U.S. Constitution smiles on anti-political spying proposal

It’s New Year’s Eve. And of all strange things, the Wall Street Journal reports that the Russians are having some fun poking their little noses into America’s national life. One of their scholars is even predicting our downfall, a splintering of our union next year in civil war.

But Russians and our other detractors should pay attention to New Mexico next year, and to civil libertarians around the country. They might get a lesson in the fundamentals of America’s bulwark against social collapse and the moral horrors that lead to political violence. That bulwark is, of course, the Constitution of the United States, a reality in our culture that officials from the former Soviet Union simply do not grasp.

A bill based on the Constitution’s protection of lawful assembly, will be backed heavily by the ACLU of New Mexico in the 2009 legislative session. It would prohibit police from infiltrating and spying on political groups that peacefully oppose government policies while exercising their right to dissent.

Another battle around the validity of dissent continues to be waged at the national ACLU over the core values of the organization. It’s a battle between marginalized old guard constitutionalists and more partisan, ends-justify-the-means mainstream that has alienated many longtime supporters of the organization.

Vibrant dissent, no matter in what venue it takes place, always stumps authoritarians, wherever they may be.

The delusional, America-hating Russian professor of post-Soviet diplomacy that’s predicting a civil war in 2010 is really stumped.

The former KGB agent, Igor Panarin, has perhaps misinterpreted partisan animosities in our country as a sign of a of fundamental fracturing in the American character producing fissures that will widen under economic pressures into a massive crevasse similar to the one that swallowed the Soviet Union in 1989.

I suppose it’s understandable that to outsiders, American political hate speech might seem like prologue to political violence. It makes sense, too, that growing economic inequalities in our country, magnified over the last three decades, might seem to be dragging us perilously close to class violence. It’s not totally unreasonable, either, to interpret racial hatred in America as becoming entrenched rather than lifting. And various assaults on the Constitution in the name of national security since 9/11, along with America’s suspicion of dissent since the 1950′s, might well be seen as preparing the way for an authoritarian crackdown that would amount to a call to arms in some quarters.

That all might well make sense to someone who works for a government that relishes the thought of us collapsing under our own paradoxes, inconsistencies and contradictions. In fact, anti-American prophets like Igor Panarin confuse wishful thinking with realism, and partial knowledge with transcendent insight.

If you’re a good spy, aren’t you supposed to pay attention to everything? Panarin has not. In the first place, of course, we are not a hodgepodge nation of regionally antagonistic cultures like the Soviet Union was, held together by state terror and five year economic plans.

We are a nation of the enlightenment. The American story is, as historian Joseph J. Ellis writes in American Creation, “about the triumph of representative government bottomed on the principle of popular sovereignty… a secular state unaffiliated with any official religion, and the rule of law that presumes the equality of its citizens.”

That spirit is vested in the Constitution.

And the Constitution, so foolishly damaged over the last eight years, appears about to make a comeback in the Obama administration. Even the most dedicated advocates of executive authority, and wartime suspension of civil rights, couldn’t demolish it, even after 9/11.

We have elected a new government, one based on dissent against the old one. The Constitution has survived once again. Without it, anything, even the Russian professor’s predictions, might befall us.

That’s why the local ACLU’s bill to ban police spying in New Mexico, and the internal struggles at the national ACLU, are so important. They are signs that Constitutional scruples are still vibrant in our nation.

As long as dissent flourishes, and even when it is reduced to mere tokenism, the Constitution has a chance to provide an arena in which economic, environmental, and even racial conflicts can be resolved without physical violence.

Opposing police spying on legitimate political groups and dissenting individuals has a strong resonance for New Mexicans, especially those who suspect they were victims of unlawful surveillance in the l980s by the Albuquerque Police Department, and peace demonstrators who have become well aware of informants in their midsts.

APD had accumulated some 35 boxes on New Mexico members of the ACLU, local lawyers and others. The secret dossiers were uncovered by a judicial investigation of APD. The boxes were destroyed before anyone could analyze their contents.

The national ACLU’s fight over basic principles, including privacy and dissent, has gone largely underground lately. But when the National ACLU Board elected Susan Herman, a New York ACLU member and Brooklyn Law School professor, president of the national board of directors, the struggle resurfaced.

To get full picture of the internal troubles, check the Web sites of the national ACLU and of Save The ACLU. Be sure to read both Susan Herman and former ACLU director Ira Glasser.

From my perspective, as a minor member of the loyal opposition, the national ACLU board and Susan Herman seem to feel that the ACLU is a “progressive organization,” as they say, that is being thwarted in its mission by internal “bickering” over what Ira Glasser calls violations of “core ACLU principles.” It’s never a positive sign when disagreement is belittled as minor squabbling, and dissent is portrayed as thwarting progress.

The ACLU, in my judgment, should be aligned to neither progressives nor conservatives, but to the Constitution exclusively, which guarantees all Americans freedom of speech and dissent under equal protection of the law.

The current national board majority seems to be waffling a bit on those core principles. It actually entertained an internal proposal a few years ago to gag board members and prevent them from publicly disagreeing with the ACLU staff and board. Though eventually cast aside, the proposal wasn’t laughed out of the room. And that speaks volumes about the current value of dissent in the organization.

All factions of the ACLU believe, I’m sure, that the Constitution holds us together as a nation, and protects us individually and collectively from authoritarian encroachments. Former members of the Soviet secret police don’t get that, of course. And their speculations on America’s future are rendered absurd, as long as dissent is honored and protected at all costs.