Free Speech & Free Actions in Wartime

Geoffrey R. Stone\'s book, -Perilous times: Free Speech in Wartime, from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism- appears to have a several-layered, rather than the more likely variegated-layered, view of the Peace Movement during the Vietnam years.  
 
However even in the Vietnam section of his book, Stone offers some little-known scenes for our remembrance.  
 
Among the most startling: \"As the antiwar movement was beginning, (David) Dellinger was scheculed to speak at a \"peace and disarmament\" rally in New York City in the spring of 1963. 
 
\'The event was sponsored by a broad coalition of groups whose leaders had agreed to focus the rally only on nuclear testing. Just before he was to speak, several students raised signs calling for the withdrawal of US forces from Vietnam. 
 
\'As Dellinger recalled, \"At the time most Americans hardly knew that there was a place called Vietnam, let alone that the US had...a militarily active mission there.\" The director of the rally ordered the signs removed. When Delligner finally got the microphone, he \"felt it necessary to say more\" about Vietnam than he had originally intended. He linked Vietnam to nuclear disarmaent, explaining that both issues arose out of the nation\'s drive for \"gloval dominance and...the profits that go with it.\"  
 
\'When he finished the leaders of the protest angrily told him that he would never again be allowed to speak at such an event. 
That was not to be. As the senior \"stateman\" of what later would become the radical antiwar movement, Delligner would play a critical role in shaping the mood and style of protest in the US during one of the most tumultuous periods in the nation\'s history.\" 
 
How often have we in our various places of peace, justice, dissent, in this present era 
stood against the very ones who were most able to speak confidently in timely fashion--future leaders who were and are especially apt at connecting the dots for us among the formerly named, office of Total Information, weaponry of war named such as peacekeepers, Patriot Act and Homeland Security with their fuzzy titles yet not so comforting? 
 
How about the way today progressives are ignoring Feingold the way they always have-- with his concern intermittently and recently about the Federal Death Penalty? 
 
What about the way so many signs were and are ignored concerning all the signing statements making some apparent Torture amendments not better but worse--the way the quieter voices were ignored regarding the coming Military Commissions Act?  
 
What about the way all too few recently, except the Catholic Bishops Office and a liberal Arabic group are pointing out the \"secrecy evidence\" clause sneaked into Immigration bills that look apparently reasonable.  
 
How about the way all too few except those who care about workers\' rights are noticing or supporting the Iraqi Oil Workers right to strike against the US Iraqi Oil Law that would allow the cowboys to continue their economic imperialism? 
 
What about the litany of regressive rulings recently with the Court and courts of our land that put us back a half century in terms of schools, racism, etc. etc.? 
 
Could it be, as some media folk once connected to this administration warned us, that we are being kept busy with the next dramatic \"gift\" such as now the CIA \"family jewels\" when we need our energies to undue the most recent Neocon Family Criminal act and to prevent the next? 
 
With such slippery stragies as these, regardless of slipping popularity, we who want change and constitutional rights back are not going to succeed without wiser and swifter strategies. 
 
How often do we suppress dissent among our own? How might we thereby quench the possibilities of young and older leaders having there say and leading us toward desperately needed change? 
 
Stone also writes with striking prose regarding dissent then and now which mirrors some of our best writers today: 
 
\"It is, of course, much easier to look back on past crises and find our predecessors wanting than to make wise judgments when we ourselves are in the eye of the storm. But that challenge now falls to this generation of Americans. Freedom can endanger security, but it is also the fundamental source of American strength. As Justice Louis Brandeis explained in 1927, \'Those who won our independence...knew that...fear breeds repression\' and that \'courage is the secret of liberty.\' Those are the two most central lessons for Americans to bear in mind.\" 
 
And also, end of his book, p. 558 
 
From footnote: In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004) 
where by a vote of 8 to 1, the Court turned aside the administration\'s claim that the president of the US could constitutionally order the indefinite detention of American citizens as \"enemy combatants\" without even according such individuals the right to \"contest the factual basis for that detention\" 
 
\"Justice O\'Conner, in a plurality opinion observed, In so holding, we necessarily reject the Government\'s assertion that separation of powers principles mandate a heavily circumscribed role for the courts in such circumstances...We have long...made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President, when it comes to the rights of the Nation\'s citizens.\" Indeed, it \"is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our Nation\'s commitment to (civil liberties) is most severely tested; and it is in those times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad.\" 
 
Stone\'s last paragraph ending book: 
\"To strike the right balance, this nation needs political leaders who know right from wrong; federal judges who will stand fast against the furied of their age; members of the bar and the academy who will help American see themselves clearly; a thoughtful and responsible press; informed and tolerant citizens who will value not only their own liberties, but the liberties of others; and justices of the Supreme Court with the wisdom to know excess when they see it and the courage to preserve liberty when it is imperiled. And so, we shall see.\" 
 
Wise Peace Works, let\'s work it well! 
Connie

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