From War & Peace:
America Should Not Be Rome: The USA Patriot Act As An Expression Of Empire
Monday, December 01 2003 @ 03:25 PM EST
Democracy is at risk in the United States. In the aftermath of September 11th, 2001, the oft-cited rationale for just about every U.S. Justice Department policy promulgated by the Bush Administration has been used to shred the nation's Constitution. Under the guise of the USA Patriot Act, the Executive Branch under Bush as well as the vast majority of congressmen brazenly defaulted on their oath of office.
In the name of fighting terrorism and defending freedom, the USA Patriot Act does neither. Rather, it seeks to suppress the right of American citizens to dissent while it simultaneously gives the federal government the power to conduct secret trials and executions through the operation of military tribunals. Not since the abuses of the McCarthy era have so many people qualified as "enemies of the state", to be persecuted without access to legal consul in violation of both the U.S. Constitution and international agreements on basic human rights.
In the twenty-four months since the September 11th attacks, it is now possible to undertake and update what has happened to the nation's civil liberties under the auspices of the Bush/Ashcroft regime. On March 11th, 2003, The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (LCHR) released a report entitled, Imbalance of Powers: How Changes to U.S. Law & Policy Since 9/11 Erode Human Rights and Civil Liberties. The report chronicles the end of open government, the death of the right to privacy, the torture and degrading treatment or punishment of immigrants, refugees, and minorities as well as the fact that approximately 650 people from forty-three countries continue to be held at military detention facilities at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.1 In all of these examples of governmental performance, the American legal system is undergoing rapid and dramatic transformations that, it may be argued, go well beyond the stated necessities of the moment. Troubling questions and numerous inconsistencies define the gap between stated policies and actual practice.
Further complicating the picture is the fact that a Patriot Act (II) entitled, Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, further erodes constitutional protections for citizens and non-citizens alike. Patriot Act (II) was made public not by the U.S. Justice Department, but rather by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI), a non-partisan, non-profit organization based in Washington D.C. In its "special report", it calls to public attention new threats to the U.S. Bill of Rights and other constitutional safeguards in the name of anti-terrorism. It begins as follows, "The Bush Administration is preparing a bold, comprehensive sequel to the USA Patriot Act passed in the wake of September 11, 2001, which will give the government broad, sweeping new powers to increase domestic intelligence-gathering surveillance and law enforcement prerogatives, and simultaneously decrease judicial review and public access to information."2
To the outrage of members of both houses of Congress who hurriedly voted for Patriot Act (I), without taking time to read it, the act robbed much power from the Congress and transferred it to the President or his designees. Many critics and authors on this subject have since compared this result to the events surrounding the burning of the Reichstag in the Germany of the 1930s by Hitler and the Nazi Party. In a real sense, it may be argued that the historical analogy is not that far removed from the reality of the fact that the American Republic is now being made over into an American Empire of global reach. In making this argument, its critics within the establishment say that it goes too far.
Voices within the establishment say that there can never be an American Auschwitz because that is said to have been the result of irrational racism. Voices within the establishment say that Russian gulags were the consequence of failed utopias and that America is somehow inherently immune from that vision. Voices within the establishment say that ethnic purification was the result of culturally engrained xenophobias and that America, even with the Patriot Act (I) and (II) will not repeat the same mistakes. However, as Professor Immanuel Wallerstein has argued, "Auschwitz, Gulags, and ethnic purification all occurred within the framework of a historical social system, the capitalist world-economy."3
In the case of the United States in 2003, we find the replication of an old historical pattern that has haunted all major empires. One of the most remarkable accomplishments of the Roman Emperor Augustus has been said to be that he maintained the form of the Republic for the people to see while actually transferring ever more power to the armed forces. In fact, in the year 121, the Roman Senate passed what was later called the senatus consultum ultimum, a decree that allowed for a suspension of Republican rights "in defense of the Republic." It gave magistrates license to discharge absolutist power, including political repression, and mass murder.4 Other examples abound.
In the case of Latin America from the 18th through the 20th centuries, defending la patria (the nation, or the fatherland) against internal and external threats has been the historical mission claimed by Latin American armed forces. Latin American states that adopted this approach to governance, embarked upon variations of a new National Security Doctrine (NSD) that was essentially a call for a permanent and total war by the state against enemies threatening la patria.5
In the American experience, beginning with the Vietnam War under the direction of President Lyndon Johnson, the United States government labeled civil disobedience an act of unpatriotic behavior as opposed to an expression of personal conscience. In the America of 2001-2003, President Bush and the Department of Justice, under Attorney General John Ashcroft, have made the exercise of conscience an act of treason subject to unconstitutional penalties, punishment, and the utter absence of genuine judicial oversight.6
At the founding of the American Republic, James Madison shrewdly noted that, "The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home." Perhaps in Madison's observation, there is no more eloquent or accurate statement which serves to encapsulate the true nature of the USA Patriot Act, Parts (I) and (II). Both the revival and constitutional governance and freedom require more than a blind adherence to authority or to the illusion of authority. On the eve of the 1960s, the sociologist C. Wright Mills declared, "The thing to do with civil liberties is to use them. The thing to do within a formal democracy is to act within it and so to give it content. If we do not do so, then we ought to stop 'defending' democracy and say outright that we do not take it seriously."7
The so-called war on terrorism forces every American citizen to reassess and redefine the structure of formal democracy with the practice of actual democracy. The Bush Administration has made the argument that the war on terrorism is largely aimed at an "axis of evil." Yet, we must ask ourselves whether the evils associated with the diminishment of civil rights are not greater than the terrorist threat from abroad. There are those who still argue that the suspension of civil liberties is necessitated by the extreme circumstances in which we find ourselves. Such an argument, however, fails to take into account the evils associated with the destruction of democracy and human rights within the United States itself. Such an argument, fails to appreciate the corrosive nature of governmental tyranny when it acts in a conspiracy against its own citizens and relies on propaganda to harness public opinion and support for its own designs.
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in his last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community, asserted, "Structures of evil do not crumble by passive waiting. If history teaches anything, it is that evil is recalcitrant and determined, and never voluntarily relinquishes its hold short of an almost fanatical resistance. Evil must be attacked by a counteracting persistence, by the day-to-day assault of the battering rams of justice.the forces of light cautiously wait, patiently pray and timidly act. So we end up with a double destruction: the destructive violence of the bad people and the destructive silence of the good people."8
For those who seek to preserve constitutional democracy within the United States, it will be necessary to take Dr. King's admonition to heart. Neither timidity nor patience will provide an adequate bulwark against the intrusions of an officious state. The defense of democracy really begins at home. The realization of freedom and democracy are mutually reinforcing day-to-day realities. The USA Patriot Act is antithetical to both. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to decide whether we shall comply with becoming collaborators in treason to our own constitution or whether we shall reclaim the liberties within it that have been so consistently proclaimed to all mankind.
c. 2003
Terrence Edward Paupp
National Chancellor of the United States for, The International Association of Educators for World Peace [IAEWP], An NGO operating under the auspices of the United Nations.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.The full text of the report is available on the LCHR website at http://www.lchr.org/us_law/loss/imbalance/powers.pdf.
2.For details, see http://www.public-i.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=502&L1=10&L2=0&L4=0&L5=0
3. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World, The New Press, c. 2003, p. 41.
4. Michael Parenti, The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome, The New Press, c. 2003, p. 68.
5. Brian Loveman, For la Patria: Politics and the Armed Forces in Latin America, SR Books, A Scholarly Resources Inc. Imprint, c. 1999, pp. xi, 236-237.
6. Cynthia Brown, Lost Liberties: Ashcroft and the Assault on Personal Freedom, the New Press, c. 2003; Richard C. Leone, The War on Our Freedoms: Civil Liberties in An Age of Terrorism, Public Affairs, c. 2003; Nancy Chang, Silencing Political Dissent: How Post-September 11 Anti-Terrorism Measures Threaten Our Civil Liberties, Seven Stories Press, c. 2002; David Cole, Terrorism and the Constitution: Sacrificing Civil Liberties in the Name of National Security, The New Press, c. 2002; Barbara Olshansky, Secret Trials and Executions: Military Tribunals and the Threat To Democracy, Seven Stories Press, c. 2002.
7. C. Wright Mills, The Causes of World War Three, Ballantine Books, copyright 1958, p. 160.
8. Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, Beacon Press, c. 1968, p 128.
America Should Not Be Rome: The USA Patriot Act As An Expression Of Empire
Monday, December 01 2003 @ 03:25 PM EST
Democracy is at risk in the United States. In the aftermath of September 11th, 2001, the oft-cited rationale for just about every U.S. Justice Department policy promulgated by the Bush Administration has been used to shred the nation's Constitution. Under the guise of the USA Patriot Act, the Executive Branch under Bush as well as the vast majority of congressmen brazenly defaulted on their oath of office.
In the name of fighting terrorism and defending freedom, the USA Patriot Act does neither. Rather, it seeks to suppress the right of American citizens to dissent while it simultaneously gives the federal government the power to conduct secret trials and executions through the operation of military tribunals. Not since the abuses of the McCarthy era have so many people qualified as "enemies of the state", to be persecuted without access to legal consul in violation of both the U.S. Constitution and international agreements on basic human rights.
In the twenty-four months since the September 11th attacks, it is now possible to undertake and update what has happened to the nation's civil liberties under the auspices of the Bush/Ashcroft regime. On March 11th, 2003, The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (LCHR) released a report entitled, Imbalance of Powers: How Changes to U.S. Law & Policy Since 9/11 Erode Human Rights and Civil Liberties. The report chronicles the end of open government, the death of the right to privacy, the torture and degrading treatment or punishment of immigrants, refugees, and minorities as well as the fact that approximately 650 people from forty-three countries continue to be held at military detention facilities at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.1 In all of these examples of governmental performance, the American legal system is undergoing rapid and dramatic transformations that, it may be argued, go well beyond the stated necessities of the moment. Troubling questions and numerous inconsistencies define the gap between stated policies and actual practice.
Further complicating the picture is the fact that a Patriot Act (II) entitled, Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, further erodes constitutional protections for citizens and non-citizens alike. Patriot Act (II) was made public not by the U.S. Justice Department, but rather by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI), a non-partisan, non-profit organization based in Washington D.C. In its "special report", it calls to public attention new threats to the U.S. Bill of Rights and other constitutional safeguards in the name of anti-terrorism. It begins as follows, "The Bush Administration is preparing a bold, comprehensive sequel to the USA Patriot Act passed in the wake of September 11, 2001, which will give the government broad, sweeping new powers to increase domestic intelligence-gathering surveillance and law enforcement prerogatives, and simultaneously decrease judicial review and public access to information."2
To the outrage of members of both houses of Congress who hurriedly voted for Patriot Act (I), without taking time to read it, the act robbed much power from the Congress and transferred it to the President or his designees. Many critics and authors on this subject have since compared this result to the events surrounding the burning of the Reichstag in the Germany of the 1930s by Hitler and the Nazi Party. In a real sense, it may be argued that the historical analogy is not that far removed from the reality of the fact that the American Republic is now being made over into an American Empire of global reach. In making this argument, its critics within the establishment say that it goes too far.
Voices within the establishment say that there can never be an American Auschwitz because that is said to have been the result of irrational racism. Voices within the establishment say that Russian gulags were the consequence of failed utopias and that America is somehow inherently immune from that vision. Voices within the establishment say that ethnic purification was the result of culturally engrained xenophobias and that America, even with the Patriot Act (I) and (II) will not repeat the same mistakes. However, as Professor Immanuel Wallerstein has argued, "Auschwitz, Gulags, and ethnic purification all occurred within the framework of a historical social system, the capitalist world-economy."3
In the case of the United States in 2003, we find the replication of an old historical pattern that has haunted all major empires. One of the most remarkable accomplishments of the Roman Emperor Augustus has been said to be that he maintained the form of the Republic for the people to see while actually transferring ever more power to the armed forces. In fact, in the year 121, the Roman Senate passed what was later called the senatus consultum ultimum, a decree that allowed for a suspension of Republican rights "in defense of the Republic." It gave magistrates license to discharge absolutist power, including political repression, and mass murder.4 Other examples abound.
In the case of Latin America from the 18th through the 20th centuries, defending la patria (the nation, or the fatherland) against internal and external threats has been the historical mission claimed by Latin American armed forces. Latin American states that adopted this approach to governance, embarked upon variations of a new National Security Doctrine (NSD) that was essentially a call for a permanent and total war by the state against enemies threatening la patria.5
In the American experience, beginning with the Vietnam War under the direction of President Lyndon Johnson, the United States government labeled civil disobedience an act of unpatriotic behavior as opposed to an expression of personal conscience. In the America of 2001-2003, President Bush and the Department of Justice, under Attorney General John Ashcroft, have made the exercise of conscience an act of treason subject to unconstitutional penalties, punishment, and the utter absence of genuine judicial oversight.6
At the founding of the American Republic, James Madison shrewdly noted that, "The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home." Perhaps in Madison's observation, there is no more eloquent or accurate statement which serves to encapsulate the true nature of the USA Patriot Act, Parts (I) and (II). Both the revival and constitutional governance and freedom require more than a blind adherence to authority or to the illusion of authority. On the eve of the 1960s, the sociologist C. Wright Mills declared, "The thing to do with civil liberties is to use them. The thing to do within a formal democracy is to act within it and so to give it content. If we do not do so, then we ought to stop 'defending' democracy and say outright that we do not take it seriously."7
The so-called war on terrorism forces every American citizen to reassess and redefine the structure of formal democracy with the practice of actual democracy. The Bush Administration has made the argument that the war on terrorism is largely aimed at an "axis of evil." Yet, we must ask ourselves whether the evils associated with the diminishment of civil rights are not greater than the terrorist threat from abroad. There are those who still argue that the suspension of civil liberties is necessitated by the extreme circumstances in which we find ourselves. Such an argument, however, fails to take into account the evils associated with the destruction of democracy and human rights within the United States itself. Such an argument, fails to appreciate the corrosive nature of governmental tyranny when it acts in a conspiracy against its own citizens and relies on propaganda to harness public opinion and support for its own designs.
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in his last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community, asserted, "Structures of evil do not crumble by passive waiting. If history teaches anything, it is that evil is recalcitrant and determined, and never voluntarily relinquishes its hold short of an almost fanatical resistance. Evil must be attacked by a counteracting persistence, by the day-to-day assault of the battering rams of justice.the forces of light cautiously wait, patiently pray and timidly act. So we end up with a double destruction: the destructive violence of the bad people and the destructive silence of the good people."8
For those who seek to preserve constitutional democracy within the United States, it will be necessary to take Dr. King's admonition to heart. Neither timidity nor patience will provide an adequate bulwark against the intrusions of an officious state. The defense of democracy really begins at home. The realization of freedom and democracy are mutually reinforcing day-to-day realities. The USA Patriot Act is antithetical to both. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to decide whether we shall comply with becoming collaborators in treason to our own constitution or whether we shall reclaim the liberties within it that have been so consistently proclaimed to all mankind.
c. 2003
Terrence Edward Paupp
National Chancellor of the United States for, The International Association of Educators for World Peace [IAEWP], An NGO operating under the auspices of the United Nations.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.The full text of the report is available on the LCHR website at http://www.lchr.org/us_law/loss/imbalance/powers.pdf.
2.For details, see http://www.public-i.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=502&L1=10&L2=0&L4=0&L5=0
3. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World, The New Press, c. 2003, p. 41.
4. Michael Parenti, The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome, The New Press, c. 2003, p. 68.
5. Brian Loveman, For la Patria: Politics and the Armed Forces in Latin America, SR Books, A Scholarly Resources Inc. Imprint, c. 1999, pp. xi, 236-237.
6. Cynthia Brown, Lost Liberties: Ashcroft and the Assault on Personal Freedom, the New Press, c. 2003; Richard C. Leone, The War on Our Freedoms: Civil Liberties in An Age of Terrorism, Public Affairs, c. 2003; Nancy Chang, Silencing Political Dissent: How Post-September 11 Anti-Terrorism Measures Threaten Our Civil Liberties, Seven Stories Press, c. 2002; David Cole, Terrorism and the Constitution: Sacrificing Civil Liberties in the Name of National Security, The New Press, c. 2002; Barbara Olshansky, Secret Trials and Executions: Military Tribunals and the Threat To Democracy, Seven Stories Press, c. 2002.
7. C. Wright Mills, The Causes of World War Three, Ballantine Books, copyright 1958, p. 160.
8. Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, Beacon Press, c. 1968, p 128.
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