The Chronicle

Dave Balson
Opinion Editor 
 
      “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his first inaugural address.


      I find it nearly impossible to read those words without dreamily drifting off to dwell on their profundity. Beyond its sharp-yet-zen phrasing, the line embodies the highest ideals of the American Century. It’s easy to see why the people who first heard it would make FDR the only president elected to a third and fourth term.


      But few on that day could have predicted how prescient his words would prove. In the 1950s, well after FDR’s passing, Sen. Joe McCarthy used the fear of communism to bring political rhetoric to a dangerous extreme. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration used fear of terrorism to expand its power, justify torture and make the case for war in Iraq. And in 2010, some conservatives are combining both of those fears for political gain.


      At a recent private meeting in Florida, the Republican National Committee presented their 2010 strategy to their core fundraisers. In a paper copy of a PowerPoint presentation accidentally left at the hotel, later obtained by politico.com and reported March 3, the RNC suggested to fundraisers that they should appeal to the “fear” of small donors and the “ego” of big donors.  Some of the more cynical slides encouraged the conference attendees to sell the fear of socialism and use an image of the president’s face painted like the Joker from the “The Dark Night.”


      The Obama-as-the-Joker poster, with “SOCIALISM” printed across the bottom, became an instant hit at Tea Party rallies. Racially charged and factually conflicted, it fits the Tea Party movement perfectly. If painting the face of the first black president is not motivated by racism, then the poster’s message is that the president is like the Joker: unpredictable, psychotic, chaotic and ruthless.


      The Joker was all of those things. Politically, we would call him an anarchist, the very farthest thing from socialism on the political spectrum. I know times are tough and that dictionaries cost more than a whole box of tea bags, but it would really help the discussion if people could start looking up words before they start using them.


      It is one thing to have your opponents call you on fear-mongering and quite another to let slip that it is an integral part of your marketing plan. But fear has been a political currency for generations and the presentation, while embarrassing, is hardly surprising.


      More worrisome are the accusations that the Obama administration is too weak on, or even sympathetic to, terrorism. The worst of these have come from Keep America Safe, an ultra-conservative organization run by Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, and Bill Kristol, a neo-con author and activist and a stalwart promoter of the war in Iraq.


      Cheney’s group has launched an ad campaign against certain lawyers working in the Justice Department for having previously represented detainees from Guantanamo Bay. A video released by Keep America Safe portrays Attorney General Eric Holder as seeking out these terrorist sympathizers to staff the Justice Department. The video refers to the seven appointees as “The Al-Qaeda 7” and asks, “Whose values do they share?”


      I’m glad you asked, Liz. It would be my great honor to offer the answer.


      They share the very deepest and noblest of American values, from our founding to present. They share the values of John Adams, who represented British soldiers in the Boston Massacre trial. Adams, the nation’s first vice president and its second president, later said the experience was, “one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country.”


      His founding brothers no doubt shared these values. The document they drafted to specifically define American values, the Bill of Rights, is chocked full of the stuff. In fact, it’s some of the most important, cherished parts of the Constitution.


      Providing legal representation to a defendant is the only way to ensure a fair trial. A fair trial allows the disinterested hand of justice to decide the case. Regardless of the charge, a person must have the means and the right to be heard and to plead their case.


      The arguments being made by some conservatives—that suspected terrorists shouldn’t receive a fair trial, that they can and should be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, that they shouldn’t be tried where the crime was committed and imprisoned on American soil—are arguments against the fundamental principles of the Constitution.


      As un-American as it is to argue that these defendants are so guilty that they don’t deserve a fair trial, it is worse still to implicate their defense attorneys. By calling the “Al-Qaeda 7” terrorist sympathizers, we imply that lawyers are necessarily sympathetic to the crimes their clients are accused of committing. If that’s the case, this country is crawling with public defenders who are sympathetic to rape, murder and child molestation.


      And what about the judges who hear the case? The juries? The elderly court reporter, sympathetically clicking away on her little machine? Just look at her, an older woman, quietly writing her incantations in heathen shorthand, I know she’s a witch, I just know it!


      American justice derives all of its legal and moral credibility from a design that prevents prosecution from becoming persecution. One of the things that makes America great is the belief that right makes might, and you are innocent until proven guilty. Lawyers who defend those accused of terrorism are keeping America’s greatest values and virtues safe. The efforts of Liz Cheney and the actions of her father do better than any lawyer, indeed any terrorist, in undermining that safety.


      Terrorism, by its very definition, uses violence and intimidation to force a society to change its political ideology.


      Those who would allow terrorists to coerce us into disregarding our deepest principles are the ones who aid and abet the terrorists. It is they who are letting the terrorists win.


      Franklin Roosevelt’s “fear itself” quote usually ends halfway through his sentence. I think it both worthy and just that we let the man complete his thought:
      “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”