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Ashcroft: Good intentions on a bad road
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Ashcroft: Good intentions on a bad road
Last week's New York Times story made it official: Many conservatives are sorry they ever supported former Missouri Gov. John Ashcroft's appointment as attorney general. They are upset at him for eviscerating the Constitution since Sept. 11 by sending the PATRIOT Act and other anti-terrorist legislation to the Hill, loosening strictures on the FBI imposed by Congress and some of his predecessors years ago, and being, shall we say, overzealous in his willingness to ignore liberty in the quest for security. As a result, they've concluded that he's no longer deserving of conservative support.
I was one of those who most strongly supported Ashcroft when he came under attack in the Senate and the media after President Bush selected him to be attorney general. I know the man and respect him. I also like him. The attacks on him as he ran the gauntlet in the Senate were unconscionable and the fact that so many former colleagues, whom he regarded as friends, turned on him must have been hard to bear.
But he made it and now probably wishes he was doing something else somewhere else. The Sept. 11 attacks on America changed much and turned Ashcroft's world upside down. The man had no chance to really recover from the traumatizing experience leading up to his confirmation before being asked to deal with the most serious threat to his country's security since World War II.
Liberals were, of course, appalled from the outset that this man would have anything to do with matters affecting the civil and criminal justice systems. They saw him as a threat in the Senate because he was a Republican and, more dangerously, a conservative who believed in the old-fashioned virtues that they have long ago outgrown.
Conservatives liked him before Sept. 11 and most like him still, but they are wary of what his department has done and wish that in striking a balance between the need for security and the need to preserve our liberties he would be a bit more careful.
The problem is that history suggests that in time of crisis, those seeking to safeguard the security of the American people more often than not run roughshod over the freedoms they are fighting to preserve. Abraham Lincoln suspended constitutional safeguards and threw innocent citizens into prison without trial to preserve the union. Franklin Roosevelt trumped him by rounding up everyone of Japanese descent in the days following Pearl Harbor and tossing them into camps as a mean of thwarting an anticipated wave of sabotage.
Lincoln and Roosevelt justified these acts in the name of protecting America and, indeed, I doubt if any people anywhere have lost their freedom to a government that announced it wanted to take it away just for the heck of doing it. In every case, those who restrict individual liberty argue that what they are doing is being done for the good of the very people from whom they are taking it. And most of those making this case are, like Ashcroft, good people trying to do the right thing at the time.
I'm glad that George Bush sits in the White House and that Ashcroft is his attorney general. I even believe them when they say that they are only doing that which they believe they need to do to protect us. They argue convincingly, I think, that roving wiretaps, reading people's e-mail, putting video cameras on every corner, and perusing their library habits will make it easier to catch terrorists before they act. They can even make a case that by establishing a Castro-like system of informants or requiring us all to carry ID cards they will be able to make it more difficult for terrorists to move around.
The problem is that, once all of this is in place, we will no longer be living in the same country we lived in prior to Sept. 11. It may still look like the United States, but one wonders if it will feel like the United States.
I suspect we'll survive these excesses as we have in the past, but those asking us to give up liberty for security should be careful. That liberty survives such crises at all is an amazing endorsement of the wisdom of the Founders, but each time we face such a crisis, we seem to lose more freedom than we get back when it ends.
Young conservatives of my generation read a slight volume penned at the turn of the last century by a fellow by the name of William Graham Sumner titled The Conquest of the United States by Spain. It was an attack on the Spanish-American War, but raised a perplexing and enduring question: What does a nation gain if, in its quest for security, it surrenders that which it set out to secure?
Those who seek to protect us must keep one eye on that they seek to protect. Ashcroft is a good man trying to do a difficult job, and for that, I admire him. But I would advise him to read Sumner's little book lest we end up with a new one titled The Conquest of the United States by al Qaeda.
David Keene is chairman of the American Conservative Union and a Washington-based government affairs consultant.
http://www.thehill.com/073102/keene.shtm
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Last week's New York Times story made it official: Many conservatives are sorry they ever supported former Missouri Gov. John Ashcroft's appointment as attorney general. They are upset at him for eviscerating the Constitution since Sept. 11 by sending the PATRIOT Act and other anti-terrorist legislation to the Hill, loosening strictures on the FBI imposed by Congress and some of his predecessors years ago, and being, shall we say, overzealous in his willingness to ignore liberty in the quest for security. As a result, they've concluded that he's no longer deserving of conservative support.
I was one of those who most strongly supported Ashcroft when he came under attack in the Senate and the media after President Bush selected him to be attorney general. I know the man and respect him. I also like him. The attacks on him as he ran the gauntlet in the Senate were unconscionable and the fact that so many former colleagues, whom he regarded as friends, turned on him must have been hard to bear.
But he made it and now probably wishes he was doing something else somewhere else. The Sept. 11 attacks on America changed much and turned Ashcroft's world upside down. The man had no chance to really recover from the traumatizing experience leading up to his confirmation before being asked to deal with the most serious threat to his country's security since World War II.
Liberals were, of course, appalled from the outset that this man would have anything to do with matters affecting the civil and criminal justice systems. They saw him as a threat in the Senate because he was a Republican and, more dangerously, a conservative who believed in the old-fashioned virtues that they have long ago outgrown.
Conservatives liked him before Sept. 11 and most like him still, but they are wary of what his department has done and wish that in striking a balance between the need for security and the need to preserve our liberties he would be a bit more careful.
The problem is that history suggests that in time of crisis, those seeking to safeguard the security of the American people more often than not run roughshod over the freedoms they are fighting to preserve. Abraham Lincoln suspended constitutional safeguards and threw innocent citizens into prison without trial to preserve the union. Franklin Roosevelt trumped him by rounding up everyone of Japanese descent in the days following Pearl Harbor and tossing them into camps as a mean of thwarting an anticipated wave of sabotage.
Lincoln and Roosevelt justified these acts in the name of protecting America and, indeed, I doubt if any people anywhere have lost their freedom to a government that announced it wanted to take it away just for the heck of doing it. In every case, those who restrict individual liberty argue that what they are doing is being done for the good of the very people from whom they are taking it. And most of those making this case are, like Ashcroft, good people trying to do the right thing at the time.
I'm glad that George Bush sits in the White House and that Ashcroft is his attorney general. I even believe them when they say that they are only doing that which they believe they need to do to protect us. They argue convincingly, I think, that roving wiretaps, reading people's e-mail, putting video cameras on every corner, and perusing their library habits will make it easier to catch terrorists before they act. They can even make a case that by establishing a Castro-like system of informants or requiring us all to carry ID cards they will be able to make it more difficult for terrorists to move around.
The problem is that, once all of this is in place, we will no longer be living in the same country we lived in prior to Sept. 11. It may still look like the United States, but one wonders if it will feel like the United States.
I suspect we'll survive these excesses as we have in the past, but those asking us to give up liberty for security should be careful. That liberty survives such crises at all is an amazing endorsement of the wisdom of the Founders, but each time we face such a crisis, we seem to lose more freedom than we get back when it ends.
Young conservatives of my generation read a slight volume penned at the turn of the last century by a fellow by the name of William Graham Sumner titled The Conquest of the United States by Spain. It was an attack on the Spanish-American War, but raised a perplexing and enduring question: What does a nation gain if, in its quest for security, it surrenders that which it set out to secure?
Those who seek to protect us must keep one eye on that they seek to protect. Ashcroft is a good man trying to do a difficult job, and for that, I admire him. But I would advise him to read Sumner's little book lest we end up with a new one titled The Conquest of the United States by al Qaeda.
David Keene is chairman of the American Conservative Union and a Washington-based government affairs consultant.
http://www.thehill.com/073102/keene.shtm
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
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