Richard II's Federalist Tea Party

(Part of a series in which I make up for not updating my blog recently.)

As in previous years, I attended the annual "Shakespeare & The Law" panel co-sponsored by the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company and a local chapter of the Federalist Society, an association of politically conservative and libertarian judges and attorneys.

One of the featured panelists, David G. Tuereck, a Suffolk University economics professor with connections to the Tea Party movement, chose to read Richard II as an allegory of the current political situation and only days before Inauguration Day, stopped just short of advocating an armed coup d'etat against President Obama.

And then things got weird, as I recount at The Clyde Fitch Report:

Tuerck missed the most obvious reason why Thomas Jefferson never read Karl Marx or John Manyard Keynes: they hadn’t published anything of significance yet.

Of course, this little problem of chronology was the least of Tuerck’s problems. Like a great many associated with the Tea Party (and, for that matter, other cults), Tuerck is drunk on symbols. Without delving into his scholarly writings in economics, his public rhetoric indicates someone more interested in iconography and allegory than in evidence and hypotheses; free-association rather than reason and causality.

This is, of course, how lawyers seek to sway a jury if they think they can get away with it.

I previously wrote about the Federalist Society's and Commonwealth Shakespeare Company's takes on Henry V and The Merchant of Venice.

The Federalist Society and the Trial of Shylock

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011, I attended the eleventh annual staged readingand symposium on Shakespeare and the Law jointly presented by the Boston Chapter of the Federalist Society and the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company. I did not know what to expect : last year's reading and discussion of Henry V had been little more than alove-fest for John Yoo and his legal arguments on behalf of George W. Bush's more controversial war-time decisions that inadvertently exposed Professor Yoo's intellectual poverty. However, since the play under consideration was The Merchant of Venice, a play that has been in my thoughts in recent years, I felt the need to attend. By coincidence, the Cutler Majestic Theatre, which hosted the event was the very same room in which I had seen Darko Tresnjak's Theatre for a New Audience production of Merchant of Venice

As with the previous year's presentation, the affair was a highly truncated reading by non-actors (in this case a cast made entirely of judges) that clocked in at about an hour, followed by a panel discussion on the legal themes. It was a pleasant surprise that this year featured as more sober, less partisan discussion than last.

Daniel J. Kelly, Chairman for the Boston Chapter of the Federalist Society, in his role as moderator, established the themes under consideration as "contract, equity, justice, and judging" as such, the scenes that were featured in the reading were those that focussed on the three types of contracts that appear in the play and their related trials: infamous bond of the pound of flesh between Shylock and Antonio and Act IV's trial scene, the will that stipulates the "obtayning of Portia by the choyƒe of three cheƒts" and the oaths regarding the wedding rings and comic early morning trial in Belmont. Helen M. Whall, professor of English at College of the Holy Cross, opened the after-play discussion, offering some of the scholarly insights that were lacking in last year's far more partisan presentation.

I am unable to account for all of the speakers and their insights but I will sketch out some notable comments as well as some general points of consensus.

Whall noted that prior to the incorporation of the first professional theatre company in England in 1576, the primary theatrical experience had been that of morality plays (a genre satirized in Launcelot Gobbo's monologue cut in this version) and thus Shakespeare's audience were accustomed to having such concepts of law, mercy, and justice allegorically dramatized on the stage. Most importantly, Whall underlined that from the Christian perspective of the 1590s, the forced conversion of Shylock from Judaism to Christianity that so upsets the sensibilities of those of us who live in countries that guarantee religious liberty would be seen as a favor (indeed, an act of "mercy.") As this theological perspective is central to my thoughts regarding the play, I will return to it later.

Judge Andrew Grainger of the Massachusetts Appeals Court, who had played the role of Shylock in the reading, was very quick to point out that despite the literary worth of The Merchant of Venice that not only was there a problem of overlaying our 21st century legal sensibilities upon a 16th century play that there were also limitations to how a literary and dramatic presentation can be seen as representing the operations of the law. This was a theme that several of the judges brought up (in fact, Gabrielle Wolohojia, also of the Appeals Court, who played Portia, expressed a strong distaste for Portia's legal practice): Portia's courtroom behavior would at the very least allow Shylock the right of appeal in a modern, western court. Besides impersonating a judge and entering the court under false credentials (not mentioned by the panelists) she has a number of conflicts of interest: the defaulted loan was taken on her husband's behalf, combined with her money being offered in settlement presents her with both a personal and financial stake in the outcome of the trial. Portia also, on a whim, changes roles from judge, to defense attorney, to prosecutor and back, while simultaneously turning what is essentially a civil trial of Antonio into a criminal trial of Shylock.

Daniel Kelly would point out that Portia reads all sorts of conditions into the bond that were not already in the bond in such a way that undercuts the rule of law (indeed, it is precisely by her reading in of conditions that she flips the trial of Antonio into a trial of Shylock.) Of course, several of the Judges present pointed out that whether Shylock was willing to accept a settlement or not, the conditions of his bond (the forfeit of the pound of flesh) were legally absurd and "void as against public policy"-- i.e. the contract would be dismissed because it required an illegal act for its fulfillment. Relying on Jean Favier's history, Gold & Spices: The Rice of Commerce In the Middle Ages it appears that courts did have the power to dismiss bonds of usury if it was determined that the contract placed too onerous a burden upon the debtor (such as something that would be otherwise illegal)-- in which case, the usurer might be subject to a small fine (but never one so harsh to keep the usurer from returning to the business) so despite even Antonio's claims that

The duke cannot deny the course of law:
For the commodity that strangers have
With us in Venice, if it be denied,
Will much impeach the justice of the state,
Since that the trade and profit of the city
Consisteth of all nations…

(Act III, Scene 3, 26-31)

--the "course of law" did then, as it does now, provide an escape from the bond. It is precisely this principle of "void as against public policy" that allowed my parents to purchase the house in which I grew up despite a deed specifically barring "Jews and Negroes" from residing within; such restrictive covenants had been rendered unenforceable by Shelley v. Kraemmer (1948) even if the deeds continue to exist.

The point being that while Portia demands Shylock be merciful, rather than doing to merciful thing which would be voiding the bond (and perhaps returning Shylock's stolen property), she threatens Shylock with death.

We do see that Portia is quite willing to manipulate the law to further her own agenda not just in the Venetian court (where she is called in a judge, not as an advocate) but in regard to the trial of the three caskets: she is willing to play by the rules, but she also actively schemes to ensure that the suitor that pleases her choose rightly and the suitor that does not choose wrongly:

Therefore, for fear of the worst, I pray thee, set a
deep glass of rhenish wine on the contrary casket,
for if the devil be within and that temptation
without, I know he will choose it. I will do any
thing, Nerissa, ere I'll be married to a sponge.

(Act I, Scene 2, 91-95)

Or in this song to Bassanio:

Tell me where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart, or in the head?
How begot, how nourished?

(Act III, Scene 2, 63-65) [Emphases mine own; they all rhyme with "lead" as in casket.]

• • •

This of course, does beg the question as to what causes Portia to threaten Shylock's life, humiliate him, and force his conversion when there was a legal means of voiding the cruelest provisions of the bond and compelling a settlement by which Shylock would be paid the capital, as well as the secondary question as to what made this a pleasing resolution to an Elizabethan audience. First of all, we must follow Grainger's warning not to impose our 21st century sensibilities upon this 16th century play. Whall was correct to note that the forced conversion that is so offensive to 21st century American sensibilities, was, to the at least nominally Christian audience of the 1590s, an act of mercy. Not in the sense that he only had to change his house of worship to avoid the death penalty, but (as I have argued elsewhere) Christian theological positions with regards to Judaism.

As I have noted in my essayregarding the Theatre for a New Audience production, Darko Tresnjak did an excellent job of bringing The Merchant of Venice into the 21st century, and used the play to show how antisemitism can continue to thrive in our age, but in doing so, he lost sight of the anti-Judaism of the 1590s and how that informs both the language and ideology of the play and failed to explain why Jew-hatred is so atavistic: it is rooted not in simple doctrinal misunderstanding, but in folklore and in Christianity itself.

Until Shylock insists on collecting his pound of flesh, he commits no act of villainy. All crimes are committed by Antonio (who is proud to own up to kicking and spitting upon Shylock) and his gang of Bassanio, Lorenzo, Salerio, and Solanio who rob Shylock's house after Antonio lures him away from home. Why does Shylock demand a pound of flesh? When asked, Shylock can only answer:

You'll ask me why I rather choose to have
a weight of carrion flesh, than to receive
three thousand ducats: I'll not answer that!
But say it is my humour, --is it answer'd?

Act IV, Scene 1, 40-43)

The answer is that it is simply what Jews do in European literature. The tale of the Merchant of Florence, Bindo Scali, from Ser Giovani Fiorentino's Il Pecorone (Composed in 1378 though published in 1554), also has a Jewish money lender who demands a pound of flesh, as does the titular Jew of The Ballad of Gernutus. Indeed the story appears throughout European folklore. While storyteller, theatre artist, and folklorist, Diane Edgecomb has informed me that she has come across older versions of this story in Kurdish folklore, in which the money lender is a Christian, it should be noted that the "pound of flesh" dovetails with the blood libel. In short, while it takes an injustice to motivate Shylock towards revenge, the particularly grotesque nature of his vengeance conforms to European prejudices of how Jews behave.

The sentence is also grotesque by Venetian standards. While other Catholic nations allowed the the Universal Inquisition free rein, The Republic of Venice granted Marranos, Jews who had been forcibly converted to Christianity and their descendants who continued to practice some form of Judaism in secret, the right to revert to Judaism without persecution by the Inquisition (see either Cecil Roth's 1932 classic A History of the Marranos or Jane S. Gerber's 1993 The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience.) In other parts of the Catholic world, both in Europe and New World colonies, these Marranos were subject to imprisonment, torture, and execution. Forced conversions may have been the norm elsewhere in Europe; but not in the Serene Republic.

Leaving aside Portia's afore mentioned ethical lapses, it's a theological imperative that results in the sentence against Shylock. The law that is operative in Shakespeare's courtroom, isn't the law of the Republic of Venice, but scripture and its Christian interpretation. Furthermore, when Shylock defends his lending of money at interest as a profession, he does not reference a major trade empire's needs to acquire liquid assets with which to invest in a new venture or deal with an unforeseen setback (something a merchant prince like Antonio would understand) but with reference to scripture, using the story of Jacob tending the flocks of Laban to justify the practice. The question is not economic necessity but the status of Jewish scripture in Christian Europe.

(As a side note: given that loaning at interest a normal business practice in Europe at the time, especially in northern Italy, the fact that Antonio would be seeking a loan from the despised Shylock implies either a desire to set Shylock up or that Antonio has bad credit with all the Christian money lenders.)

As I have argued previously (most recently in my notes on Tresnjak's production) the issue of mercy in Act IV is a theological proposition of the superiority of Christianity over Judaisim: Shylock, the Jew, may have the Law, but he only receives God's mercy by becoming Christian; conversely, the Venetian and Belmontean characters all commit sins: they are accessories to theft, they break oaths, impersonate court officials, yet are recipients of God's mercy on account of being Christians.

This has long been, in the eyes of Christian theologians, the dividing line between Judaism and Christianity: Judaism is presented as a religion of strict laws while Christianity is the religion of mercy (again note Whall's point that Shakespeare's audience was familiar with the allegorical morality plays as well as the sermons of any number of Christian sects, both Catholic and Protestant and as such Mercy and Law could be real characters to them) so not only have we Shylock defending his profession through reference to scripture, but in the courtroom scene he proclaims:

My deeds upon my head! I crave the law,
The penalty and forfeit of my bond.

(Act IV, Scene 1, 202-203)

Note that this adherence to "the law" is in the same breath as a line that echoes the "blood curse" from Matthew, 27: 24-25 "His blood be on us, and our children" -- in short, the very passage that Christians had used to place the blame of Jesus' crucifixion upon Jews of subsequent generations.

"Law" in The Merchant of Venice is not merely civil law or criminal statutes, but also scripture. Consequently, this dichotomy between mercy and the law is also one of Christianity and Judaism as imagined by Christianity. Christianity has long had the ambivalent position of both insisting that Jewish scripture, the Tanakh was the proof that the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth had fulfilled messianic prophecy, and thus validated the new religion over the old, while also having to contend with the continuing existence of Judaism in the Christian era. The question became one of "if Jews know the prophecies, how could they deny Jesus?"

This question came to a head for Christian theologians during the late middle ages, when in 1230s, the Inquisition, whose mission had up until then to regulate the beliefs of Catholics, intervened in a theological dispute between rabbis over Moses Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed. While in 1240 Pope Gregory ordered the mendicant orders of the Dominicans and the Franciscans to seize and burn any copies of the Talmud and other Jewish texts a containing doctrinal error. Rabbis were summoned by the Inquisition. This continued under subsequent Popes. The belief was held that the Talmud and other interpretive commentaries had not only strengthened Jewish resolve to reject Christianity, but that exposure to Jewish texts would result in Christian heresy. In short, the Inquisition, with papal backing, decided that it had the authority to determine orthodox versus heterodox Judaism using the weapons of imprisonment, torture, and execution.[Note: I am greatly indebted to Jeremy Cohen's The Friars and The Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (1982) regarding the role of the Dominican and Franciscan orders in the persecution of Jews and the formulation of an anti-Judaic ideology.]

By the time of the Barcelona Disputation of 1263, Dominican Friar Pablo Christiani (a Jewish convert once named Saul) had gone so far as to argue that the Talmud reveals that Jewish sages were not merely misguided but that they believed Jesus to be both God and Messiah while also refusing to reject Judaism and adopt Christian rites and beliefs out of sheer wickedness. Rabbi Nachmanides' (who had been forced to defend Judaism in a court whose rules were determined by the Inquisition) response ultimately was that Christiani was presenting a heretical interpretation of the Talmud as well as misrepresenting the canonical status of Talmudic texts. The dispute was largely an aporeia, in part because Nachmanides was barred from presenting certain counter arguments at the very outset of the disputation. Both sides claimed victory, but ultimately the disputation failed to convert Spanish Jewry.

So by the time of Franciscan Hebraist Nicholas of Lyra (c. 1270-1349) composed his Quodlibetum de adventu Christi, he had actually argued that the sole reason the Hebrew text of the Tanakh provides enough ambiguity for Jews to deny that it validates and foretells Jesus' ministry, and his status as both God and Messiah, was that rabbis had deliberately altered the text to deny the Christian truth:

[The Jews] here pervert the true text and deny the truth just as they deny the divinity of Christ. This might best be done from ancient Bibles, which were not corrupted in this and other passages in which there is mention of the divinity of Christ, if they [these Bibles] can be had. In this way our predecessors used to argue against them [the Jews] over this and similar passages. Yet although I myself have not seen any Bible of the Jews which has not been corrupted. I have faithfully heard from those worthy by reason of their lives, consciences, and knowledge, who swear on oath that they have seen it thus in ancient Bibles

[Translation found in the aforementioned work by Jeremy Cohen.]

In short, after reading the Tanakh in Hebrew, Nicholas argued that since it did not actually state what his Church wanted it to say that the authentic Hebrew scripture had been suppressed, and that all extant copies (excepting those that he knew of through rumor) had been deliberately altered.

Despite England having recently become a Protestant country, these medieval Catholic views regarding Jews continued to be influential (Nicholas of Lyra's work was very influential on Martin Luther's 1543 polemic On The Jews and Their Lies) indeed it offers historical context to Antonio's response to Shylock's interpretation of the story of Shylock and Laban:

Mark you this Bassanio,
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose,--
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

(Act I, Scene 3, 92-97)

I have more than once noted the usage of diabolic rhetoric regarding both Shylock and Jews in general throughout The Merchant of Venice but what is notable here and perhaps chaffing to the 21st century audience is that to Shakespeare's English audiences, the Bible is not a shared text common to both Christian and Jew, but a source of division: at once both holy word in the mouths of Christians and diabolic law in the mouths of Jews and simultaneously affirming both the Christian notion that that same law is superceded by Christianity.

So while I am inclined to view Shakespeare, the author, as a humanist, sensitive to the irony and ambiguity of human experience, the courtroom shenanigans of Portia, like the folkloric and literary sources he relies upon, effectively provide a theological trump to his humanism.

Henry V meets John Yoo for Fun and Torture

[N.B.Thomas Garvey's account of the same event is at The Hub Review.]

"What," you might ask me, "would bring you of all people to a Federalist Society function?" What if I told you that the function was co-sponsored by Commonwealth Shakespeare Company that it was a staged-reading of Henry V followed by a panel discussion entitled "Shakespeare's Henry V And The Law And War" featuring former White House Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General, John Yoo who is generally credited with authoring the memos that are now seen as laying the legal groundwork for the Bush administration's use of torture?

The Federalist Society is an association founded by conservative and libertarian lawyers and judges associated with the Reagan administration. Their rallying cry is "original intent" (or as Yoo would tellingly joke in the panel discussion, "Our original intent." A quick look at the list of participants made it very clear that the evening's agenda would likely be using Shakespeare's play to validate the Bush administration's wartime record.

Of course, when Commonwealth Shakespeare Company director Steven Maler last staged Henry V it was in 2002, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The framing narration was set in the London tube during the Battle of Britain, when the underground doubled as a public bomb shelter for the people of London seeking refuge from German bombs and rocket attacks:

The narrator was a glamourous woman in green who tells the story of King Harry's victory in Agincourt to reassure a little boy who fled underground while still in his pajamas that Britain and its allies will ultimately emerge victorious over the Germans:

So given the time, when many Americans were still reeling from the September 11 attacks, and political consensus had not yet been rattled by the morass that emerged in Iraq, the allegory that director Steven Maler was presenting was clear: King Harry's multinational army (which is presented as including English, Scots, Welsh, and Irish) were standing in for the Allied forces who fought the Axis powers during World War II, who in turn, were standing in for the multinational North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces who were deploying against al-Qaeda and their Taliban supporters in Afghanistan. Never mind that Harry's claim on France was probably as dubious as Germany's claim on the Sudatenland, Silesia, Alsace-Lorraine, and other parts of Europe that were incorporated into Großdeutschland. That's the problem with allegories: they start to break down once one extends them too far.

It was probably the most brilliant piece of political propaganda I had seen on stage. That this is not a criticism: Henry V, like all of Shakespeare's histories, contain elements of propaganda. This was just the most effective use I had seen of those elements. Contrarily, Actors' Shakespeare Project more intimate 2008 production which had been staged after pubic dissatisfaction with the Iraq war was widespread, gave greater emphasis on the hard lives of the soldiers than on Henry's heroic status (though it was also the most effective performance of the courtship of Henry and Katherine I've seen-- but maybe that's just because Molly Schreiber rocks. Disclosure: I frequently usher for ASP.)

"How did you like the play, Mister Thal?" The text was dramatically cut to only a little more than an hour, but that was just as well as Thomas Garvey noted lawyers don't make very good actors. They were mostly adequate in the chorus but lacked the ability to present characters or hint at subtext, something most actors seem to be able to do even when reading cold. Former Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey was actually somewhat amusing as Princess Katherine (she had played the role before.) Senior Vice President of Raytheon and former Associate Attorney General (2001-2002) seemed to be cast as King Henry largely due to his physical resemblance to George W. Bush: As we will see, the George and Henry comparisons would never end, though they seemed pretty much limited to the idea of a ne'er-do-well son of a political dynasty ascending to power despite most observers' low expectations and then starting a war. Oh yes, did I mention the dubious causae belli? Actually, none of the panelists made any of explicit comparisons, they only encouraged me to free-associate.

In his remarks, Bernard Dobski of Assumption College noted that Henry rejected Christian just war theory in his formulation of his causae belli as well as in many of his wartime actions (though he left out that he received approval from the Church to make unprovoked war) and made some non-argument that Henry was upholding the dignity of the law even as he was acknowledging the "incompleteness" of the law. Dobski forgot that in the play, the Church appears to have abandoned just war theory as well.

Michael Avery, in his role as the panel's token left-winger, suggested that Shakespeare should write a play called George II about a monarch who claims the power of the unitary executive, that no treaty or domestic law puts limitations on a president's war powers while making hypothetical claims of weapons of mass destruction, with Colin Powell in the role of the hero. David Hare already wrote that play: it's called Stuff Happens. Avery then pointedly addressed John Yoo by noting that when one wars upon the Constitution one wars upon the country. This an added extraordinary level of irony to Andrew Card's earlier fantasia of George W. Bush thinking about his Presidential Oath of Office on September 11, 2001 after he told Bush that the country was under attack:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Republicans have problems with irony.

Yoo had apparently also never heard of David Hare and suggested a sequel entitled Obama I in which George II's successor loses all of his predecessor's gains (by contrast, Andrew Card would prove to be more charitable, applauding President Obama's intellect and ability to make decisions based on intelligence reports that, as president, he receives on a daily basis). Before I go into the details of John Yoo's arguments, let me note how disappointed I was with his performance. I had been expecting him to have a coherent legal theory, but instead he seemed to be relying the idea that we in the audience was not paying close attention, he also seemed not to have understood the play and generally had problems distinguishing between a 16th century dramatization of 15th century politics and 21st century political reality. Card had similar problems but, he's an apparatchik and not an academic.

Yoo rather anachronistically appeared to view Harry's seeking Church permission to wage war on France as George Bush's moral authority to wage war over and against any objections from the international community. Yoo seemed to miss that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely do not make any moral claims, but rather support Henry's belligerance out of their own political interests, and furthermore: the Church they represent was the equivalent of the international community. Yoo will continue to talk of morality above the law as justification for Henry and George's decisions to flaunt both jus ad bellum and jus in bello in the interest of political expediency. He expanded on this by pointing out the inability of the international community today embodied by the United Nations to represent a universal morality when many of the nations are dictatorships. Instead of insisting that the international community be held to higher standards Yoo took the sophistic position of moral nihilism. Despite Henry's threats to the citizens of Harfleur, Yoo continues to claim Henry fights on behalf of morality:

If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;
Your fathers taken by the silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry
At Herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen.
What say you? will you yield, and this avoid,
Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy'd?
(III.iii 33-43)

Moral nihilism goes beyond the realm of simple amoralism in that it makes continual reference to the language of morality, i.e. Yoo's call for a morality that is above the amoral standards of the international community while endorsing the claim that no moral standard, not even the moral standards of the United States as embodied in U.S. laws, should bind the President and even argues on behalf of specific actions that arguably have no practical purpose: like torturing children. I would be tempted to call John Yoo the "Noam Chomsky of the right" in light of Chomsky's own morally nihilistic apologetics for genocide, terrorism, and genocide denial, except that Chomsky is really little more than a self-aggrandizing cult-leader, and John Yoo is a moral nihilist with political influence.

[Doug Cassel asked]"If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?"

"No treaty," replied John Yoo.

Of course, in the interests of the "civility" that the Federalist Society maintains for its panel discussions, the act of crushing children's testicles wasn't discussed, while the sadomasochistic techniques seen at Abu-Ghraib were only alluded to and waterboarding, whose use by the Spanish Inquisition was widely condemned by 16th century English writers (Shakespeare's contemporaries) as barbaric, was only mentioned in passing.

Card and Yoo were clearly focussed on a defense on the Bush administration's wartime record. Both of them using the September 11, 2001 attacks as the causae belli for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Insisting that the threat of terrorism had changed the rules. Thus Card engaged in apologetics for the "are you with us or against us" doctrine noting that the invasion of Iraq was necessitated by Iraq not being "with us." Of course, Card was rewriting history: Iraq had already caved in to international pressure and had permitted UN arms inspectors to return, the Coalition invasion of Iraq was done before the arms inspectors could finish their job and was without regard to what they had not discovered. Speaking of writing history, they also frequently evoked the war records of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as giving legitimacy to Bush policy. Note: Lincoln and Roosevelt were demonstrably, highly effective war-time presidents who also did perceive limits on even their most controversial exercises of power while neither case can be made for Bush. Defense attorney J.W. Caney Jr., who had played Fluellen, raised the point that the measure of a society's justice system is how it treats those whom the society despises,but ultimately, neither Bush administration veteran could make the case that either the particular acts of the administration: invasion without a justifiable causae belli, the use of torture, extraordinary rendition, or the theory of the unitary executive who is above and not bound by treaties, laws, or the Constitution he is sworn to defend was actually needed in order to defend democratic societies from either foreign nation states or terrorists. All they could say was that the world had changed after 9/11 and unreflectively enlist a misreading of a truncated version of Henry V to support their thesis.