treatment of individuals and the development of due process:
IN TORTURE WE TRUST
Fundamental to both the English and the American revolutions is the Leveller conviction that basic human rights are inalienable:
Déjà Vu
Memory is short, when the political body floods itself with rage, or racism, or the hunger for revenge:
THE TIPTON THREE
Acting through whatever remains functional within the legal system, a handful of individuals forced the truth to the surface, documenting a wide range of abuses suffered by often completely innocent captives at Guantanamo Bay and other “facilities”:
AWARD WINNING ENTERTAINMENT
Ms. Peirce closes with the question that is also our question, as we look ahead to 2013:
Anticipating the familiar objection that such an education would be considered by many to be an unsupportable luxury, Ms. Brann writes:
The tone of her book indicates that Ms. Brann thought that the situation could hardly get any worse than it was in 1979; alas, the precipitous disintegration was just getting started. Within a generation, the notion of a classically defined liberal arts education available by right to all citizens now seems like a remote and impossible dream. Instead, we have conceived an education system derived from the most narrow conception of instrumental utility, one that could hardly be expected to produce engaged and informed citizens within a vibrant republic. As chronicled by the
The reference to Jaspers descends from his often overlooked Way to Wisdom, published in 1951:
We have enormous respect for Karen Armstrong, not only for her lucid navigations through world religions, but also for her most beautiful idea of all: the 
