Citizens’ Power

Abstract

This sarcastic ode was sent to President Lyndon Johnson in January 1967 by his aide Joseph Califano. At the time, the British philosopher Bertrand Russell was busily preparing an international tribunal to charge the United States with war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Vietnam. Such a venue had no legal standing, but the U.S. government was gravely concerned about its public relations impact. Power ostensibly was being put into the hands of concerned citizens, and even the United States could not but recognize a serious threat to its sovereignty and international status. State authority was being challenged on the basis of human rights practices, and justice was being played out across national boundaries. Was such a process an instructive exercise in democratic assertion, a triumph of liberalism’s standards of objectivity, or was it—as implied in the above ditty—a new form of kangaroo court? Could the populist remedy constitute a greater travesty of justice than the state’s malfeasance?

“‘We’ll be judge, We’ll be jury,’ said Bertrand with fury: And our verdict has just been released to the press.’”¹