DOROTHY RABINOWITZ'S MEDIA LOG
A Demon for Our Times
Why the left hates John Ashcroft.
Monday, September 22, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT
Frenzy mounts uncontrolled over John Ashcroft, now considered--in those quarters touched by the delirium--enemy No. 1 of the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and all that Americans hold dear. What is the cause of these fevers? Is there a doctor in the house?
We may exclude Dr. Howard Dean, running for the Democratic presidential nomination, who has already offered his findings, to wit: "John Ashcroft is not a patriot. John Ashcroft is a descendant of Joseph McCarthy." Sen. John Kerry, once properly--and eloquently--infuriated over the campaign of cretinous slanders mounted against John McCain in the last Republican presidential primary, has in turn offered his views on the attorney general. During the Democrats' debate in Baltimore, candidate Kerry said he saw before him "people of every creed, every color, every belief, every religion. This is indeed John Ashcroft's worst nightmare here." Richard Gephardt, eyes similarly on the prize, has let America know which of our great national concerns he considered most pressing--a good thing to know about a candidate. The national priority looming largest in his mind is, Mr. Gephardt has let it be known, to fire John Ashcroft in "my first five seconds as president."
On the subject of the attorney general, no candidate has waxed more passionate than John Edwards, who warned, "we cannot allow people like John Ashcroft to take away our rights, our freedoms, and our liberties." And further: John Ashcroft and this administration can "spin their wheels all they want about the Patriot Act. . . . They have rolled over our rights for the past two years," says Mr. Edwards, one of the most uncompromisingly staunch Senate supporters of the Patriot Bill when it was passed after September 11--a fact the candidate seems to have found little or no occasion to mention in the course of his current crusade. Also among those voting for the bill were Rep. Gephardt, and Sens. Kerry, Lieberman and Graham.
It's hardly necessary by now to list all the charges and the alarms being raised about Mr. Ashcroft, by those portraying the attorney general as the menace to civil liberties that should haunt the dreams of all Americans who want to preserve our way of life. This is no exaggeration; the fever has spread wide, fed largely by the American Civil Liberties Union and allied sentinels of freedom, its signs clear in the ads calling on citizens to "Save Our Constitution," in emergency rallies led by the ACLU, and such groups as "Families for a Peaceful Tomorrow" and "The New York Bill of Rights Defense Committee." The attorney general has, declared the New York Civil Liberties Union, "led a massive assault on our most basic rights." Indeed, to hear the aforementioned groups, John Ashcroft is a greater threat to our national life and our freedoms than that posed by terrorists--a view that itself speaks volumes about the character and disposition of the Constitution-protectors up in arms over Mr. Ashcroft.
Then there is the issue of the facts--a scarce commodity in the oceans of oratory now spilling forth about our threatened Bill of Rights, and about agents spying on Americans' reading habits. In none of the descriptions of the out-of-control attorney general, and accompanying suggestions of incipient fascism on the march, is there to be found any mention of the truth that the attorney general did not, of course, arrogate to himself the power to extend security measures: He went to the courts for permission. They were put in place only after scrutiny by judges.
Likewise, current hair-tearing about secret investigations and library spies notwithstanding, it remains a fact that for decades now, in its pursuit of crimes like money-laundering, the government has been free to prohibit banks from informing clients they were under investigation--and has done so without any outcry from the ACLU about civil rights violations. The Patriot Act could be said to be imperfect in some areas, a dissident member of the ACLU recently informed me--but so dishonest was his organization's portrayal of it as a threat to our basic freedoms, he could hardly bring himself to join any argument against it.
That ACLU dissidents harbor feelings of disgust at their leadership and its policies shouldn't come as news. For some 20 years now, control of the organization has rested securely in the hands of activists devoted to issues dear to the hearts of the left. No one was surprised when the ACLU of Southern California--home to the organization's most far-out activists--undertook the lawsuit to delay the state's recall vote.
The ACLU was the first to charge, after Sept. 11, that the government's antiterrorist measures and detention of terror suspects threatened civil liberties. Even as workers struggled to pull bodies from the mountain of rubble in downtown Manhattan, the ACLU and like-minded allies had begun issuing warnings that government efforts to prevent more terrorist assaults posed greater dangers to the nation--would destroy our Constitution and the America we have always known--than the terrorists could possibly do.
The arguments found instant acceptance, not surprisingly, among faculty ideologues on the campuses. Who can forget the instantly organized teach-ins, where speakers argued, even as the nation mourned nearly 3,000 dead, that the United States had received just deserts for its policies? Efforts to protect ourselves with rational means of defense--investigations and apprehension of likely suspects, increased security measures, profiling--all connected with the spirit of these arguments: We--not the terrorists so avid for our destruction--were the enemy that would cause the demise of our democracy.
This was, and remains, claptrap of the rankest kind, which the great mass of sane Americans would never buy--and still, it cannot be ignored. It cannot be ignored, that is, that we are in a time never before seen in this country--a time produced in part by what remains of the politics and values of the 1960s, but only in part. For even in the '60s, we did not see what we do today--namely significant quarters of the culture, elite and popular, sympathetic to the views of those home and abroad most hostile to this nation. A time when talk of American "swagger" and "bullying" comes tripping from the tongue.
For such times John Ashcroft was a target made to order. Devoutly religious, appointee of George Bush, he could scarcely have been a better fit for the bogeyman figure advanced as the greatest threat to our civil liberties--the perfect model to fire up the crowds at marches, and breast-beating festivals. Not for nothing do the Democratic presidential candidates out-do themselves denouncing the attorney general: they know, the candidates do, what has filtered down to their base, their main audience, after all. They all know, as John Kerry does, that he can say whatever he wants about John Ashcroft--that he views, as a nightmare, members of other races creeds and religions, or anything else the Democratic candidate finds convenient--and it will all be understood, a mark of political virtue.
Mr. Ashcroft's detractors were at no time more infuriated--at least recently--than when he undertook his journey to various states, to speak up in defense of the USA Patriot Act. Indeed, Janet Reno, former attorney general, was sufficiently exercised by Mr. Ashcroft's journeys to come forward to join the denunciations of his policies. Ms. Reno, whose devotion to civil liberties was best exemplified in 1993, when she ordered tanks in to assault the Branch Davidian compound in Waco--which exercise resulted in the deaths of 19 children and 57 adults--has not been heard from for a while. But it is worth remembering that attorney general's notions of due process in a time of emergency. A dangerous situation was becoming more dangerous, Ms. Reno would later explain--there had been word that children had been sexually abused. In went the tanks and the flammable gas canisters. As far as one can tell, the ACLU launched no protests. The 19 children, were, it could be argued, certainly saved from molestation.Mr. Ashcroft's efforts as attorney general have, as far as anyone knows, resulted in no such mass casualties. Still the hot-eyed demonstrators keep rolling out to shout their denunciations and wave placards saying "R.I.P. Civil Rights" and "Here Lies Your Freedom." Much has been invested in the demagoguery portraying John Ashcroft as the most serious threat to our liberties in memory: an investment that has enriched the ACLU's funding coffers, and delivered priceless publicity. No one should expect it to end anytime soon.
Ms. Rabinowitz is an editorial board member of The Wall Street Journal and author of "No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times" (Wall Street Journal Books, 2003), which you can buy at the OpinionJournal bookstore.
Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of the Journal's editorial board.
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