The Conscience of Abe’s Turn freedom of speech, defense, and life

Brian Wilson on his radio show at WSPD yesterday talked with Jim Bovard about a recent Washington Post article about sending U.S. troops to the U.S. “The U.S. military,” according to the Post, “expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe.”

Domestic emergency deployment may be “just the first example of a series of expansions in presidential and military authority,” or even an increase in domestic surveillance, said Anna Christensen of the ACLU’s National Security Project. And Cato Vice President Gene Healy warned of “a creeping militarization” of homeland security.

The founders of the Bill of Rights were rightly against military action at home, and they insisted the Constitution have safeguards against it, because they knew it would be a means through which a powerful government would deny the people their civil rights. Since then, domestic militarization has indeed been associated with the abuses of communist Russia and fascist Germany, and of George Orwell’s Oceania.

Back to the interview. Jim Bovard is an informed, intelligent commentator, and he always has something of substance to say:

It’s possible that the deployment of troops could be tied to a presidential declaration of emergency. And people would think, Well, that’s like Hurricane Katrina, for instance. But no, it could be anything the president says was an emergency. Bill Clinton pioneered the art of making snow storms in northern states national emergencies. Clinton averaged, I think, about 1 emergency declaration per week in some years of his presidency. And—fundamental problem here—there is nothing to limit the president’s power in how he deploys these troops…

Part of the frustration that I have is similar to what I felt during the Clinton years. There are a lot of liberals who seem to understand, when George W. Bush was ordering torture or suspending habeas corpus or whatever, that power is a very dangerous thing. But now that there’s someone who claims to liberal who’s going to be president, it’s almost as if all the old dangers have vanished.

Listen to the complete interview with James Bovard, at WSPD’s web site. (You may have to scroll down to the date “12/3.”)

Jim Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, The Bush Betrayal, and Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil. And his book Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years provided bits of initial inspiration behind The Conscience of Abe’s Turn.

-TimK

P.S. James Bovard also gave a recent talk at the Future of Freedom Foundation, entitled “Bush’s War on Civil Liberties,” the whole video of which you can see on YouTube.