When Power Turns to Discretion: Lessons from the Boat Strikes
In early September, the United States government began using military force against small boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific. The descriptions of the people on those boats shifted from day to day. Sometimes they were called traffickers. Sometimes cartel members. Sometimes enemy combatants. What never changed was the fact that many were killed without arrest, without evidence presented to the public, and without any form of due process.
The Two Kinds of Freedom
What good is a library if you can’t read? The doors might be unlocked. No guard stops you from walking in. Every book is yours to open. On paper, you’re completely free.
But without the ability to read, that freedom is mostly imaginary. No one is preventing you from learning. You simply don’t have the means to use what’s in front of you. The permission is there. The possibility isn’t.
Intertwined
Whether you like it or not, you are part of a society. You walk on roads you did not build, protected by laws you did not write, and safeguarded by people you may never meet. The air you breathe is cleaner because others agreed to rules you did not set. The food you eat reaches you through systems of inspection, transport, and labor that would collapse without collective effort. The myth of absolute self-reliance is a comforting story told by those who have forgotten how deeply dependent we all are.
The Fragility of Privilege
Rights are not a gift from government. They are a claim built into what it means to be human. You can suspend them by force, fail to honor them in law, or ignore them in practice. But you cannot erase their source without denying the person who bears them. That is the heart of the matter, and one of the oldest arguments in political thought.