Great quote to end the article:
Nancy Johnson's new attack ad is just political terrorism By Chris Powell
09/19/2006
H.L. Mencken may have had politicians like U.S. Rep. Nancy Johnson in mind when he remarked that "the whole aim of politics is to keep the populace alarmed and hence clamorous to be led to safety by menacing it with a series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
Of course the threat of terrorism is real, no mere hobgoblin, but the terrorism threat conjured by the new television attack ad of Johnson's re-election campaign is worse than a hobgoblin; it is a fraud.
Johnson, the Republican who has represented northwestern Connecticut in Congress for 24 years, is denouncing her Democratic opponent, state Sen. Christopher Murphy (or, as the attack ad calls him, "LIBERAL Chris Murphy"), for being soft on terrorism. The ad imagines a telephone call from New York to "a known terrorist in Pakistan" and declares that while Johnson wants the U.S. government to monitor the call immediately, Murphy would require the government to go to court to get a warrant first, putting the country at risk of another terrorist attack.
Yes, there always has been a conflict between national security and constitutional rights in wartime, and there always have been politicians ready to suggest (or worse) that anyone who is not eager to surrender his constitutional rights is some sort of traitor. But in the case of monitoring telephone calls, the old argument is effectively moot -- and Johnson's own commercial proves it.
<snip>
In making fun of demagogic politicians like Johnson, Mencken was mostly an entertaining cynic and even a nihilist. But another great journalist, Elmer Davis, who became the U.S. government's director of war information during World War II, took a stand against such politicians on the most patriotic and principled grounds.
"The first and great commandment," Davis said, "is: DON'T LET THEM SCARE YOU. For the men who are trying to do that to us are scared themselves. They are afraid that what they think will not stand critical examination; they are afraid that the principles on which this republic was founded and has been conducted are wrong. They will tell you that there is a hazard in the freedom of the mind, and of course there is, as in any freedom. In trying to think right you run the risk of thinking wrong. But there is no hazard at all, no uncertainty, in letting somebody else tell you what to think. That is sheer damnation."
http://www.journalinquirer.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17215955&BRD=985&PAG=461&dept_id=565860&rfi=6
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