VACANT LIBERAL MINDED LEFTY LOON ALERT.
Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Thursday, July 4, 2002
WASHINGTON - As America celebrates its first Independence Day since
Sept. 11, a revolt is going on in left-wing city councils against the
crackdown on terrorism. The revolt and the reaction to it raise
fundamental questions about how much liberty Americans are willing to
forgo to prevent further attacks.
Though the public in general has supported the measures, the protests
cast doubt on how patient and united Americans are in this time of war
involving a real threat from a real enemy.
The left has made most of the official noise about this issue. But
NewsMax.com has also found division of opinion on the right.
The USA PATRIOT Act, passed weeks after terrorists killed thousands of
Americans at the World Trade Center, strengthened the hands of
intelligence agencies in such areas as roving wiretaps and government
spying.
The focal point of the revolt has come in city council resolutions in
Berkeley, Calif.; Ann Arbor, Mich.; the Massachusetts cities and towns
of Cambridge, Northampton, Amherst and Leverett; Carrboro, N.C.; and
Denver.
People Who Live in Ivory Towers ...
"I think what you're seeing is the manifestation of the universities
in those cities," veteran counter-subversive expert Herbert Romerstein
told NewsMax.com.
"That's where radicalism and crackpotism hold sway. The people who
live in those cities are usually the victims of extremists on campus."
Romerstein, who has spent years combating subversives in the
legislative and executive branches of government, quickly added that,
of course, "we're a free society, and they have a right to say
whatever stupid thing they want. What they don't have a right to do is
undermine the defense of the rest of us."
But there are some outside the radical left's orbit who also have
qualms about the USA PATRIOT Act. And they are frustrated that the
left wing, with its track record of excusing or minimizing the danger
of subversion over the years, has given the cause of privacy a bad
name.
Concerns on the Right
"Unfortunately, the cities which are protesting are controlled by the
far left," Free Congress Foundation (FCF) president and conservative
icon Paul Weyrich told NewsMax.
"There is ample reason for cities controlled by conservatives and
Republicans to express the same concern. This is only symbolic, but if
some cities on the right expressed similar views, it might cause the
administration to take some notice to be sure that civil liberties are
not infringed upon."
Weyrich's organization has a division focused on protecting privacy.
Just this week, Christopher Kilmer, a research associate for FCF's
Center for Technology Policy, wrote that Attorney General John
Ashcroft's recently announced changes in the way the FBI collects
intelligence do in fact raise legitimate issues about civil liberties.
But "in light of the wartime political climate," he said, "the best
argument to prod the feds into revising the guidelines is that they
will not better our national security, but rather compromise it."
FBI Director Robert Mueller's announcement of the guidelines May 30
followed a whistle-blower's letter exposing the bureau's lax
procedures before Sept. 11. The guidelines have split the right in
three directions:
* Those who think they are a potential threat to civil liberties
(Kilmer).
* Those who applaud the director's move ([59]former FBI agent and
whistle-blower Gary Aldrich).
* Those who claim the guidelines are inadequate and paper over
fundamental flaws (Judicial Watch Chairman Larry Klayman).
But it is the USA PATRIOT Act, passed overwhelmingly by Congress and
signed by President Bush in the fall, that is the focus of the
left-wing city councils.
'Handful of Crackpots'
Romerstein, co-author of "The Venona Secrets," which painstakingly
documented secret messages between the Soviet Union and its agents, in
and out of government, during the Roosevelt and Truman
administrations, says the council members in the cities mentioned
above "don't understand that we all have a responsibility in
protecting one another."
"And why should our safety be jeopardized by this handful of crackpots
in some of these extreme left-wing cities deciding to opt out on
mutual defense?" he told NewsMax.
"We were concerned about the abridgement of free speech because of
national security concerns," Denver Councilwoman Kathleen McKenzie
told ABC News.
"It resonated to us of the McCarthy era and other times," she said,
referring to the hearings of the House Committee on Un-American
Activities in the 1950s.
Entangling the House Committee on Un-American Activities with the late
Joseph McCarthy, a U.S. senator who was never a member of the House,
let alone any of its committees, drew a sharp riposte from Romerstein,
who spent several years as a professional staff member of HCUA.
"The mind-set is very closely related to the ignorance," he said in
the NewsMax interview. "The fact that she doesn't know that we have a
bicameral legislature and that a senator never chairs a House
committee indicates that she doesn't know how government works. And
she wants to make decisions that affect our lives and our safety!"
NewsMax.com asked Romerstein for his analysis of whatever happened to
the wartime unity that was typified by the World War II cry of
"Remember Pearl Harbor!"
Stuck in the '60s
The 1960s counterculture changed much of that, he said.
"The left got away with a lot during the Vietnam War," he said, "and
they acted up, and they acted crazy, and they undermined the war
effort. And the real question is: Shall we allow them to undermine the
terrorism war effort now?"
In Cambridge, Councilman Brian Murphy was quoted as ruefully noting
that "there have been attacks on civil liberties before in time of
war. I think if you look at USA PATRIOT, this is another example of
that."
Some of that history is true enough, responded Romerstein. He recalled
that during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and
"had people arrested without charges, and had to do it to preserve the
union."
"We don't have that situation today, and we don't have those kinds of
Draconian measures. And by pretending, as the left does, that somehow
our civil liberties have been threatened is really an attempt to argue
that we shouldn't defend ourselves against terrorism."
Romerstein sees today's fight against internal subversion as more
complicated than the kind the old HCUA faced. Clearly, he said, that
panel was able to go after the Communist Party (doing the work of the
Soviet Union) and the German-American Bund (doing the work of Nazi
Germany). If a congressional panel or special committee could probe
international terrorism and the interrelationship of terrorist groups
today, "it might be a valuable educational experience for all of us."
He hastened to add this was not a call to foment "prejudice against
Muslims," a charge that would likely plague any such investigation.
'Prejudice Against Terrorists'
"We should not have prejudice against Muslims," he said, "but we
should have prejudice against the enemies of the United States
regardless of what label they claim to wear."
In fact, he said, "many of the international terrorist organizations
cooperating with the al-Qaeda are not religious at all. They're not
Muslim or anything else. They are simply radical groups that want to
take power."
As an example, he cited FARC in Colombia, "which is a Marxist-Leninist
group affiliated with Cuba, running terrorist operations and
distributing narcotics. We need to know about such things, and it
would be very useful if Congress would look into international
terrorism and tell us something about it.
"It wouldn't be prejudice against Muslims. But it would be prejudice
against terrorists."
There was notable dissent in some of the city councils that passed the
resolutions against the USA PATRIOT Act, some of which urged the local
police not to cooperate with federal agencies "if they were asked to
do things that violated someone's rights."
Councilman Ed Thomas, for example, objected even to his city's
relatively mild resolution. He told ABC that it would create a
situation where "Denver would be a haven for terrorists."
'We Have Lost Our Collective Mind'
"My opinion was that we have lost our collective mind if we are going
to come up with these kinds of motions," he said. "The last time I
checked, I believe we are at war."
Rallying around the flag in wartime is something conservative skeptics
such as researchers at Free Congress's Center for Technology Policy
fully support.
Their main note of caution is to make certain that any rules or laws
implemented or passed now to track down terrorists who want to kill
Americans are not used in the future by a left-wing administration to
railroad those who merely exercise their right to dissent from
government policies.
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