CNN | Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré first gained national attention commanding the military's response to Hurricane Katrina. He's back in the spotlight again, arguing that members of the U.S. Congress lack a sense of "shared purpose." His solution is to send them to internment camps.
Here are some quotes from his CNN.com opinion piece: "It's time to get draconian ... time to load our elected officials on troop planes and send them to Camp Shelby, Mississippi.
"Put them in tents with no air conditioning, have Army drill sergeants teach them teamwork and physical sacrifice. When they recognize their responsibility to the people of America, they can return to D.C., their upscale restaurants, and military plane trips, as though they were royalty."
Taken at face value, Gen. Honoré is advocating a coup d'etat. Neither the president nor the Army has the authority to intern people based on their political beliefs or behaviors, let alone members of Congress.
Honoré's "draconian" measures violate every conceivable constitutional principle, from due process to the separation of powers. While using the innocuous term "boot camp," Honoré is actually advocating interning members of Congress for the purpose of political re-education. "Boot camp," or basic training, has a distinct military purpose: to transform civilian volunteers into effective service members responsive to the lawful orders of a chain of command.
Honoré's re-education facility at Camp Shelby has no such military purpose. Instead, its purpose is to change the political beliefs and behaviors of popularly elected civilian officials. Honoré would release members of Congress from internment only when they "recognized their responsibility to America." Honoré does not specify who will make this judgment, but it certainly cannot be the voters. Perhaps Honoré expects the president to make this judgment, or perhaps it will be left to military officers. In either case, the moment that the U.S. military starts teaching Congress about "teamwork and physical sacrifice," the rule of law in America will have come to an end.
A more plausible explanation is that the general didn't mean what he said. Relying on the colorful bombast that made him a media darling during the Katrina debacle, Honoré may be speaking apocryphally. He doesn't really intend to force members of Congress to live in tents in Camp Shelby. Instead, he's lamenting the partisan rancor in Washington when compared with the discipline of America's military forces.
Still, it's clear that Honoré misunderstands the ideas that underpin the U.S. Constitution. James Madison, rightly called "Father of the U.S. Constitution," did not expect members of Congress to embrace Honoré's "shared purpose." Instead, he expected vigorous debate on the very topics under discussion in Washington today.
Madison and the other founders knew that Americans held different views on the proper size, scope and purposes of government. They anticipated the formation of factions organized around these views and developed mechanisms to cope with the resulting disagreements.
