GranolaBox

President Bush issued an executive order last week that represent a serious threat to our Fifth Amendment protections. The order allows the President to take the property of anyone who the government feels might threaten the stability of Iraq’s government or undermine Iraq reconstruction efforts.

Oh, and if you’re helping anyone do any of the above then you’re just as guilty. Watch out Michael Moore. Jeez… a lot of us better watch out for that matter.

This new move on the part of the Bush administration, while frightening and largely ignored by the mainstream media is nothing new in the history of American government. The difference is that in the past Congress has demanded a timetable for giving those rights back when the emergency subsided, and been very assertive about making sure the executive branch stuck to the deadlines.

During the Civil War, President Lincoln was desperate to keep the “border states” loyal to the United States and so shut down the opposition press in those states. He also suspended habeas corpus and instituted martial law in some areas to squelch anti-Union smack.

Congress also let him get away with several military actions that only they were supposed to authorize. Congress and the Supreme Court allowed him step on civil liberties and checks and balances because the fate of the nation was in jeopardy. They also reminded Lincoln both officially and unofficially that these powers must return to the people after the crisis ended. And they did. Thus the wartime President and Congress set important precedents for the loss and replacement of civil rights.

During World War I, the Espionage Act of 1917 made it illegal to speak out against the war effort. Charles Schenck, a socialist, distributed anti-draft leaflets to recent draftees and was subsequently arrested. He naturally claimed his rights to free speech had been violated, and the Supreme Court ruled against him.

Here, Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes established the litmus test by which free speech would be measured for years to come. If the speech presented a “clear and present danger” to others, it was not allowed. Holmes launched another famous phrase by arguing that a reasonable person would not yell “fire” in a crowded movie house, thus inciting a panic.

During World War II, hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans were put in concentration camps in the desert, losing their jobs and their property on the Pacific Coast allegedly because they threatened the war effort and the nation. Fred Korematsu sued the United States government for this egregious violation of his and others rights, but the Supreme Court upheld the President’s executive order, arguing that the rights of a minority of people may need to be sacrificed during a national emergency. After the war the Japanese-Americans were freed sans property and livelihood. The government later gave them or their immediate descendents a token compensation for their losses.

The USA Patriot Act thus fits in with previous wartime precedents, in that it gives the government extra wartime powers at the expense of peoples’ liberties. The difference is that the war on terror, which morphed mysteriously to include the Iraq war, has no end in sight.

While Congress might well end the Iraq War, it’s doubtful that President Bush will give up the power he’s so readily grabbed up in the name of precedent. This latest blow to the Fifth Amendment is yet another example.

One hopes the next President will not rely on the ubiquitous war on terror to continue to deny our civil rights. As long Congress, the press and the American people let the Commander-in-Chief erode the Bill of Rights without a word of criticism or protest, it seems likely we won’t get the rights we’ve lost back any time soon.

Technorati Tags: President Bush, Fifth Amendment, Iraq reconstruction, Michael Moore, Bush administration, habeas corpus, martial law, Patriot Act, war on terror

Filed under: Politics, History on July 22nd, 2007