Building Big Brother.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks, pundits and politicians have been quick to suggest that Americans trade their freedoms for security. Such proposals are a recipe for tyranny.

"Safety from external danger," Alexander Hamilton observed in The Federalist, No. 8, "is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free."

Subsequent American history is riddled with mournful examples of this very tendency. Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus and censorship of the press, Woodrow Wilson's persecution of Americans opposed to entry into World War I, Franklin D. Roosevelt's wartime economic controls and internment of Japanese-Americans, and Harry S. Truman's refusal to seek a constitutionally-mandated declaration of war, among many others, show how precarious civil liberties are in wartime.

Now, in the face of a war of unlimited duration, history seems poised to repeat itself along the lines of Hamilton's gloomy dictum. Hardly had the Twin Towers toppled when the calls to curtail civil liberties began. Washington Times columnist Tony Blankley called for Congress to "suspend ... habeas corpus for any detention relating, at our government's sole discretion, to possible terrorist intents [and] construe the Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable searches and seizures to mean that any search or seizure is reasonable in our government's efforts to prevent terrorism." CNN's Tim O'Brien fretted about "civil liberties, which may be sacrificed in the aftermath of this. And that may have to be the case.... We'll have to take steps to protect ourselves and some of those steps we may find repugnant today but they may

become necessary." And responding to a Wall Street Journal poll on national I.D. cards, one panicked citizen, writing in favor of the idea, argued, "If that is what it takes to keep Amer ica safe for our children I want Big Brother watching."

While the impulse to protect against future terrorist atrocities is understandable, we must not needlessly enlarge and empower an already outsized federal government. Many of our current problems with crime, including terrorism, have been exacerbated by too much government in the wrong areas, and by the failure of government to attend to its proper functions. Pressing for still more laws and regulations, especially of the sort that directly undercut civil liberties, will leave us in the long run with more crime, terrorism, and internal instability -- but no freedom. Sadly, internationalist demagogues, both homegrown and foreign, are using the September 11th attacks -- and the war without end that may result -- to convince Americans to trade their liberty for the illusion of government-furnished security.

Embracing Big Government

The chimera of "security" has always been Big Government's easiest selling point. In the wake of the September 11th attacks, the champions of big government are in a frenzy of anticipation. "The era of big government is back," proclaimed Reuters analyst Randall Mikkelsen on October 4th -- as if it had ever been absent. "The era of big government is not over," crowed former Congressman Lee Hamilton, "and it clearly is going to be expanded. The government always expands in times of crisis." Robin Toner of the New York Times wrote: "Suddenly, the political language of a generation looks dated: Nobody wants to get the government off their backs. Nobody really wants to hear that the era of big government is over." In a recent editorial for the Los Angeles Times tellingly entitled "The Government, Once Scorned, Becomes Savior," columnist Ronald Brownstein waxed effusive about the grand new potential for government growth in a new era of pro-state sentiment:

At the moment the first fireball seared the crystalline Manhattan sky last week, the entire impulse to distrust government that has become so central to U.S. politics seemed instantly anachronistic.... [P]olitical leaders -- especially on the right -- have hacked away at these fraying bonds of trust.... [W]hile U.S. industry has proved brilliant at creating wealth and inspiring innovation, it's naive (or disingenuous) to expect private companies to operate entirely in the public interest.... [O]n some critical needs, like educating our children, safeguarding our retirement, or, now, policing the skies, there may be no alternative to government shouldering central responsibility. It's times of tragedy that expose the hollowness of the manufactured disdain for government.... It's simply misguided to see the federal government as something divisible from America, when it is in fact the tool through which we meet collectively the challenges that we can't handle alone. It obscures that basic truth to suggest we mu st choose between trusting government or the people.

How often must exasperating fallacies like these be refuted? Government, it cannot be repeated often enough, is power, wielded by fallible, fallen human beings, and as such it must be carefully limited both by law and by a vigilant citizenry. Thomas Jefferson, articulating the Founders' unanimous and profound skepticism for manmade power schemes, warned that "confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism.... In questions of power let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution."

Brownstein's apologia also ignores the crucial distinction between concentrated power at the federal level and the diffusion of authority among various levels of local government. The Founders limited federal government power to things that could only be dealt with at the national level, and left the rest to the states, to local government, or to private enterprise. Nowadays, though -- especially after major crises -- big government apologists leap to justify federal involvement in every conceivable facet of society, and to rationalize the consolidation of new powers at the federal level. Moreover, they often support the consolidation of power in the hands of a single man -- the president -- at the expense of the checks provided by the other branches of government. Perhaps the most striking example of this shift in power to the presidency is the circumvention of the war-making power belonging to Congress, which has not declared war since World War II.

Homeland Security

Nine days after the attacks, President Bush, in a speech to a joint session of Congress, announced the creation of a new Cabinet-level post, the Office of Homeland Security. The office will be entrusted with coordinating internal security-related aspects of various federal law enforcement and investigative agencies. If that were its only purpose, there might be no cause for alarm. But President Bush explicitly referred to "dozens of federal departments and agencies, as well as state and local governments [having] responsibilities affecting homeland security [whose] efforts must be coordinated at the highest level." (Emphasis added.) Bush's statement strongly implies that the new office will not only coordinate the work of various federal agencies, but also draw state and local law enforcement into a vortex of new federal standards and centralized, presidential-level oversight.

Unbeknownst to most Americans watching Bush's speech, however, the Office of Homeland Security has been in the works since long before the September 11th attacks. On September 14th -- six days before President Bush's televised address -- the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) held a special meeting in Washington, D.C., to discuss the work of the so-called Hart-Rudman Commission. Known formally as the United States Commission on National Security/21st Century, the Hart-Rudman Commission was established in 1998 at the urging of President Clinton and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, both members of the CFR. The Commission, co-chaired by former Senators Gary Hart (CFR) and Warren Rudman (CFR), attempted in several detailed studies to predict the direction of American foreign policy priorities in the first quarter of the 21st century.

The first Commission report, New World Coming: American Security in the 21st Century, envisions an America threatened by "hostile attack on our homeland" for which "our military superiority will not protect us.... Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers." Another report, Road Map for National Security: Imperative for Change, contains policy recommendations to meet coming security threats. Prominent among them, under the heading "Securing the National Homeland," is the Hart-Rudman Commission's keystone proposal: the "creation of a new independent National Homeland Security Agency (NHSA) with responsibility for planning, coordinating, and integrating various U.S. government activities involved in homeland security.... The NHSA Director would have Cabinet status and would be a statutory advisor to the National Security Council." This is a precise description of President Bush's Office of Homeland Security. According to the participants at the September 14th meeting, the recommendat ions in the Commission's report were delivered to President Bush and his Cabinet on January 31st.

President Bush's call to use the National Guard to patrol airports is also prefigured in the Hart-Rudman Commission's report. A few paragraphs beyond the recommendation for the NHSA, the report prescribes "new priorities ... for the U.S. armed forces in light of the threat to the homeland. We urge, in particular, that the National Guard be given homeland security as a primary mission.... The National Guard should be reorganized, trained, and equipped to undertake that mission."

Turning the National Guard into a permanent military police force and using the Office of Homeland Security to "coordinate" state and local law enforcement would be calamitous for community- and state-based law enforcement. Most law enforcement in the United States has traditionally been carried out at the local level; state and local police and sheriffs' departments are usually more than adequate in fighting crime and normally have the best interests of the local citizenry at heart.

On the other hand, the function of national law enforcement agencies is often distorted by agents unaccountable to local citizens and motivated primarily by a drive to protect and empower the government institutions they serve. We need look no further than the litany of recent abuses of power on the part of the FBI to see this principle in action. Moreover, using the National Guard as a military police would be the worst of all possible worlds, since the objectives of law enforcement and military activities are fundamentally incompatible: police are supposed to "serve and protect," while the military, quite properly, is designed to "kill people and break things" in the defense of American citizens. To the degree that local law enforcement is federalized -- whatever the underlying motive -- the result will be a dangerous shift in power to a national police force, comparatively unconcerned with protecting and serving the citizens who employ them, and prone to the same kinds of abuse and corruption that bedevil centralized federal agencies.

Public-Private Synthesis

The uncharacteristic candor of the HartRudman Commission illustrates the process by which powerful actors outside legitimate government are able to influence affairs for their own ends. In this case, a private, ostensibly neutral discussion group, the Council on Foreign Relations, working through two presidential administrations, has produced a revolutionary change in the structure of the Federal government in the creation of the Office of Homeland Security. The CFR, in reality, has acted in this way for decades. Following a long-established script, the Council on Foreign Relations advertises itself as an apolitical forum for discussion and research while manipulating the levers of state power behind the scenes.

Members of Congress, Republican and Democrat alike, are not challenging the Bush administration's statist drift. At the time of this writing, separate bills designed to give the federal government more search, seizure, and surveillance power are working their way through the House and Senate. While Congress seems leery of succumbing to knee-jerk hysteria, far too many members of Congress are clamoring for more controls of one kind or another. Extraordinary times, Americans are being told, require extraordinary measures.

Yet an argument can be made that the federal government already has too much power over matters of security that are more properly addressed by local government and the private sector. It was tragically shortsighted federal regulations, for example, that banned weapons from passenger aircraft, thereby creating an environment where a few men armed only with primitive weapons carried out the worst mass slaughter of civilians ever on American soil. And even in the wake of the attacks, President Bush -- who travels on a jumbo jet bristling with armed security -- is reportedly cool to any suggestion that airline passengers or pilots be allowed to carry weapons to protect themselves.

To be sure, the federal government has a legitimate role in overseeing national security, both external and internal (see page 43). Rather than expand the powers of the federal government, especially the executive branch, to further allow intrusion and interference in the lives of law-abiding citizens, Washington must get back to doing what it's supposed to do, namely, those constitutionally-mandated activities, like controlling and defending our borders, that state and local governments cannot handle. Just as importantly, American citizens must keep events in perspective and not be deceived, in the emotion of the moment, into permitting further federal encroachments where they are neither needed nor constitutionally authorized.