I. Introduction
In western history, due to some reasons, the Jews were always excluded to the political and social communities in which they were living. In The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare described the social prejudice between the Christians and the Jews. In that drama, as a typical Jewish who made a living by moneylending in Venice, Shylock hated Antonio, not only because he was a Christian, but also because he insulted and spat on Shylock for being a Jew. Also, Antonio undermined Shylock's moneylending business by lending money at zero interest. Under Shakespear’s pen, Shylock was notorious and greedy, while Antonia was helpful and generous. Even the Jews were discriminated by the Christians in Italy, they were still treated as human beings and they could earn a basic living for themselves at that time.
However, when we turn our attention from the Jews who were living in Italy to the Jews who were treated as non-human under Nazi German’s rule, we notice that the Jews were totally deprived of their lives and basic human rights. Since the French Revolution, all human beings were endowed the freedom and equality around the world by The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, while the Jews were an exception. Without a nation for themselves, they were still expelled in the political and social spheres. Why the Jews were treated so unfair? Why they were deprived of their basic human rights? Why they could not have their own living and lives? Concerning these questions, let’s go back to political philosopher Carl Schmitt, who shaped the official philosophy of Nazi German.
Carl Schmitt explains that “the sovereign who decides outside the law,” and under the “state of emergency,” the sovereign can suspend the rule of law and the citizen will lose some basic legal rights due to the special political situation.[1] When the Nazi German adopted Schmitt’s philosophy, Adolf Hitler suspended the Weimar Constitution and the rule of law in the name of “the state of emergency”. Then the “Auschwitz is precisely the place in which the state of exception coincides perfectly with the rule and the extreme situation becomes the very paradigm of daily life.”[2] Under the rule of Nazi German, the German turned to be a totalitarian state, “the camp is the space that is opened when the state of exception begins to become the rule,” which creates a kind of person who is named “der Muselmann,” literally “the Muslim:”
The so-called Muselmann, as the camp language termed the prisoner who was giving up and was given up by his comrades, no longer had room in his consciousness for the contrasts good or bad, noble or base, intellectual or unintellectual. He was a staggering corpse, a bundle of physical functions in its last convulsions. As hard as it may be for us to do so, we must exclude him from our considerations.[3]
The Muselmann, who were put into the camps, were totally treated differently from the Germans. Under the state of exception, the Muselmann were separated from the human beings.
Following Carl Schmitt, Giorgio Agamben explores the relations between sovereign power and bare life under the “state of emergency”. Agamben argues, in the state of exception, the sovereign can suspend the laws which regulate the normal political life and create a lot of “the sacred,” who can be killed without committing homicide.[4] Agamben discusses the Jews who were forced to the concentration camps and became “the sacred” under the Nazi German, but he has not considered “the sacred” in democratic states. But does this phenomenon also exist in democratic state, especially in America, one of the most democratic states in contemporary world?
While in fact, in America, a model of democratic states in the world, it is still producing “the sacred.” Since the September 11 attack, President George W. Bush claimed that America was in “the state of emergence” and quickly passed the USA Patriot Act in order to protect Americans and prevent the potential attacks on Americans. Then President Bush launched the War on Terrorism and invaded Afghanistan to depose the Taliban, who had harbored al-Qaeda terrorists. In the name of anti-terrorism, President Bush suspended the rule of law and strengthened the presidential power, which directly deprived the basic human rights of the Afghanistanese and turned them to be “the sacred.” Beginning in 2004, accounts of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, including torture, rape, sodomy, and homicide of prisoners held in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, also known as Baghdad Correctional Facility, came to public attention. Moreover, at Guantanamo Bay, one of the most famous American army stations at Cuba, many Afghanistanese who were suspected as potential terrorists by American government were also abused and tortured in the prisons. It is a great irony that in America, it still has these kinds of scandals, which is unbelievable for Americans.
The Jews are not the subjects of this essay, but their histories offer me good lens to rethink the living condition of those who have the similar destinies like them in democratic America. In American history, there are several critical phases, during which American presidents strengthened their executive power in the name of the “state of emergence,” which directly created a large number of “the sacred.” Among them, they were the French-Americans, the Southerners, the socialists, the Japanese-Americans and the prisoners of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay and so on. In this paper, focusing on the state of emergency, I will discuss the relations between presidential power and “the sacred” who are excluded by the presidential power in American history; in part two, I will discuss contemporary Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s view on the bare life, sovereign power and the state of exception; in part three, I will explore how the American presidential power was strengthened and how the French-Americans, the Southerners, the socialists, the Japanese-Americans and the prisoners of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay became “the sacred” in American history; finally, I will draw my own conclusion for this paper.
Part Two: Agamben on the State of Exception and Bare Life
In the early of 20th century, when Europeans states entered the World War I, those whose nations were defeated and lost their own sovereignty and occupied or annexed by other hegemonic states were forced to leave their own countries. Without a legal nation to protect their own basic rights, they became the stateless and refugees in the Europe. In The Origin of Totalitarianism, Arendt noticed this political phenomenon:
With the emergence of the minorities in Eastern and Southern Europe and with the stateless people driven into Central and Western Europe, a completely new element of disintegration was introduced into postwar Europe. Denationalization became a powerful weapon of totalitarian politics, and the constitutional inability of European nation-states to guarantee human rights to those who had lost nationally guaranteed rights, made it possible for the persecuting governments to impose their standard of values even upon their opponents.[5]
Under the totalitarian politics, Arendt noticed that the refugees or the stateless people were produced in Europe. Arendt argued that these kinds of political phenomenon should be put into the history of the totalitarianism in order to understand their living condition. Moreover, she thought “the end of the rights of man” was closely connected with nation-states. Enlightened by Arendt, Agamben assumes the political relation is based on sovereign ban, which can create a large number of “the sacred.”
But why did the refugees and the stateless were banned in the Europe? In order to understand what the sovereign ban means, let us firstly turn our attention to Carl Schmitt and Walter Benjamin, whose thoughts on the extraordinary politics and sovereign power directly illuminated Agamben. Schmitt was famous for analyzing the extraordinary politics of the sovereign. Comparing with the normal rule, he argues the extraordinary rule is much more interesting:
The exception can be more important to it than the rule, not because of a romantic irony for the paradox, but because the seriousness of an insight goes deeper than the clear generalizations inferred from what ordinarily repeats itself. The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything: It confirms not only the rule but also its existence, which derives only from the exception. In the exception the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition.[6]
Schmitt thinks the exception can help us to deepen our understanding of the politics.
Like Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin also discussed extraordinary politics. Moreover, he advocates that political thinkers should connect the oppressed with the “emergency situation”:
The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘emergency situation’ in which we live is the rule. We must arrive at a concept of history which corresponds to this. Then it will become clear that the task before us is the introduction of a real state of emergency; and our position in the struggle against Fascism will thereby improve.[7]
But comparing with Schmitt who reduced the politics to the extraordinary politics, Benjamin connected the oppressed and the “emergency situation” and assumed the history of the oppressed was the product of the “emergency situation.” Therefore, in order to understand the history of the oppressed, a “real state of emergency” should be put into history.
Following Schmitt and Benjamin’s thoughts on the extraordinary politics and the oppressed, Giorgio Agamben explores the relations between the bare life of “the sacred” and the sovereign power. In Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Agamben considers a special kind of punishment in archaic Roman Law, which directly turned a kind of the Roman people to be “the sacred.” According to Pompeius Festus:
The sacred man is the one whom the people have judged on account a crime. It is not permitted to sacrifice this man, yet he who kills him will not be condemned for homicide; in the first tribunitian law, in fact, it is noted that “if someone kills the one who is sacred according to the plebiscite, it will not be considered homicide.” This is why it is customary for a bad or impure man to be called sacred.[8]
It was so strange a phenomenon that “the sacred” were included under the Roman Law, however, they were also excluded by the people who were living under the Roman rule. “The sacred” were accepted by their communities, yet they were killed by others who didn’t commit homicide.
But why “the sacred” were inclusively excluded in ancient Roman law? In order to answer this question, we should take a look at how Agamben defines the sovereign power and “the sacred.” According to Schmitt, “sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”[9] It is a paradox that the sovereign not only stands outside the law, but also inside the law. The sovereign can not only declare the juridical order, but also suspend it for his own sake. It is a “borderline concept” that the sovereign is between the norm and the exception, between the inside and the outside of the legal order. Agamben thinks Schmitt’s perspective is very valuable, and he recognizes that “there is a limit-figure of life, a threshold in which life is both inside and outside the juridical order, and this threshold is the place of sovereignty.”[10] Then Agamben points out, “the sovereign sphere is the sphere in which it is permitted to kill without committing homicide and without celebrating a sacrifice, and sacred life——that is, life that may be killed but not sacrificed——is the life that has been captured in this sphere.”[11] Noticing the contradictory phenomenon of “the sacred” and the sovereign power, Agamben connects them together and argues that “the sacred” was the products of the sovereign power. Then he pursues the history of “the sacred” and explores their living condition and how they are treated in an inclusive exclusive way.
But who are “the sacred” in modern history? Agamben claims, the Jews who were treated as the “living death” under the German rule in the 1930s were “the sacred” in the modern history. During the rule of Nazi German in the 1930s, Hitler promoted his racism policies, namely the concentration camp policies, which put the Jews to the camp and made the Great Massacre on them. Under the sovereign ban during the Nazi German rule, they lost their natural life, while only had their own bare life in the world. For Agamben, he thinks, the “Auschwitz is precisely the place in which the state of exception coincides perfectly with the rule and the extreme situation becomes the very paradigm of daily life.”[12] It is a paradox that the Jews are the same human beings as the Germans, while they lived as non-human. As the result of the national violence, under the state of exception, the natural life of the Jews was changed and their bare lives were exposed , then “the sacred” were produced.
Nazi German history was a special episode in the 20th century, and it was not incredible that totalitarian German had produced “the sacred” at that time. But does this kind of phenomenon also appear in democratic America? If so, who were “the sacred” in American history? And how was their living condition? In order to answer these questions, let’s take a look at the American presidential power and the state of emergency in American history and how “the sacred” were produced by the presidential power in American.
Part Three: The State of Exception and “the Sacred” in American History
In the world history, as a paradigm of government, “the state of emergence” is a very popular phenomenon. In the legal history of the West, it has been existed in France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, England, and the United States. In France, “after being established with the Constitutional Assembly’s decree of July 8, 1791, it acquired its proper physiognomy as État de Siège fictive or État de Siège politique with the Directorial law of August 27, 1797, and finally, with Napoleon’s decree of December 24, 1811;”[13] In Germany, “Article 68 of the Bismarckian Constitution, which, in cases where ‘public security was threatened in the territory of the Reich,’ granted the emperor the power to declare a part of the Reich to be in a state of war (Kriegszustand), whose conditions and limitations followed those set forth in the Prussian law of June 4, 1851, concerning the state of siege;”[14] In Italy, the governments of the kingdom resorted to proclaiming a state of siege many times: “in Palermo and the Sicilian provinces in 1862 and 1866, in Naples in 1862, in Sicily and Lunigiana in 1894, and in Naples and Milan in 1898;”[15] It is so widespread a phenomenon that it is also existed in the England, Switzerland and other nations.
In American history, “the state of emergency” also appeared. When American founding fathers created the Federal Constitution in 1787, they made Article 1 to discuss the relations between the presidential power and “the state of emergency.” In Article 1 Section 9, it establishes “the Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”[16] While in Article 1 Section 1, the American Constitution claims that “all legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.”[17] During the American founding, American founding fathers designed the American Constitution and constructed American Government based on the principles of balance and check, however, it “does not specify which authority has the jurisdiction to decide on the suspension.”[18] Moreover, when it discusses the relations between another passage of Article 1, which declares that “the power to declare war and to raise and support the army and navy rests with Congress,” and Article 2, which states that “[t]he President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States,” it doesn’t clarify whether the President or the Congress has the legitimate and inalienable right to declare “the state of emergency” and suspend the rule of law.[19] Due to its ambiguity, “the American constitution is in the dialectic between the powers of the president and those of Congress,” which “has taken shape historically as a conflict over supreme authority in an emergency situation.”[20] And for this drawback of the American political institution, the American presidential power could be extended in the name of “the state of emergency.”
When John Adams was the American President, the French-Americans, who were suspected by his government were treated as “the sacred.” Although the French allayed with the America in 1778 and supported the Independence War of the colonies, the French-America relations was totally in tension in the late 1790s. When the French captured American ships on the sea and undeclared the war with America, the Undeclared War with France (1798-1800) was broken out. In order to stop enemies from making conspiracies to the United State government, the Alien and Sedition Acts was passed by the Federalists in the 5th United States Congress and signed into law by President John Adams. Proponents claimed the acts were designed to protect the United States from alien citizens of enemy powers and to stop seditious attacks from weakening the government. Under the Alien and Sedition Act, the American President was authorized to deport aliens:
That it shall be lawful for the President of the United States, at any time during the continuance of this act, to order all such aliens as he shall judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States, or shall have reasonable grounds to suspect are concerned in any treasonable or secret machinations against the government thereof, to depart out of the territory of the United States within such time as shall be expressed in such order;[21]
The Sedition Act made it a high misdemeanor, punishable by fine and imprisonment, to commit any treasonable activity, which was defined to include publishing false, scandalous, and malicious writing concerning the government of the United States. Who were the aliens? And who were against the Adams government? The French-Americans, who were suspected by the American government were totally treated as alien citizens rather than American citizens. Once their “conspiracies” were exposed, they were punished by fines and put into prisons. Although the First Amendment of the United State Bill of Rights endowed American citizens the basic right of free speech, due to the special political relations between the France and America, the French were treated unequal and expelled in the political sphere.
When the Northern states were in conflict with the Southern states over the slavery in America, Americans finally went into the Civil War in the 1860s. During the American Civil War, in order to save the federal government and unit the Southern states and Northern states, President Abraham Lincoln broadened his presidential power in the name of “the state of emergency.” On September 25, 1862, President Lincoln generalized the state of exception throughout the entire territory of the United States, authorizing the arrest and trial before courts marital of “all Rebels and Insurgents, their aiders and abettors within the United States, and all persons discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting militia drafts, or guilty of any disloyal practice, affording aid and comfort to Rebels against the authority of the United States.”[22] By this point, President Lincoln was the holder of the sovereign decision on the state of exception.
Moreover, on September 15, 1863, Abraham Lincoln pointed out that the southern states were in rebellion and the United States was in danger of breaking down, then he declared “the state of emergency” in America and proposed to suspend the Writ Of Habeas Corpus. Lincoln claimed:
Whereas a rebellion was existing on the 3rd day of March, 1863, which rebellion is still existing; …… the public safety may require, is authorized to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in any case throughout the United States or any part thereof; and Whereas, in the judgment of the President, the public safety does require that the privilege of the said writ shall now be suspended throughout the United States in the cases where, by the authority of the President of the United States, military, naval, and civil officers of the United States, or any of them, hold persons under their command or in their custody, either as prisoners of war, spies, or aiders or abettors of the enemy, or officers, soliders, or seamen enrolled or drafted or mustered or enlisted in or belonging to the land or naval forces of the United States, or as deserters therefore, or otherwise amendable to military law or the rules and articles of war or the rules or regulations prescribed for the military or naval services by authority of the President of the United States, or for resisting a draft, or for any other offense against the military or naval service.[23]
Who were the “prisoners of war, spies, or aiders or abettors of the enemy, or officers, soldiers, or seamen?” Most of them who lived in the southern states and were loyal to southern states rather than the federal government. However, by declaring the federal government was in danger and suspending the Writ of Habeas Corpus, they were totally deprived of their own basic rights endowed by the American Constitution. The Southern states were parts of the Federal government and they had their own representatives to vote for the sake of their states in the Congress. Without their participation and discussion in the Congress, the Lincoln government illegally passed the Proclamation Suspending Writ of Habeas Corpus, which directly violated the American Constitution. In strengthening the power of the federal government, Lincoln government excluded the southerners, who earned their living depended on the cotton and slavery in the southern states and treated them as “the sacred.”
When the First World War was broken out in Europe and the United States entered into the war, horrified by the communism in Russian Revolution and feared the communists to overthrow American government, President Woodrow Wilson also broadened the presidential power and produced “the sacred.” When the Russian October Revolution successfully overturned the tsarist government and became the first socialism state in the world. Fearing the red socialism spreading in America, the American Congress passed several laws to punish espionage and enforce the criminal laws of the United States. On June 15, 1917, the Congress approved The Espionage Act, which prohibited any attempt to interfere with military operations, support America's enemies during wartime, to promote insubordination in the military, or interfere with military recruitment:
Whoever, with intent or reason to believe that it is to be used to the injury
of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation, communicates, delivers,
or transmits, or attempts to, or aids or induces another to, communicate, deliver, or
transmit, to any foreign government, or to any faction or party or military or naval
force within a foreign country, whether recognized or unrecognized by the United
States, or to any representative, officer, agent, employee, subject, or citizen thereof,
either directly or indirectly, any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch,
photograph, photographic negative, blue print, plan, map, model, note, instrument,
appliance, or information relating to the national defense, shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than twenty years.…… one or more of such persons does any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy shall be punished as in said sections provided in the case of the doing of the act the accomplishment of which is the object of such conspiracy. [24]
And on May 16, 1918, the Congress amended the Act entitled “An Act to punish acts of interference with the foreign relations, the neutrality, and the foreign commerce of the United States, to punish espionage, and better to enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and for other purposes” and passed The Sedition Act, which forbade the use of "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces or that caused others to view the American government or its institutions with contempt:
Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States, or the flag of the United States, or the uniform of the Army or Navy of the United States, or any language intended to bring the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States, or the flag of the United States, or the uniform of the Army or Navy of the United States into contempt, scorn, contumely, or disrepute, or shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any language intended to incite, provoke, or encourage resistance to the United States, or to promote the cause of its enemies, or shall willfully display the flag of any foreign enemy, or shall willfully by utterance, writing, printing, publication, or language spoken, urge, incite, or advocate any curtailment of production in this country of anything or things, product or products, necessary or essential to the prosecution of the war in which the United States may be engaged, with intent by such curtailment to cripple or hinder the United States in the prosecution of the war, and whoever shall willfully advocate, teach, defend, or suggest the doing of any of the acts or things in this section enumerated, and whoever shall by word or act support or favor the cause of any country with which the United States is at war or by word or act oppose the cause of the United States therein, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both.[25]
Besides, under this Act, once employees and officials who were confirmed to commit disloyal act or speak unpatriotic language would be dismissed immediately:
That any employee or official of the United States Government who commits any disloyal act or utters any unpatriotic or disloyal language, or who, in an abusive and violent manner criticizes the Army or Navy or the flag of the United States shall be at once dismissed from the service. Any such employee shall be dismissed by the head of the department in which the employee may be engaged, and any such official shall be dismissed by the authority having power to appoint a successor to the dismissed official.[26]
Moreover, advocated by senator Lee Slater Overman, the Congress also passed The Overman Act in 1918, which gave President Woodrow Wilson extraordinary powers to coordinate government agencies in wartime. From 1917 to 1918, Congress approved these Acts, which granted President Wilson complete control over the administration of the country and not only prohibited disloyal activities, such as collaboration with the enemy and the diffusion of also reports, but even made it a crime to “willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States.”[27] On the one hand, the presidential power was extended during the wartime; on the other hand, those who were suspected to do illegal behaviors and disloyal to the United State government were treated as “the sacred” and had to lose their own basic rights.
We wonder to know: who were the espionages? Who were disloyal to American governments? At that time, the American government thought the socialists were the espionages and their purpose was to overturn capitalist regimes. In America, the purpose of the socialists was to overturn American government. But how many socialists exist in America? And how many socialists were conducting to overturn American government? We do not know the answers for these questions, however, we are informed by Wilson government that the socialists were “the sacred.”
In order to solve with the Great Depression and enforce the New Deal policies in America, President Franklin Roosevelt also extended his presidential power. Through a series of statutes culminating in the National Recovery Act of June 16, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt achieved an unlimited power to regulate and control every aspect of the economic life of the country. With the outbreak of the World War Two, he extended these powers with the proclamation of a ‘limited’ national emergency on September 8, 1939, which became unlimited on May 27, 1941. On September 7, 1942, he renewed his claim to sovereign powers during the emergency: “In the event that the Congress should fail to act, and act adequately, I shall accept the responsibility, and I will act……The American people can…be sure that I shall not hesitate to use every power vested in me to accomplish the defeat of our enemies in any part of the world where our own safety demands such defeat.”[28]
When the Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japan army on December 7, 1941, and the United States was brought into the World War II, by using his own presidential power, Franklin Roosevelt turned the Japanese-Americans to be “the sacred.” Facing the fascism attack from Japan and fearing Japanese-Americans would attack Americans like the Empire of Japan, the United States government proposed an internment policy towards them. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the internment with Executive Order 9066, which allowed local military commanders to designate "military areas" as "exclusion zones," from which "any or all persons may be excluded:"
Whereas the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities as defined in Section 4, Act of April 20, 1918, 40 Stat. 533, as amended by the Act of Nobember 30, 1940, 54 Stat. 1220, and the Act of August 21, 1941, 55 State. 655 (U. S. C., Title 50, Sec. 104)……I hereby further authorize and direct the Secretary of War and the said Military Commanders to take such other steps as he or the appropriate Military Commander may deem advisable to enforce compliance with the restrictions applicable to each Military area hereinabove authorized to be designated, including the use of Federal troops and other Federal Agencies, with authority to accept assistance of state and local agencies.[29]
Under this Order, Japanese ancestry were excluded from the entire Pacific coast, including all of California and most of Oregon and Washington, except for those in internment camps. Under this interment policy, more than 110, 000 Japanese Americans were forced into the camps, deprived of their civil rights as the Americans and became “the sacred.” Moreover, it is not well known that this Order was also applied to smaller numbers of residents of the United States who were of Italian or German descent. And during that time, “individuals of German and Italian ancestry also were interned or relocated during World War II, but in far fewer numbers—nearly 11,000 of German descent and 2,000 of Italian descent.”[30]
During George W. Bush’s period, he also strengthened the presidential power in the name of anti-terrorism and emergency state. When the terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush declared that America was in “the state of emergency” and advocated Americans to fight against the terrorism. Then, on November 13, 2001, the “military order” was issued by the president of the United States, which authorized the “indefinite detention” and trial by “military commissions of noncitizens suspected of involvement in terrorist activities.” Moreover, the USA Patriot Act, namely, the Unifying and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act issued by the U. S. Senate on October 26, 2001 “radically erases any legal status of the individual, thus producing a legally unnamable and unclassifiable being.”[31] Fearing the terrorists to attack the Americans again, President George W. Bush advocated the anti-terrorism war and attacked the Afghanistan and Iraq. The American government arrested a lot of potential terrorists and put them into the Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay. We actually do not know whether the prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay are terrorists or intend to be terrorists, because they are arrested and put into prisons before committing terrorists. Unlike those who were forced to leave their nations after the World War I described by Hannah Arendt, these prisoners are wholly deprived of their basic rights as the human beings. They are tortured, beat, sexually abused in the prisons, and they are treated like animals rather than human beings. During George W. Bush’s period, they became “the sacred” of anti-terrorism wars.
Conclusion
During the wartime or when America entered the wars with other countries, American Presidents could make their presidential power much more powerful than ever. John Adams broadened his presidential power in order to fight against the French; Abraham Lincoln strengthened his presidential power in order to reunite the northerner states and the southerner states; Woodrow Wilson made his power much more stronger in order to deal with the communists and the Trust businessmen; Franklin Roosevelt broadened his presidential power to solve with the Great Depression and prevent Americans from attacking by the fascist Japan in the World War II; and George W. Bush strengthened his power to fight against the potential terrorists. No matter what they coped with, they extended their presidential power in the name of “the state of emergency.” In the future, America will still have economic or political crisis like it suffered in the past 200 years, and we can assume that the presidential power will also be strengthened in the name of “the state of emergency.”
In the 20th century, we are surprised that the Nazi German put the Jews into the concentration camps and made the great massacres on them. But when we trace the American history, we are much more surprised that the United States, as one of the most democratic states in the world, is still producing “the sacred.” American founding fathers designed the American government and its institutions based on the principles of balance and check and asked them to represent the interests of the Americans. But in fact, the Congress and the President were in conflict with each other since the creation of American republic, while through bypassing the Congress and suspend the rule of law, the American Presidents could broaden their Presidential power in the name of “the state of emergency”. Once the Presidential power was extended, “the sacred” were created. John Adams produced the French-Americans, Abraham Lincoln produced the southerners, Woodrow Wilson produced the communists, Franklin Roosevelt produced the Japanese, Italians and the Germans and George W. Bush produced the prisoners. No matter where they come from and no matter who they were, they were totally produced and treated as “the sacred.”
When Alex de Tocqueville travelled in America and examined the democratic institution and society in America in the 1930s, he assumes that the America was more democratic than Europe. “Alongside his social reading of democracy as a society of nearly equal men−a relatively new concept−is his political sense of democracy as the sovereignty of the people, the people ruling themselves, which was the original meaning of democracy in ancient Greece. In no other country had authority and power been so expanded from the one or the few to the many as in America, where, according to Tocqueville, the divine right of kings had been replaced by the divine right of the people.”[32] Although Tocqueville warned the potential danger of the “tyranny of the majority,” he did not notice that American democracy was also in potential danger due to the fact that the presidential power could be strengthened.[33]
We do not deny that the America is a democratic nation, but we should also be cautious to the darkness of the American democracy. After all, those who were treated as “the sacred” were the victims rather than the American citizens. To be a democratic nation, America should embrace them rather than expel them; to be a democratic citizen, American should be cautious to the potential danger of American democracy. After all, once the presidential power was extended, “the sacred” were produced. We cannot predict the future of the American history, but we can assume that the American presidential power will still be extended; we cannot predict who will be the next sacred, but we can assume that some other kinds of “the sacred” will be produced in the near future.
[1] Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p.5.
[2] Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive, Daniel Heller-Roazen trans, (New York: Zone Books, 1999), p. 49.
[3] Jean Amery, At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities, Sidney Rosenfeld and Stella P. Rosenfeld trans., (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), p. 9; Cited from Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz, ibid, p. 41.
[4] “The sacred” is kind of person who could be killed while not committing homicide in ancient Roman Law. For Giorgio Aganmben, it is a key term, without it, it’s hard to understand the bare life and the sovereign power from the perspective of the biopolitics. He thinks the basic political relations are the included and excluded, the people and the People, the natural life and the bare life. Moreover, the biopolitics is based on the sovereign ban, which creates a large number of the political subjects, namely, “the sacred” or the “homo sacer.” Moreover, he argues, “the ‘people’ must begin with the singular fact that in modern European languages, ‘people’ also always indicates the poor, the disinherited, and the excluded. One term thus names both the constitutive political subject and the class that is, de facto if not de jure, excluded from politics……the constitution of the human species in a political body passes through a fundamental division and that in the concept ‘people’ we can easily recognize the categorical pairs that we have seen to define the original political structure: bare life (people) and political existence (People), exclusion and inclusion, zoe and bios. The ‘people’ thus always already carries the fundamental biopolitical fracture within itself. It is what cannot be included in the whole of which it is a pat(r)t and what cannot belong to the set in which it is always already included.” He discusses “the sacred” in detail in his monograph──Homo Sacer: Sovereign power and bare, in this paper, following Agamben, I want to examine “the sacred” in American history. See Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, pp. 176-8.
[5] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company, 1958), p. 269; also see Agamben, Homo Sacer, ibid, p. 126.
[6] Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, George Schwab trans., (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), p. 15
[7] Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Hannah Arendt, ed., Harry Zohn, trans., Illumination: Essays and Reflections, (New York: Schocken, 2007), p. 257.
[8] Pompeius Festus, On the Significance of Words, cited from Agamben, Homo Sacer, ibid, p.71.
[9] Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, ibid, p.5.
[10] Agamben, Homo Sacer, ibid, p. 27.
[11] Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer, ibid, p. 82.
[12] Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz, ibid, p. 49.
[13] Agamben, Kevin Attell trans., Station of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 11.
[14] Agamben, Station of Exception, ibid, p.14.
[15] Agamben, Station of Exception, ibid, p. 17.
[16] Bruce Frohnen, The American Republic: Primary Sources (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002), p. 330
[17] Bruce Frohnen ed., The American Republic: Primary Sources, ibid, p. 326.
[18] Agamben, Station of Exception, ibid, p. 20
[19] Agamben, Station of Exception, ibid, p. 20; also see Bruce Frohnen, The American Republic: Primary Sources, idid, p. 326 and p. 331.
[20] Agamben, Station of Exception, ibid, p. 19.
[21] Bruce Frohnen ed., The American Republic: Primary Sources, ibid, p. 549.
[22] Agamben, Station of Exception, ibid, p. 21.
[23] Bruce Frohnen ed., The American Nation: Primary Sources (Indianapolis, liberty fund, 2008), p. 104
[24] Bruce Frohnen, The American Nation: Primary Sources, ibid, p. 783.
[25] Bruce Frohnen, The American Nation: Primary Sources, ibid, pp. 805-6.
[26] Bruce Frohnen, The American Nation: Primary Sources, ibid, p. 806.
[27] Agamben, Station of Exception, ibid, p. 21.
[28] Clinton Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship: Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1948), pp. 268-69.
[29] “Executive Order 9066: Japanese Relocation Order,” in National Archives and Records Administration ed., Our Documents: 100 Milestone Documents from the National Archives (New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 179.
[30] According to Immigration and Naturalization Service records, 10,905 German legal resident aliens and German-Americans were taken in under the enemy alien program, See Evelyn Nieves, “Past Recalled for Japanese-Americans,” New York Times, September 27, 2001, p. A26; also see Timothy J. Holian, The German-Americans and World War II: An Ethnic Experience (Jackson, TN: Grove/Atlantic Press, 1998), p. 1.
[31] Agamben, Station of Exception, ibid, p. 3.
[32] “Introduction,” xxvi, in Alexis de Tocqueville, trans. Gerald E. Bevan, Isaac Kramnick, Democracy in America: and Two essays on America (Penguin Books, 2003).
[33] Concerning the tyranny of the majority, see “chapter 8: What Moderates the Tyranny of The Majority in the United States?” in Alexis de Tocqueville, ibid, pp. 305-6.
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