"Insensibly" Sliding Into Tyranny

William Norman Grigg writes:

"By waging open-ended foreign wars for 'liberty,' warned John Quincy Adams, America's ruling philosophy would 'insensibly change from [one of] liberty to force....' That warning, sadly, was amply validated by George W. Bush's Second Inaugural Address...

"Did he refer to the criminal irresponsibility of his administration in failing to act on plentiful pre-September 11 warnings about the impending attack? Or was he alluding to a decades-old interventionist foreign policy that has nurtured foreign enemies and engendered hatred toward the United States? Or was he perchance offering an oblique apology for the ineptitude displayed by the federal government on that horrible morning, when the only effective defense of our nation was mounted by the private citizens aboard United Flight 93, even as the administration’s leaders were cowering in secure locations?

"In fact, the 'deepest source' of our vulnerability, according to Mr. Bush’s speechwriters, is the fact that there are regions of the world not firmly under Washington’s control...

"Of course, the president's speech did not acknowledge the role Washington's interventionist policies have played over decades, during both Republican and Democrat administrations, in helping to bring those simmering resentments to a murderous boil. There was no mention of how the U.S. government had supported Saddam's Iraqi regime prior to the Persian Gulf War or how the CIA had assisted Osama bin Laden... These observations were not made since, to cure the conditions exacerbated by U.S. foreign policy, the administration prescribes a larger – and perhaps ultimately more lethal – dose of the same interventionist treatment...

"Mr. Bush opened his speech with a perfunctory nod to 'the durable wisdom of our Constitution,' and spent the rest of it expressing disdain for the principles embodied in that charter. Nothing in our Constitution authorizes the federal government to mount a global campaign on behalf of democracy. In fact, in their wisdom the Founders ardently admonished Americans to eschew grandiose foreign entanglements of that sort...

"America, [John Quincy] Adams famously warned on Independence Day, 1821, 'goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own... She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....'

"As thousands gathered to hear Mr. Bush extol 'freedom' in Washington, D.C., security preparations had transformed the Capitol into what the New York Times called 'a steel cocoon.' Missile launchers defended the skies; manhole covers were welded shut to secure the streets. Militarized police, metal detectors, body searches, and other stigmata of the garrison state were on full display. Performers in the inaugural parade were instructed not to do so much as look directly at the president, lest they be regarded as security threats."

"Insensibly" Sliding Into Tyranny