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Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
America declares 'war' on America
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© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
It's funny that a nation, rooted in the revolutionary oratory of men like
Patrick Henry and the pamphletry of Thomas Paine, the fiery rhetoric of
Samuel Adams and the sermonizing from the pens and pulpits of men like the
Revs. Jacob Cushing and Moses Mather, would have such a hang-up with
language.
America was forged in the smithy of the spoken word and printed page. The
founders regularly met in pubs and inns both before the War for Independence,
to hash out justification and agreement for secession from England, and
after, to begin the arduous task of making a government. Adams' Committees on
Correspondence kept revolutionary ideas in circulation, while incendiary
tracts by the likes of Paine and others gave backbone and resolve to the
colonials.
After Britain's bonds were shaken off, the founders turned attentions to
carefully crafting the Articles of Confederation, first, and finally the
Constitution of the United States. Polemics pro and con shot back and forth,
detailing every benefit, downside, blessing and danger inherent to the
proposed central government; these debates are preserved for us in part in
collections such as the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers.
Language was so important to Noah Webster that he composed his dictionary
specifically to distinguish Americans' use of English from the British. It
was obviously important to many others, as well, since it sold like crazy.
Take a thumb through the Declaration of Independence, Paine's "Common Sense,"
or John Adams' "A Defense of the American Constitutions." Americans find
their freedom in a mountain of words.
It is strange, and all the more tragic, then, that a nation set free by a
million speeches is now being re-enslaved by just one syllable. Whether the
citizens of the United States know it or not, liberties guaranteed by the
Constitution and Bill of Rights are being shackled by a metaphor, bound and
gagged by three little letters:
War.
Not war against a foreign government; not war against a nation that would
threaten our people, our soil, our lives and livelihoods. Those sorts of
wars, while tragic, are vital to the preservation of liberty. To save our
properties, persons and liberties from plunder, sometimes brutal and violent
force must be used to grisly and ghastly ends against the gangster armies of
foreign powers. Such is the price of freedom. That is, however, not the sort
of war I'm talking about.
In order to capitalize on the unifying spirit and goodwill engendered by that
righteous sort of entanglement, American politicians have, since President
Lyndon Johnson, used the word "war" to gain a backing for their political
programs and social schemes.
Johnson kicked off the scam with his "War on Poverty." President Nixon,
facing Johnson's successor in a battle for the nation's biggest bully pulpit,
conjured up the same rhetoric – only Tricky Dick directed the guns of
political rhetoric toward narcotics, officially launching America's "War on
Drugs."
Both of these schemes fail any real-world definition of war. The enemy is
less than clear, the battlefield is even less obvious and the rules of
engagement are fungible and at odds with our founding spirit and written
Constitution.
Take just the drug war. In a war, there's no such thing as due process before
depriving a man of life, liberty or property – as required by the Fifth
Amendment to the Constitution. Which is more than understandable. It's a war,
after all. Hardly any time to go requesting warrants and worrying about
protecting the liberties of your opponents.
The goal of war is to win, and recalling the wisdom of Gen. George Patton,
you don't win a war by dying for your country; you make the other "poor, dumb
bastard" (I think those were his words) die for his. Most any tactic in war
is excused and commended provided it results in victory. As such, enemies
have little in the way of rights, and if they are the aggressor nation,
they've ceded whatever rights they might have had. The bully who starts a
fight should not be surprised if his cry of "uncle" is met with a few more
fists to the teeth and boots to the kidneys.
This works fine for real wars, but the drug war is not a war. It's a policy,
a policy crafted in a nation whose overarching legal doctrines are contained
in the Constitution and Bill of Rights and to which the policy must conform.
By thinking of policy like war, however, the first instinct is to disregard
the rights of the citizens – enemies have no rights.
For first-hand experience with this fact, I'd point you to John Adams of
Lebanon, Tenn., or Juan Mendoza Fernandez of Irving, Texas, or maybe even
Mario Paz of El Monte, Calif. I'd point you to these three men had not police
been paying more attention to Gen. Patton than to Thomas Jefferson. All three
were gunned down in drug raids by officers more anxious to win a battle in
the War on Drugs than protect the rights of the citizens.
Minds ensnared by the metaphor of a battle, police are increasingly
militarized and made to look more like elite fighting squads than constables
and keepers of the peace. Ever-increasing outrages in enforcement are nodded
to with approval, while officers are often granted King's X for simply acting
in "good faith," even if that good faith results in the nullification of the
rights to life, liberty and property.
The Fifth Amendment is regularly ignored in the name of asset forfeiture. The
Fourth Amendment is spit upon by searches and seizures. The Eighth Amendment
is scratched in favor of mandatory minimum sentences that treat drug users
more severely than rapists and murderers. All this, while the Ninth and 10th
Amendments are used for doormats by drug warriors as they walk inside federal
buildings to plot more usurpations of the states' rightful role in deciding
how they might best deal with drugs themselves.
In this way, the drug war and its enthusiasts are repealing the founders. The
multitudes of words – each crafted and arranged soulfully, logically,
persuasively to make the case for freedom – are being redacted, erased and
ripped from the books that make up the library of liberty in America. That
amazing array of oratory, that stunning collection of wordcraft is steadily
being toppled and defeated by an army of one – the absurd and sad end of
treating a single metaphor like an entire action plan.
What Martin Luther wrote about Satan in his great hymn, "A Mighty Fortress is
our God," is increasingly true of America: "One little word shall fell him."
That word for us is war, and there are no white flags from which to escape
its grasp. America is enslaved by a metaphor.
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