The weakest link
By James Higdon

November 28, 2001 - There is absolutely no question about it. If it was 
Osama bin Laden's quest to destroy a free society in America, he has 
achieved some great victories with the help of his staunch allies, 
George W. Bush and John Ashcroft. I'm sure he sends kudos, as well, 
to five infamous members of the United States Supreme Court.

And if it is his belief that the US has not the courage to defend 
freedom, sadly, at the moment, he seems to be right again. With the 
executive and judicial branches of government having joined bin 
Laden's war on freedom, the legislative branch, with few exceptions, 
has been spending the last couple months hiding under American flags. 
The majority of what we call "the Fourth Estate" sold the soul of 
democracy-varied political discourse-in exchange for unlimited profit 
to the American Taliban some years ago.

Back in the late 1970s I had an occasion to speak with a retired CIA 
official. We shared a brief discussion about constitutional freedom. 
The gentleman's assurance seemed to imply that, while what he was 
saying would never be uttered in any official capacity, he spoke for 
the majority in our intelligence community. Essentially he told me 
that Americans didn't give a twit for the Bill of Rights if the 
defense of it threatened their "lifestyle." As long as the vast 
majority of Americans can continue to drive their boat-sized 
automobiles, he told me, and to go about their daily lives in their 
current fashion, the Bill of Rights is nothing more than a proud 
fable. It's kind of like the story about Washington throwing a silver 
dollar across the Potomac.

At the time, my youthful idealism wouldn't allow me to agree. I was 
certain that the majority of Americans had far more character than 
that. But after 20 some odd years, there are times that I experience 
a crisis of faith, and fear that I am losing the argument. Last 
December I watched the smiling punditry on television extol with glee 
how wonderful it was that, in America, we can dispense with the 
consent of the governed in a coup and never worry about tanks rolling 
in the streets. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I read an editorial by 
Marc Sandalow, printed in the San Francisco Chronicle. Sandalow even 
takes some pride in proving the error of my ways.

Sandalow writes of a chance meeting with retired Gen. Barry McCaffery 
at an undisclosed airport. McCaffery, who was the former head of the 
Southern Command, and later Bill Clinton's "drug czar," told Sandalow 
that for many years Americans have "had their head up their asses." 
Sandalow went on to describe how we will essentially put an end to 
several of the first ten amendments to our constitution. Personal 
searches will be conducted everywhere the public gathers, enforced at 
the point of automatic weapons. Sandalow talks of being "spread-
eagled with my belt unbuckled." "'Please unbuckle your belt,' I was 
told both at the front of the security line, and at the gate, where I 
was singled out for another search. My pockets were emptied of keys, 
pens, coins, receipts, throat lozenges, crumpled up bills, scrap 
paper, wrappers, unrecognizable lint, four crayons and the top of a 
juice carton from a summer trip with the kids."

But for all of this, says Sandalow, he was only an hour behind 
schedule when he arrived home. He goes on to state the damage 
that "19 terrorists" wreaked on New York, Washington, and 
Pennsylvania. But for all of that, "the terrorists did not come close 
to destroying our way of life." (Emphasis added.) Sandalow 
concludes, "as you stand in long lines at airports this week, as many 
of you will, it is something for which you can be thankful." Never a 
mention about what has been done to the document that has served as 
the world's beacon of freedom. That's right, Marc. The trains all run 
on time, and we can still fill our SUVs for just over a buck-fifty a 
gallon.

The American Taliban aligned itself with bin Laden in order to win 
the "culture war" here at home. And bin Laden has been a fortuitous 
ally. Bush II has succeeded in ricocheting us backward, off of the 
21st century. Our Common Law has been set back 500 years to when it 
was used to provide the illusion of justice in order to control the 
masses. Our economy has been set back 100 years to the era of the 
Robber Barons. And our politics has been sent back 50 years to the 
era of "Tailgunner Joe" McCarthy, when the threat of Communists 
hiding under every bed was used to control the First Amendment.

Today, when we are told that there is a terrorist hiding under every 
bed, Tailgunner Lynne Cheney (the wife of the invisible vice 
president) has picked up the slack left by McCarthy. Tailgunner Lynne 
is a vice president in her own right. She is vice president of one of 
America's Taliban organizations, the American Council of Trustees and 
Alumni, and co-founder of a new "blacklist" of American university 
professors.

Any statement by a university professor that has a shade of criticism 
about American governmental policy (read that Republican policy) is 
sufficient to put him/her on the list. This "list," the most anti-
American document since the USA Patriot Act (I guess I didn't have to 
go back too far), cites that its occupants are America's "weak link," 
excoriating them for using "tolerance and diversity (after all, what 
is more un-American than tolerance and diversity?) as antidotes to 
evil."

I'd like to give a brief rundown on those who've made the blacklist 
(in case you haven't seen the article in the New York Times, by Emily 
Eakin), and their statements that have issued their ticket to ride. 
Any blacklist put out by Lynne Cheney is a patriot list to me.

The American Taliban's third favorite target (just behind Bill and 
Hillary Clinton) made the list, Rev. Jesse Jackson. Jackson told 
students at Harvard Law School that America should "build bridges and 
relationships, not simply bombs and walls." That's it! The entirety 
of the statement that put him on the list. Chilling isn't it? Good 
thing he didn't say that Americans had once held slaves. He might 
have gotten arrested!

Now this one, right outside my own back door, is really subversive. 
Prof. Joel Beinin, teaching Middle Eastern history at Stanford 
University (what can you expect from a school attended by Chelsea 
Clinton?), had the temerity to tell his students (perhaps he thought 
this wouldn't get out), "If Osama bin Laden is confirmed to be behind 
the attacks, the United States should bring him before an 
international tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity." 
Imagine! Just think, for a moment, what might have happened if we'd 
done that with Nazi war criminals in 1945! Oh . . . wait a 
minute . . . 

Wasima Alikhan at the Islamic Academy of Los Vegas said, "Ignorance 
breeds hate." How could anyone even think of uttering such words in 
times like these? Why, Jerry Falwell could tell you in a heartbeat 
that ignorance breeds love. That's why we need to destroy our public 
schools.

Todd Gitlin of New York University, a professor of communications, 
said that "there is a lot of skepticism about the administration's 
policy of going to war." Now, this is one of those really insidious 
statements. It implies a fact that just isn't present. There is no 
legally elected administration in government right now with a policy 
of going to war.

The worst of the lot, Hugh Gusterson, of Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology, even went so far as to attend a peace rally. He should 
surely be beaten in the street for suggesting that people in other 
countries might be suffering under US foreign policy. "Imagine the 
real suffering and grief of people in other countries. The best way 
to begin a war on terrorism might be to look in the mirror."  A 
statement like that might actually contend that Randy Newman wasn't a 
prophet when he sang "They all hate us anyhow; so let's drop the big 
one now."

Lynne Cheney is obviously concerned that our youth may not be 
properly indoctrinated. They must be taught that the world exists 
only in stark black and white; that George W. Bush is a great elected 
leader, and popular among the masses. They must be told that we are 
engaged in a great holy war of good versus evil, and that Bush II has 
been selected by God for the task. In short, Lynne Cheney thinks that 
our university students are stupid, and that we are better served by 
closing their minds than by opening them.

For Americans, the word "patriotism," has been a far broader brush 
stroke than the love of land within our national borders. Patriotism 
has been defined by our willingness to die for the notion that all 
have the unalienable right to weigh a diversity of beliefs and 
philosophies, where each can come to his or her own conclusions, and 
upon those conclusions provide consent to be governed. I'm speaking 
of that typically American statement, borrowed from Voltaire, 
that, "I might not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the 
death your right to say it." That philosophy of taking the great 
ideas from around the globe, and putting them to use to build a 
greater America, spreads to the very way we collect our citizens. We 
take the refuse of closed governments and with them build upon an 
open and diverse, great society that has been the envy of all the 
world.

In spite of what a former CIA man told me more than 20 years ago, the 
Bill of Rights is a document that lives and breaths. It will survive 
whatever the Cheneys attempt to do to it. And that, Lynne Cheney, is 
basic American Civics 101. This is a fundamental that you have 
forgotten or have never learned. Therefore, Lynne Cheney, you are our 
weakest link! Goodbye!


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