There is nothing so deplorable as a miserable gain any demagogue will get in return for major twisting of facts. The Laws of Trade in such commodities are such, that you need a ton of lies (misrepresentations, deceptions, disinformation, etc.) to get an ounce of your personal benefit. That is the biggest burden of being a demagogue, but people seem to handle it with flair. A fairly old Greco-Roman school of thought suggest how “not to be caught in a lie, but produce marvelous results”. I call it POLITICAL MARKETING STRATEGY. This old marketing politics routine would entail some of the following (if we, publicly and vigorously deny that we have any dealings with the Dunkinstan – the whole world will be under the impression that we are secretly selling them nuclear arms in return for landing rights – that will put pressure on their neighbors at Pumpkinstan to start offering us better terms about using their air space). The power of human suspicion is such that the element of a strong denial will provoke some question asking and will get “the ball rolling in our designed path”. Isn’t it a common thing to say “where there is smoke – there is fire”? Of course it is.
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Allow me to introduce a short outline of what really is a demagogue: “Demagogy is the set of methods used by demagogues. It is a strategy of obtaining power by appealing to the gut feelings of the public, usually by powerful use of rhetoric and propaganda.
H. L. Mencken, an American critic, defined a demagogue as
"one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots." The word is nowadays mostly used as a political insult: political opponents are described as demagogues, but people we approve of are "men of the people," or great speechmakers.
Although, according to Mencken's definition, Demagogy involves lying, some would say it doesn't, since it doesn't use false facts directly, but rather brings the uncritical listener to draw the desired conclusion himself. Demagogy often involves logical fallacies, but has many aspects that have nothing to do with logic.
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I had to insert this explanation because most of Americans have not lived 20 or 30 years exposed to the utmost demagoguery, like I was in the former Communist Eastern Europe. If the ancient Greeks who defined and perfected Ethics, rhethoric and logic, had any way to look ahead through time, by far the most successful demagogues could be found amongst the Communist leaders of the Eastern block countries. That is probably why the entire phenomenon is alien, here in the United States, and that is why it takes me half a second to recognise a demagogue’s speech within half a second – I listened to much of it for the greater half of my life. Hence the following conclusions:
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Some of the recent criticism of George Bush indicated that some degree of illicit activities may have taken place in order to increase surveillance of certain targeted suspects. I find this policy perfectly in accordance with all the existing Laws and common Ethics.
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The critical stream has thrown a huge monkey wrench into this recent development claiming that “due process” (4th and 5th Amendment) may have been abridged (or abrogated), etc. etc.
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Naturally none of that is true. Nobody has suspended any of our Constitution’s precepts, nor has there been such a tendency.
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On the contrary if we take the critics (demagogues in this case) at face value and employ their suggestions by “splitting hairs” and getting a signed warrant for every (however cursory) activity of our Law enforcement officials – it is at that point that we will get to realize how absurd the requirements are. Consider the following:
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1. We have a country where the local, state and federal police is often in conflict over some routine (not to say benign) crime – what would this be? Now, we not only have to have some hierarchy in our Law enforcement, but we have to reconcile all the conflicting interest while the suspect is on a plane to Abu Dhabistan (imaginary country)…? The alternative is a shootout between our own agencies: A local war between all the law enforcement agencies?
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2. Get all the enforcement officers to start using wireless PDAs, laptops, a nd similar? Out of what pocket? This would force our government into a dreadful spiral of spending and educating the police force – while the suspects are (yet again) on the plane to Abu Dhabistan (imaginary country)
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Who’ll pay? What expenses to be charged to local, state of Federal government? See that? Now it becomes a nightmare from a logistic point of view.
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The worst aspect is the judicial element. We can’t possibly get a high ranking judge to stay up around the clock since some of those activities might take place on our (U.S.) territories outside the continental United States. Who would dare ask some future Supreme court justice to join a crew of “rotating on call presence”? Certainly not me. It’s quite unfathomable to even get a crew of circuit judges to be “on-call in a rotating shift” so somebody is always there to sign a warrant at 3:15AM (DC time). Short of that the suspect is again on a plane to Abu Dhabistan (imaginary country).
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If that is not beyond absurd, I don’t know what is.
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If we really are in a state of war (remember the World Trade Center, The Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania), we owe it to ourselves to increase our vigilance and scrutiny – but of course not become a police state where anybody’s privacy is invaded.
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If we really are threatened to a higher degree there is the Court Marshal or a Military Tribunal which is designed to be just and impartial but primarily efficient and expeditious – no they are not much in terms of due process or jury selection, but some crimes are so evident all you need is a firing squad. Let the course of justice unfold afterwards.

A brilliant article with this topic has appeared by the even more brilliant Dr. S. Trifkovic and you can find it at: www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/newsviews.cgi/Intelligence/The_False_Dilemma_o.writeback
Iliya Pavlovich