Repeal the USA Patriot Act, Part IIby Jennifer Van Bergen
truthout.org (website)
4/2/2002 This is Part II of a six-part t r u t h o u t series on the USA Patriot Act.
This Act, passed hastily and in a time of fear, affects all of us in some very basic
and important ways.
Part II walks the reader back in time to look at two acts, which were also passed
hastily and in a time of fear. The Alien & Sedition Acts of 1798 parallel the USA
Patriot Act in many respects, and offer some important warnings.
Repeal the USA Patriot Act
 Part
II: The Wheel of History
by
Jennifer Van Bergen
t
r u t h o u t | April 2, 2002
In 1798, the United States almost went to war with France.
France, angry that we had signed a treaty with England behind its back, began
attacking American ships at sea. The United States sent a special peace delegation
to France, but France tried to extract money from the delegates in exchange for
receiving them.
The event became known as The XYZ Affair, after the three French operatives who
demanded the bribe, whose identities President John Adams refused to reveal.
When Adams released the insulting dispatches, war fever swept the land.
"Millions for defense, not one cent for tribute!" became the cry of the warlike
Federalist Party, and Americans of all political persuasions rashly agreed to increased
defense expenditures and limits on personal freedoms.
Xenophobia became so great that many French immigrants who had sought refuge
here from the guillotines of the French Revolution had to leave the U.S., often
with nowhere to go.
With the country in a vengeful mood, the Alien and Sedition Laws were enacted.
The Alien Act allowed the President to arrest, imprison, and deport "dangerous"
immigrants on mere suspicion of "treasonable or secret machinations against the
government." If a deported alien returned, the President could imprison him for
as long as he thought "the public safety may require."
Sound strangely familiar? (If it does, then you know something about the USA
Patriot Act.)
The Sedition Act made it unlawful for any person to write, print, publish, or
speak anything "false, scandalous and malicious" about the government, either Congress
or the Executive, if it was done with the intent to defame or to bring the government
"into contempt or disrepute," or to excite the hatred of the people against the
United States.
Does this remind you of John Ashcroft's December 6th rant before Congress in
which he equated civil liberties with aid to terrorists and declared that any public
debate would "give ammunition to America's enemies"?
The
Alien and Sedition Laws were a blot on the democratic record of this country. They
were not used to protect against dangerous aliens. The Alien Act was used by Federalists
to keep out of Congress qualified Democratic candidates who had only recently become
U.S. citizens (such as Swiss immigrant, Albert Gallatin, who two years later became
Secretary of the Treasury under President Thomas Jefferson). The Sedition Law was
used to arrest, prosecute, and jail Democratic newspaper editors who dared to oppose
the Administration.
Thomas
Jefferson and James Madison wrote resolutions that challenged the federal government's
power to enact these laws. These became known as the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions.
These resolutions declared that states do not have to accept unconstitutional laws
passed by Congress. The Kentucky Resolution further declared that states could nullify
such laws.
These resolutions were never tested in the courts or in Congress, but many historians
feel they provided the doctrinal basis for the secession of the South from the Union
sixty-two years later, which began the Civil War.
It is frightening to make the comparison. War fever in 1798 led the extreme Right
(Federalists) to push through acts that targeted immigrants but were used to persecute
political opponents and violate the civil rights of citizens. These rash enactments
led moderates to endorse two constitutionally dangerous doctrines, nullification
and secession, which over half a century later opened the door for civil war.
We should think carefully about these events.
One member of the ill-fated 1798 peace delegation was John Marshall, subsequently
the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court whose most famous decision,
"Marbury v. Madison," established the doctrine of judicial supremacy, making the
Supreme Court and not Congress the final arbiter of the law.
Marshall did more to establish the power of the Supreme Court than any other
Justice did. Without his establishment of judicial supremacy, the present Supreme
Court arguably could not have put George W. Bush into office.
As one legal commentator put it: "The principal objection [to the doctrine of
judicial supremacy] is the seeming paradox in a democracy of non-elected officials
overruling policy judgments of the people's elected representatives." Or, for that
matter, the popular vote.
Interesting, is it not, how the wheel of history turns and comes back to stare
us in the face?
Tomorrow, Part III, civil rights violations and the possibility of torture
under the USA Patriot Act.
Jennifer Van Bergen holds a law degree from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law,
is an adjunct faculty member at the New School for Social Research in New York,
and is a member of the Board of the ACLU Broward County, Florida Chapter.
Jennifer Van Bergen is an Editor and a
regular contributor to t r u t h o u t. Close |