Viewing the Constitution from the Right
By David Swanson
Bruce Fein's new book "Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy," is written
by someone who admits he voted for Bush and Cheney twice, supported the appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito
with no apparent regrets, proposes Robert Bork as a model justice, admires Rehnquist and Scalia, supported the
impeachment of Bill Clinton and wanted him convicted, served as associate deputy attorney general to Ronald Reagan and
general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission under Reagan (who -- you'll recall -- eliminated the Fairness
Doctrine), worked as research director for Congressman Dick Cheney when they blocked investigation of Reagan's
Iran-Contra crimes and prevented his impeachment, has been a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, opposes Roe v.
Wade and affirmative action and any minimum wage, supports discrimination against homosexuals, and -- in an unfortunate
bit of timing -- openly declares on page 20 that he "frowns on government regulation … to manipulate or distort free
market choices."
Yet, if you set aside pages 19 through 21, I agree with pretty much all the main points in this book. That they come
from someone on the right has had no impact on them that I can discern. That they come from Bruce Fein has given them a
unique foundation in historical and legal facts, benefitting from Fein's understanding of history, both distant and
Nixonian. Fein did not support Nixon's crimes any more than Bush's and Cheney's, but he does recognize the greater
gravity of the latter.
Fein's political perspective may have had some impact -- I don't know for sure -- on his choice of which crimes to focus
on. His book is particularly worth reading if you want the low down on illegal spying, illegal secrecy, and illegal
rendition. Fein goes very light on the war and many other crimes and abuses. On page 2 he rather obscenely refers to the
"hundreds [sic] of civilians who have been killed by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan." Two serious studies
have been done of the Iraqi death count resulting from the invasion and occupation, both placing the count well over a
million. One is Just Foreign Policy's updated figure based on an initial but now outdated report by Johns Hopkins /
Lancet. The other is an August 2007 study by the British polling company Opinion Research Business, then estimating 1.2
million, now also out of date. See: http://justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html I think you'd be hard pressed to find any neocons in Washington who would claim the total was under 10,000, except
apparently for Fein.
I also object to Fein's claim on page 41 that the American people have not "flooded Pelosi's office with protesting
Emails or phone calls," over her refusal to impeach. Where did Fein get such an absurd idea? >From Pelosi? And he
believed her? Or did he just pull it out of thin air based on the Washington Post's and the Washington Times' failure to
report on the fact that we've shut Pelosi's office down with floods of Emails, faxes, and phone calls over a period of
well over a year, that we've sat in her office, delivered petitions to her office, camped out endlessly in her front
yard in San Francisco (which has made lots of media and generated her complaint that she can't have us arrested the way
she would if we were poor people unprotected by the First Amendment), disrupted her speaking events, marched from Boston
to her DC office, saturated the internet and progressive radio with complaints against her, and run Cindy Sheehan
against her as an impeachment candidate for Congress.
I also disagree somewhat with some of Fein's points on pages 44-45. Fein thinks that Americans are slow to grow outraged
over abuses of civil rights because most of those abused are non-Americans with foreign-sounding names. I think there is
a lot of truth in that, and yet there are numerous American victims, including political prisoners like the former
governor of Alabama. Americans have been spied on. American whistleblowers, including in the Justice Department -- such
as Jesslyn Radack -- have had their careers destroyed as retribution for speaking out, and for speaking out against
abuses of other Americans. Americans have been deceived by illegal propaganda. Americans (like Cindy Sheehan's son) have
been sent to their deaths for a pile of lies. Americans live on the globe the accelerated warming of which Fein does not
touch on. In short, there are specific American victims, and we are all victims of outrageous criminal acts and criminal
negligence. And when Fein proposes that candidates for president should promise not to "detain without trial any
American citizen," I think he is playing to the same xenophobia he diagnoses. We should not tolerate the detention
without trial of anyone.
But these are minor points I'm picking out of a 204-page book that is absolutely devastating in its demand for the
immediate impeachment of Bush and Cheney. And this is obviously a book that can be given to your right-wing uncle with
the most likely chance of him not dismissing it quickly. Fein's analysis of the peril in which we find ourselves is
devastating -- and depressing. Sadly, he offers no advice for what we can do about it, other than demanding impeachment.
He organizes nothing, and he openly predicts failure, which is just not an effective way to encourage action. And yet it
seems pure and honest, and Fein offers these dead-on accurate and ethical words of advice:
"It might be asked, if the overwhelming majority of Americans are vastly more thrilled by sporting events and creature
comforts than they are by the moral challenges and burdens of self-government, then why struggle against this inexorable
tide? The answer is two-fold. Anything else would be dishonorable. And you might leave footprints in the sands of time
to inspire someone yet to be born to champion freedom in more propitious circumstances."
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