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Extremism in the defense of power is a vice
June 10 marked the 61st anniversary of the American University speech where President John F. Kennedy called for peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union.
The young leader’s hopeful message contrasted sharply with the fear-mongering rhetoric of his presidential campaign of just a few years earlier. The Cuban Missile Crisis convinced Kennedy that nuclear war had to be prevented at all costs because the alternative was too terrible to contemplate.
What a contrast to the spectacle of a scowling President Biden goading Russia over Ukraine, a corrupt country with no obvious strategic value to the United States. His provocative actions suggest the desperation of an unpopular leader willing to do anything to preserve the impression of strength.
Biden's recklessness gives the lie to the notion peddled by his followers that the aging Democrat would restore a sense of order and decorum after the alleged chaos of the Trump administration.
It turns out that the people who harp the most about the need to preserve “norms” are the biggest norm breakers around.
A partial list of their other transgressions includes ginning up the first-ever felony verdict of a former and possibly future president in the middle of an election; opening the southern border to millions of illegal immigrants; and ordering police to attack pro-Palestinian college students demonstrating against their government’s support for Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
In 1964, Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater declared that “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”
Today’s ruling faction clearly believes that extremism in defense of their power is no vice.
Not that this situation is unprecedented. President John Adams supported the Alien and Sedition Acts. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. Woodrow Wilson jailed dissidents as he maneuvered the country into the First World War. FDR put Japanese-American citizens in internment camps after Pearl Harbor. Lyndon B. Johnson manufactured the Tonkin Gulf incident to justify a dramatic escalation of US involvement in Vietnam. George W. Bush lied about “weapons of mass destruction” to provide a pretext for our unprovoked invasion of Iraq.
What those outrages showed was a refusal on the part of officeholders and their functionaries to recognize any limits on their use of the power entrusted to them by Americans. Which was exactly the circumstance that the men who established the governing structure of the United States, including Adams, wanted to prevent. That's why they created three separate coequal branches of government.
A free press was supposed to keep a watchful eye on the whole arrangement. Yet here we are now, beset by a government that is infinitely more dangerous than anything Adams and his compatriots could have imagined.
Albert Camus said that wisdom comes from accepting the fallibility of being human. There are inherent restrictions on our ability to understand and affect the world.
Our leaders need to heed JFK’s example and operate within the boundaries of reason. Otherwise they will continue to be part of the problem, not the solution.
John Kirsch
Mexico City