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abused and then arrested.
This is the proving ground for the upcoming assault on dissent and free expression ahead of the upcoming presidential election. And in Florida, no less!
President Bush's reaction to the terrorist attacks on 9-11 was a mix of defiance and rhetoric in his defense of the 'freedom' that he said the attackers wanted to 'destroy'.
"They hate our freedoms - our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other," he declared in an address to a joint session of Congress.
"With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends," he said. "They stand against us, because we stand in their way."
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, at the president's direction, presented a plan; The Patriot Act of 2001, Public Law 107-56, to monitor the activities of ordinary Americans, which would rival the Reichstag Fire Decree. (Allowed the Nazi government to take any "appropriate" measure to remedy dangers to public safety, and represented one of the major steps in which the Nazi government established its rule.)
In every provision, the Patriot act enhances or expands the government's ability to intrude in the private affairs of American citizens and weakens the very protections of freedom and individual rights that are embodied in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which they claim to defend.
Further, the manner in which the Supreme Court intervened to halt the recount of the Florida election ballot, and effectively assured the ascendence of President Bush to the presidency, must be factored into any expectation of impartiality in higher court decisions involving prosecutions for dissent whose appellants challenge the motives and the prerogatives of the executive, especially in times of war.
These constitutional protections serve to restrain our government and its elected representatives as they perform their duties, to act in a manner which preserves the promises of democracy and provides for free expression, debate, and advocacy, and representation in our political and legal system.
Without these constitutional protections, it is impossible for the government to act decisively on the assumption it has the full weight of the American people behind any decision it might make. In wartime, this weak franchise may wrongfully view opposition as treason and seek to crush it.
But in the absence of the full consent of the governed, such a heavy hand by the omnipresent government could rightly be seen as tyranny.
If we refuse to stand up for protest and dissent we will effectively leave the fate of the issues we care so deeply about to a handful of managers who routinely divide the fruit of our labor and sacrifice among an undeserving, two-percent confederation of corporate interests.
We must care enough to involve ourselves in every instigation of democracy which confronts us. Our government is a reflection of everything we choose to neglect and every cynical impulse we reflect.
Thomas Jefferson had no sympathy for a federal government which had violated its compact with the governed. He wrote in opposition to the Alien and Sedition laws that, ". . . whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void and of no effect."
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