APRIL 2004: U.S. NO LONGER FREE, NOR A DEMOCRACY

As the result of an horrendous double blow yesterday, the U.S. has lost its credibility as either a democracy or a constitutionally liberal state. First, the arch-conservative and deeply partisan U.S. Supreme Court ruled, by its now standard 5-4 margin, that gerrymandering is not unconstitutional. Ruling on the outrageous redistricting plan in Pennsylvania, which essentially guarantees incumbent Republicans two thirds of the state’s seats in Congress although they have a minority of the registered voters, the Chief Justice threw it back to the executive and legislative branches, saying, incredibly,

The Court made it clear that there is not really any point in anyone in the U.S. bothering to vote in future Congressional elections because gerrymandering has already determined the results in all but a handful of districts. But in abrogating its responsibility in a baldly partisan manner, the Court also said that it is up to the ‘legislators’ to fix the system, and that even though, under Zacharia’s definition above, the U.S. can no longer call itself a democracy, they will not declare this completely fraudulent practice unconstitutional. The NYT calls on both parties to introduce “nonpartisan redistricting”, as is done in Iowa, Canada, and just about every true Western democracy, a process that the thoroughly corrupt judge Scalia denied, in his argument for the majority supporting the continuation of gerrymandering, was reasonably possible. But asking the legislators to regulate themselves is like asking the fox to run the hen-house. The judiciary, not the legislature, is responsible for protecting the country against laws that are undemocratic and unconstitutional, and it has utterly and disgracefully failed to do so in this ruling.

The second blow came in an announcement from the ACLU that its constitutional challenge of the Patriot Act cannot be publicized because the Justice Department has put a ‘gag order’ on the challenge while the Presnit campaigns around the country for renewal and expansion of this outrageous law. So, first, we have a law that allows the arbitrary arrest, indefinite detention, denial of constitutional rights and freedoms, and unlimited rights of search and seizure of anyone by the paramilitary FBI/Homeland Security brownshirts, with no need for demonstration of reasonable cause, just the issuance of a vaguely worded “national security letter”. And the perpetrators can hide behind “national security” to deprive the victims of this law, their families and their lawyers, of any information about why they have been victimized, and who authorized it. And now, to muffle any criticism of the law, the Justice Department is prohibiting opponents of the law from even talking to the public about challenges to it.

So, again, under Zacharia’s definition, the U.S. is now no longer a constitutionally liberal state — the rule of law, and basic human rights and freedoms, are both abrogated, and in no small way, by the Patriot Act. There is no longer freedom of speech, freedom of dissent, freedom of assembly, right to a speedy and fair trial, or right to information about government actions. Rule of law has been subverted to the absolute authority of the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to do whatever, in its discretion, limited only by the whim of the government of the day, it wants to do.

To someone living in a democracy and a constitutional liberal country, as I do, where gerrymandering and laws like the Patriot Act are unthinkable, the fact that these two rulings occurred in one day, in an election year, with hardly a peep from the mainstream press or the candidates, is absolutely terrifying. Although, to be sure, these outrages have not yet been used in the U.S. to the extent that similarly undemocratic and constitutionally illiberal processes and laws have been used in Cuba, China, Iraq, North Korea and others of the most “unfree” states in the world, there is no reason to believe, after yesterday’s double blow, that they couldn’t be, and won’t be in the future. Especially when (not if) the next terrorist attack on U.S. soil occurs.

History is replete with examples showing that the decline from liberal democracy to ruthless and tyrannical dictatorship can occur quickly, and begins with a single step. Yesterday, the U.S. took two giant leaps along that path. The rest of the world can only watch, and shudder, at how easily and quietly the fall of a once-great country is beginning.