True Patriotism

By: David Podvin

This should be a time for nonpartisanship and national unity. It should be a time to temporarily set aside important differences and unite against a common foe. Yet so far today, I have seen three Republicans on television and heard three more on radio blame President Clinton for the terrorist bombings. Conservative websites are bashing him and other Democrats for the deaths of thousands American terrorism victims.

Since mutual nonpartisanship is unattainable, and unilateral nonpartisanship (however well meaning) is gutless, let’s deal with the truth:

We have a man in the White House who, in the name of patriotism, is demanding a “blank check”.

Congressional Democrats were already generally predisposed to capitulate even before the crisis began. They were unwilling to stand up to him when it was much easier to do than it will be now.

Public opinion polls show that over half of Americans are currently willing to sacrifice some freedom for some safety.

It’s nervous time for those who value liberty.

George W. Bush has already proven that he is willing to enthusiastically exploit crises to advance his own agenda. During the energy “crisis” that was manufactured by his patron Kenneth Lay, Bush cynically misrepresented the situation in order to gain passage of a bill that was a windfall for his oil, gas, and coal benefactors. When the economy began to falter, Bush deceitfully relabeled his multi-trillion dollar tax gift to the rich as an “economic recovery” plan. He is ready, willing, and able to take advantage of unfortunate circumstances in order to roll his Trojan Horse right wing agenda past the American people.

Now, he has the mother of all crises to exploit.

The most inviting places to begin for a conservative with a blank check are an assault on civil liberties and a huge upward redistribution of wealth. Regarding the former, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has already used this situation to advocate much more restrictive secrecy standards that would allow the American people even less access to information than they have now. This is despite the fact that there is absolutely no evidence the terrorist acts had anything to do with insufficient government secrecy. Other administration officials have been making noises about our society being vulnerable because it is “too open”. Their remedy is to make it “less open”.

The Bush administration has started to argue that the events of September 11 mean it is even more urgent for Americans to spend over a trillion dollars on a missile shield. This is despite the fact that there is no conceivable way a missile defense system could have prevented what happened to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The Bush missile defense scheme will not provide more safety to the country, but it will provide his loyal G.O.P. donors in the aerospace industry with more tax money, and it will provide the average American with more debt.

Fighting terror by stealing from the middle class to pay off Republican campaign contributors and by assaulting the First Amendment will only serve to make the citizens of the United States poorer and less free. It is the terrorists who should be punished, not the American people.

It would require guts for Democrats to stand up and risk being pilloried as unpatriotic for saying that America is strong enough to endure a terrorist attack without sacrificing our freedoms or bankrupting our country. It would involve confronting emotion with reason and simplistic rhetoric with logic. This is not something that the modern Democratic Party has been willing to do.

Though the terrorists have inflicted a great evil upon this country, they lack the means to permanently damage our democracy. That ability rests in the hands of domestic demagogues who have already begun the attempt to manipulate the citizens of this nation during a period of great emotion. They seek to use this tragedy in order to fulfill an elitist agenda that during less frenzied times would be rejected as bad for America.

It is patriotic to oppose those efforts. Over two hundred years ago, patriot Benjamin Franklin said that those who would choose safety over liberty deserve neither. Today, those who would choose repression of basic rights and selfish raids on the treasury during a national crisis deserve to fail. If they succeed, then they will do far more long term harm to America than evil acts of terrorism could ever inflict.

This is a critical time in the history of our country. The American people need public servants whose commitment to constitutional rights is stronger than the passions of the moment. We deserve to have a president whose abilities are exclusively devoted to protecting our interests, and whose efforts are unburdened by a selfish ideological agenda. During this time of crisis, common citizens and our elected representatives must communicate to our commander in chief that we will fully support him by holding him to that truly patriotic standard.