Free Elections Threaten America

One would think that if anything would be fundamental to America, it would be the free elections that go along with democracy. Unfortunately there are more than a few Americans who regard liberals and dissent as such serious threats that perhaps they shouldn't even be allowed.

At Spinsanity, Brendan Nyhan comments:

[Zell] Miller wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Monday: "As I have said time and again, 9/11 changed everything. Everything, that is, except the national Democrats' shameful, manic obsession with bringing down a commander in chief. John Kerry has been wrong many times, but he's never been more wrong than in his failure to support our troops and our commander in chief in this war on terror."

Here, Miller again equates criticism of the president with an attack on his role as the civilian leader of the military, even suggesting that Kerry himself must go along with Bush. Moreover, the Georgia senator extends that principle even further, suggesting that Democrats had a "shameful, manic obsession with bringing down a commander in chief" even before 9/11, and that they should not have attacked Bush during any portion of his presidency.

Miller's language echoes that used by Steve Forbes, the former Republican presidential candidate, in a fundraising letter (404K PDF) distributed this summer by the Heritage Foundation. In it, Forbes suggests that liberals are a "threat to America" and that their ideological attacks on President Bush weaken the country: "Have you ever seen liberals and the Left so hostile? And do you think they're a threat to America, or are they just making outrageous talk? I think they're dangerous. In all my years I have never seen such venom in American politics. Even mainstream liberals are saying things and promoting policies that could rip our country apart and weaken our national security."

Statements like these go far beyond merely arguing that liberals are wrong or that dissent is misguided. Labeling dissent as "threat to America" in the context of a war where citizens are locked up without access to counsel and describing the mere act of offering a choice in the presidential election as a failure to support the troops in time of war imply that perhaps it is wrong to offer a choice in the first place.

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