Great New Book
by Charley Reese
If you want to know what is really going on in President Bush's War on Terror, read "Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil," by James Bovard.
What is so valuable about Bovard's work is that it is just plain, fact-based, footnoted reporting. He is not a polemicist, and you will find no shrill arguments, no straw men, no rants, no name-calling such as you find in most of the quickie political books that people grind out these days. Instead, you get a sober recitation of the facts set within a philosophical framework that exactly matches that of the Founding Fathers.
These facts are damning, but they also often would be hilarious if the consequences were not so serious. Certainly some of the grand goof-ups at American airports would make a Hollywood comedy, and the baldfaced lies and surrealistic comments made by government officials would intrigue and depress George Orwell. One Cabinet official, during the government's campaign to get people flying again, publicly boasted that he was flying without bodyguards, when in fact his flight had been salted with undercover air marshals.
The bizarre Justice Department of Attorney General John Ashcroft defends itself by saying that even though people are arrested in secret, on charges that are secret, and are being held in places that are secret, the department is not guilty of secrecy because it admits what it is doing.
As Bovard sums it up, "By this standard, if President Bush publicly announced that all decisions and decrees would henceforth be kept secret, Americans would still have an open government — because the government openly announced its plans to keep secrets."
Weird, huh?
Bovard is not opposed to tracking down terrorists and bringing them to justice. He would, as a reasonable man, prefer that it be done without destroying domestic liberty and justice within the United States. He also points out, as other sensible people have, that foolproof protection against terrorist attacks is an illusion. Therefore, to swap liberty for promised security is to fall victim to a con game. You will lose your liberty for sure, but you will not gain the promised protection from terrorism.
To sum up, politicians routinely tell you what you want to hear, what will make you feel good. Bovard tells you, as a citizen, what you need to know. The truth is certainly less pleasant than government fairy tales, but Americans need to be realists. Government is a human institution, and human beings are flawed. Therefore, government is just as likely to be incompetent, to lie, to commit injustices, to exaggerate its virtues and to cover up its vices as is any other human institution.
I spent a lot of years close to government, and I can tell you that elected officials and bureaucrats are exactly as human as anyone else. Some are smart, some are stupid, some are brave, some are cowards, some are honest, some are crooks, some are conscientious, some are irresponsible, some love this country, and some lust for power.
To put blind faith in government is as stupid as putting blind faith in what a used-car salesman tells you. It is also un-American. In our great country, sovereignty rests with the people, and the proper attitude of a citizen toward government at all levels is courteous skepticism. Elected officials and bureaucrats are your servants, not your masters.
Government is not a benign institution. It is institutionalized force. Mao Tse-tung spoke the truth when he said the power of government comes out of the barrel of a gun. George Washington likened government to fire — a useful servant but a fearful master. If you want to remain free, you must always be wary of government, because governments, not private terrorists, are and always have been the greatest threats to liberty and the greatest mass murderers in history. The U.S. government has already killed three times as many innocent people in the war on terror than al-Qaida killed on Sept. 11.
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