El Borak's Myopia

El Borak's Myopia

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Perspective

Max Raskin delivers news from the near future or the distant past - I can't tell which:

WASHINGTON – In a surprise decision bound to become a landmark case of the 21st century, the Supreme Court today ruled, eight-to-one, against the Constitution. In Bush v. Constitution, the issue before the court was, "whether the Constitution’s antiquated espousal of ‘liberty’ and ‘checks and balances’ should definitively establish the powers of federal government."

The case was brought up after President Bush filed an injunction against the document because of what he called, "the dangerous undermining of the War on Terror by the Bill of Rights." ...

It's satire*, of course, but it does illustrate a rather interesting parallel and a supreme irony that I first noted in the Decider's second year in office: Dubya, so hated by Progressives, is the reincarnation of Woodrow Wilson, the darling of Progressives. Wilson was not only the first President elected** as a Progressive, he was the worst President the US has ever had. Yet many who look to him as a hero are the type to complain that GWB is the worst ever, especially on the grounds of warmongering and the resultant abuse of domestic constitutional protections***.

So take a walk with me through the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson, progressive Democrat. We shall find some parallels with today and a few contrasts. But I think one thing we will find is a sense of perspective.

The year is 1913. Historian Woodrow Wilson has just been sworn in as President of the US. A Democrat elected primarily because of a nasty split in the GOP, Wilson has very little government experience (he was governor of New Jersey for 2 years) and no foreign policy experience. But he has a lot of ideas, big ideas that he will see implemented one way or another.

After the important task of re-racially segregating the federal government, Wilson's first term was was taken up by creation of the Federal Reserve System, passage of tariff reform, and implementation of the income tax. At first relatively innocuous (1% on only "the richest Americans") 6 years later it would feature a 77% top marginal rate. He would also "take on" big business, first by establishing a commission to watch them but eventually by funneling millions of dollars' worth of government contracts to them when he essentially took over the US economy in preparation for an unnecessary war.

Through 1916 the US had remained mostly neutral in regards to WWI. Wilson loved the Brits, but he could not get too close without alienating German and Irish immigrants in the US since both groups hated the Brits but were part of the Democrats' core support. Wilson's re-election campaign slogan**** was "He kept us out of war." A month after he was re-inaugurated - and no longer beholden to voters - Wilson went to Congress and asked for a declaration of war, so that by pursuing war the world could "be made safe for democracy." Then as today, not everyone was happy with war. Then as today, that was considered dangerous to the war effort.

Modern civil libertarians are rightly concerned about such presidential malfeasance as the creation of strange legal designations (e.g. "unlawful enemy combatant") that allow the government to hold and prosecute Americans without respecting constitutional protections. Wilson had the same problem for the same reason, and not being one who grasped the importance of a good acronym, his Patriot Act was called the Sedition Act of 1918.

Wilson's Sedition Act banned criticism of the government, threatening to imprison anyone who might "utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States, or the flag of the United States...". Secret societies sprang up, encouraged by the government, to spy on neighbors, and J. Edgar Hoover (yeah, the same one) collected 150,000 names in a secret government database. The government even refused to deliver mail to those deemed radical or disloyal.

The Supreme Court, in an abominable display of reading incomprehension, found the act constitutional. In that sense, the "story" above is not a story about the future, but the past, not about Bush, but about his spiritual father.

So here's a little perspective:

Elective War on behalf of Democracy and Purple Thumbs:

Bush: Iraq & Afghanistan, 4000 Americans dead.

Wilson: WWI, 120,000 Americans dead.

Spying and suppression of internal dissent:

Bush: PATRIOT Act. 500-1000 arrests, foreigners and 1 American at Gitmo, some extraditions and expulsions. Illegal wiretaps, databases (Terrorist, 500k), "aggressive" questioning. Denial of air travel. Regulation of speech in airports.

Wilson: Sedition Act: 10,000 arrests resulting in lengthy prison terms, some extraditions and expulsions. Illegal wiretaps, databases (Hoover, 150k), "aggressive" questioning. Denial of mail service. Regulation of speech everywhere.

The parallels are enlightening. In each case, you have an inexperienced president who gets the nation involved in an unnecessary war in the names of freedom and democracy. Each concentrates power not only in the executive branch, but increasingly within the person of the President himself. Each passes (with help of a captive Congress, both houses of which are controlled by the President's party) significant legislation that watches citizens, snoops around their stuff, keeps list of those deemed dangerous. Each equates (or at least their partisans equate) support of the war effort to be evidence of patriotism, each uses legal maneuvering to deny what courts will later consider constitutional rights. Where Bush spies, Wilson spied, where Bush collects names, Wilson collected names.

But the perspective is even more enlightening. Compared to Wilson, Bush is a piker. There is nothing Bush has done that Wilson did not do before him and nothing Bush has done that Wilson did not do twice as efficiently, effectively, or blatantly. If Bush uses fear of terrorism, Wilson used the Red Scare twice as well. Where Bush runs deficits, Wilson's were 5x as big.

This is in no sense a defense of Bush: there is not a vote I've cast in my life I regret more than the one I cast for Bush in 2000. But it is to say that those Progressives who hate Bush only think he's the worst President in history because they lack perspective. They have not seen what a real Progressive can do.

But we'll all see what she can do soon enough.

* Sometimes the line between satire, history, and prophecy is a blurry one.

** TR was a progressive but was not elected as one.

*** And we won't even get to globalism/internationalism. There is more, but it's just more of the same.

**** though to be fair, Wilson never himself uttered the words.

Labels: history, politics

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