Democratic Principles, Russ Feingold and John Kerry

Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold has attracted national media attention and incurred the wrath of the political right for launching an internet campaign directed at the Bush assault on the most fundamental of our basic political rights. Unfortunately Feingold's campaign is not getting the attention it deserves; people don't seem to care about basic constitutional principles unless, or until, their individual interests are immediately involved.

The American Civil Liberties Union has historically wrestled with this problem, attracting negative attention for defending unpopular causes in their campaign to protect and defend everybody's constitutional rights. Oh how people complained when the ACLU defended the American Nazi Party’s right to march through the streets of Skokie, Ill. in the early sixties (Skokie is an American Jewish community where many victims of the holocaust live or lived--most of them are now dead.) The good citizens of Skokie had refused to grant them a parade permit thereby restricting the Nazi right to protest and demonstrate. The long and short of it, led by two Jewish lawyers, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit that ultimately was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of the Bill of Rights; the Court recognized the American Nazi Party’s constitutional right to march in Skokie, and they did.

To be sure, the ACLU didn't respect or endorse the Nazi Party principles; however, they did strongly endorse their right to speak and demonstrate without unreasonable government prohibitions against such actions. The ACLU actions in sum represented support for everyone's right to voice a divergent point of view.

In looking at the ACLU actions over the years, it is clear that the cases they defend, if they can be grouped as a class, represent unpopular, minority expressions of dissent. Indeed, the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, exist specifically to protect minority political rights against the actions of majority tyranny. Senator Feingold’s actions serve as a necessary reminder that this nation was conceived by people who so cherished the right to engage in political dissent, that the basic right to do so is enshrined in our Constitution as the Bill of Rights.

Senator Feingold, as the ACLU has, is struggling to ensure that the government struggle against terrorism doesn’t come at the cost of our basic freedoms; those freedoms so clearly articulated in the Bill of Rights, and we do have cause for concern. For, as Bob Hebert wrote Thursday, April 20, in the New York Times, “In past years, stories about torture and ‘the disappeared’ have been associated with sinister regimes in South and Central America. The attitude in the United States was that we were above such dirty business, that it was immoral and uncivilized, and we were better than that. . . .Now people are disappearing at the hands of the U.S. government.” Indeed, Herbert noted that Amnesty International has just released a report, “. . .on the reprehensible practice of extraordinary rendition, a highly classified American program in which individuals are seized–abducted–without any semblance of due process and sent off to be interrogated by regimes that are known to engage in torture. Some of the individuals swept up by rendition simply vanish.”

Clearly Senator Feingold’s concern is legitimate; we need to reflect that same concern. The America wrought by George Bush and Dick Cheney is not the America envisioned by our Founding Fathers.

Saturday, April 15th at historic old Faneuil Hall in Boston, the very cradle of liberty, Senator John Kerry sounded warnings very similar to Feingold’s during a powerful speech based upon bedrock American political values. He said, “I come here today to affirm that it is both a right and an obligation for Americans to disagree with a president who is wrong, a policy that is wrong and a war in Iraq that weakens the nation.” Senator Kerry squarely challenged the Bush-Cheney anti-American, anti-democratic positions, stating, “The most dangerous defeatists, the most dispiriting pessimists, are those who invoke September 11th to argue that our traditional values are a luxury we can no longer afford.” Senator Kerry’s career is that of a man who speaks courageously, not out of base self-interest, but rather from humane instincts; at important times in our history his voice has served to reminded us of the nobility that should mark our direction in world affairs. This is the same John Kerry who spoke before a Senate committee 35 years ago in opposition to the Viet Nam War, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” he said then.

Not withstanding the nasty commentary put forward by the Swift Boat veterans in the last presidential campaign, the soundness of Senator Kerry’s judgement on the Viet Nam War has been absolved by history. I’m in complete agreement with the views he expressed more recently in Faneuil Hall, “I believed,” he said, “just as I believe now, that the best way to support the troops is to oppose a course that squanders their lives, dishonors their sacrifice and dissevers our people and our principles,” so spoke Senator Kerry.

The entire Bush dialogue about democracy is alien to any, even the most fanciful notions about democracy imaginable. This is a president who gave a state of the union address promising to support democracy all over the globe but who, in practice, doesn’t support it anywhere. Lest we forget, after a military coup in Venezuela overthrew the newly, democratically, elected Hugo Chavas government, President Bush immediately recognized the legitimacy of the generals. Unexpected by the Bush Administration, mass street protests of over one million Venezuelans opposing the military coup erupted in the streets bringing an end to the less than week old military dictatorship and left the Bush Administration with egg on its face. However brief the military coup, the message sent around the world was clear; the Bush administration doesn’t really care about democracy or democratic principles. No, this is an administration that will fight for the Patriot Act, the right to spy into private lives, all on the pretext that they’re fighting terrorism; but, when they in fact have had chances to actually fight terrorism, they fail miserably. After five long years, Bin Ladden is still sending us video commentaries. As Senator Kerry noted, “Who are we to run around the world saying protect the Falun Gong or somebody else’s right to speak out, and then we’re willing to take people without knowledge. . .and throw them into torture situations.” Make no mistake about it; we are grabbing people off the streets. . .they just vanish into think air; and lest we forget, President Bush did give the Chinese President a lecture about the Chinese need to liberalize their society. . .to respect religious and political freedom... during the Chinese President’s recent White House visit.

Bush Administration democratic talk to the contrary, information, the oxygen of a democratic government, is being shut off by the Bush-Cheney thugs. The assault on our basic democratic values continues unabated with daily denunciations of the press: The New York Times, The Washington Post, LA Times and the Wall Street Journal have all become right-wing political targets. The notion that the American government is a government of the people, by the people and for the people is clearly at odds with Bush Administration practices, practices that deny freedom in the most pernicious manner imaginable. You can’t talk or even think about something you don’t know about.

The Bush policies are designed specifically to deny citizens access to information, if and when one or more of the mainstream messengers arrives with leaked information, the modus operandi is clear: Kill the Messenger! The Bush people have even gone to the extreme of pushing the National Archives to reclassify information that has been a part of the public record for almost fifty years. John Dean was right, this is worse than Watergate. The Imperial Presidency that Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. worried about with the publication of his book of that title in 1973 has arrived. In 1973 Schlesinger made a good case that democracy and secrecy are inimical, fundamentally at odds one with the other.

A free press builds the foundation stones upon which free people stand, think and speak freely. At the moment, we’re being led about like a herd of blind sheep.


Ever on the watch for ya, Davy Crockett