[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 131 (Tuesday, September 23, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1864-E1865]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         A DEMON FOR OUR TIMES

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. MICHAEL G. OXLEY

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 23, 2003

  Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Speaker, it is rare that an issue as important as 
homeland security is written with such cogency and realism as the 
following column by Dorothy Rabinowitz, a member of the Wall Street 
Journal editorial board. I recommend it to all of my colleagues.

                   [From the OPINION, Sept. 22, 2003]

                         A Demon for Our Times

                        (By Dorothy Rabinowitz)

       Frenzy mounts uncontrolled over John Ashcroft, now 
     considered--in those quarters touched by the delirium--enemy 
     number one 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 anti-terrorist 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

[[Page E1865]]

     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 any time 
     soon.

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