The weakest link
By James Higdon
November 28, 2001 - There is absolutely no question about it. If it was
Osama bin Laden's quest to destroy a free society in America, he has
achieved some great victories with the help of his staunch allies,
George W. Bush and John Ashcroft. I'm sure he sends kudos, as well,
to five infamous members of the United States Supreme Court.
And if it is his belief that the US has not the courage to defend
freedom, sadly, at the moment, he seems to be right again. With the
executive and judicial branches of government having joined bin
Laden's war on freedom, the legislative branch, with few exceptions,
has been spending the last couple months hiding under American flags.
The majority of what we call "the Fourth Estate" sold the soul of
democracy-varied political discourse-in exchange for unlimited profit
to the American Taliban some years ago.
Back in the late 1970s I had an occasion to speak with a retired CIA
official. We shared a brief discussion about constitutional freedom.
The gentleman's assurance seemed to imply that, while what he was
saying would never be uttered in any official capacity, he spoke for
the majority in our intelligence community. Essentially he told me
that Americans didn't give a twit for the Bill of Rights if the
defense of it threatened their "lifestyle." As long as the vast
majority of Americans can continue to drive their boat-sized
automobiles, he told me, and to go about their daily lives in their
current fashion, the Bill of Rights is nothing more than a proud
fable. It's kind of like the story about Washington throwing a silver
dollar across the Potomac.
At the time, my youthful idealism wouldn't allow me to agree. I was
certain that the majority of Americans had far more character than
that. But after 20 some odd years, there are times that I experience
a crisis of faith, and fear that I am losing the argument. Last
December I watched the smiling punditry on television extol with glee
how wonderful it was that, in America, we can dispense with the
consent of the governed in a coup and never worry about tanks rolling
in the streets. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I read an editorial by
Marc Sandalow, printed in the San Francisco Chronicle. Sandalow even
takes some pride in proving the error of my ways.
Sandalow writes of a chance meeting with retired Gen. Barry McCaffery
at an undisclosed airport. McCaffery, who was the former head of the
Southern Command, and later Bill Clinton's "drug czar," told Sandalow
that for many years Americans have "had their head up their asses."
Sandalow went on to describe how we will essentially put an end to
several of the first ten amendments to our constitution. Personal
searches will be conducted everywhere the public gathers, enforced at
the point of automatic weapons. Sandalow talks of being "spread-
eagled with my belt unbuckled." "'Please unbuckle your belt,' I was
told both at the front of the security line, and at the gate, where I
was singled out for another search. My pockets were emptied of keys,
pens, coins, receipts, throat lozenges, crumpled up bills, scrap
paper, wrappers, unrecognizable lint, four crayons and the top of a
juice carton from a summer trip with the kids."
But for all of this, says Sandalow, he was only an hour behind
schedule when he arrived home. He goes on to state the damage
that "19 terrorists" wreaked on New York, Washington, and
Pennsylvania. But for all of that, "the terrorists did not come close
to destroying our way of life." (Emphasis added.) Sandalow
concludes, "as you stand in long lines at airports this week, as many
of you will, it is something for which you can be thankful." Never a
mention about what has been done to the document that has served as
the world's beacon of freedom. That's right, Marc. The trains all run
on time, and we can still fill our SUVs for just over a buck-fifty a
gallon.
The American Taliban aligned itself with bin Laden in order to win
the "culture war" here at home. And bin Laden has been a fortuitous
ally. Bush II has succeeded in ricocheting us backward, off of the
21st century. Our Common Law has been set back 500 years to when it
was used to provide the illusion of justice in order to control the
masses. Our economy has been set back 100 years to the era of the
Robber Barons. And our politics has been sent back 50 years to the
era of "Tailgunner Joe" McCarthy, when the threat of Communists
hiding under every bed was used to control the First Amendment.
Today, when we are told that there is a terrorist hiding under every
bed, Tailgunner Lynne Cheney (the wife of the invisible vice
president) has picked up the slack left by McCarthy. Tailgunner Lynne
is a vice president in her own right. She is vice president of one of
America's Taliban organizations, the American Council of Trustees and
Alumni, and co-founder of a new "blacklist" of American university
professors.
Any statement by a university professor that has a shade of criticism
about American governmental policy (read that Republican policy) is
sufficient to put him/her on the list. This "list," the most anti-
American document since the USA Patriot Act (I guess I didn't have to
go back too far), cites that its occupants are America's "weak link,"
excoriating them for using "tolerance and diversity (after all, what
is more un-American than tolerance and diversity?) as antidotes to
evil."
I'd like to give a brief rundown on those who've made the blacklist
(in case you haven't seen the article in the New York Times, by Emily
Eakin), and their statements that have issued their ticket to ride.
Any blacklist put out by Lynne Cheney is a patriot list to me.
The American Taliban's third favorite target (just behind Bill and
Hillary Clinton) made the list, Rev. Jesse Jackson. Jackson told
students at Harvard Law School that America should "build bridges and
relationships, not simply bombs and walls." That's it! The entirety
of the statement that put him on the list. Chilling isn't it? Good
thing he didn't say that Americans had once held slaves. He might
have gotten arrested!
Now this one, right outside my own back door, is really subversive.
Prof. Joel Beinin, teaching Middle Eastern history at Stanford
University (what can you expect from a school attended by Chelsea
Clinton?), had the temerity to tell his students (perhaps he thought
this wouldn't get out), "If Osama bin Laden is confirmed to be behind
the attacks, the United States should bring him before an
international tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity."
Imagine! Just think, for a moment, what might have happened if we'd
done that with Nazi war criminals in 1945! Oh . . . wait a
minute . . .
Wasima Alikhan at the Islamic Academy of Los Vegas said, "Ignorance
breeds hate." How could anyone even think of uttering such words in
times like these? Why, Jerry Falwell could tell you in a heartbeat
that ignorance breeds love. That's why we need to destroy our public
schools.
Todd Gitlin of New York University, a professor of communications,
said that "there is a lot of skepticism about the administration's
policy of going to war." Now, this is one of those really insidious
statements. It implies a fact that just isn't present. There is no
legally elected administration in government right now with a policy
of going to war.
The worst of the lot, Hugh Gusterson, of Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, even went so far as to attend a peace rally. He should
surely be beaten in the street for suggesting that people in other
countries might be suffering under US foreign policy. "Imagine the
real suffering and grief of people in other countries. The best way
to begin a war on terrorism might be to look in the mirror." A
statement like that might actually contend that Randy Newman wasn't a
prophet when he sang "They all hate us anyhow; so let's drop the big
one now."
Lynne Cheney is obviously concerned that our youth may not be
properly indoctrinated. They must be taught that the world exists
only in stark black and white; that George W. Bush is a great elected
leader, and popular among the masses. They must be told that we are
engaged in a great holy war of good versus evil, and that Bush II has
been selected by God for the task. In short, Lynne Cheney thinks that
our university students are stupid, and that we are better served by
closing their minds than by opening them.
For Americans, the word "patriotism," has been a far broader brush
stroke than the love of land within our national borders. Patriotism
has been defined by our willingness to die for the notion that all
have the unalienable right to weigh a diversity of beliefs and
philosophies, where each can come to his or her own conclusions, and
upon those conclusions provide consent to be governed. I'm speaking
of that typically American statement, borrowed from Voltaire,
that, "I might not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the
death your right to say it." That philosophy of taking the great
ideas from around the globe, and putting them to use to build a
greater America, spreads to the very way we collect our citizens. We
take the refuse of closed governments and with them build upon an
open and diverse, great society that has been the envy of all the
world.
In spite of what a former CIA man told me more than 20 years ago, the
Bill of Rights is a document that lives and breaths. It will survive
whatever the Cheneys attempt to do to it. And that, Lynne Cheney, is
basic American Civics 101. This is a fundamental that you have
forgotten or have never learned. Therefore, Lynne Cheney, you are our
weakest link! Goodbye!
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