Dangerous Times: When Freedom is Disloyalty

There has been a lot of criticism of Zell Miller's speech at the Republican National Convention, most of it focusing on Miller's attacks on Kerry. Not enough attention has been paid to the manner in which he equated legitimate political dissent with treason and disloyalty.

Jack M. Balkin writes:

Does the Republican leadership, or for that matter, the Republican rank and file actually believe that political opposition to the President's policies is truly disloyal? If so, this is a serious problem for the health of American democracy. It's fair game to call your opponents stupid and their policies unsound. It's even OK to say that what they are proposing will be bad for the country and for the cause of freedom around the world. But you cross the line when you argue that political opposition is designed to weaken America at the hands of its enemies, and that the other party seeks to sell America out.

That is one reason why I thought Anne Coulter's recent book entitled "Treason" was a sorry comment on the state of American democracy. One can dismiss Coulter as a freak show, although she gets plenty of air time on the cable channels. But when Coulter's basic message-- that political opposition is disloyal-- is delivered by a keynote speaker at the Republican National Convention to a wildly cheering audience, these sentiments can no longer be seen as isolated examples of fringe lunacy. Instead, they now are being employed as a key campaign strategy.

Terrorism around the world makes the world a dangerous place. What happened the other night at the Republican Convention makes things dangerous in an entirely different way.

Matthew Yglesias writes:

Watching that speech from inside the hall, I was genuinely afraid at one or two points. The audience was so enthused by his frankly fascistic remarks that at any moment I thought the distinguished Senator might point up and say "see, there, right there is one of these unpatriotic liberal journalists busy abusing the freedoms our soldiers fight to protect -- he must be destroyed for the safety of the Republican" and that Matt Welch and I would need to fend for our lives against the onrushing hordes.

Of course it didn't quite come to that, but I don't believe I've ever heard a more disgusting speech delivered in the English language. The fact that I couldn't see a single person on the floor who seemed to feel anything less than the utmost enthusiasm for that lunacy was, well, a bit disturbing.

I don't see where there could be any basis for disputing the idea that attitudes like Miller's are unhealthy for a democratic republic like ours. Unfortunately, he isn't a crank posting on a blog on the internet, he's a prominent politician whose ideas were received with great enthusiasm by the Republican Party. What does that say about the Republican Party generally and the Republicans who were actually there?

Zell Miller's ideas are consistent with a one-party totalitarian state, not a free democracy. The fact that the current Republican leadership did not immediately repudiate him (which would have been tough, since they approved his speech before hand) raises the question of whether they cannot be trusted with the reigns of power in a democracy. Theoretically, only those who respect the principles of freedom, disagreement, and dissent should be in such a position.

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