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<p class="article">Mark Twain once made an essential and oft-forgotten distinction. "Loyalty to the country always - loyalty to the government when it deserves it." The distinction is a peculiarly American one, and one that has often been embraced by both extremes of the political spectrum when circumstances dictated. The principle of the sovereignty of a people over its government is enshrined eternally in the Declaration of Independence and is given legal weight and procedural prerogative throughout the system of checks and balances in the Constitution. It has expressed itself in various ways, from Shay's Rebellion at the dawn of the Union to the burning of draft cards nearly two hundred years later. No question today holds more moral significance for Americans today as a government - in our names, with our resources, at the risk of us all - assiduously prepares the grounds for the ultimate terror of war.</p>
<p class="article">Twain also said that "those of you who are inclined to worry have the largest selection in history to choose from." I am inclined to worry, but I simply don't know where to start. The Administration of George W. Bush has violated my sensibilities as an American citizen so often, on so many levels, and with such breathtaking crudeness, that I feel myself on the cusp of a moral precipice: has this government violated its duties so egregiously that a conscientious citizen could declare its authority null and void?</p>
<p class="article">Many would call my question unpatriotic at a time when we are under threat from attack at home and abroad. When the Attorney General can suspend the principle of <i>habeas corpus</i> via something called the USA Patriot Act which hardly raised an eyebrow in the Senate or Supreme Court. Presumably terms like "treasonous" might even be bandied about.</p>
<p class="article">Be that as it may. The Bush Administration has in effect staged a silent coup d'etat. Our systems of constitutional safeguards have been paralyzed by McCarthy-like accusations of insufficient patriotism, while the Fourth Estate has reduced itself to a soapbox for the likes of Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. When the government reacts only with contempt to legitimate concerns of its citizens, when all rational arguments are drowned out by the blaring of Fox News and Code Orange Terror Alerts, the only remaining channel of dissent is direct action.  </p>
<p class="article"><b><i>A little rebellion now and then…</i></b></p>
<p class="article">One of Jefferson's letters to Madison includes the famous quip of a little rebellion now and then being a good thing, as "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." On the eve of the Civil War, Frederick Douglas reiterated this, saying "The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of struggle … Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."</p>
<p class="article">This has always been implicit in the organizational character of every society, to a greater or lesser extent. The state always has a monopoly on the legitimate use of lethal force, which it may use to enforce its will when appropriate. This implicit threat stands behind every tax return, every stop sign, and every treaty to which the government lends this ultimate authority. </p>
<p class="article">The key issue is that of legitimacy. If the will of the government is proper and legitimate, then we as citizens - morally speaking - must acquiesce. If we fail to do so, we are then bound to accept the consequences of that failure. But if the will of the government is not legitimate, then we as citizens have every right to deny the improper exercise of that authority. The act of governance becomes one of <i>force majeure</i>: does the will of the government to punish exceed that of the people to be punished? </p>
<p class="article">This is not an idle question. In the end it has always been rebellion that has succeeded in making America a better place to live - not gradual change from within the system of economic, political, and military control. The Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the War of Capital and Labor during the Industrial Revolution, and the end of the Vietnam war were all violent cataclysms which shook society to its core. They were wars for America's soul that without exception left the media and their corporate masters shouting that the end was nigh and the world was about to collapse into darkness. But the promised darkness never came: and at the end we were one step closer to that America which Langston Hughes called "the land that never was … and yet, must be".</p>
<p class="article"><b><i>The corpus of American Values</i></b></p>
<p class="article">Members of the Bush White House have made a conspicuous point of claiming that they alone are responsible for determining what is politically legitimate in the post-September 11 environment.  John Ashcroft, in Senate testimony concerning the abridgment of judicial freedom, said "To those … who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve." Ari Fleischer, in an ominous and under-reported warning to the press corps when questions about the government's reaction to September 11 began to surface, announced that "It's not what government officials are saying that's the issue. It's the type of questions that reporters are asking that's the issue. The press is asking a lot of questions that I suspect the American people would prefer not to be asked, or answered."</p>
<p class="article">Of course the grandfather of this philosophy is George W., who was able to comment to Bob Woodward that "One of the great things about being President is that I don't have to explain myself to anybody" - forgetting that he has to explain himself to 270 million Americans, not to mention the rest of the world which is staring down the barrel of his six-gun politics. The Bush Administration's policies in the wake of September 11 can only be characterized as a maniacal expansion of the executive branch's political autonomy, combined with a ghoulish ambition to use the unparalleled might of the military and civilian security apparatus against perceived enemies the world over. </p>
<p class="article">The most frightening element of this is that no effort is made to hide the fact of what they are doing. Only the most cursory attempts are made to cloak the greedy expropriation of power in unconvincing utilitarian arguments and the tattered remnants of Clintonian internationalism which Bush has spent two years savaging with pitbull-like fury. Patriotism, normally the last refuge of the scoundrel, has been the first word on Bush's lips as he mows down Constitutional obligations and safeguards like noxious weeds.</p>
<p class="article">It is one of the great propaganda coups of modern history that the Republican Party has consistently been able to convince the American public that it is inherently a more effective defender of American values than the Democrats. By successfully claiming a monopoly on the interpretation of terms like 'national security' and 'national interest', and their ramifications for public policy, they have placed Democrats in the unenviable position of having to prove their own commitment to these same goals. </p>
<p class="article">There <i>is</i> a corpus of core American political values, and Bush has violated them egregiously. Among them are:</p>
<ul>
  <li class=article><b>Respect for the rule of law in domestic affairs</b>: in other words, simple constitutionalism. But by appointing an Attorney General with the moral self-righteousness of Jerry Falwell and the tactics of J. Edgar Hoover, he has made a mockery of this principle time and again.
  <li class=article><b>Respect for the will of the people</b>. Bush has made it a point of honor that he does not respond to public opinion when preparing the aerial slaughter of civilians as a precursor to empire. Yet with no electoral mandate, this is a right the 'appointee-president' simply does not have.
  <li class=article><b>Respect for the self-determination of nations</b>. As Bush's father once said, "the occupation and overthrow of one small nation is one too many". With its roots in Wilson's Fourteen Points, this has been one of the few contributions America can claim to have made to international affairs. Yet we now watch Bush shamelessly propounding a new American colonialism.
  <li class=article><b>Respect for the rule of law in international affairs</b>. While America has historically paid lip service to this principle, the end of the Cold War saw a conscientious effort by Bush I and Clinton to make this a guiding principle of American foreign policy. But from Kyoto to the ABM Treaty, and most seriously of all, the shameless strong-arming of the UN Security Council, Bush has made it clear that he respects no law save that of military and economic might.
  <li class=article><b>Concern for the security of the average American citizen</b>. Bush's foreign policy could not have been more finely calculated to inspire rage abroad and potentially catalyze more domestic terror attacks. His budgetary proposals clearly show where his priorities lie: hundreds of billions of dollars for military adventures abroad, hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy - paltry billions for domestic defense. 
  <li class=article><b>Concern for the health of public finances</b>. The government has a responsibility to ensure the economic well-being of the country in so far as is possible. Bush's reckless budget proposals have squandered a massive surplus and will surely send us spiraling into further generations of crushing debt. 
</ul>
<p class="article">Bush's policies have not made Americans safer, better off, or the world a better place. This was never their intention, of course. But they have packaged these policies and marketed them as "Brand America": and, incredibly, succeeded in doing so to a large extent. In doing so they have accomplished what most experts in propaganda says is impossible in a representative democracy - created a Big Lie, and gotten the public to swallow it as truth in a moment of panic. </p>
<p class="article">This has been done before, of course. Americans swallowed Big Lies about Japanese Americans forming a fifth column during WWII. No acts of sabotage had been attributed to them, but Americans willingly accepted their internment - in the name of their own safety - while strangely ignoring the millions of recent immigrants of German and Italian descent. They bought stories about the survivability of nuclear war and the dangers of communist infiltrators in the local PTA during the McCarthy years, in spite of absence of evidence for either theory. The public supported keeping the world safe for democracy in Vietnam by spattering ten year olds with napalm, only realizing decades later that it had been a terrible error. The interesting thing about Big Lies is that they cannot be outflanked logically, simply because they are so big - can you prove that if Vietnam falls, the Reds won't get Indonesia next? Can you prove Baghdad is not secretly funding al-Qaeda? How do you know your neighbor is not a terrorist? </p>
<p class="article">A public in the grip of fear can be convinced of any solution, no matter how absurd, for a time. Politicians, of course part of the public themselves, often convince themselves of the rightness of their solutions. It took Robert McNamara twenty years to admit that Vietnam had been a mistake, and Walt Rostow went to his grave a few weeks ago, still defending the war as essential to the survival of democracy. Big Lies can only be punctured directly, as Joseph Welch famously did with those famous words, which perhaps bear quoting once more: "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you no sense of decency?"</p>
<p class="article"><b><i>The Defense of American Values</i></b></p>
<p class="article">America's national security, national interests, and above all national values will not be defended in the thankless deserts of Iraq, as Churchill called them. All three will be drastically compromised by the impending war abroad and the fearful erosion of civil rights at home. And it seems that we the people are helpless to stop either. </p>
<p class="article">The Bush Administration has accomplished what no other presidency in modern history has managed: <i> it has achieved effective domination of all levers of power in American society</i>.  It directly controls the military and internal security apparatus, has approved massive economic expenditures, dominates the judicial branch, exercises indirect control over mass media, and has engineered a virtual breakdown in the constitutional system of checks and balances. The result is that there is no longer any effective, constitutionally sanctioned route via which the silenced majority of the American public can express its opposition to policies which are dramatically and demonstrably not in its best interest. </p>
<p class="article">Effective resistance to these policies can therefore only proceed via extra-constitutional means. One hopes that in the best tradition of the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War protests, these protests will be non-violent. One hopes that Bush will neglect his Nixonian legacy and not order the National Guard to shoot to kill. But an Administration with a proven willingness to carry out extra-judicial executions of Americans abroad cannot be counted on to refrain from doing the same at home.</p>
<p class="article">I do not countenance violence as an appropriate response to aggressive actions from military or law enforcement authorities. Nevertheless, dramatic public action aimed at disruption of the functioning of the civilian and military apparatus is both necessary and appropriate when confronting a government which has violated essential terms of the social contract. This includes:</p>
<ul>
  <li class="article">Non-payment of taxes for the duration of illicit military involvement</li>
  <li class="article">Refusal to purchase government bonds and securities </li>
  <li class="article">Non-violent occupation of public buildings </li>
  <li class="article">Blockading of military installations and the transport of military goods</li>
  <li class="article">Refusal of National Guardsmen and -women to serve in the event of being called up</li>
  <li class="article">Non-violent occupation of media outlets in order to halt what is essentially government propaganda</li>
</ul>
<p class="article">The final goal of these activities should be precipitating the resignation of Cheney and Bush from office, or at least preventing them from engineering irrevocable domestic and foreign policies in our names for the duration of their tenure. </p>
<p class="article">Bush and his chickenhawk generals constantly call for sacrifice, and with good reason: we will not build the America of which the Founding Fathers dreamt without conflict and sacrifice. But Jefferson's dream is not Bush's, or Cheney's, or Rumsfeld's. Not by a long shot. And we have allowed ourselves to lose sight of that essential fact.  </p>
<p class="article">The Big Lie tells us that we must accept secret military tribunals to remain free; that we must kill another nation's children a world away in order to protect our own; that we must mortgage our future in order to save it. I hesitate to think where this logic can end. We are on a slippery slope which could easily become a cliff. As Rousseau said, "man must be forced to be free": and perhaps the shock of September 11 was necessary to make us as citizens reclaim the right to make these decisions about what a human life is worth, and what are acceptable prices to pay in pursuit of our national interests. This is a debt we owe to our own national heritage, and one which we must accept. Accept, and act upon decisively. History, and its victims, will not absolve us if we fail.</p>

<a href="mailto:colinshea99@hotmail.com">Colin Shea</a> is a member of the great twentysomething Generation X diaspora which fled the mini-malls of California in the 1990s. A respectable telecommunications executive by day, at night he transforms into a furtive scribbler of literary pornography and sanctimonious essays. He has lived in Caracas, Santo Domingo, Amsterdam, and most recently Prague.