IVIV (10) page 157

[alice wellintown]

There are several excellent articles, the publication was a special
issue of the Oklahoma City University Law Review, it is Volume 24,
Number 3 (1999). I'm fairly certain that WE can read all of the
articles online at the link provided.

To the current crew, I recommend, THE PRESIDENT'S EMERGENCY WAR POWERS
AND THE EROSION OF CIVIL LIBERTIES IN PYNCHON'S VINELAND by DAVID
THOREEN: But by 1984, those freedoms have been trampled on so often,
nibbled away by so many "incrementalists,"75 that we no longer
register a complaint; the most perfunctory claim of "National
Security" is enough to silence all but the most ardent defenders of
civil liberties. Worse, we have become so conditioned by television
cop shows that "[nobody thought it was peculiar anymore, no more than
the routine violations of constitutional rights these characters
performed week after week, now absorbed into the vernacular of
American expectations."76 The "smell of distant fireworks" refers,
then, not only to the dispersing sulfur that accompanies the
fireworks' snap, crackle, and pop, but also to those original
freedoms, now relegated to the distant past.


With each passing year, as U.S. citizens, Rip Van Winkle & Zoyd, sleep
nearer my couch to Thee, Slothful Citizens for whom Television
provides the stuff that dreams are made on, and whom, like children
too excited by the bangs and bursts of rocket
celebrations, have become a public ignorant, apathetic, and
generally, complacent, gaze with a false nostalgia at the trivialized
memory of a Revolution, while its Executive subverts constitutional
balance, exerting force in over 70 foreign conflicts, and writs of
habeas corpus are suspended by state governments. This is one of the
things Pynchon hopes we will pay attention too--the smell of Distant
fireworks.  Ultimately, the advance of humankind in Freedom must
reflect the growth of the Spirit and Freedom has nothing to do with
being left alone, nor with one's own privilege to act, nor with the
abstention from action of others, but on the positive and co-operative
action on the part of the communities of humans. Instruments of
government, which make provision for political freedom in the exercise
of more widely extended rights of self-government, have been framed by
statesmen, usually in the language of one of the schools of
philosophy. Bills of rights have been drawn up to afford judicial
protection of civil rights, usually in the form of abstention from
action or guaranties of noninterference. Within the framework of
extended and diversified political and civil rights, the development
of economic and civil rights, designed to provide freedom from fear
and from want, has required other devises of implementation, for as we
know, political rights consist in the freedom to exercise proper
functions in self-government, and civil rights consist in freedom from
restraint in thought, expression, worship, and assembly.  The freedom
from fear, and the freedom to participate in the benefits of the
progress of humanity depend, not on one's privilege to act as one
would, nor in the restraints placed on others that might violate or
surpress one's privileges.  In America, Pynchon sees, and asks that
his sophisticated reader to see, that the ideals of democracy have
been degraded to a censorious and inquisitorial CONTROL of thought,
expression and action; its freedoms have been subordinated to
self-interest and the accumulation of wealth; and its individual
determination has been leveled to the purveying wholesale of articles
of common taste. This great sleep of freedom, this great American
error, this transforming of Freedom to its contrary, constitutes the
"Perfect Plot" of the tragedy of American History. This is Pynchon's
Politics.  Ultimately, the advance of Humankind involves Freedom of
the Spirit, for freedom in this sense is the prerequisite, as well as
the end, of democratic institutions.


On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 10:35 PM, Robin Landseadel
<robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
> On Oct 16, 2009, at 7:00 PM, alice wellintown wrote:
>
>> Ever read that Oklahoma Law Journal that takes up the Law in P's
>> works? Check it out. It's online.
>> Oklahoma City University Law Review
>> Volume 24, Number 3 (1999)
>
> Here's a link to the article:
>
> http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/fischer24.htm
>
>