-Caveat Lector-
From
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/ucrr/20011208/cm/there_is_a_difference_
between_dissent_and_treason_1.html
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Op/Ed Headlines
Sources: New York Post
Saturday December 08 07:05 PM EST
THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DISSENT AND TREASON
By Richard Reeves
WASHINGTON -- So, the attorney general of the United States tells me:
"To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost
liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists."
Well, screw you, buddy! What are you trying to say? Are you saying
that anyone who talks about civil rights, civil liberties and the
freedom that makes us Americans is a traitor in this undeclared but
loudly proclaimed war?
I have messages for you, Mr. Attorney General John Ashcroft, former governor, former
senator and all-round political perpetual: (1) I am no traitor, and neither is anyone
else who questions sweeping expansion of governmen
t power to search people's homes and minds; (2) if someone or something has to be
blamed and castigated for the breakdown in American security analysis that occurred so
horrifically on Sept. 11, we should start with the f
oul-ups of the government itself in allowing terrorist networks to develop almost
openly over the past 10 years.
Start by searching you own record, sir. Take a hard look at what the FBI and the CIA
have been doing instead of setting them on ordinary citizens with new powers to tap,
bug, search, seize, detain and arrest. The people s
upposed to be watching over us have responded to their own failures in watching our
enemies by saying that now they need more power to watch us.
That said, Ashcroft impresses me as a small man, who does indeed seem to see the very
real terrorism crisis as an opportunity to push a law enforcement agenda not unlike
the one heralded as the salvation of the country in
the bad old days of "The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!" His obvious
determination to regulate almost everything in the country, with the notable exception
of any checks on unlimited gun ownership by eithe
r citizens or aliens, seems somehow detached from the real threat of foreign-sponsored
terrorism. His blaming the naivete of the citizenry about terrorism is outrageous.
Americans know what is happening, and they certainl
y seem willing and eager to do something about it, including the use of our military
wherever in the world bad guys assemble and plan.
The libertarian monthly Reason is one of the few publications that have the guts right
now to criticize the repression impulse that has coursed through the country since
Sept. 11. The publication has gathered men and wome
n of both the right and left who understand, or are willing to say, that the terrorism
was not caused in some bizarre fashion by constitutional guarantees of individual
liberty and free speech.
"Federal agents still need to make the case that the expanded powers for which they
are asking are necessary," the journal quoted Jerry Berman of the Center for Democracy
and Technology as saying in its current issue. "It
wasn't a restriction breakdown. It was an analysis breakdown."
The magazine also quoted two officials from research institutions:
"Once people have been subjected to such thoroughgoing government surveillance, all
relations between the government and the public are transformed. Whether the rulers be
revolutionary despots or democratically elected of
ficials, every citizen knows that 'they' know all about him and his affairs, and hence
no one dares to step out of line. In such a situation, the sociopolitical system will
gravitate ineluctably toward totalitarianism," s
aid Robert Higgs, editor of The Independent Review.
"Friends of traditional American values -- namely, freedom, privacy and justice --
should keep their eyes on two transcendent issues during wartime," said David Kopel,
the Independence Institute's research director. "Firs
t, the effort to change our system of checks and balances and our system of federalism
with unreviewable central executive power. Second, the tendency of people to suppress
their own willingness to think freely, and to la
sh out at those who do not similarly self-suppress."
Watching members of Congress defer to Attorney General Ashcroft, there is obviously a
lot of self-supression going on in Washington these days. But not at the Justice
Department or the White House; the executive branch se
ems more intent on expanding its own police power at home than in mobilizing the free
will of the American people against terrorism from abroad.
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