- September 11, 2001. The entire nation is shocked as TV
replays the havoc of that day of infamy over and over and over.
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- But quite frankly, I am still waiting for the second
shoe to drop. As a lowly Infantry Assistant Squad Leader, I knew that when
we gained an advantage over a German position, we were to exploit the opportunity
and see what further damage we could inflict. We were trained to maximize
our tactical advantage.
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- In every imaginable way, America was up against the ropes
on 9/11. I remember telling my wife, "I wonder what will happen next?
Will they unleash the terror of either biological or chemical attacks?
Will they invade our computer systems and bring the country to a standstill?
What ace do they have up their sleeve?" But nothing happened. The
first punch was thrown. Our defenses were down and the knockout punch was
never delivered. It didn't make any sense to me then, and it still doesn't
eleven months later. Why has the other shoe not dropped?
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- Possible explanations are that bin Laden is a dumb turkey
or that he did not have the wherewithal to conduct a second strike. Neither
one of these alternatives seems credible. I don't think bin Laden was overly
worried about the ability of our intelligence apparatus to stop a follow-up
blow. They seemed to have had some opportunity to stop the first strike
and for whatever reason they failed to do so. Since the best predictor
of future performance is past behavior, bin Laden could readily have believed
he didn't have too much to worry about from the C.I.A. or the F.B.I.
-
- While Al Qaeda was sitting on the sidelines, our President
was quick to follow up. He now had the opportunity to unite the nation
against a seemingly real threat. He would emerge as a decisive leader who
knew what was good for the nation. However, his measures far exceeded prudent
security procedures. He sought to alarm the American people by insisting
there is an "Axis of Evil" and issuing periodic messages of impending
attacks to frighten our populace.
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- A central bureau to protect our Vaterland was created.
This President, who had always railed against government control of the
people, now instituted the most widespread network of a centralized agency.
It was given power to proceed against suspects without due process of law
and anyone was a suspect who was declared to be a potential threat by the
Attorney General. No proof was needed other than the word of Ashcroft,
a man whose emotional maturity is suspect.
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- A benumbed Congress passed the USA Patriot Act the month
following 9/11.
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- Many clauses of this Act deny constitutional rights.
Under a Supreme Court guided by Constitutional principles rather than dogmatic
ideologies, the Act would most likely be adjudged unconstitutional but
with our current Supreme Court, all bets are off.
-
- The fact that this administration would not think twice
to deny civil liberties to citizens who stand in the way of its agenda
is not earthshaking news - it is troublesome news, but not totally unexpected,
since it does not seem to be out of character for this administration.
After all, the appointment of an Attorney General who takes his marching
orders from the moralism of his personal religion rather than the Constitution
also foreshadows the direction of things to come.
-
- Doreen Miller wrote a very incisive article on the dangers
of the USA Patriot Act entitled "High treason in the U.S. government."
It is must reading in order to understand the potential threat to any citizen
who raises his or her voice for freedom. Whatever policies King George
III instituted to limit the freedom of the American Colonists were mere
child's play when compared to the dictatorial powers handed the Executive
Branch by the U.S. Congress to limit freedom and abrogate the Bill of Rights.
-
- The paragraph in Ms. Miller's column that most caught
my attention reads: "U.S. government officials would have us believe
that this 342- page, complexly nuanced document was allegedly crafted after
September 11 in the time span of little over a month. To accomplish this
feat would have required the in-depth study of fifteen other lengthy acts
and statutes which it modifies and amends."
-
- Let me revert to the major premise of a previous column
I wrote for YellowTimes.org, "Economics 101: Turning water into wine."
In it I make the point that dissection is not comprehension. I am more
concerned with the possible reasons behind the Act rather than its actual
clauses. Taking my cue from Ms. Miller, I assume also that this Act had
been drawn up, or at least in draft, before the event of 9/11.
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- The President was not generating the steam he desired.
Before 9/11, the economy had started to look a bit shaky and the President's
advisors knew that people are inclined to vote their pocketbooks. So, the
President tried to buy the American people with a tax refund and a tax
cut. He then used the Bully Pulpit to persuade us to go out and buy and
buy in order to shore up the economy.
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- But the ploy did not work; most of the refund went to
the super-rich. The tax refund didn't produce the desired results. In the
meantime, collections by the Treasury declined. The dotcoms began to crumble.
Interestingly, by Executive Order, the President impounded his Father's
Presidential papers at the very time that they should have become public
property. What's being hidden?
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- The executive team was holding its collective breath
to find an opportunity, any opportunity, to make the President look, well,
presidential. Being a rather smart group of folks, they were ready for
any eventuality. The intelligence community must have heard rumors of a
potential terrorist attack. (If they did not, why are we spending billions
on their activities?) What better opportunity to solidify the grip of the
Executive Office over the American people than a threat to their collective
security? A terrorist attack would provide a golden opportunity to weld
the will of the American people into a united front against the attackers
of our cherished values.
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- It's a similar scenario as the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Does it not make sense that long before 9/11, the Administration undertook
the writing of the USA Patriot Act? They just waited for a proper event
providing justification to deprive the citizenry of its freedom. In the
intense emotionality generated by 9/11, it would have seemed unpatriotic
to question this Act or to vote against its passage.
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- But why would the President, sworn to uphold the Constitution
of the United States, limit Civil Rights and have in readiness an Act that
virtually allows him to declare martial law? If there is a loss of popularity,
an erosion of faith by the populace in the leadership, how could the people's
opinion be coerced to put their trust in the President?
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- In his book "Motivation and Personality," published
in 1954, Abraham Maslow makes the case that human needs arise in an orderly,
predictable manner. At the bottom of his "Pyramid" is the need
for food. A hungry person will give up everything else to obtain food in
order to survive. Once the need for food is satisfied, the behavioral dynamics
of life drive the individual to the next level, the "Safety Need."
This not only includes basic creature comforts such as housing and clothing,
but also personal safety. The next step is the need to interact socially
with others. After that life moves to the level of "Self-Esteem,"
then "Self-Actualization" or "Self- Realization," "Wisdom,"
and finally the need for the "Transcendental."
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- Here is what Maslow says about the Safety Need: "The
safety needs can become very urgent on the social scene whenever there
are real threats to law, to order, to the authority of society. The threat
of chaos or nihilism can be expected in most human beings to produce a
regression from any higher need to the more prepotent safety needs. A common,
almost expectable reaction is the easier acceptance of dictatorship of
military rule."
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- In view of above thought we can begin to understand the
frenzy of the Executive Office to keep people's sense of safety in a state
of imbalance. A sense of insecurity makes it easy to impose autocracy on
a nation. Hitler scared the German people with the threat of Communism
as well as the threat of continuing economic chaos in Germany imposed by
the Versailles Treaty.
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- In case anyone questions the intent of Oval Office to
impose a potential reign of terror on America, he or she has only to look
at some of the clauses of the Act. The Attorney General has the right to
designate anyone as a terrorist who appears to be one! Section 213 permits
government agents to go into the home of anyone who appears to be a terrorist
and seize whatever they deem to be of importance in proving the person
to be subversive. This "unreasonable search and seizure" can
be conducted while the suspected individual is away from his home.
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- Again let me urge you to read Ms. Miller's article that
dissects the Act rather well.
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- Why would anyone who has sworn to uphold the Constitution
of the United States, promulgate such a devious Act? The Act shreds the
Magna Carta no less than did Anderson's shredding of Enron documents. It
is an Act potentially depriving us of our civil rights no less than did
imprisonment of dissidents in Russian gulags or German Concentration Camps.
Why?
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- I think the answer can be found in the basic ideological
concepts embraced by this administration. It is an erroneous assumption
but one deeply ingrained in the psyche of our species. Goethe puts the
problem into focus. He said, "What is important in life is life; not
a result in life." Life is the very opposite of a cold, decaying,
rotting body. Life is dynamic, ongoing, changing, and active. Life is always
becoming. Death is a result. Death has "become." The swirling,
expanding, developing, moving universe presents prima facie evidence that
this undivided whole of an implicit order represents not a "result"
but rather a "becoming." Results are merely points of death along
the days of our lives. Unless results are only seen as temporary stopping
places, the intentioned springboard for new ventures, they constitute frozen,
lifeless forms.
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- Our religious tradition teaches, in spite of all the
evidence to the contrary, "God rested on the seventh day." Religion
declares that the universe is an accomplished fact. Wrapped in this is
the implication that all moral values have also been set in concrete. Incised
in granite were all the Commandments, rules, regulations, laws, executive
orders, and even the Supreme Court decisions on how men and women should
behave. In other words, the world "became" whenever the Almighty
ordained it. Traditional lore does not see life, society, culture, and
the world as becoming, but rather as static revelations of God. Therefore,
those who believe that God ordained an unchanging, eternal order feel compelled
to force all things and all people into that divinely, predestined system.
The defenders of the true faith believe that they are ordained of God to
use all means fair or foul to instill that fixed eternal totality into
the dumb sinners who will not accept the absolute and final act of creation.
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- So, local informers are being deputized to spy on all
these ungodly creatures. Because they are ungodly they have no rights as
human beings. In essence, they are subhuman because they refuse to knuckle
under the dictates of the enlightened ones. Whatever means are needed will
be used to whip the population into line. Those resisting that eternal
order will be eliminated since they are anathema to the faithful.
-
- Makes sense? Well, it does if you have bought into the
philosophy proclaiming that on the seventh day all acts of creation ceased.
A static view of life makes sense if you reject the fact that at this very
moment new stars are born and old stars are dying. It makes sense to be
a reactionary if you don't believe that living things mutate, change, and
evolve. It makes sense if you close your eyes to the fact that the important
thing about life is life. If you think that life is a fixed result - the
reactionary results of a misguided religious sentiment - then by God you
are under orders to get rid of the non- believing bastards.
-
- Those who seek to impose their will on the people are
not above the use of any means to whip the masses into line. A quote often
attributed to Julius Caesar (although not appearing in any of his writings)
is: "Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip
up the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged
sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when
the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate
and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights
of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded
by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly
so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar."
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- Sound vaguely familiar?
-
- Belief in an absolutely static universe in which God
has fully revealed the totality of all creation, all moral values, all
political dynamics, becomes the touchstone forcing people to substitute
this lifeless form in place of life. It is a form lacking in vitality and
movement. It is a form perceived in the frozen grimaces of the leaders
of the dead. Such a manifestation of death only seeks a provocation to
spew its rotting offal over an entire population.
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- Fearing for their very lives if they do not obey, the
masses embrace their spiritless leaders. These living dead seek to kill
love and light, learning and laughter. They have laws in place to whisk
away, without due process of law, anyone they deem to be a threat to their
celebration of death and destruction of the human spirit. These self- serving
moralists whose thoughts are generated in the catacombs of their lusterless
brains, do not understand that the meaning of life is life!
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- They fail to understand the child-like innocence of the
living. The dragons of these alien life forms seek to dominate the desert
realm of their empires by peddling their petty "Thou Shalts!"
and "Thou Musts" as the voice of God. The living dead do not
see each day as a new beginning and a self-rolling wheel. They miss the
holy Yea of the dawn rising over the ebon darkness of ignorance and prejudice.
They force life into the straight jacket of dead creeds, the mummified
bodies of lifeless dogmas, and the corpses of extinct ideologies. (After
Nietzsche's Three Metamorphoses in "Thus Spake Zarathustra.")
-
- And that, I believe, is the fundamental reason calling
into existence the Patriot Act. It allows the dead to kill the living.
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- [John Brand is a Purple Heart, Combat Infantry veteran
of World War II. He received his Juris Doctor degree at Northwestern University
and a Master of Theology and a Doctor of Ministry at Southern Methodist
University. He served as a Methodist minister for 19 years, was Vice President,
Birkman & Associates, Industrial Psychologists, and concluded his career
as Director, Organizational and Human Resources, Warren-King Enterprises,
an independent oil and gas company. He is the author of "Shaking the
Foundations."]
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- John Brand encourages your comments: jbrand@YellowTimes.org
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