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GAG RULE: ON THE SUPPRESSION OF DISSERT AND THE STIFLING OF DENOCRACY
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by Nathan Stark
September 2 – 8, 2004 |
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Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and the Stifling of Democracy
Lewis H. Lapham (The Penguin Press)
Leaving aside George W. Bush’s decision to open the western forests and ANWR to expropriation by logging companies, it remains true that his term in office has been particularly hard on trees. The Bush administration, while stirring up storms of passion on all sides of the political debate in the US, has also stirred up a blizzard of books. From Frum and Perle’s bellicose An End to Evil to Clarke’s searing Against All Enemies, authors inside, outside and on all sides of the issues confronting the United States at the dawn of the 21st century have weighed into the debates.
Lewis Lapham’s contribution to the textual brouhaha, Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and the Stifling of Democracy, captures the zeitgeist of the American scene, both domestic and political, and makes a dire assessment of the direction Bush has taken since the attacks of September 11th.
Lapham is the editor of Harper’s Magazine, to which he contributes a monthly essay under the title “Notebook.” Lapham’s writing can always be distinguished for its highly polished refinement, bitingly ironic tone, and his undisguised and unrestrained contempt for George W. Bush, his administration and their conduct in government.
Gag Rule, a slender, strongly argued and beautifully written volume, adheres to all of these principles. In it Lapham decries the turn towards self-censorship and uncritical assent to the Bush administration’s misguided and dangerous foreign and domestic policies that followed the attacks of September 11th. In the authoritarian turn that the US government is taking Lapham sees the civil liberties, and the strength of the Constitution which upholds them, being rapidly eroded. The Bush administration, he argues, capitalizes on the fear of threats of terror and war to erode the legal protection of individual freedoms, and he warns that “the government doesn’t lightly relinquish the spoils of power seized under the pretext of apocalypse.”
As the executive branch accumulates new powers through subterfuge, secrecy and demagoguery, Lapham explains, their motivations become clearer while the power to speak out against them is diminished: “Heavy concentrations of capital remain at liberty to do as they please…. Unincorporated individuals wait for instructions about where and when they can sing or talk or smoke or dance. If not going off to prison for the possession of a single joint of marijuana, they submit to the censorship of their careless and ill–kempt speech.”
In the fog of fear that the administration continually spreads, a climate of suspicion of fellow citizens emerges, one where each monitors the speech and actions of the other. This climate serves to support, legitimate and reinforce the ubiquitous apparatus of police surveillance: “A well ordered police state rests on the cornerstone of a cowed citizenry, and how better to promote a decent respect for authority than by encouraging people to imagine themselves wearing a sheriff’s badge, a well–tailored uniform, and a pair of polished boots?”
Lapham’s characteristic ironic tone can be heard in his sarcastic explanations of the “necessity” that compels the Bush administration’s assault on the Constitution: “a modern war against terrorism cannot be fought with an old scrap of parchment and obsolete notions of freedom. Let too many freedoms wander around loose in the streets, and who knows when somebody will turn up with a bread knife or a bomb?”
Lapham’s thought and his writing are steeped in the tradition of American liberty beginning in the era of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson. The soul of his writing comes from his desire to protect the liberties guaranteed in the US constitution and the US model of government — and also the challenges and struggles that protecting liberty necessitates. He also points out the historical precedents for the suppression of dissent and democracy during the Spanish–American War, World War I and the Cold War. Lapham’s long historical perspective reacquaints the reader with the beauty and fragility of the US’s democratic system and provides historical lessons for combating the current erosion of liberties, which is too often regarded as unprecedented.
While Gag Rule is focussed on the United States and its particular problems, his examination of political culture can be applied to other democratic nations. In sum, Gag Rule, is an elegy for leaders’ and citizens’ loss of courage to ask difficult questions of power and work imaginatively toward a stronger democracy.
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