by
Charles Goyette

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Pay close attention.
This is how it happens…

President Obama
found a moment of reduced visibility, in an unwatched hour on New
Year’s Eve, to sign the latest assault on the Fifth Amendment. In
signing the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 on New Year’s
Eve, Obama knew the nation’s attention would be elsewhere, diverted
by revelry, football, New Year’s Day, and a Monday national holiday.

In case you
haven’t heard, the National Defense Authorization Act allows the
government to detain people indefinitely – yes, it includes American
citizens who can be taken even on our native soil and imprisoned
– merely on the basis of accusations.

The measure
is “so radical,” says Human Rights Watch, “that it
would have been considered crazy had it been pushed by the Bush
administration.” And although Obama appended a signing statement
as he put his name to the act, solemnly assuring the nation that
the power he insisted on having won’t be used recklessly, it is
a political gesture that has no more force of a law than attaching
a little yellow sticky note to the bill. If the clear language of
the Constitution itself cannot bind the governing classes, it is
hard to imagine a post-it note having much effect on the current
or future presidents now that the indefinite detention of Americans
without trial has been legislatively countenanced.

There you have
it in a nutshell, the new American way: Guilty until proven innocent.

This is how
once-free people slip into state tyranny and slide into martial
law.

Political figures
are always careful to paper over their power grabs with spurious
legalities and midnight measures, granting themselves the rights
they are appropriating. No matter how flimsy the pretext, no matter
how forbidden the act, everything must be formalized and enabled.
Overturned rights and the pretext of legality.

That is how
the Fourth Amendment was trashed… marginalized by a document called
the Patriot Act.

And now the
Fifth Amendment is under attack.

But you shouldn’t
be surprised. If the president of the United States can have you,
an American citizen, assassinated on his own say so, how much of
a shock is it to find that he can have you arrested and held without
any of that pesky Fifth Amendment due process business?

Of course,
in trying to outdo Bush, Obama has all along claimed the right to
detain Americans without interference from the Bill of Rights. In
making this extraordinary claim, Obama relied on the 10 year old
Authorization for the Use of Military Force, the measure authorizing
the pursuit of those responsible for 9/11. But now this broad interpretation
of the authority to go after the likes of Osama bin Laden has been
extended to nullify whole sections of the Bill of Rights. Obama’s
reading of his authority, radical to begin with, has now been handed
to him in a statute, codified in a pile of paperwork called the
National Defense Authorization Act, and tucked right in with the
Pentagon’s budget.

It’s all part
of the forever war on terror, after all.

And if the
assault on the Fifth Amendment weren’t enough, the Sixth Amendment
was put on the table as well. Remember, that’s the one about “a
speedy and public trial” and “an impartial jury.”
Well, that’s all but flushed. Forget “speedy.” And “public”
just left town. You can now be detained without a trial at all.
Indefinitely.

America’s
Slippery Slope

How many points
on the line does it take to recognize our downward slope into state
lawlessness? Do we really need more than just the state claiming
the right to arrest and hold the people without due process? Does
it take more than the state assuming the right to assassinate them?

Warrantless
surveillance? Torture? The state secrets privilege? Critics of the
National Defense Authorization Act say it makes it easier for the
government to render citizens to fascist proxy states where they
can be tortured. Is that enough points on the line to see where
we are headed?

Can the slide
into state militarism be seen in serial wars, all undeclared? In
the trillions of war spending that won’t be refused? Or in drones
prowling overhead in what used to be called “our country,”
but has now been renamed with a term that echoes Nazi Germany: The
Homeland?

Perhaps it
is a slope that can be discerned in the threat of violence as the
first tool of diplomacy. In the paramilitary forces and SWAT teams
that are now part of virtually every federal department and agency.
In the Freudian envy with which local police departments across
the land ape the dress and manner of military operations. In the
TSA Viper (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) teams that
have now moved their surveillance of the American people beyond
the airports and put them on the open streets of das Heimland.

It happens
in every power grab in modern times. Like the National Defense Authorization
Act, there is always a legalistic pretext upon which the power grab
of the state relies. Lenin consolidated his control under the cover
of a blizzard of legalistic decree-laws. Hitler promulgated his
emergency decree “For the Protection of the People and the
State” on the day of the Reichstag fire. That was followed
by the “Enabling Act,” which declared that laws of the
Reich could deviate from the constitution.

Paper pretexts
all, slow-motion coups in the small hours conferring the appearance
of legitimacy as they subvert the people’s freedom.

Of course,
most of the national news media, the lapdog press, will miss the
latest assaults on the Bill of Rights. But do not assume it’s because
they were all hung-over. It’s easier to believe that they just don’t
care. If there is any dissent at all about this power grab, it will
not be because of the attack on your freedom. The national talk
shows will see it as important only to the extent that it allows
their favored team, red or blue, to move the ball down the field.

But where are
America’s sworn defenders of the Constitution? With raised arms,
all federal officeholders mouth the words, “I do solemnly swear
that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States
against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true
faith and allegiance to the same…”

Where are the
Democrats who made that vow, those who were worked into a frenzy
by the Patriot Act and Bush’s abuses of the Constitution, including
warrantless eavesdropping?

Where are they
now that Obama’s abuses are out-bushing Bush?

They are in
the same silent space occupied by the Republicans who denounced
Clinton’s unconstitutional and undeclared warfare until Bush went
to war without a declaration.

It is a silent
space large enough to accommodate all the Republican and Democrats
alike who make empty vows of empty words.

Believing not
one thing or the other, they make fitting companions for the cowards
Dante described as hateful to both God and his enemies:

“The
heavens, that their beauty not be lessened,
have cast them out, nor will deep Hell receive them –
even the wicked cannot glory in them.”

So pay close
attention. This is how it happens.

January
12, 2012

Copyright
© 2012 Charles Goyette

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