To My Fellow Prisoners...

Licence they mean when they cry Liberty.---John Milton

Most people believe that when McCain referred to those in his audience as "my fellow prisoners" it was a gaffe. I disagree. Seeing that the McCain campaign said he made no mistake in implicitly questioning Prime Minister Zapatero of Spain's commitment to "human rights, democracy, and freedom"(He wasn't confused; he meant that!), I can imagine how they might explain the prisoner comment should they be so pressed...



They might say something like...
The senator here is only expressing his profound philosophical respect and preference for the concept of "positive liberty"(the possibility of acting — or the fact of acting — in such a way as to take control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes") over "negative liberty" ("the absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints").

Yes, it is true----like most perspicacious conservatives obsessively observe, with their indefatigable employment of the words "freedom" and "liberty"* and constant elucidation of the subtle definitions and fine distinctions inherent in such highly elusive American concepts: It's true that we are not bound in chains, we do not practice "chattel slavery," nor exploit child labor (in the U.S. at least), nor any longer condone the king's prima nocta right of "christening" our bedchambers on our wedding night by deflowering our new brides, etc. etc.

McCain was simply taking a philosophical maverickian stance against his own party's adherence to this "negative liberty" understanding (i.e.---big gov, taxes, educated elitists in the way). By putting us all in a metaphorical prison of sorts, he was implicitly drawing attention to the collective dearth of our rights to self-determination, self-mastery, and self-realization, within the iniquitous circumstances of our meager and debilitating economic means and relations, the interminable struggle to reclaim our time, space, and personal autonomy from the social and economic norms imposed upon us by institutions unresponsive to political democracy.

*In Bush's Second Inaugural he used the words "freedom, free, and liberty" no less than 49 times.

The Inner Hierarchy of the Metaphorical Prison

Since McCain has suggested that we are all not unlike mere prisoners on an allegorical island of theatrical deceit and coercion, this detailed list of its hierarchy of command has come to light:


Who Is...

#1. Unknown. Maybe Big Oil. Maybe the shadowy consortium of the Federalist and John Birch Societies? Or possibly The Prisoner Appreciation Society?

#2. The GOP

#3. Karl Rove (too ugly to picture)

#4. Current occupant un-newsworthy until he steps down, but John McCain and Sarah Palin both aspire to this position (undeserving of picture).

#5. Chuck Norris (too intelligent to picture here)

#6. Patrick McGoohan (and metaphorically, ALL OF US!)

Liberty and Licence
Remembering one of the most important of Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, freedom from fear (today, an unpopular notion for McCain crowds that boo at "not having to be scared"), we have this recent admission by the Maryland Police Department to consider:

new details have been released on the state police spying on peace groups and anti death penalty activists. In July, Maryland was forced to admit its agents infiltrated meetings and events of the Baltimore Pledge of Resistance and the Baltimore Coalition Against the Death Penalty. On Tuesday, Maryland’s top police chief admitted fifty-three nonviolent activists, as well as several protest groups, were classified as terrorists and entered onto a federal database that tracks terrorism suspects. Activists are now being invited to review their files before they are deleted.

This, of course, isn't just an isolated incident. Here are just a few examples here, here, here, and here. Not to mention corporate and inter-advocacy group spying. I don't know, maybe a fifth freedom is in order: freedom from infiltration into our personal and civic lives?

Modern day surveillance coupled with the restrictions on the right to demonstrate by designating "zones" for protest away from the actual event itself gives new poignancy to Milton's notion that we can confuse permission and also permissiveness ("licence") with actual liberty:

...hogs/That bawl for freedom in their senseless mood,

And still revolt when Truth would set them free.

Licence they mean when they cry Liberty;

"They," the numbered hierarchy on our island of coercion and oppression, along with their enablers, appear to see it this way: The "hogs," by demanding liberty, are actually demanding permissiveness, which is just another word for anarchy and immorality. Well, we've seen a lot recently of how "They" impose order; and it ain't pretty.

Remember this gem from Mike Van Winkle California Anti-Terrorism Information Center (CATIC)?

You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that [protest]. You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act.