Joseph Sobran’s
Washington Watch

Et Tu, Ypsilanti?

(Reprinted from the issue of September 2, 2004)

I couldn’t decide whether the week I spent in my hometown, Ypsilanti, Mich., seemed like living in a time machine or a parallel universe. My anxieties about my class reunion — class of ’64 — turned out to be needless. It was a beautifully organized event (let the record show that my old friend George Ridenour performed heroically to make it so), and I was happily, joyously surprised to rejoin so sweet a group.

Old friendships were resumed almost as if we’d never lost touch. Terry Larson, my best pal from grade school, a splendid athlete, and our co-valedictorian, looked almost younger than his senior picture! Dave Farquharson and the former Marcia Thomas, the cutest high school sweethearts of all time, are not only still married but as obviously in love with each other as they were 40 years ago. The pretty girls I used to flirt with are now pretty grandmothers. I expected to see a lot of decrepit geezers, but I was the only one.

These were the people I loved before I had any interest in politics, and the subject hardly came up, except when Marcia told me she and Dave are now active Democrats who devoutly hope Bush will be defeated this year. Gently registering my dislike of John Kerry, I offered at least limited sympathy and a few jokes at the president’s expense. Marcia laughed her beautiful laugh, as of old, and Washington seemed far, far away.

All week I was able to keep an eye on our nation’s capital through The New York Times and cable TV. I gathered that the city was still brawling over Kerry’s war record and the Bush partisans’ TV ads — this year’s version of the Willie Horton war of 1988.

Out in Michigan Washington’s obsessions seem not only remote, but silly. Even the Iraq War seems too distant to be worrisome, and we’re still wrangling about Vietnam? It was only at the airport that I felt the surreal security measures that are ubiquitous in Washington. Every airline stewardess — excuse me, “flight attendant” — is now a little Stalin, giving stern orders to suspected terrorists — excuse me, “passengers.” They used to make you feel welcome.

It’s nice to be reminded that most Americans, including my old classmates, hardly feel touched by the anti-terrorist mania in their daily lives. I rarely flew in the old days, but when I did, you just walked onto the plane like a guest. There weren’t even metal detectors! You could smoke on the plane!

It was a different country. You took all sorts of freedoms for granted. It never crossed your mind that they might be taken away. Today you wonder what you are still permitted to do. Things you once did without a second thought may get you arrested, or at least provoke a sharp warning from superfluous airport and airline personnel who think of themselves as government agents — which, after all, is what they have become.

I hoped to escape all this by going home. And for the most part, I did. But I wonder if I’d have found the same crackdowns in government buildings, for example, if I’d stayed longer. Even in the Washington suburbs you can’t enter a courthouse without passing through a metal detector now. Every citizen is a suspect. We’ve come to expect subtle humiliation as a way of life.

Terrorism has become an excuse for government to assert myriad new powers over us, always in the name of security, safety, protection, defense, and even health. Signs advise you that “This is a smoke-free airport.” Smoke-free! Even a prohibition, backed by an implicit threat, is disguised as a freedom. It’s really telling you who’s boss. And these little bans add up to create a new atmosphere, in which we get used to a new relation of subservience to state authority unknown to our American ancestors.

I waited an hour at the airport for the friend who was supposed to pick me up on arrival. I was afraid something had happened to him, because he is never late. It turned out he’d been forced to keep driving around outside, because the security guards wouldn’t let him park on the curb for even a minute while he popped into the baggage claim area. At last I reached him through another friend; luckily they both had cell phones.

A mere inconvenience? Yes, but one of many our new way of life has forced on us.

Just as, under Communism, every citizen became a titular “comrade” but, in fact, a suspected “class enemy” meriting constant surveillance, so the anti-terror regime must regard each of us as a potential enemy. No matter that this is offensive not only to justice but to common sense; to make obvious practical distinctions would be “discrimination,” so enforcement must be universal.

We already joke about the absurdity of strip-searching grannies, but this is where the hysterical logic of “security” leads: to a petty tyranny that spares nobody.
 
A Lost Ideal

Where will it end? Well, there is no reason to think it will ever end. When government, under the pretext of crisis, assumes new powers — of taxing, legislating, making war, fighting crime, finding enemy agents — it never specifies a terminal point beyond which it will not go. If there is one thing experience should have taught us, this is it.

The U.S. Constitution, which our rulers pledge their immortal souls to uphold, has utterly failed to confine the federal government to the powers specifically delegated to it. Today its powers are virtually infinite, its debt in the trillions. What else do we need to know?

I say this with a heavy heart. I once believed that the United States could return to constitutional government; and I still admire those who fight for constitutional principles. But I now regard the Constitution chiefly as a lost ideal, remaining as a measuring stick by which we may judge the mendacity, hypocrisy, and tyranny of our rulers.

I wish I could offer a solution. But surely the first step toward recovering our liberty is to realize that our whole civilization has gone insane. It no longer shares the faith or even comprehends the language of our ancestors.

The problem isn’t confined to Washington. I find the fatal delusions of politics just as deeply implanted in the minds of the dear people of Ypsilanti, Mich.


Two new books by Bill Buckley and Pat Buchanan offer sharply opposed views of what has happened to the conservative movement. Both are assessed in the October issue of SOBRAN’S. If you have not seen my monthly newsletter yet, give my office a call at 800-513-5053 and request a free sample, or better yet, subscribe for two years for just $85. New subscribers get two gifts with their subscription. More details can be found at the Subscription page of my website.

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Joseph Sobran