Dissent Is What Rescues Democracy: From A Quiet Death Behind Closed Doors
27 March 2011
By Paul Craig Roberts
"Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death
behind closed doors." --Lewis H. Lapham
The year 2011 will bring Americans a larger and more
intrusive police state, more unemployment and home
foreclosures, no economic recovery, more disregard by
the US government of US law, international law, the
Constitution, and truth, more suspicion and distrust
from allies, more hostility from the rest of the
world, and new heights of media sycophancy.
2011 is shaping up as the terminal year for American
democracy. The Republican Party has degenerated into a
party of Brownshirts, and voter frustrations with the
worsening economic crisis and military occupations
gone awry are likely to bring Republicans to power in
2012. With them would come their doctrines of
executive primacy over Congress, the judiciary, law,
and the Constitution and America's rightful hegemony
over the world.
If not already obvious, 2010 has made clear that the
US government does not care a whit for the opinions of
citizens. The TSA is unequivocal that it will reach no
accommodation with Americans other than the violations
of their persons that it imposes by its unaccountable
power. As for public opposition to war, the Associated
Press reported on December 16 that "Defense Secretary
Robert Gates says the U.S. can't let public opinion
sway its commitment to Afghanistan." Gates stated
bluntly what has been known for some time: the idea is
passe that government in a democracy serves the will
of the people. If this quaint notion is still found in
civics books, it will soon be edited out.
In Gag Rule, a masterful account of the suppression of
dissent and the stifling of democracy, Lewis H. Lapham
writes that candor is a necessary virtue if
democracies are to survive their follies and crimes.
But where in America today can candor be found?
Certainly not in the councils of government. Attorney
General John Ashcroft complained of candor-mongers to
the Senate Judiciary Committee. Americans who insist
on speaking their minds, Ashcroft declared, "scare
people with phantoms of lost liberty," "aid
terrorists," diminish our resolve," and "give
ammunition to America's enemies."
As the Department of Justice (sic) sees it, when the
ACLU defends habeas corpus it is defending the ability
of terrorists to blow up Americans, and when the ACLU
defends the First Amendment it is defending exposures
of the lies and deceptions that are the necessary
scaffolding for the government's pretense that it is
doing God's will while Satan speaks through the voices
of dissent.
Neither is candor a trait in which the American media
finds comfort. The neoconservative press functions as
propaganda ministry for hegemonic American empire, and
the "liberal" New York Times serves the same master.
It was the New York Times that gave credence to the
Bush regime's lies about Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction, and it was the New York Times that
guaranteed Bush's re-election by spiking the story
that Bush was committing felonies by spying on
Americans without obtaining warrants. Conservatives
rant about the "liberal media" as if it were a vast
subversive force, but they owe their beloved wars and
coverups of the Bush regimes' crimes to the New York
Times.
With truth the declared enemy of the fantasy world in
which the government, media, and public reside, the
nation has turned on whistleblowers. Bradley Manning,
who allegedly provided the media with the video made
by US troops of their wanton, fun-filled slaughter of
newsmen and civilians, has been abused in solitary
confinement for six months. Murdering civilians is a
war crime, and as General Peter Pace, Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the National Press Club
on February 17, 2006, "It is the absolute
responsibility of everybody in uniform to disobey an
order that is either illegal or immoral" and to make
such orders known. If Manning is the source of the
leak, he has been wrongfully imprisoned for meeting
his military responsibility. The media have yet to
make the point that the person who reported the crime,
not the persons who committed it, is the one who has
been imprisoned, and without a trial.
The lawlessness of the US government, which has been
creeping up on us for decades, broke into a full
gallop in the years of the Bush/Cheney/Obama regimes.
Today the government operates above the law, yet
maintains that it is a democracy bringing the same to
Muslims by force of arms, only briefly being
sidetracked by sponsoring a military coup against
democracy in Honduras and attempting to overthrow the
democratic government in Venezuela.
As 2011 dawns, public discourse in America has the
country primed for a fascist dictatorship.The
situation will be worse by 2012. The most
uncomfortable truth that emerges from the WikiLeaks
saga is that American public discourse consists of
cries for revenge against those who tell us truths.
The vicious mendacity of the US government knows no
restraint. Whether or not international law can save
Julian Assange from the clutches of the Americans or
death by a government black ops unit, both executive
and legislative branches are working assiduously to
establish the National Security State as the highest
value and truth as its greatest enemy.
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