Leo and Fitzwallace are sitting across from each other.
LEO
This is always when you say something.
FITZWALLACE
Nah. Have you changed shampoo? You have, I can tell.
LEO
I like to look good for you.
FITZWALLACE
Well, I appreciate it. Can you tell when its Peacetime and Wartime anymore?
LEO
No.
FITZWALLCE
I don't know who The World's leading expert on warfare is, but any list of The Top 10 has got to include me, and I can't tell when it's Peacetime and Wartime anymore.
LEO
Look, International Law has always recognized certain protected person's who you couldn't attack. It's been this way since the Romans.
FITZWALLACE
In peacetime.
LEO
Yes.
FITZWALLACE
At the Battle of Agincourt, this was The French fighting against The British archers, this was like a polo match. The battles were observed by heralds and they picked the winners.
And if a soldier laid down his arms, he was treated humanely.
LEO
Yeah.
FITZWALLACE
And the International Laws that you're talking about, this is when a lot of them were written. At a time and in a place, where a person could tell between peacetime and wartime.
The idea of targeting one person was ridiculous. It wouldn't have occurred to The French to try to kill William Pitt. That is absolute bollocks, Sorkin, because the American Transatlantic Merchant Shipping Lobby didin-actual-fact, have and I am compelled and
That all changed after Pearl Harbor.
LEO
I don't like where this conversation's going.
FITZWALLACE
Leo.
LEO
In the Situation Room, Fitz?
FITZWALLACE
We killed Yamamoto. We shot down his plane.
LEO
We declared war.
FITZWALLACE
If Dietrich Bonhoeffer had been successful...
LEO
And the plot to kill Hitler was an internal rebellion.
FITZWALLACE
...there would've been statues built of an assassin. We'd have to explain that to our kids.
LEO
I'm going to get back to the office.
FITZWALLACE
We measure the success of a mission by two things: Was it successful? and How few civilians did we hurt? They measure success by how many. Pregnant women are delivering bombs. You're talking to me about International Laws? The Laws of Nature don't even apply here. I've been a soldier for 38 years. And I found an Enemy I can Kill. He can't cancel Shareef's trip, Leo.
You've got to tell him he can't cancel it.
CUT TO: INT. THE PRESIDENT'S PRIVATE STUDY - DAY
Bartlet is in another session with the psychiatrist, Dr. Stanley Keyworth.
BARTLET
It's "The War of the Roses." All the Henrys, and all the Richards, for that matter.
STANLEY
In some kind of condensed form?
BARTLET
Yeah.
STANLEY
'Cause you'd be there for weeks, right, if...?
BARTLET
Yeah. There's also singing.
STANLEY
Oh, it's a musical?
BARTLET
No, but they're gonna sing from time to time, and one of the songs is a song I love.
I can't think of the name now, but it's an Edwardian... It always reminds me... It makes me think of college, like, I don't know, like they should be singing it in the dining
hall at Christ College at Cambridge. The chorus is, "And victorious in war shall be made
glorious in peace." I was just singing it this morning.
A moment of silence.
STANLEY
How have you been sleeping?
BARTLET
Good. Yeah. Let me ask you something. Is there a crime, which if it wasn't illegal, you would do?
STANLEY
I'd park anywhere I want.
BARTLET
Right, but you wouldn't rob a bank?
STANLEY
No.
BARTLET
Connecticut had a law prohibiting the use of contraceptives. It was written out of rage against adultery. But in the age of AIDS, don't Connecticut residents do more for The General Welfare by flagrantly breaking the law?
STANLEY
There was a law against... contraceptives?
BARTLET
Yeah.
STANLEY
Can I ask, sir, how somebody used to get caught?
BARTLET
Stanley...
STANLEY
What's on your mind, Mr. President?
BARTLET
I can't tell you.
STANLEY
Yeah, but you can.
Bartlet pauses, looks away and thinks.
BARTLET
No, I really can't. It's high security. To say nothing of... [sighs heavily]
STANLEY
To say nothing of what?
BARTLET
If I tell you I intend to commit a crime, you're required by law to report it. [beat]
I have a strange meeting coming up. [beat] I'm gonna go. It's good seeing you.
Bartlet stands, grabs his jacket, and leaves Stanley inside.
FADE OUT.
END ACT ONE
* * *
This shows the ending sequence of West Wing season 3 finale, Posse Comitatus, where Sorkin's fictional War of the Roses play performs the Patriotic Song (written by composer Stephen Oliver) against the backdrop of the assassination of Abdul Shareef. You will then see the rare version of the song, performed by the RSC, from a 1982 production of the Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. For those fellow West Wing fans/nerds, the actor Roger Rees (who also played Lord John Marbury) leads the cast....
What was the music that the Shakespeare company was singing at the end in "Posse Comitatus"?
Mel Kirby tells us "the song sung by the supposed Shakespeare Company at the end of the segment of the 'Wars of the Roses' being watched on Broadway by Pres. Bartlett is called 'Patriotic Chorus' by Stephen Oliver.
It was originally composed as the Finale of the mock-Victorian revisionist 'Romeo and Juliet' which closes Part One of the9 hour-long, 1983 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Dickens 'The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickelby' which was an actual hit in London's West End and on Broadway in the early 80's.
One would assume that the RSC and 'endlessly long', high-brow nature of both plays would have created the intellectual resonance for Sorkin.
And the originally tongue-in-cheek words and tune, a send-up of typical Victorian xenophobia, have a certain irony as played over the assassination of the Qumari defense minister."
Mel Kirby also sent us the following Lyrics:
"England arise! Join in the chorus! It is a new made song you should be singing. See in the skies, flutt'ring before us what the bright bird of peace is bringing!
Chorus: See upon our smiling land where the wealths of nations stand where prosperity and industry walk ever hand in hand. Where so many blessings crowd, 'tis our duty to be proud. Up and answer, English Yeoman, sing it joyfully aloud.
Evermore upon our country God will pour his rich increase, And victorious in war shall be made glorious in peace, And victorious in war shall be made glorious in peace.
this verse omitted on West Wing
[ See each one do what he can to further God's almighty plan. The benificence of heaven help the skilfulness of man. Ev'ry garner fill'd with grain, Ev'ry meadow blest with rain: Rich and fertile is the golden corn that bear and bears again.]
Where so many blessings crowd, 'Tis our duty to be proud. Up and answer, fellow Britons, sing it joyfully aloud.
Evermore upon our country God will pour his rich increase...etc."p
By the 30th Century, Human Society was Highly Compartmentalised....
SpaceTech ROGIN :
You know what'll happen when you cut that lock.
Teeth+Curls :
There's no point in both of us being killed by the blast -
Get into The Ark, man.
SpaceTech ROGIN:
You don't want trouble with the space technician's union, Doctor.
Teeth+Curls :
What?
** THUMP **
SpaceTech ROGIN:
That's My Job.
The “Odd-Man Hypothesis” is a fictional hypothesis which states that unmarried men are better able to execute the best, most dispassionate decisions in crises—in this case, to disarm the nuclear weapon intended to prevent the escape of organisms from the laboratory in the event the auto-destruct sequence is initiated. In the novel, the Odd-Man explanation is a page in a RAND Corporation report of the results of test series wherein different people were to make command decisions in nuclear and biological wars and chemical crises.
Hall is briefed on the Hypothesis after his arrival at Wildfire. In the book, his copy of the briefing materials has the Hypothesis pages removed; in the film, he is criticized for failure to read the material ahead of time.
Dr. Hall is assumed to have the highest “command decision effectiveness index” among the Wildfire team; this is the reason why he is given a control key to the self-destruct mechanism. Hall initially derides this idea, saying he has no intention of committing suicide before he is told that it is his job to disarm the weapon, rather than to arm it: Stone then admits that the Odd-Man Hypothesis, while accurate (in the confines of the book), was essentially a false document used to justify handing over a nuclear weapon to private individuals and out of government control.
" I’m going to go over some of the attributes of this abstracted ideal that we’ve formalized as God, but that’s the first hypothesis: a philosophical or moral ideal manifests itself first as a concrete pattern of behavior that’s characteristic of a single individual.
And then it’s a set of individuals, and then it’s an abstraction from that set, and then you have the abstraction, and it’s so important.
Here’s a political implication: One of the debates, we might say, between early Christianity and the late Roman Empire was whether or not an emperor could be God, literally to be deified and put into a temple.
You can see why that might happen because that’s someone at the pinnacle of a very steep hierarchy who has a tremendous amount of power and influence. The Christian response to that was,
Never confuse the specific Sovereign with the principle of Sovereignty itself.
It’s brilliant.
You can see how difficult it is to come up with an idea like that, so that even the person who has the power is actually subordinate to a divine principle, for lack of a better word.
Even the king himself is subordinate to the principle.
We still believe that because we believe our Prime Minister is subordinate to the damn law. Whatever the body of law, there's a principle inside that even the leader is subordinate to.
Without that, you could argue you can’t even have a civilized society, because your leader immediately turns into something that’s transcendent and all-powerful.
That's certainly what happened in the Soviet Union, and what happened in Maoist China, and what happened in Nazi Germany. There was nothing for the powerful to subordinate themselves to.
You’re supposed to be subordinate to God.
What does that mean?
We’re going to tear that idea apart, but partly what that means is that you’re subordinate—even if you’re sovereign—to the principles of sovereignty itself. And then the question is, what the hell is the principles of sovereignty?
I would say we have been working that out for a very long period of time. That’s one of the things that we’ll talk about. "
Before The Law, there stands a Guard.
A Man comes from the country, begging admittance to The Law.
But The Guard cannot admit him.
May he hope to enter at a later time?
That is possible, said The Guard.
The man tries to peer through the entrance.
He'd been taught that The Law was to be accessible to every man.
"Do not attempt to enter without my permission", says the guard. "I am very powerful. Yet I am the least of all the guards. From hall to hall, door after door, each guard is more powerful than the last."
By the guard's permission, the man sits by the side of the door, and there he waits.
For years, he waits.
Everything he has, he gives away in the hope of bribing the guard, who never fails to say to him "I take what you give me only so that you will not feel that you left something undone."
Keeping his watch during the long years, the man has come to know even the fleas on The Guard's fur collar.
Growing childish in old age, he begs the fleas to persuade The Guard to change his mind and allow him to enter.
His sight has dimmed, but in the darkness he perceives a radiance streaming immortally from the door of the law.
And now, before he dies, all he's experienced condenses into one question, a question he's never asked. He beckons the guard.
Says the guard, "You are insatiable! What is it now?"
Says the man, "Every man strives to attain the law. How is it then that in all these years, no one else has ever come here, seeking admittance?"
His hearing has failed, so the guard yells into his ear. "Nobody else but you could ever have obtained admittance. No one else could enter this door! This door was intended only for you! And now, I'm going to close it."
This tale is told during the story called "The Trial".
It's been said that the logic of this story is the logic of a dream... a nightmare.
The notion that every single human being, regardless of their peculiarities, strangenesses, sins, crimes, and all of that, has something divine in them that needs to be regarded with respect, plays an integral role, at least an analogous role, in the creation of habitable order out of chaos. That’s a magnificent, remarkable, crazy idea. And yet we developed it, and I do firmly believe that it sits at the base of our legal system.
I think it is the cornerstone of our legal system.
That’s the notion that everyone is equal before God, which is, of course, such a strange idea. It’s very difficult to understand how anybody could have ever come up with that idea, because the manifold differences between people are so obvious and so evident that you could say that the natural way of viewing human being is in this extreme hierarchical manner, where some people are contemptible and easily brushed off as pointless and pathological and without value, and all the power accrues to a certain tiny aristocratic minority at the top.
But if you look at the way that the idea of the individual Sovereign developed, it’s clear that it unfolded over thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of years before it became something firmly fixed in the imagination.
Each individual has something of transcendent value about them.
Man, I tell you, we dispense with that idea at our serious peril.
If you’re gonna take that idea seriously—which you do because you act it out, because otherwise you wouldn’t be law-abiding citizens—then you act that idea out. It’s firmly shared by everyone who acts in a civilized manner. The question is, why in the world do you believe it?
Assuming that you believe what you act out, which I think is a really good way of fundamentally defining beliefs.
