Howard Dean, former Vermont governor and easily the best Democratic presidential candidate in decades, has started a petition to John Ashcroft to stop the Attorney General’s efforts to promote the new VICTORY Act. VICTORY, as outlined in this early draft, adds to the civil liberties damage already done by the PATRIOT Act.
Ashcroft is going on tour to support the VICTORY Act, legislation aimed to prevent “narco-terrorism”. The act includes provisions to punish “reverse money-laundering” (no, I haven’t been able to figure out what that means, and I’ve read the text four times now), extend prison sentences for a number of nonviolent drug-related (and unrelated) crimes, and greatly extend asset forfeiture powers possessed by the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security.
My personal comments to Ashcroft in the Dean petition:
The attacks of September 11, 2001 were designed to disrupt the American way of life. They have succeeded because of this administration’s failure to recognize that the American way of life is deeply rooted in personal freedoms. Yes, steps must be taken to more closely monitor terrorist organizations. Yes, we need better security for airports and vital infrastructure. Yes, we have been lax in our vigilance. But if measures intended to stop terrorism trample the civil rights of American citizens, we have handed the terrorists a victory they could not achieve with any number of suicidal attacks: the destruction of the American way of life. We will have become exactly what the terrorists would have us become: a paranoid police state whose citizens live in fear of not only terror attacks, but their own government and their fellow citizens.
Protecting the basic civil liberties granted by our Constitution is the best way we have to show terrorists that their vicious tactics are ultimately futile. We must set an example as a nation where anyone’s views may be heard, no matter how unpopular, without reprisal. The free exchange of ideas is crucial to the maintenance of a fair and just democracy in America. Legislation like the USA PATRIOT Act only serves to prevent public debate, forcing our best and brightest to keep silent for fear of reprisal from their government and those who do not share their ideas.
