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Why Use Plan “B,” When Plan “A” is
Working Fine?
Too
many activists are so obsessed with elaborate back-door schemes
to steal our freedoms that they're oblivious to the full-scale
frontal assault that has very nearly wrecked our republic.
By
Thomas R. Eddlem
As someone
who came of age politically in the John Birch Society, I am
more convinced than most that powerful people are working
to destroy our nation’s Constitution and its Bill of Rights.
Although people pursuing such ends always employ an element of
deception and secrecy, some of them have written boldly about
the strategies they would employ to achieve their goals – the
end of our constitutional republic and its replacement with a
regional or world government of some kind.
The most
famous admission of that sort, at least among those well-known
in JBS circles, was a 1974 article in the Council
on Foreign Relations’ flagship publication Foreign Affairs
by Richard N. Gardner, a veteran US diplomat. Having worked in
the JBS Appleton headquarters for a dozen years, I recall joking
with a few staffers that we had used the quote so often that
our MIS Director had programmed all of our computers with an “[Alt][Shift][F7]” hotkey
function so we could insert that quote into our essays with a
minimum of keystrokes.
“The 'house of world order' will have to be built from
the bottom up rather than from the top down,” Gardner wrote,
suggesting “an end run around national sovereignty, eroding
it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned
frontal assault.” Gardner, a Columbia University Professor
who was later President Clinton’s Ambassador to Spain,
suggested the strategy of patient gradualism, destroying sovereignty
piece-meal through international treaties such as the GATT trade
mechanism, regional groups such as the European Union (and now
NAFTA), and a variety of other internationalist devices.
The “Gardner Quote” from
Foreign Affairs littered so many JBS publications precisely
because it encapsulated one
authentic strategy of those wishing to destroy the Constitution;
the assumption was that the gradualist approach is necessary
because the American people would never allow a direct assault
against their cherished (though not well-understood) Constitution
and the system of liberty under law it protects.
But Gardner was wrong.
The whole "end run" idea was plan "B" from
the beginning. The people who want to destroy our constitutional
protections only went with plan B when plan A -- a direct assault
-- didn't work. But now that direct assault is underway; it is
working; and just about everyone on the “right” is
doing nothing about it.
There’s
no more need for patient gradualism if President Bush can unilaterally
set aside the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution
and argue in open court that those accused of terrorism -- American
citizens and non-citizens alike -- have no right to representation
by counsel, no
habeas corpus protections, no right to a jury
trial, and no right to a hearing before being deported to a foreign
dungeon where they can be imprisoned and tortured without trial.
Where the central government can exercise those powers, there’s
little point in calling this an “end run” around
the Constitution.
When a president
and his top advisers can openly and brazenly make such claims,
it's reasonable to believe that we’ve
almost reached the end of the age of conspiracy, at least as
we’ve traditionally thought of the term. The very word “conspiracy” implies
a secrecy that, in part, no longer applies.
Sure, the Bush Administration has made secrecy its watchword,
and in that respect there are elements of the assault against
the Constitution that could be called conspiratorial. But the
main aim of destroying the Constitution is out in the open.
Despite
earlier denials, the Bush Administration now openly admits
(See here,
here
and especially here)
it has turned the Fourth Amendment protection against warrantless
searches
nothing more than an empty piece of paper. And the Eighth Amendment
protection against “cruel and unusual punishments” is all
but a dead letter, with the architect of the administration’s
torture policy, John Yoo, openly defending the supposed constitutionality
of a presidential order authorizing interrogators to crush the
testicles of an innocent child. (See him reaffirming it here.)
The Bush Administration has made its case for such dictatorial
powers outside of the Constitution in open court and in the public
square. And they are dictatorial, for what else could one call
the power to throw someone into a dungeon without a trial or
hearing and then torture him without a time limit?
And that brings me back to the fight for limited, constitutional
government that many organizations on the political right have
traditionally waged.
Immigration is an important battle, because no nation can long
survive if it does not control its borders.
Spending
needs to get under control, because no economy – not
even ours – can long survive the kind of profligacy displayed
by Congress and the president.
We can prattle on and on about an international trade treaty
that hasn't even been written yet (two years ago the scare was
a Free Trade Area of the Americas, the FTAA, now it's the amorphous
North American Union) and what it may someday do, but right now
we are losing vital time and vital freedoms.
Yes, Richard
N. Gardner warned us that international agreements can be used
to nibble away at national sovereignty until none
is left, and this strategy for destroying the US Constitution
has been followed when the “frontal assault” wouldn't
work.. And yes, if we lose our sovereignty to such regional bodies
such as the North American Union, we will someday lose everything.
But
the frontal assault is working and we are already losing everything – not
someday. We need to fight these battles too, admittedly, but
there are also more urgent fights to take
on. Despite some victories in the courts (perhaps short-lived
if Bush gets more appointees on the Supreme Court), real people
have been denied trials, and have suffered torture – and the
overwhelming majority of them were innocent. The Bush Administration
is setting precedents that future presidents will make much worse,
unless a public outcry occurs.
I don't
fear conspiracies against the Constitution very much when the
executive branch is attacking the Constitution head-on.
The pretense is just about over. A nation that ignores its core
set of laws – its Constitution – for any period of
time is a nation headed for disaster. We can still stop that
looming disaster. It’s not inevitable.
But time is of the essence!
Thomas
R. Eddlem is a radio
talk show host in Southeastern Massachusetts and freelance
writer. He has been published in more than 20 periodicals, including
The Providence Journal, LewRockwell.com, AntiWar.com and The
New American magazine.
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