Thursday, February 27, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Backstory: Bin Laden at the DMV?

By Michael Green

The Nevada Legislature is rightly concerned about terrorism. That gives it no right to commit terror against the Constitution and common sense.

Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony from Janine Hansen, president of the Nevada Eagle Forum and a leader of the Independent American Party, opposing an anti-terrorism bill. She said its provisions could apply to her picketing a Department of Motor Vehicles office or the Bureau of Land Management. The ACLU agreed. So did some state senators.

Since Hansen and her group are so far to the right, it might seem strange that she is in lockstep with the ACLU. But if the left and the right agree on one thing, it is freedom. We may fight about definitions, but the word matters.

In introducing his anti-terrorism bill, Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio intended to defend freedom. Nationally, that intention has led the Bush administration into the greatest assault on civil liberties since the McCarthy era of the late 1940s and 1950s--and that presumes George W. Bush and his partner in crime, Attorney General John Ashcroft, really fear a threat to freedom or see an opportunity to destroy it.

Raggio pointed out his bill also says a terrorist is one who commits an act of violence, fear or sabotage, so Hansen and company needn't worry. For a legislator who is supposed to know something about legislation to make this argument is unfortunate. For a practicing lawyer who is supposed to know something about the law to make this argument is frightening.

First, does he realize that judges look at an entire law, not just the section of it that he explains? Second, does he know that the Legislative Counsel Bureau, which drafts bills, has been known to claim a law means the opposite of what it says?

In addition to the section he cites, the bill calls a terrorist anyone who tries to disrupt, affect or influence the conduct or policy of a government entity by intimidation.

This sort of thinking should be welcome news. For many years around the country, opponents of a woman's right to choose have committed violence against them and the abortion clinics where doctors obey the law. Too many have cheered militia groups that threaten violence and often commit it. It's heartening to see a Republican leader such as Raggio agree that so many of his party's supporters are wrong.

But, of course, that isn't what Raggio is thinking--if he is thinking. No one with a shred of decency supports terrorism. But if Bush is right that terrorists hate us because we are a bastion of freedom, then we should know when the terrorism has nothing to do with Osama bin Laden, whom Bush was going to catch; remember him? And we should avoid letting bin Laden take away our freedom.

This is not the first time Nevada or the nation has rushed to judgment and suffered the consequences. In 1919, the state Legislature passed the Criminal Syndicalism Act. It became a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $5,000 fine--to support any "doctrine which advocates or teaches crime, sabotage, violence or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform."

That bill was a response to the rise of radical labor unions and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. In particular, the Industrial Workers of the World tried to unionize Nevada miners who had gone without pay raises during and then after World War I while prices rose and mine owners showed no signs of giving up even a slim percentage of their profits.

As is the case now, Nevada wasn't unique. California--the supposedly socialist bailiwick to our left, physically and intellectually--arrested hundreds under this law. Nationally, the Justice Department used the claim of a red menace to deport thousands suspected of unpatriotic words and deeds. Leading that effort was J. Edgar Hoover, who was only just beginning his career as a disgrace to everything for which this country stands. Nevada merely took advantage of the act to break unions.

True, the unions themselves were radical. But were the miners? Many of them simply wanted to make a living wage and were ready to support whoever would help them get it--just as our government at one time or another has supported dictators (not to name names, but the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq) who were the enemy of our enemy.

To say that anyone who followed the IWW was therefore socialist or communist is like saying the hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world who protested the idea of a war with Iraq were the dupes or agents of left-wing or fascist groups. And that's exactly what several Bush supporters disgraced themselves by saying.

Raggio's anti-terrorism bill is unlikely to do the kind of damage to civil liberties done by the Criminal Syndicalism Act and Red Scare of 1919, McCarthyism and the witch hunts that the term exemplifies or even Ashcroft's Injustice Department. Nor is it unreasonable to want to stop terrorists from taking the next step. As Raggio said, "Who knows what else they can dream up?"

But when we dream up ways to limit our freedom, we make the dreams of terrorists come true. Those dreams are our worst nightmares.