FEARLESS AND TYRANNICAL: Why the Bush administration gets away with it

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."
Thomas Jefferson

Ironic. Even as the founding fathers preached liberty, they set up the national government to practice tyranny.

What?

True. While they built the bulwarks of liberty into the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, the founding fathers included in Article 1, Section 8 a fateful provision paving the road to tyranny in a presidential, rather than parliamentary system of government.

And if you doubt the truth of this statement you need only answer the question: Do the American people fear their government or does the government fear the people? At a time when the government can imprison and torture you indefinitely without charges or due process through the simple expedient of declaring you an “enemy combatant,” or tap your phones and monitor your e-mail without warrants, or surreptitiously search your premises, or confiscate your property merely because they suspect you of a crime, or capriciously examine every intimate detail of your finances and medical records, the answer is obvious.

In the U.S., the people fear the government; in France, the government fears the people. Why? There’s a simple explanation. In France, the seat of government is located in the heart of the country’s most populous city. Consequently, when the people are angry with their government, they take to the streets in the hundreds of thousands. Mindful of the storming of the Bastille and the Tuileries during the French Revolution, and the various episodes in French history when Parisians manned the barricades, the French government rightly fears angry demonstrators controlling the streets. Given France’s parliamentary system, legislators responding to such protests can bring down the government with a vote of no confidence. Recent French history demonstrates government’s fear of and responsiveness to mob action: In October 2005, riots by disaffected Muslim youths in the Paris banlieue of Clichy-sous-Bois forced the Chirac government to promise to purge France of the "poison" of discrimination and to provide €800 million to local authorities and charities to help create jobs in the suburbs. In March 2006, massive student street protests forced the French government to reconsider a contested job law intended to make labor markets more flexible.

The U.S. government knows no such fear. That’s largely because, not by accident, the U.S. seat of government was located far from the major population centers, in a formidable yet subtle redoubt at the confluence of two rivers, virtually impregnable to mob assault. Furthermore, under the Presidential system ordained by the Constitution, the government cannot be brought down by a simple no-confidence vote by fearful legislators responding to angry mobs. The only basis for removing the President is through impeachment and conviction for "treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors," as set forth in Article 2, Section 4 of the Constitution. Setting the bar that high for removing the chief executive from office provides the executive with a relatively high degree of job security.

That is why the Bush administration gets away with egregious abrogation of Constitutional rights previously mentioned, and disdain for the will of Congress and a majority of the American people on such issues as the war in Iraq, treatment of veterans, reproductive rights, climate change, the environment, mass firings of federal prosecutors, no-bid defense contracts for cronies, bribing of media commentators, the rebuilding of New Orleans, enforcement of campaign finance laws, Congressional subpoenas for current and former employees of the executive branch, government subsidies for religious organizations, tax breaks for wildly profitable oil companies and tax cuts for multi-millionaires.

Insulated within the Beltway in the secure redoubt decreed by the founding fathers and designed by Major L’Enfant, and with continuity in office assured by the presidential, rather than the parliamentary system of government, the Bush administration does not fear the people. Without such fear, the administration is free to make the people fear the government, thereby, according to the logic of Thomas Jefferson, paving the road to tyranny.

While the road has been thus paved for many years, the Bush administration is unique in traversing it in dogged pursuit of despotic objectives at odds with the U.S. Constitution and not dissimilar fundamentally from the “long train of abuses and usurpations” and “history of injuries” decried by the very same Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence.

Sadly, we have only ourselves to blame for our predicament. We the people, the ultimate source of authority for the U.S. government, have struck a Faustian bargain to surrender our voice and liberties for a hollow promise of security from an arrogant government notoriously incompetent, secretive, unaccountable and mendacious. As long as we cling to that bargain, our government will remain fearless and tyrannical.

“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves”
Edward R. Murrow

(The full 2,500-word text of this essay is available to subscribers in the August 2008 issue of the Cassandra Chronicles.)