Posted on 12/11/2001 3:33:20 PM PST by white trash redneck
The Perils of Totalitarian "Patriotism"
Hello and welcome to Review of the News Online. I’m William Norman Grigg, Senior Editor for The New American magazine – an affiliated publication of The John Birch Society.
In his December 6th remarks to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General John Ashcroft put the proposition quite plainly: Criticism of the federal government’s anti-terrorism policies is nothing less than treason:
"To those … who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve."
This message has a familiar sound; where have we heard it before?
In a 1995 commencement address at Michigan State University, which was delivered shortly after the terrorist bombing at Oklahoma City, Bill Clinton declared: "If you say the government is in a conspiracy to take your freedom away, you are wrong… There’s nothing patriotic about hating your government or pretending you can hate your government but love your country."
A few weeks later, in remarks before a hand-picked audience in Billings, Montana, Clinton insisted that Americans have a patriotic duty to "shout down" critics of government actions: "When you hear somebody doing it, you ought to stand up and double up your fist and stick it in the sky and shout them down."
Whether spoken by John Ashcroft or Bill Clinton, this is the language of totalitarianism. And while the Bush administration has not yet described shouting down its critics as a patriotic duty, one of its key allies – a veteran of the first Bush administration – is prepared to do so.
According to Paul Bedard of U.S. News and World Report, former "Drug Czar" William Bennett is creating an organization called the "Committee on Terrorism in American Culture." One of its first projects, reports Bedard, will be to "use TV and radio ads, special conferences, and a patriot SWAT team to shush anti-patriots."
Perhaps Bennett’s so-called "Patriot SWAT team" could model itself on the World War I-era American Protective League, or APL -- a citizen auxiliary to the Justice Department that monitored, harassed, bullied, and occasionally lynched people it suspected of being inadequately committed to the war effort.
One APL affiliate in Missouri distributed "warning" cards to people who criticized the federal government. A white card was a "caution" to the recipient that he had been overheard making "dangerous and disloyal" statements about the government. A blue card was a more pointed warning; and a red card meant that "Summary Action" would be taken unless the recipient provided proof of a change of attitude. This thuggish exercise was carried out by an APL chapter that called itself "the Committee on Patriots and Patriotism."
In the republic created by our Founding Fathers, patriotism was defined as loyalty to the United States Constitution. It was a love for America as a free and independent nation ruled by law. This type of love cannot be extorted through threats, or instilled through television commercials. And it certainly will not flourish in the terrified silence that would be created through the suppression of principled dissent.
Where John Ashcroft denounces those who warn about the potential loss of personal liberty, James Madison instructs us that the "first duty" of Americans is to display a "prudent jealousy" regarding our liberties. According to the Father of our Constitution, Americans must "take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties…. The Freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle."
Thomas Jefferson, from whose pen flowed much of the modern language of liberty, similarly warned that "confidence [in men] is everywhere the parent of despotism…. In questions of power let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution."
From the perspective of our Founding Fathers, Americans have only two choices: Either we bind our leaders by the restraints on power contained in the Constitution, or we allow them to become rulers with the power to bind us in the shackles of tyranny. Even in wartime, when our attentions are focused upon depraved and murderous foreign enemies, Americans must remember that it is our own government that remains the largest potential threat to our individual rights and prosperity – if we allow our government to become free from the limits of law.
In the name of protecting Americans from terrorism, the Bush administration is steadily destroying the remaining restraints on the powers of the executive branch. As it does so, its top officials consistently invoke what Noah Webster called "the old stale plea of necessity."
In a November 30th address to a group of federal prosecutors, Attorney General John Ashcroft censured what he called "a few voices who have criticized" the Bush administration. "Some have sought to condemn us with faulty facts or without facts at all. Others have simply rushed to judgment, almost eagerly assuming the worst of their government before they’ve had a chance to understand it at its best." Mr. Ashcroft would apparently have us ignore the warning of John Adams: "Whoever would found a state and make proper laws for the government of it must presume that all men are bad by nature."
Speaking at the same event, the President insisted: "There is no doubt about our intentions, and there shouldn’t be." But as Senator Daniel Webster warned, "Good intention[s] will always be pleaded for every assumption of power…. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
Some conservative defenders of the Bush administration would insist that the President and Attorney General Ashcroft are honorable men of character who can be entrusted with extraordinary powers. But they should remember English philosopher John Locke’s warning that liberty is most imperiled during the reign of "good rulers." This is because their evil successors "draw the actions of those good rulers into precedent and make them the standard of their prerogative -- as if what had been done only for the good of the people was a right in them to do for the harm of the people, if they so pleased...."
Conservative defenders of the Bush administration must remember that the powers they are willing to grant to George W. Bush and John Ashcroft today may be exercised by – let’s say -- President Hillary Rodham Clinton and Attorney General Alan Dershowitz tomorrow. Indeed, since the Bush administration has claimed that the "war on terrorism" will last for decades, there will be plenty of time for these extraordinary powers to be "strengthened by exercise" – and for overtly left-wing administrations to use them against targets of their own choosing.
This is why lovers of liberty have a patriotic duty to defend the constitutional restraints upon government power now – while it is extremely unpopular to do so.
Thank you for listening. Please join us again next week.
How true.
Politically difficult to do. Like the article says, think of President Hillary and Atty. General Dershowitz. That may not be the most likely RAT administration, but it's certainly possible, and certainly not conspiracy kookery.
The ratio is none too impressive.
Will you defend the same actions if done be clinton or reno?
Or will you support constitutional abuses only from the Republcans?
Different situations there. We were at war with national actors (Italy, Japan), and after those countries surrendered, the war was unequivocally over (except maybe for the irrelevant isolated Japanese soldiers on deserted islands). The was on terrorism, however, has no such clearcut end, and so the risk that a Clintoon (or, if it makes you happier, choose a right wing totalitarian) would abuse these powers is a real possibility.
The CONSTITUTION! (It was worth saying again).
Government should never have any power that cannot be readily thwarted by the citezenry WHEN it falls into corrupt hands.
Many of Clinton's abuses of power were done under color of law and precedent implemented by previous administrations.
I don't think it's a bad idea at all to look at things from the perspective that the powers of the Presidency WILL fall into the hands of another Clinton, Wilson, Roosevelt or far worse individual.
History is not kind on this subject.
That's not a very conforting thought at all. Actually, you prove the author's point that if we are not vigilant, there WILL be more abuses and more victims of injustice. The problem with injustice is that it can be rather indescriminant in its victims.
And there are FReepers (thankfully, not many) who wait for the NEW AMERICAN in the same way a pervert waits for his HUSTLER.
This is what I've been trying to say.
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