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Tired of Being Lied to? Modern History You Can't Afford to Ignore
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1950:- The US government establishes the first program to develop human mind control techniques, conducting 149 separate experiments using electroshock, hypnosis and drugs on unsuspecting inmates, mental patients, minorities and others.
- Government researchers conduct secret germ tests on U.S. citizens, releasing live bacteria over San Francisco. The Army later says it conducted open air tests of biological agents 239 times between 1949 and 1969.
- Congress approves the Security Act of 1950, which contains an emergency civilian detention plan that remains in effect for more than 20 years. During the early 1980s, Oliver North helps draft secret wartime contingency plans which provide for "the imposition of martial law, internment camps, and the turning over of government to the president and FEMA," and more than twenty years later, the Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Bush administration might employ these Reagan-era security initiatives, installing "internment camps and martial law in the United States." Following the Sept. 11 terror attacks, reports of civilian detention camps and plans to "herd people into sports stadiums," are punctuated by John Dean's question: "
Could terrorism result in a constitutional dictator?" By late 2005, after President Bush proposes a greater role for the military during natural disasters and the imposition of marshal law should there be an avian flu outbreak, former Reagan cabinet member Paul Craig Roberts asserts that "The Police State Is Closer Than You Think."
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Constitutional dictatorships: What happens to democracies in emergencies
"Those republics which in time of danger cannot resort to a dictatorship will generally be ruined when grave occasions occur," wrote Machiavelli in his greatest work, "The Discourses." This quote opens the 1948 treatise "Constitutional Dictatorship: Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies," by Clinton Rossiter. In commenting upon the quote, Rossiter points out these are not the thoughts of the out-of-work philosopher "who dashed off "The Prince" in a vain attempt to wheedle a job out of Lorenzo de Medici." Rather, there are the reflections of a mature and noted scholar who had labored for years upon his work.
Rossiter looked at the phenomenon of constitutional dictatorships in the aftermath of World War II, for he was concerned that "more rather than fewer periods of crisis" lay ahead. In "Constitutional Dictatorship," he examines the experiences of crisis governments ranging from the ancient constitutional state of Rome to four modern states (Germany, France, Great Britain, and the United States), focusing on four major crises in the United States: the Civil War, the two World Wars, and the Great Depression.
Professor Albert Sturm, a student of Rossiter's work, has also written of constitutional dictatorships. In a 1949 essay "Emergencies and the Presidency" in the "Journal of Politics," for example, Sturm found that these "temporary concentrations of power in an executive" for meeting emergencies, which have been "employed by vigorous democracies since ancient times," are necessary for "the preservation of the established system in the face of temporary crisis." Typically, such authority lasts only as long as the crisis, Sturm notes, and it is sanctioned by the "existing constitutional system."
Constitutional dictatorship: Could it happen here?
Of course, the very concept of a "dictatorship" is offensive and inimical to our political thinking as citizens of a democracy. And Rossiter acknowledges that no American government has ever been a true constitutional dictatorship, as that concept is understood by students of government. Rather, he uses the term, in the American context, as "convenient hyperbole" -- an exaggeration meant to underscore how many, and how extensive, have been the powers American presidents have necessarily arrogated to themselves in wartime.
Nevertheless, Rossiter, and other students of constitutional dictatorships, do not rule out the idea that one could ever exist in America. Indeed, they raised questions in the aftermath of World War II that are still relevant today as we find ourselves in an undeclared war, and the first stages of emergency government.
Recall that FDR took the nation from a "limited" national emergency on September 8, 1939, to an "unlimited" emergency by May 27, 1941, and then to total war by December 7, 1941. Anyone who does not believe the war on terrorism will escalate, as well, is in denial.
Rossiter does not address the question of whether Americans could tolerate the undemocratic ways of a constitutional dictatorship. Instead, he is interested in the question of whether we could survive the alternative. He asks, that is, if we could "afford not to resort to undemocratic methods when such methods are essential to the preservation of the state?" To raise the question suggests the answer.
Terrorism could indeed result in a constitutional dictatorship
"Constitutional dictatorship is a dangerous thing," Rossiter advises. Such governments are the result of necessity, of the sheer imperative of survival. The greatest danger with such a form of government, and its related institutions and laws, is that they can remain after the crisis has abated.
We are fighting a war against terrorism, with no end in sight. It is a war, I believe, that will inevitably escalate. Indeed, it is a war that could force the nation to live under martial law -- for indefinite periods.
These are not decisions that should be made by the President and Congress each time the crisis escalates; rather, we should think about them carefully in advance in order to make prudent decisions later.
One need only look at the haste and thoughtlessness with which we have adopted the potentially dangerous USA Patriot Act, most of which Republicans and Democrats alike had earlier rejected, to understand why legislating in the aftershock of terrorism should be avoided if possible.
Our present emergency laws and regulations are a hodgepodge, a patchwork quilt. They respond to precedents from past great crises, and that is wise, but unfortunately these precedents do not contemplate a protracted war on terrorism, or an enemy unlike any we have ever confronted.
Congress has the power to determine whether it wants the American equivalent of a constitutional dictator in the White House. The only way to be certain that we don't make that decision during a crisis, is to revise and codify our emergency laws now -- before fear and anger in the aftermath of a possible attack might cause us to make bad decisions, and too easily trade liberty for security in numerous areas.
As I write this column, President Bush has announced that he will address the nation about his plans for restructuring the government for fighting the war on terrorism. None of Professor Rossiter's observations about our history is more chilling than his finding that each national crisis has left the nation a little less democratic than before. With the president's announcement, it is not too soon to consider whether, in fighting terrorism, we really want a constitutional dictator to lead us. I certainly don't, nor do I know anyone who does, but if a future attack comes, and is devastating, the pressure to resort to constitutional dictatorship may be irresistible.
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