Though I agree with the point that the constitution is not a suicide pact, I am finding it hard to completely agree with the argument that Charles Krauthammer made in his column in yesterday’s Washington Post
In 1977, when a bunch of neo-Nazis decided to march through Skokie, a suburb of Chicago heavily populated with Holocaust survivors, there was controversy as to whether they should be allowed. I thought they should. Why? Because neo-Nazis are utterly powerless.
Had they not been — had they been a party on the rise, as in late-1920s Germany — I would have been for not only banning the march but also for practically every measure of harassment and persecution from deportation to imprisonment. A tolerant society has an obligation to be tolerant. Except to those so intolerant that they themselves would abolish tolerance.
In other words, in Krauthammer’s world, you have the right to express an unpopular opinion as long as you don’t have the power to enforce it.
Call it situational libertarianism: Liberties should be as unlimited as possible — unless and until there arises a real threat to the open society. Neo-Nazis are pathetic losers. Why curtail civil liberties to stop them? But when a real threat — such as jihadism — arises, a liberal democratic society must deploy every resource, including the repressive powers of the state, to deter and defeat those who would abolish liberal democracy.
The analogy between the Neo-Nazis in Skokie and terrorism is completely misplaced. Terrorists don’t wish to just express their opinion, they employ murder, both on a small and large scale, as a means toward achieving their goal. That is why they should be stopped and why it is perfectly acceptable, even in a libertarian society to deport someone actively promoting the work of Al Qaida.
Arguing that it is acceptable to restrict the civil liberties of someone because of he opinions they express, when those opinions are not followed-up by actions, is dangerous because it denigrates the very purpose for which something like the First Amendment exists.
Krauthammer goes on to attempt to refute the slippery slope argument by citing examples from American history.
During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln went so far as to suspend habeas corpus. When the war ended, America returned to its previous openness.
Not entirely. The Civil War marked the beginning of the expansion of the Federal Government at the expense of the states, and things never returned to the pre-war status quo.
During World War II, Franklin Roosevelt interned an entire ethnic group. His policies were soon rescinded (later apologized for) and shortly afterward America embarked on a period of unprecedented expansion of civil rights
Partly true, but World War II also ended with the rise of the national security state and the size of government increased even more.
Similarly, the Vietnam-era abuses of presidential power were later exposed and undone by Congress.
This is just plainly untrue. If anything, the Imperial Presidency is even more powerful now than it was in 1974.
We have not slid inexorably toward police power. We have fluctuated between more and less openness depending on need and threat. And after the Sept. 11 mass murders, America awoke to the need for a limited and temporary shrinkage of civil liberties to prevent more such atrocities.
The question is, how long is this “temporary” shrinkage of civil liberties going to last ? If history is any guide, the increased powers given to law enforcement in the wake of 9/11 will remain in place, and be enhanced, for the foreseeable future regardless of whether they are actually useful in fighting the war on terror.
Linked with Outside The Beltway’s Beltway Sunday Drive.
