Call It Tyranny

Tyranny is not a word to be used lightly. It is an accusation of a deliberate attack on basic liberty. It is especially not to be used in regard to partisan politics. Tyranny is something more fundamental and more noxious. So why did the Lebanon Daily News use that accusation in an editorial last Sunday?

The paper was condemning as tyranny and as "extremism writ large," Senate Bill 1867, The National Defense Authorization Act. That bill, which passed the Senate on a vote of 93 – 7 deserves the accusation and an appropriate response.

Senate Bill 1876 authorizes the military to detain American citizens indefinitely anywhere in the world – including US soil – without any of the rights that surround habeas corpus. These are found most explicitly in Article VI of the Bill of Rights: the right to a public trial, an impartial jury, the nature of the accusation, the right to confront witnesses and have the assistance of counsel. This bill puts the military in charge of policing the US for terrorism. It suspends basic constitutional rights for the length of a war with no end and on a battlefield with no border.

It is tyranny to require that all suspected terrorists be turned over to the military. It is tyranny to, in the end, authorize disappearances, renditions and other tools of vicious dictators.

The bill is so shrouded in stealth and duplicity that it has the smell of conspiracy. The main provisions were drafted in private by Senators Carl Levin and John McCain but without consultation with the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Intelligence Committee, the Defense Department, the FBI or the Intelligence Community. The word is apparently out that no one is to challenge or discuss this bill. And the entirety of the mainstream media is a willing accomplice.

The whole of Washington's normally noisy press corps is joining with the Congress in ignoring or withholding information on this bill. The news services such as AP, McClatchy and Bloomberg report nothing. The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal are silent. Of national newspapers only the Christian Science Monitor and Agency France-Presse have at least touched the content and politics of the story. The blogosphere is a-fire with dire warnings from both the right and the left but the mainstream is suspiciously silent. Why do I learn this only from the Lebanon Daily News? What is going on?

This is not partisan. Both parties overwhelmingly support this power grab! Only seven voted for the Constitution. Three are Republicans: Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Michael Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky. The three Democrats are: Tom Harkin of Iowa, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Ron Wyden of Oregon. Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, was the seventh vote.

Where are the other normally outspoken senators who claim to take the Constitution seriously? Among the liberals, where are Senators Dianne Feinstein, Dick Durbin, Al Franken and Bob Casey? Among the conservatives, where are Senators Pat Toomey, Scott Brown, Orrin Hatch and Jim DeMint? Why is the Senate so determined to pass this tyrannous attack on our liberty and why so quietly?

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, it was natural that our leaders would overreact and suspend some constitutional liberties. After all, they did not know what other attacks were impending. But at this point, the war on terror is winding down. Osama bin Laden is dead, law enforcement has thwarted all the serious attacks, Al Qaeda has been virtually wiped out and we are pulling our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Why put more restrictions on our liberties now?

Something is going down and we have to respond. When elected officials attack our most sacred constitutional rights, then it is time to turn from the Constitution with its rights and protections to the Declaration of Independence and its responsibilities.

The Declaration of Independence is a call to action. "[W]hen a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce [the people] under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security."

If we want to get our country headed in the right direction again; if we want to begin to work together to resist tyranny, then this is the best opportunity likely to come along.

Conservative Republicans should go to liberal Democrats, and vice versa, and agree that liberty is our common goal. The road to liberty should, first, be voting out of office every single person who voted yes to S.1867. If that doesn't work, then we may have to pledge “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” It is that serious.