“Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding is no safer in the long run than exposure….” — Helen Keller
Tell that to the Marines, Helen. Or rather, don’t.
For that matter, don’t write about where the Marines are. And don’t report about the presence of area nerve gas depots because then the terrorists will know about them, too. And if you’re feeling a little ambivalent about this war business, say you’re one of the 6 percent who are not with the program, keep it to yourself. Now is not the time for any of it.
Or so you would think if you’d been gathering string, as I have, in the past few weeks as a couple of columnists in Texas and Oregon were fired for criticizing President Bush after Sept. 11.
- As the work of another columnist, one who had been championed for her ill-considered remarks in the past, was dumped from a Website because she called for a new “Crusade.”
- As a televangelist and a politically incorrect television host were hounded into issuing abject, if unbelievable, apologies for speaking their minds, however intemperate their thoughts.
- As the President’s press secretary warned “to watch what you say” — a remark that was deleted from the official transcript of that press conference.
- As the one congressional representative who voted against giving President Bush broad war powers was flooded with written and verbal diatribes, some of them threats.
- As a few phone calls started to come in from concerned citizens who wanted less news, not more.
All of which forces the question: Is the First Amendment going to be buried in the rubble of Sept. 11, too?
“I am very concerned,” said Paul McMasters, the First Amendment ombudsman for the Freedom Forum. “Not only do I see a dampening of our free speech tradition, I see pressure on people not to say the kinds of things they would say ordinarily. I understand these are extraordinary times, but this is the very time we should value what makes us distinctive.”
What makes us distinctive are our rights to engage in dissent and discussion — the very things that are being scooted into post-Sept. 11 corners, as if they were unseemly cousins, even as the government moves to give itself more leeway into the recesses of our lives.
To resurrect a phrase from another age: Where’s the outrage?
The day I spoke with McMasters, he was waiting to board a plane at Dulles Airport, his first flight since Sept. 11. Incidentally, on the morning of Sept. 11, he was in the parking lot of the Pentagon when an American Airlines Boeing 757 that had taken off from Dulles slammed into that building.
As fearful as those Sept. 11 events were, striking at the very heart of so many of our institutions and stealing so many lives and futures, McMasters has seen other fearful things in the days since.
“The public is not wanting to disagree with speech, but to punish speech. It happened to (Bill) Maher and to (Jerry) Falwell. It was, ‘We want them off the air, we want them shut up and shut down.’ That is actually more of a threat to our security in the long down.’ That is actually more of a threat to our security in the long haul,” McMasters said.
I told him about the fears of those who had called to talk about a couple of recent stories the newspaper had printed about nerve gas depots in the area. “Why write about this now?” callers had asked. (A database search showed the newspaper has printed more than 80 stories about one particular depot in the past 12 years.)
“I understand those people but there is much more security with everyone knowing that proper precautions are there, than not knowing,” McMasters said.
“It is not unpatriotic to demand answers and to provide the American people with the maximum amount of information. If they (the government) don’t trust us with information, how can we ask to trust them with our security? There is some information that can’t be shared, but right now we’re searching for ways to keep the American people informed and to keep them full partners in their own governance.”
Ten short years ago, the American people did not desire such partnership. McMasters points out that eight out of 10 Americans approved of press restrictions for covering the Gulf War and that, to this day, there are things we still don’t know about that war. (Remember, the Gulf War Syndrome only was acknowledged after a lot of sick veterans talked and some persevering journalists researched and reported.)
“That’s a very scary thing to me,” McMasters said. “We who are providing the human capital as well as the financial resources for the conduct of any war deserve to have as much information as possible about policies made, and why. If we’re denied (that information), we are not full partners in this democracy.”
History shows that democracy has had its wings clipped during wartime and that civil liberties have taken it on the chin in the name of “necessity.” Perhaps the most widely known and infamous example of this suspension of rights was the internment of Japanese-Americans in the United States during World War II.
But there’s another egregious example that is worth noting, and highlighting, for there are many familiar themes in this story, and a Hoosier takes center stage:
There is great unrest in the world. Our country has set an isolationist course, preferring to stay disengaged from foreign entanglements. Soon, the unrest touches our shores. According to newspaper and government accounts, a huge explosion, caused by foreign agents, rocks New York City. It knocks people out of their beds, disconnects the phone lines and sends people running to churches.
Sept. 11, 2001?
No. July 30, 1916, when enemies of the state — believed to be Germans and Irish Nationalists — blew up a munitions dump at New York Harbor. The Statue of Liberty is hit by shrapnel from the blast. Suddenly, everyone was talking conspiracy and sabotage.
Less than a year later, the United States declared war on Germany. And, citing “German intrigues” the U.S. government was “helpless” to fight under existing laws, Congress passed a variety of bills proposed by the Wilson administration. The Espionage Act of 1917 became law.
Essentially, it became illegal to disparage, undercut, “scorn” or criticize the war effort, our military forces, the flag and the government. The punishment for that crime: a $10,000 fine or up to 20 years in prison or both. The law also allowed the postmaster general to act as a censor; he could and did refuse to mail anything that was critical of the war.
The effect of this official action was profound. Soon, books by German authors were taken from some library shelves. German language newspapers disappeared or went underground. German departments were dissolved in some universities, and German was dropped from some course offerings. Iowa declared English the official language of public conversations, even those on the telephone. And one historian wrote that children threw rocks at dachshunds.
Into this great breach marched Eugene V. Debs of Terre Haute, Ind. He was a national labor leader and an avowed Socialist who made a name — and trouble — for himself by pushing what were then radical workplace reforms: pensions, an eight-hour work day, sick leave, Social Security,
workers’ comp. He also was something of the Harold Stassen of his day; he ran for president of the United States five times. The last time, as a prisoner.
On June 16, 1918, in Canton, Ohio, Debs made an anti-war speech. He was promptly arrested. He said the First Amendment allowed him to make that speech. The judge didn’t buy it, and sentenced Debs to 10 years in prison for speaking his mind. Then, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Debs’ appeal. He settled in at a federal prison in Atlanta where in 1920, as Convict 9653, he made his last run for president of the United States; he received almost 1 million votes. Warren G. Harding, the winner of that election, commuted Debs’ sentence and let him go home to Terre Haute.
He died six years later. (Debs lost his citizenship because he was convicted of sedition; in 1976, 50 years after his death, his citizenship was restored.)
Our world is not so different than it was more than 80 years ago when Debs went to prison for speaking against war. Again we are in the throes of conspiracy theories and news of sabotage. Again we are clamping down on words and the people who speak them — no, maybe not by enacting laws, yet, but certainly by our own fear of the unknown and our intolerance of dissenting points of view.
Yes, these are scary times. How can they not be, with our new reality framed by crashing jets and tumbling skyscrapers?
But more important than that new frame is the backbone that has supported us for more than 200 years. We are distinctive because of our Bill of Rights. A scarier time would be one in which we allowed that backbone to bend to the breaking point; to avoid, in the name of security, exercising our right to be a partner in our democracy.
“You can’t trade freedom,” McMasters said, “to protect freedom.”
Unless, as the old song goes, “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”
