We Are Not What We Set Out
to Be by John W. Whitehead
As
nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both
instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And
it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the
air—however slight—lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.—William
O. Douglas, U.S. Supreme Court Justice
The year was 1961, and I
was 14 years old, the only child of blue-collar workers living in Peoria,
Illinois. I was young, poor and lacking any great understanding of the winds of
change that were blowing through our nation and the world. Even so, I found
myself transfixed as I huddled in front of our small black-and-white television
to watch John F. Kennedy deliver his inaugural address as the nation’s 35th president.
The sound might have crackled and the picture wavered, but Kennedy’s message
came through loud and clear. It was a message of hope, challenge and faith in
an America that could be a beacon of freedom to the rest of the world. Kennedy called us the
“heirs of that first revolution” and spoke of rights that come not from the
state but from God. “Let the word go
forth,” he said, “that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born
in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud
of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of
those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which
we are committed today at home and around the world.”
Suddenly I realized that
he was not talking to my parents or my teachers or the cop on the beat: he was
talking to me. Everything in me wanted to be part of an America that was
a champion of justice and a model of virtue. I longed to be part of making that
dream a reality. It was a pivotal moment in my life, one that eventually led me
to seek out a career in constitutional law. When Kennedy called on Americans to
“bear the burden of a long twilight struggle” to defend freedom in its hour of
maximum danger, I never would have guessed how long that twilight would last—or
that almost half a century later, we, the American people, would come to
represent the gravest threat to our freedoms through our apathy, ignorance and
indifference.
The world is a very
different place from when I was a teenager. We undeniably live in perilous,
uncertain times. Our nation is
plagued by perpetual war. An erratic economy. Shadowy enemies bent on
terrorizing us.
Increasingly aggressive
government agencies. An appalling literacy rate. A populace with little
understanding of history or the United States Constitution. Porous borders with
countless illegal immigrants flowing over them. Ravaging natural disasters. A
monstrous financial deficit. Armed forces pushed to their limit, spread around
the globe. We are embroiled in wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq against a rebel enemy that seems to attack from
nowhere.
Our country is both
ideologically and politically fractured. America’s credibility around the world
is at an all-time low. And I am not alone in believing that we may be only one
terrorist attack away from becoming a military state.
All of this has
contributed to a general air of cynicism, pessimism and despair. According to a
Time-CNN poll, 59 percent of Americans
believe that the end-times prophecies found in the Book of Revelation—all of
which end in massive violence
and mayhem—are going to come true. This negative view of the future was
magnified by the terrorist attacks
of September 11, 2001, when the unthinkable became our worst nightmare and our
way
of thinking about our
freedoms and way of life was forever altered.
Since then, the rights
enshrined in the Constitution, particularly those in the Bill of Rights, have
come under constant attack.
Governmental tentacles now invade virtually every facet of our lives, with
agents of the government listening in on our telephone calls and reading our
emails. Technology, which has developed at a rapid pace, offers those in power
more invasive, awesome tools than ever before. The groundwork has been laid for
a new kind of government where it will no longer matter if you’re innocent or
guilty, whether you’re a threat to the nation or even if you’re a citizen. What
will matter is what the president—or whoever happens to be in power at the
time—thinks. And if you’re considered a threat to the nation, you’ll be locked
up with no access to the protections our Constitution provides. You will, in
effect, disappear. Some already have.
Sadly, few Americans seem
worried. More than once I’ve heard it said, “I’m a law-abiding citizen. I have nothing
to worry about.” While that statement might have been true at one time, we are
now operating under a system of government where everyone is suspect. No longer
do Americans have a clear sense of what it means to be a free people. Nor
does it seem as if many of us even care.
Bobbleheads
in Bubbleland
We have changed. Consequently,
the light of that once bright and shining city on a hill has dimmed. Americans,
says journalist and author Nicholas von Hoffman, are living in a glass dome, a
kind of terrarium, cut off from both reality and the outside world. In his
words, they are “bobbleheads in Bubbleland…. They shop in bubbled malls, they
live in gated communities, and they move from place to place breathing their
own, private air in the bubblemobiles known as SUVs.”
We are besieged by
technological gadgets, which, while they have succeeded in creating numerous conveniences
for our already busy lives, have also managed to fully occupy our attention,
distracting us from meaningful discourse about issues of national and
international significance.
America currently spends
in excess of $40 billion annually on public education. Yet the numbers are undeniable:
in comparing the literacy level of adults in 17 industrialized countries,
America was number ten on the list. And 16- to 25-year-olds under-perform their
foreign counterparts as well. Moreover, they do so to a greater degree than do
Americans over 40.
The number of Americans
who read books has also steadily declined. As a recent National Endowment for
the Arts report titled “Reading at risk” found, many Americans do not
ordinarily read voluntarily (not required for work or school), and only 57
percent of American adults read a book in 2002. When they do read, it is often fiction
or books that focus on narcissistic themes such as diet and self-help.
Millions of adults are
lacking the most rudimentary knowledge about history and world geography, such
as the identity of America’s
enemy in World War II. In fact, “one reads that 11 percent of young adults
can’t find the United States on a world map, and that only 13 percent of them
can locate Iraq. It turns out that only 12 percent of Americans own a passport,
more than 50 percent were (prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall) unaware that
Germany had been split into eastern and western sectors in the aftermath of
World War II and 45 percent believe that space aliens have visited the earth.
As in the Middle Ages, when most individuals got their understanding of the world
from a mass source—i.e., the Church—most Americans get their ‘understanding’ from
another mass source: television.”
Television, however, has
been a poor teacher. Television news has become a function of entertainment to
such an extent that political and historical analysis typically amounts to two-
to three-minute sound bites. With such shallow content, it is easy to see why,
on the eve of the 2004 presidential election and despite overwhelming evidence
to the contrary, 42 percent of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was involved
in the September 11 attacks and 32 percent believed he had personally planned
them. No wonder the average American’s understanding of politics is generally
reduced to a few slogans picked up the day before from broadcast news or
late-night comedy shows. There is truth in the
adage that civilizations do not die from being attacked or invaded. They do
themselves in.
Americans today have come
to embody what the renowned eighteenth century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
termed “stupidity.” Nietzsche was not referring to an intelligent quotient or
ignorance, per se; rather, he meant stupidity as in mentally clogged,
anesthetized numb. As author and professor Thomas de Zengotita recognizes: “He
thought people at the end of the nineteenth century were suffocating in a vast
goo of meaningless stimulation.”
The same could be said of
Americans at the dawn of the twenty-first century. We, too, are mentally
clogged, anesthetized, numb.
Connected to our cell phones, computers and television sets, we are
increasingly disconnected from each
other. Even when physically crowded together at concerts and sports spectacles,
we fail to truly communicate
with one another. According to author Alex Marshall, Americans live “in one of
the loneliest societies on the
earth.”
The
Loss of Community
To a large degree, we have
lost our sense of community. This precipitous decline
in community, as documented in Harvard University professor Robert Putnam’s
appropriately titled book Bowling
Alone, began in the last quarter of the twentieth century. As community groups
started to disappear, Americans became drastically disconnected from family,
friends, neighbors and social structures. “Church
groups, union membership, dinners at home with friends, bridge clubs—all have been decimated. By 1993,
the number of Americans who attended one public meeting on town or school affairs
during the previous year was down 40 percent from what it had been twenty years
before that time.” And in the mid-seventies, Americans entertained friends at
home an average of fourteen to fifteen times per year. By the late nineties,
that figure had dropped 45 percent.
This loss of community has
given rise to a “bystander effect” that allows us to view the world around us
from a distance, no longer compelled to get involved in matters that do not
directly impact us, even when someone is in peril. An incident that occurred in
July 2007 illustrates the gravity of the problem. According to police, as a
stabbing victim lay dying on the floor of a Kansas convenience store, five
shoppers, including one who stopped to take a picture of the victim with a cell
phone, stepped over the woman. “It was tragic to watch,” said a police
spokesman. “The fact that people were more interested in taking a picture with
a cell phone and shopping for snacks rather than helping this innocent young
woman is, frankly, revolting.” The victim, only 27 years old, later died at the
hospital from her injuries. “The lack of concern for humanity over this young woman’s
life is deeply troubling,” a policeman noted.
Moreover, the rise of
corporatism has negatively impacted community life. Corner groceries and drug
stores, owned by people who actually worked and lived in the community, have
all but disappeared. In their place, huge commercial chain stores and
multinational outlets have not only eradicated mom-and-pop businesses, they
have created a cultural landscape of blandness where, no matter in what city or
state you happen to find yourself, everything is the same. Shopping malls are
now America’s most distinctive public space. But mall culture is not community.
Rejecting community in
favor of self-gratification and isolation, we have in essence become an atomistic
society, a characteristic of emerging totalitarian societies. Atomistic societies
form pseudo-communities in times of perceived crisis, which we briefly saw in
the wake of 9/11. But as Michigan State University professor Darren W. Davis
recognizes, that did not last long: “People stopped giving to charities and
volunteering. American flags displayed in front of homes and patriotic bumper
stickers disappeared. Church attendance returned to pre-September 11 numbers,
and old animosities resurfaced.” The illusion of community
faded. What did not fade, however, was our tendency to be easily led by our
fears, especially in times of
real or perceived crisis.
Accomplices
in Terror
Just before his historic
broadcast on McCarthyism, which ravaged 1950s’ American culture, the renowned television
journalist Edward R. Murrow remarked to his staff, “No one can terrorize a
whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.”
Unfortunately, the
American people have, for all intents and purposes, become accomplices in constructing
their own prison. We have become a culture of fear—a nation divided. Heavily
armed and barricaded in our homes, we fear our surroundings, our neighbors and
the encroaching world of terrorism. This is somewhat understandable because the
government’s system of alarms and alerts keeps the population in tension. All
it takes is a color-coded alarm from the government to start the masses
clamoring for greater security measures, even if it means relinquishing more of
our freedoms. Murrow’s reminder to his viewers at the end of that unforgettable
March 9, 1954, broadcast is appropriate for our fearful populace today:
“We will not walk in fear,
one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig
deep in our history and our doctrine; and remember that we are not descended
from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and
to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular. This is no time for men…to
keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our
history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way
for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities.”
Despite this timeless
warning, we have largely abdicated our responsibilities and allowed ourselves
to be ruled by our fears, helped along in no small measure by the events of
9/11. After the 9/11 attacks, government leaders and politicians naturally
focused their efforts on shoring up the nation’s security. A mere
month and a half after 9/11, the structure for a new governmental scheme was in
place. The initial phase included the passage of the massive 342-page USA
Patriot Act, which most constitutional scholars consider one of the greatest
assaults ever on civil liberties. Ramrodded through Congress by the Bush
Administration, the bill was passed in the U.S. House of Representatives a day
after being introduced (with remarkably little debate and discussion) and in
the U.S. Senate. Incredibly, few of the
representatives had even
read the legislation they were passing. Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) cast the
lone dissenting vote on October
25, 2001. President Bush then signed the bill into law on October 26.
New security proposals
embodied by legislation such as the Patriot Act quickly transformed American
society. Americans were warned that they would have to adjust to a new way of
life—a new normal—and adjust they did. But the “new normal” came with a price.
The adjustments initially took the form of excruciatingly long waits, pat-downs
and heightened security at airports, sporting events and concerts. These
necessary precautions, however, soon gave way to greater encroachments on our
rights, some of which went unnoticed by the public-at-large. As professor Davis
writes, “American citizens would have to adjust to greater limitations on their
civil liberties and freedoms through greater surveillance and monitoring of communications,
racial and ethnic profiling, stricter immigration rules, and greater scrutiny
of reading habits and financial records.” Moreover, “[t]he public would have to
stomach violations of international laws protecting prisoners from abuse and
torture.”
A number of Americans did
stomach such violations, and some even justified the military actions that
resulted in the horrific photographs which surfaced in April 2004 at Abu Ghraib
prison. In one picture, a hooded man is standing on a box with electrical wires
attached to various parts of his body (“the Statue of Liberty,” as the Iraqis
sardonically called it), which seemed to indicate that American troops had
actually participated in the torture of Iraqi prisoners. As we later learned,
the man, Satar Jabar, was nothing more than an accused car thief.
Despite no further attacks
on American soil, the nation remained in a heightened state of alert. And soon
the new normal—with its loss of freedom, heightened surveillance and increased sense
of vulnerability—began to feel more and more like life as usual, but with a new
paradigm in place. As journalist Lisa Anderson observed: “Of all the changes in
all the 9/11-related statistics amassing day by day, one of the greatest, and
perhaps most lasting, is the abrupt introduction of Americans to feelings of
insecurity, fear, and vulnerability to terrorism on their soil. In a space of
hours, Americans learned for themselves what people in so many countries have known
for years: No one truly is safe from terrorism.”
Danger
Signs
Many Americans have come
to blindly believe that the government will ensure our safety (or at least
provide the illusion of safety). But such gullibility comes at a steep price—the
devaluation of our freedoms.
What we are presently
grappling with is nothing new. The history of governments is that they
inevitably overreach. And, if not deterred, they will impinge or eradicate
freedom. That is not to say that those who run the government are necessarily
evil. Their actions to the contrary, government officials are not malevolent people.
They often operate from a misguided sense that whatever they do is for the
greater good. Whether the motives were initially benevolent or otherwise,
however, the point is that in the process of seeking perhaps even worthy goals,
the foundational principles of freedom are being undermined in America.
None of this is a secret.
The danger signs are all around us. Although some may heed the warnings, many
more choose to look the other way. Indeed, how many of us take our freedoms for
granted? How many in moments of perceived peril or stress would allow their
rights to be taken away? How many have already decided that a temporary
security is more important than freedom? How many dare speak up for those brave
enough to voice their opposition to government policies? How many, when the
basic principles of the Constitution and Bill of Rights are criticized as being
too cumbersome or outdated, fail to speak up in their defense? How many Americans
have even read the Constitution?
Americans have become much
too complacent. A 2007 Pew Research Center survey found that although 65 percent
of Americans are satisfied with their private lives, they are overwhelmingly
pessimistic about their public institutions—only 25 percent indicated
satisfaction with the state of the nation. Two-thirds believe the country is on
the wrong track, and 60 percent think the next generation will be worse off
than the current one. Yet not much is being done to remedy the problems. As the
Pew study indicates, Americans feel helpless to do anything about it. Worse,
“[t]hey don’t want a change that will upset the lives they have built for
themselves.”
They prefer to preserve
their personal peace and affluence—two preeminent American values. Even given
their dissatisfaction with Congress and the president, many Americans continue
to place their hopes in politics. There are those who naively believe that
somehow the next president is going to alter the course of events. But seldom
has that happened. As government invariably oversteps its authority, Americans
are faced with the pressing need to maintain the Constitution’s checks against
governmental power and abuse. After all, it was not idle rhetoric that prompted
the framers of the Constitution to begin with the words “We the people.”
We must remember that our
freedoms were created with extraordinary care and foresight, but they were not meant
simply for the moment. Our precious liberties were to be passed on to our
descendants indefinitely. As the Preamble to the Constitution declares, the
Constitution was drafted to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and
our posterity.” Formally adopted on September 17, 1787, it has long served as
the bulwark of American freedom. And we the citizens are entrusted as guardians
of those freedoms. When we shirk that duty, we leave ourselves wide open for an
authoritarian regime to rise to power, place restrictions on our freedoms and
usurp our right to govern ourselves.
Lest
We Forget Ourselves William Harlem Hale was a journalist, broadcaster for Voice of
America and a trusted advisor to President
Harry Truman. Writing in
1947, when America first emerged as the most powerful nation in the world, Hale
saw the looming forces of “greed, bigotry, and inertia.” He saw a country that could
annihilate large portions of the world with a single bomb. He saw a world
“accused of being overbearing and imperialistic” and a country where
communities were feeling the divisiveness of modernity. But Hale had a vision
of the role that America should play in the world. This was a vision born out
of his experiences in World War II. Hale tells of entering the German
concentration camp at Dachau in 1945, on the heels of a battalion of American
liberators. He describes emaciated prisoners scouring the campgrounds for rags
and bits of colored cloth to make crude national flags, even before they
searched for food. Standing in the drizzling rain, these prisoners in the
thousands listened to speeches from various national leaders in a ceremony of
liberation. And then came the Americans: An alley was made for the American
commanding officer—a tall, gray-haired colonel who now climbed the platform,
helmet in hand, and spoke a few words of greeting and fraternity. When he had
finished, the great iron gate which the Nazis had built was swung open and
three American soldiers marched in—a guard bearing the United States colors.
They advanced toward the platform, and I thought they would climb up and mount our
colors on it, impressively high. But at the last moment, upon the colonel’s
signal, they wheeled toward the assembled thousands, carried our flag into
their midst, and placed it there with the banners borne by men in convict
stripes from a dozen victim peoples. And at this there arose a shout—a general
shout of brotherhood and joy that echoed around the sodden walls. That moment,
for Hale, captured the soul of America: “I thought as I came away: This is what
we mean, this is what we are. Should we seem to be less than this—should we
stand apart from the lowly, from the people oppressed for faith, from those who
will not be bound—then, in spite of all our riches and our power, we are not
what we set out to be. We were these people, we have led, and we can again
lead, their common aspirations. If we forget this, we forget ourselves.”
At one time I felt a deep
sadness at the ravages time and circumstances have wrought upon my beloved country.
Though I and a few others remained determined to fight the growing
authoritarianism, most Americans seemed to have forgotten what it once meant to
be American. And few seemed to give a damn about our freedoms. My hope
that we could turn things around had been all but extinguished.
But change is in the air.
Over time, I have begun to catch fleeting glimpses of America’s once intrepid
spirit among ragtag groups of dissenters scattered across the country, and I
have found myself strangely buoyed.
More and more Americans
seem to be waking from a self-imposed sleep. If they do, and if they can be convinced
to hope and care once again, then maybe—just maybe—we can remember what it is
to be an American. And in remembering, perhaps we can preserve our own freedoms
while once again being an example of freedom to the world.
It feels good to be
hopeful again. However, hope is not enough. We must face up to the grim
realities of the day, realizing that reclaiming our liberties will entail
sacrifice and hard work. There is no easy fix or magic formula. We can make
significant progress in protecting our freedoms, only if we are realistic.
There can be no room for false optimism. Hoping that things will get
better will only add fuel to the already raging fire. Doing something
about it is our only recourse. We must get organized. And we must use the
valuable operatives given to us by the architects of the American republic: the
Constitution. There is work to be done. Let us begin.
Source: Georgia Weekly
Post, georgiaweeklypost.com. Published by The Rutherford Institute
https://www.rutherford.org/constitutional_corner/we_are_not_what_we_s...1 of 13
8/11/2014 9:20 PM
Some good points are made here. I hope the author will be pleased to know that I've spent the past week offline, fully engaged with reality: working on a real book manuscript, gardening, paying the bills, reading the Bible, and hanging out with my mother.
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