Where Have Conservative Libertarians' Been?

John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute

“The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year,” writes Barton Gellman in The Washington Post, “a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters—one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people—are extending the bureau’s reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.” Indeed, according to a previously classified document released recently, the FBI has conducted clandestine surveillance on some U.S. residents for as long as 18 months at a time without proper paperwork or oversight. Thus, the government does not limit its attacks to actual terrorists. Ordinary American citizens are the focus as well.


Take the case of Selena Jarvis, a social studies teacher at Currituck County High School in North Carolina. She assigned her senior civics and economics class to use photographs to illustrate their freedoms as found in the Bill of Rights. One student photographed a picture of George W. Bush next to his own hand in a thumbs-down position as a way to express his freedom to dissent. However, while developing the student’s photographs, a Wal-Mart photo department employee, in obvious need of some education on the Bill of Rights, called the police. They then contacted the Secret Service. But rather than dismissing the case, the Secret Service decided to investigate the matter. The agents interrogated the student and questioned Jarvis. While questioning Jarvis, an agent asked her if she thought the photo was suspicious. Dumbfounded, Jarvis responded, “No, it was a Bill of Rights project!” Jarvis was startled at the claim that the student was a terrorist and called the whole thing “ridiculous.”


Why would the Secret Service, which is not run by incompetent individuals, take the time to investigate a high school student and his class project? It is safe to assume that the Secret Service knew the student was not a terrorist and wanted to make an example of him for others who might be bold enough to use their right to dissent. After the ordeal, Selena Jarvis commented, “I blame Wal-Mart more than anybody. I was really disgusted with them. But everyone was using poor judgment, from Wal-Mart up to the Secret Service.”


Unfortunately, this is not the only “ridiculous” case of individuals tattling on their neighbors. For example, Barry Reingold was questioned by the FBI after he criticized the war in Afghanistan in the locker room of his local health club. In another case, Derek Kjar’s neighbors reported his bumper sticker of George Bush wearing a crown with the heading “KING GEORGE—OFF WITH HIS HEAD.” As a result, Kjar was interrogated by the Secret Service. In both instances, close contacts of the two men reported them to the authorities.


And as if things weren’t bad enough, the military is now spying on us. A secret database obtained by NBC News recently reveals that the Department of Defense and the Pentagon have also increased intelligence collection on American citizens inside the country. This includes monitoring peaceful anti-war groups and protests and involves video taping, monitoring the Internet and collecting the name of anyone critical of the government. There is even a toll-free number for anyone interested to report on fellow Americans to the military. And the spying even includes religious groups such as those attending the Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Florida. “On a domestic level, this is unprecedented,” says NBC News analyst William Arkin. “I think it’s the beginning of enormous problems and enormous mischief for the military.”


Since 9/11, it has been consistently drummed into our heads by the government, with all its alerts and multi-colored alarms, that terrorists are everywhere and even your next door neighbor could be one. As a result, the government’s promotion of fear and paranoia has moved us closer to an Orwellian state where citizens inform on one another. The result is that the citizens often do the job of the police and no longer use good judgment before reporting their neighbors. In the process, such informing citizens are doing away with their own freedoms.


These tactics are not new to the world. The Nazi and Soviet secret police of former regimes were infamous for such tactics. The police controlled the people through fear, and the subsequent result was a totalitarian state. They turned their respective population into a society of informers. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning author and former Soviet dissident, once spoke of how fear destroys the will of the people. He noted how the Russian people would kneel inside the doors of their apartments, pressing their ears to listen when the KGB came at midnight to arrest a neighbor who had spoken out against the government. Solzhenitsyn said that if all the people would have come out and driven off the secret police, sheer public opinion would have demoralized the effort to subdue a free people. But fear and paranoia kept the people at bay.


We should not be afraid of government agents, whether employed by the FBI, the military or local authorities. Their salaries are paid through our tax dollars. Supposedly, they are our servants. Truly free societies do not function that way. Our fear of government servants is a clear indication of ominous things to come. If citizens are too frightened to use their freedoms, then those freedoms will become extinct. And the darkness will be complete.

Welcome words from an organization dedicated to "civil liberties and human rights", conservative or not. However, why has it taken so long? Both the Democrats and Libertarians have been largely silent on topics close to their hearts for nearly three years. Surely there is more to the effects of fear that took hold long before the government agents were authorized to get involved. Seeing the Forest addresses this issue.

The big question, of course, is how this is going to manifest itself in terms of political action within the right, and within the Republican Party... at what point is the level of alarm and dissent going to rise so high as to precipitate real change?


I'm afraid the answer is, "far too late". The Republican Party and the right are reaping the whirlwind of thirty years of extremist propaganda, which has acquired a momentum of its own - a tsunami of rhetoric whose operators broke no dissent from the party line, and whose tactics, in many ways, can be seen as functionally analogous to those used by the Nazi and Soviet secret police referred to above. I have to wonder what type of heat Whitehead is taking from Administration loyalists as a result of this article... it might be interesting to see whether or not the Rutherford Institute's funding is affected over the next few years.

An atmosphere of fear did indeed emerge from the Reagan Administration. Democrats were seen as "tax and spend liberals" and were "soft on defence". Meanwhile, Reagan was running up a deficit that quickly quadrupled the National Debt. I truly thought no Republican would ever dare do that again. "Starving the beast" became the secret methodology of killing the federal government. Grow government until it starves on it's excess.
But this is nothing new in politics. Society has always been quick to pick out scapegoats in times of economic or political stress. But it's been a certain kind of government that has used that tactic effectively, its been those that lean towards an authoritarian bent, be they from the right or the left. As Whitehead says, the Soviets and the Nazi were known for that kind of government excess. It appears life in a authoritarian family lead people to authoritarian attitudes. From a recent psychological study, Psychological Bulletin 2003, Vol. 129, No. 3, 339–375:

Extremely conservative and authoritarian attitudes may lead ... to an actively hostile or dominant approach to dealing with socially sanctioned scapegoats and devalued out-groups (and) may lead to a more passively submissive or deferential posture toward authorities, which would make its subscribers ideal candidates to follow the next Hitler or Mussolini. Thus, extreme right-wing attitudes "lock" people into a "dominance submissive authoritarian embrace".

Every dictator has used this method to control his supporters since the begining of history.