Quote of the week
[T]he moral point of the matter is never reached by calling what happened by the name of ‘genocide’ or by counting the many millions of victims: extermination of whole peoples had happened before in antiquity, as well as in modern colonization. It is reached only when we realize this happened within the frame of a legal order and that the cornerstone of this ‘new law’ consisted of the command ‘Thou shall kill,’ not thy enemy but innocent people who were not even potentially dangerous, and not for any reason of necessity but, on the contrary, even against all military and other utilitarian calculations. … And these deeds were not committed by outlaws, monsters, or raving sadists, but by the most respected members of respectable society.
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on The Banality of Evil
The role of MPs
The fact that members of the Assembly assume office through nomination by political parties ought to have a limited influence on how they exercise the institutional power of the Assembly. Where the interests of the political parties are inconsistent with the Assembly’s objectives, members must exercise the Assembly’s power for the achievement of the Assembly’s objectives. For example, members may not frustrate the realisation of ensuring a government by the people if its attainment would harm their political party. If they were to do so, they would be using the institutional power of the Assembly for a purpose other than the one for which the power was conferred. This would be inconsistent with the Constitution.
