Letter to the Editor: U.S. government abuses civil rights

Pundits often liken the U.S. political process to the movement of a pendulum. When one presidential administration tramples civil liberties, they say the next will restrain the offenders and stop the abuses. They usually cite the closure of the Japanese internment camps after World War II and the intense public scrutiny of CIA and FBI activities after Watergate. However far the pendulum swings toward tyranny, it always swings back, and what passes for American democracy is once again saved from the lurking threat of totalitarianism – at least momentarily.

The only problem with this narrative is that it is false. The pendulum never swings back.

Once the government claims the power to tap phones or torture people, a precedent is set. It does not matter whether the claimed powers are exercised to their fullest extent or whether they are exercised at all. Each emergency measure becomes just one more tool in the government toolbox, ready to be pulled out when needed. Sooner or later those in power decide it is needed.

And then it is used. Eventually it becomes standard operating procedure, the new normal.

Civil liberties violations may be more frequent or intense during certain periods in U.S. history, especially in times of political unrest. But when one takes the long view of history, refusing to see the past in four- and eight-year slices, it becomes apparent that over the past two centuries the trend has been toward the vast expansion of state power. The individual has been suppressed with increasing ruthlessness. Now the state celebrates its ultimate victory.

On Sept. 30 the CIA assassinated two American citizens in a drone bombing in Yemen. Neither had been charged with a crime, much less convicted. Nor was any evidence presented to support official claims that they were involved in plotting terrorist attacks. Government lawyers argued last year that no such evidence was needed, according to The New York Times. They argued that the president has the power to unilaterally order the murder of anyone on the face of the earth he deems a threat to national security, including U.S. citizens on American soil.

According to the Times, the courts agreed.

This is, of course, not the first time that the U.S. government has assassinated American citizens. Civil rights activists were often killed during the 1960s and 1970s as part of the FBI's COINTELPRO, or Counter Intelligence Program. But these murders, however common, were technically illegal. The latest round of assassinations, conducted under the color of law, is far more horrifying in its implications. It means that the U.S. government has claimed absolute power of the sort wielded by every despot from Henry VIII to Hitler. It means that all the debates that came before – wiretapping, torture, indefinite detention – no longer matter. When one can be murdered by the state at any moment, all else fades into insignificance. And it means that the assassination of American citizens has been officially added to the government toolbox.

There is no turning back.

Matt Kovac

Medill 2014

Editor-in-chief, The Protest