Bush assault on civil liberties

[Doug Millison]

"What has al-Qaeda done to our Constitution, and to our national standards
of fairness and decency? Since September 11, the government has enacted
legislation, adopted policies, and threatened procedures that are not
consistent with our established laws and values and would have been
unthinkable before. [...]  The government's dubious laws, practices, and
proposals have provoked surprisingly little protest in America. Even some
groups that traditionally champion civil rights have, with surprisingly few
reservations, supported the government's hard line. Polls suggest that
nearly 60 percent of the public approves even the use of military
tribunals. We should not be surprised at any of this. September 11 was
horrifying: it proved that our enemies are vicious, powerful, and
imaginative, and that they have well-trained and suicidal fanatics at their
disposal. People's respect for human and civil rights is very often fragile
when they are frightened, and Americans are very frightened. The country
has done even worse by those rights in the past, moreover. It suspended the
most basic civil rights in the Civil War, punished people for criticizing
the military draft in World War I, interned Japanese-American citizens in
detention camps in World War II, and after that war encouraged a Red Scare
that destroyed the lives of many of its citizens because their political
opinions were unpopular. Much of this was unconstitutional, but the Supreme
Court tolerated almost all of it.

We are ashamed now of what we did then: we count the Court's past tolerance
of anti-sedition laws, internments, and McCarthyism as among the worst
stains on its record. That shame comes easier now, of course, because we no
longer fear the Kaiser, or kamikazes, or Stalin. It may be a long time
before we stop fearing international or domestic terrorism, however, and we
must therefore be particularly careful now. What we lose now, in our
commitment to civil rights and fair play, may be much harder later to
regain.

True, it is politically difficult for elected officials to criticize or
oppose hugely popular government policies. John Ashcroft has already told
us that those who oppose his policies are giving aid and comfort to the
terrorists. But this intimidation makes it all the more important to
scrutinize the arguments that have been put forward to justify such a major
retreat from our traditional concern for fair play and for the rights of
anyone accused of serious crime. [...] "


... continues in this Pynchonian vein at
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15145,
article by Ronald Dworkin

http://www.nybooks.com/authors/90
Ronald Dworkin is Professor of Law and Philosophy at New York University
and Quain Professor of Jurisprudence at University College, London. He is
the author of Life's Dominion, Freedom's Law: The Moral Reading of the
Constitution, and, most recently, Sovereign Virtue. (February 2002)