AMERICA DECLARES 'WAR' ON AMERICA

It's funny that a nation, rooted in the revolutionary oratory of men
like Patrick Henry and the pamphletry of Thomas Paine, the fiery
rhetoric of Samuel Adams and the sermonizing from the pens and pulpits
of men like the Revs. Jacob Cushing and Moses Mather, would have such a
hang-up with language.

America was forged in the smithy of the spoken word and printed page.
The founders regularly met in pubs and inns both before the War for
Independence, to hash out justification and agreement for secession from
England, and after, to begin the arduous task of making a government.
Adams' Committees on Correspondence kept revolutionary ideas in
circulation, while incendiary tracts by the likes of Paine and others
gave backbone and resolve to the colonials.

After Britain's bonds were shaken off, the founders turned attentions to
carefully crafting the Articles of Confederation, first, and finally the
Constitution of the United States. Polemics pro and con shot back and
forth, detailing every benefit, downside, blessing and danger inherent
to the proposed central government; these debates are preserved for us
in part in collections such as the Federalist Papers and the
Anti-Federalist Papers.

Language was so important to Noah Webster that he composed his
dictionary specifically to distinguish Americans' use of English from
the British. It was obviously important to many others, as well, since
it sold like crazy.

Take a thumb through the Declaration of Independence, Paine's "Common
Sense," or John Adams' "A Defense of the American Constitutions."
Americans find their freedom in a mountain of words.

It is strange, and all the more tragic, then, that a nation set free by
a million speeches is now being re-enslaved by just one syllable.
Whether the citizens of the United States know it or not, liberties
guaranteed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights are being shackled by
a metaphor, bound and gagged by three little letters:

War.

Not war against a foreign government; not war against a nation that
would threaten our people, our soil, our lives and livelihoods. Those
sorts of wars, while tragic, are vital to the preservation of liberty.
To save our properties, persons and liberties from plunder, sometimes
brutal and violent force must be used to grisly and ghastly ends against
the gangster armies of foreign powers. Such is the price of freedom.
That is, however, not the sort of war I'm talking about.

In order to capitalize on the unifying spirit and goodwill engendered by
that righteous sort of entanglement, American politicians have, since
President Lyndon Johnson, used the word "war" to gain a backing for
their political programs and social schemes.

Johnson kicked off the scam with his "War on Poverty." President Nixon,
facing Johnson's successor in a battle for the nation's biggest bully
pulpit, conjured up the same rhetoric - only Tricky Dick directed the
guns of political rhetoric toward narcotics, officially launching
America's "War on Drugs."

Both of these schemes fail any real-world definition of war. The enemy
is less than clear, the battlefield is even less obvious and the rules
of engagement are fungible and at odds with our founding spirit and
written Constitution.

Take just the drug war. In a war, there's no such thing as due process
before depriving a man of life, liberty or property - as required by the
Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Which is more than understandable.
It's a war, after all. Hardly any time to go requesting warrants and
worrying about protecting the liberties of your opponents.

The goal of war is to win, and recalling the wisdom of Gen. George
Patton, you don't win a war by dying for your country; you make the
other "poor, dumb bastard" (I think those were his words) die for his.
Most any tactic in war is excused and commended provided it results in
victory. As such, enemies have little in the way of rights, and if they
are the aggressor nation, they've ceded whatever rights they might have
had. The bully who starts a fight should not be surprised if his cry of
"uncle" is met with a few more fists to the teeth and boots to the
kidneys.

This works fine for real wars, but the drug war is not a war. It's a
policy, a policy crafted in a nation whose overarching legal doctrines
are contained in the Constitution and Bill of Rights and to which the
policy must conform. By thinking of policy like war, however, the first
instinct is to disregard the rights of the citizens - enemies have no
rights.

For first-hand experience with this fact, I'd point you to John Adams of
Lebanon, Tenn., or Juan Mendoza Fernandez of Irving, Texas, or maybe
even Mario Paz of El Monte, Calif. I'd point you to these three men had
not police been paying more attention to Gen. Patton than to Thomas
Jefferson. All three were gunned down in drug raids by officers more
anxious to win a battle in the War on Drugs than protect the rights of
the citizens.

Minds ensnared by the metaphor of a battle, police are increasingly
militarized and made to look more like elite fighting squads than
constables and keepers of the peace. Ever-increasing outrages in
enforcement are nodded to with approval, while officers are often
granted King's X for simply acting in "good faith," even if that good
faith results in the nullification of the rights to life, liberty and
property.

The Fifth Amendment is regularly ignored in the name of asset
forfeiture. The Fourth Amendment is spit upon by searches and seizures.
The Eighth Amendment is scratched in favor of mandatory minimum
sentences that treat drug users more severely than rapists and
murderers. All this, while the Ninth and 10th Amendments are used for
doormats by drug warriors as they walk inside federal buildings to plot
more usurpations of the states' rightful role in deciding how they might
best deal with drugs themselves.

In this way, the drug war and its enthusiasts are repealing the
founders. The multitudes of words - each crafted and arranged soulfully,
logically, persuasively to make the case for freedom - are being
redacted, erased and ripped from the books that make up the library of
liberty in America. That amazing array of oratory, that stunning
collection of wordcraft is steadily being toppled and defeated by an
army of one - the absurd and sad end of treating a single metaphor like
an entire action plan.

What Martin Luther wrote about Satan in his great hymn, "A Mighty
Fortress is our God," is increasingly true of America: "One little word
shall fell him."

That word for us is war, and there are no white flags from which to
escape its grasp. America is enslaved by a metaphor.