A BAD YEAR FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES
The civil liberties of the American people are among the main casualties of last year's Sept. 11 tragedy, not as a result of nefarious activity by Osama bin Laden but by the eagerness of George Bush and a supine Congress to justify the sacrifice of individual freedoms in order to pursue a dubious "war" on terrorism.
In an assessment of the "State of Civil Liberties" one year after Sept. 11, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) declared that the Bush administration, Congress and Justice Department "have enacted a series of Executive Orders, regulations, and laws that have seriously undermined civil liberties, the checks and balances that are essential to the structure of our democratic government, and indeed, democracy itself."
In a message coinciding with the first anniversary, ACLU executive director Anthony Romero said the most "disturbing change" in America since Sept. 11 "is the government's apparent belief that our society cannot be both safe and free.... The principles enshrined in our Constitution are the bedrock of our country. They define us as a people. They are the source of our strength as a nation. They are our enduring legacy to the world. Defending them in a time of national crisis is more than an act of patriotism -- it is a moral imperative."
In a report Sept. 5, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights declared that since Sept. 11, 2001, "the U.S. government has introduced a series of security laws and practices that contradict the core values and principles on which the American government is founded....[Its] actions over the past year have rolled back Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure, targeted immigrants, undermined the principle of separation of powers, and have frequently been undertaken in secret. In doing this, the United States has also given encouragement to other governments around the world to deny rights in similar ways."
Examining recent governmental depredations against civil liberties, the New York Times observed editorially Sept. 10 that "the American people need to make clear that they... will not allow their rights to be rolled back."
On Sept. 5, the Associated Press distributed without comment a brief, chilling list of "some of the fundamental changes to [U.S.] legal rights by the Bush administration and the USA Patriot Act following the terror attacks." The list follows [with a few bracketed additions by the editor]:
"FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION: Government may monitor religious and political institutions without suspecting criminal activity to assist terror investigation. [Such "political institutions" include all the peace and justice groups to which many of our readers belong.]
"FREEDOM OF INFORMATION: Government has closed once-public immigration hearings, has secretly detained hundreds of people without charges [actually it is 1,200 so far], and has encouraged bureaucrats to resist public records requests.
"FREEDOM OF SPEECH: Government may prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation. [Uncle Sam's police agencies are also able to scan the internet, Email and telephone transmissions with highly sophisticated devices capable of monitoring millions of words while looking for 'terrorists.'"]
"RIGHT TO LEGAL REPRESENTATION: Government may monitor federal prison jailhouse conversations between attorneys and clients, and deny lawyers to Americans accused of crimes.
"FREEDOM FROM UNREASONABLE SEARCHES: Government may search and seize Americans' papers and effects without probable cause to assist terror investigation.
"RIGHT TO A SPEEDY AND PUBLIC TRIAL: Government may jail Americans indefinitely without a trial.
"RIGHT TO LIBERTY: Americans may be jailed without being charged or being able to confront witnesses against them."
In its analysis of civil liberties today, the CCR observed that "The Executive branch, by using Executive Orders and emergency interim agency regulations as its tools of choice for combating terrorism, has deliberately chosen methodologies that are largely outside the purview of both the legislature and the judiciary. These Executive Orders and agency regulations violate the U.S. Constitution, the laws of the United States, and international and humanitarian law. As a result, the war on terror is largely being conducted by Executive fiat and the constitutional guarantees of both citizens and non-citizens alike have been seriously compromised. Additionally, the actions of the government have been shrouded in a cloak of secrecy that is incompatible with democratic government.
"Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the government's actions has been its attack on the Bill of Rights, the very cornerstone of our American democracy. The war on terrorism has seriously compromised the First, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights of citizens and non-citizens alike. From the USA Patriot Act's over-broad definition of domestic terrorism [passed in haste by a panicked Congress last October], to the FBI's new powers of search and surveillance [mandated by Attorney General John Ashcroft May 30 when he removed restraints placed on the FBI by Congress in 1976], to the indefinite detention of both citizens and non-citizens without formal charges, the principles of free speech, due process and equal protection under the law have been seriously undermined."
The constitutional rights group concluded that "The result of all of these actions has been the deliberate, persistent, and unnecessary erosion of the basic rights that protect every citizen and non-citizen in the United States. A free society demands the rule of law. Without it, democracy is meaningless. The government has consistently refused to recognize the protections afforded by the U.S. Constitution and international law, and in doing so, it has failed in its responsibility to maintain a democratic society that is both open to, and accountable to, the people."
These attacks on democratic rights have elicited such meager comment from the mass media -- reflecting the paucity of concern expressed within the establishment political system -- that the cautious and belated Times editorial mentioned earlier stands out like a blinking neon light in the pitch darkness.
Noting that there have been several repressive occasions over the years when the U.S. government severely restricted civil liberties, the Times argued that "to curtail individual rights, as the Bush administration has done, is to draw exactly the wrong lessons from history. Every time the country has felt threatened and tightened the screws on civil liberties, it later wished it had not done so. In each case -- whether the barring of government criticism under the Sedition Act of 1798 and the Espionage Act of 1918, the internment of Japanese-Americas in World War II or the McCarthyite witch hunts of the cold war -- profound regrets set in later.
"When we are afraid, as we have all been this year, civil liberties can seem abstract. But they are at the core of what separates this country from nearly all others; they are what we are defending when we go to war. To slash away at liberty in order to defend it is not only illogical, but has proved to be a failure. Yet that is what has been happening."
The Bush administration has made the erosion of civil liberties at home a concomitant of its war on terrorism abroad. Given the insignificant attention paid by the "opposition" Democrats to the Republican regime's abrogation of traditional rights, it falls to left and progressive activists to pursue the defense of civil liberties as well as the struggle to end Washington's imperial wars.