2/2/06
A Nation
At Stake
Afflicted as we obviously are by some collective national
attention deficit disorder, things that matter often fall
through the cracks. A few weeks ago many of us missed one
of the most important speeches given in our lifetimes. It
was televised but it ran after all on C-Span, and at the same
time as the Golden Globe Awards one Sunday night. But we urge
everyone who still honors and believes in our constitution
and our democracy to go online, type in www.alternet.org/story/30905/
and read it for themselves.
The speech “A Constitutional Crisis” was delivered
by former vice-president Al Gore, after an introduction by
former Republican congressman Bob Barr, one of the country’s
leading conservatives. In the past, the two basically disagreed
on everything. But what they share today is the belief that
our government under President Bush has moved to positions
so extreme as to threaten not just our privacy and our most
cherished civil rights, but the rule of law and the constitutional
basis of American democracy, the separation of powers. They,
like we, believe the issues at stake aren’t about politics,
they’re about the survival of our founding father’s
vision of a nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and
so on, and nothing less.
“In spite of our differences over ideology and politics,”
said Gore, “we are in strong agreement that the American
values we hold most dear have been placed at serious risk
by the unprecedented claims of the Administration to a truly
breathtaking expansion of executive power…”
Most of us already understand that as Gore nicely put it,
“Our government has been caught eavesdropping on huge
numbers of American citizens and has brazenly declared that
it has the unilateral right to continue.” But what’s
equally clear now to many is that “the war on terror”
has become a smokescreen both for a frontal assault on every
American’s constitutional rights, and for the dismemberment
of the checks and balances between the executive, legislative,
and judicial branches of our government. And if the Bush administration
succeeds in convincing anyone that its radical new doctrine
of the “unitary executive” represents something
much different than what we used to call totalitarianism,
then democracy in America will frankly become a thing of our
past and not of our future. That in our view, is now a clear
and present danger.
Only once before in our lifetimes has the subject of massive
illegal surveillance of American citizens been raised publicly.
That high crime and misdemeanor was laid out in 1974 in the
second article of impeachment against Richard Nixon, who resigned
before that trial began. But for those who’ve been following
the breaking news stories only vaguely, here are some of the
key issues of recent weeks:
President Bush claims he can imprison American citizens for
the rest of their lives without an arrest warrant, and without
telling them why they’re being held or notifying their
families they’ve been incarcerated. He claims the authority
to kidnap people in foreign countries, and deliver them for
torture by foreign governments on our behalf. He signed, under
protest, a law sponsored by Senator McCain to put a stop to
such practices, while at the same time announcing he reserved
the right not to comply with the law. Meanwhile it turns out
that in direct contravention to the nearly 30 year-old statute
requiring a court order for federal wiretaps and surveillance,
for four years the administration has been illegally monitoring
the phone calls and emails of hundreds of thousands, possibly
millions of American citizens. During this time the president
repeatedly assured the public that no such thing was happening
and all constitutional safeguards were intact in the wake
of 9/11 and the Patriot Act. That of course, turned out to
be a huge lie, but once revealed, the President made no attempt
to conceal it. Attorney General Gonzales in fact, admitted
the administration knew perfectly well its use of the National
Security Agency to spy on Americans was illegal, but rather
than try and change the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance
Act, they simply chose to break it instead.
At this point two lawsuits have been filed in federal court
to try and end the Bush administration’s illegal spying
on Americans, one by the ACLU and one by the Center for Constitutional
Rights and the National Lawyers Guild. Where if anywhere these
suits will go, no one knows. At stake is the rule of law in
America, the federal judiciary is the court of last resort,
and the basic issue is whether a president is free to pick
and choose which laws assuring our civil liberties he wishes
to obey and which he doesn’t. What’s especially
troubling is the final decisions are being made by a President
who can just barely and infrequently manage to cobble together
a cogent thought in English on any subject, least of all this
one.
As James Madison once said, “The accumulation of all
powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary in the same
hands, whether of one, a few, or many…may justly be
pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” We believe
in a nation of laws and respect for the rule of law. We believe
in the balance of governmental powers, so brilliantly framed
by our founding fathers. And while we pray that the federal
courts will ultimately affirm both, we don’t know that
they will, not with justices like Antonin Scalia and Sam Alito
casting the deciding votes.
Thomas Jefferson told us that should we stray from our guiding
principles “in moments of error or alarm, let us hasten
to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads
to peace, liberty, and safety.” That we find ourselves
at such a junction today is hardly in dispute. That we chose
the right path now is up to us to decide but for our children
and theirs to ultimately judge. And if we fail to leave them
a legacy where freedom still means something, God help them.
BP
