The sixth annual Muzzle Awards

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The sixth annual Muzzle Awards

Ten who undermined freedom of speech and personal liberties
BY DAN KENNEDY

REPRESSION JUST ABOUT always arrives with the consent of the governed. Benjamin Franklin memorably warned that those who would trade liberty for safety deserve neither. But what did Franklin know about Al Qaeda and orange alerts and shady people with Arabic names picked up on the Brooklyn Bridge, practically in the shadow of where you-know-what happened almost two years ago? And what have you got to hide, anyway?

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A year later, that optimism has given way to bitter reality. In May, the Justice Department — headed by the order-obsessed attorney general, John Ashcroft — issued a report to Congress admitting that it had used the Patriot Act to go after people whose alleged criminal activities — including the sale of illegal drugs, credit-card fraud, and the like — had nothing to do with terrorism. Ashcroft’s minions also conceded that they had jailed nearly 50 people in secret because they were thought to be material witnesses in connection with the 9/11 investigation.

One might think that secret detention would be about as low as we could get. But Ashcroft is now looking for more, in the form of the Patriot Act II, which would give the government even greater powers to snoop into what we say, what we read, and what we think. Bet that some form of it will pass. No member of Congress wants to face re-election in 2004 having to admit that he or she rejected an opportunity to, you know, protect us simply out of concern about an outmoded idea such as liberty.

This has also become a more dangerous culture in which to deviate from the official line, as celebrities such as Natalie Maines, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, and others have learned. Then again, we live in a time when even members of the political opposition can’t do what they are supposed to do — that is, to oppose — without having their patriotism castigated by the well-honed attack machine of the Republican Party. We have just fought the first "preventive" war in our history. The deadly weapons that were the Bush administration’s stated reason for invading Iraq appear not to exist. And anyone who dares point this out is accused of being anti-American, or French, which these days is more or less the same thing.

Inevitably, the Muzzle Awards have also taken a turn toward the dark side. In place of books banned from school libraries we have a college professor questioned by the FBI for no reason other than his Iraqi background. We have a 60-year-old man arrested for trespassing because he refused to take off his anti-war T-shirt at the mall. We have legislators working not to protect our liberties but to take still more of them away, filing bills to saddle anti-war protesters with backbreaking costs and to keep students who hail from countries that sponsor terrorism out of public colleges and universities.

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