When's the first train to the re-education camp?

November 9, 9:21 PMCivil Liberties ExaminerJ.D. Tuccille

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"Lady Liberty Cracked" by Julio Aguilera

When antisemites slip into my site among the decent people to post comments on my columns warning, in all-caps, that our first non-lily-white president is a secret totalitarian with plans to establish the Fourth Reich on American soil, I know that we've entered into a strange new world. Barack Obama must be a scary guy if he can get the Nazis shivering in their jackboots.

Speaking as a man married to a Jewish woman, who has mezuzahs affixed to his home's doorways and who is raising his son to be secular, but knowledgeable of both Jewish and Christian traditions, all I can say to the kosher-phobic visitors is: Shalom, y'all!

That's not to say there aren't reasons to be concerned about the new president. As I've written, I'm worried about Obama's apparent interest in compelled service to the state. And his obvious hostlity to the only recently formally recognized right to bear arms is a very real potential threat to freedom. Obama also rode to office on a platform of populist economics that suggests a dangerously heavy hand on regulation and a protectionist trade policy that could ruin this country.

But I'm not fond of the indifference his predecessor, President George W. Bush, displayed to due process, privacy and limits on executive power. And Bush was less a protector of free markets than a practitioner of crony capitalism whose administration was both enthusiastic and inept at business regulation.

If we're entering into an era of elitist collectivism, it's only after eight years of thuggish authoritarianism. It's too early to know whether the new order will be less bad than what went before.

At this time, before he's taken the oath of office, Barack Obama has the potential to do either good or evil once he assumes power. He has a good record on reproductive rights and due process, an interest in at least moderating the worst abuses of drug prohibition, and at least a mixed history on privacy. I'm not hopeful, but we will have to wait and see whether President Obama's tenure in office is a net boon or bust for liberty.

But amidst the apocalyptic warnings of the death of the republic that have become traditional before and after every election, it's easy to forget that the recent history of this country hasn't exactly been an unbroken march to the re-education camps. Even as liberty has waned in some areas, it's also waxed in important ways.

Veronique de Rugy, of George Mason University's Mercatus Center, has an important article in the current issue of Reason (not yet online), asking, "Are You Better Off Than You Were 40 Years Ago?" That's a time frame of interest to me because, 40 years ago, I was exactly the same age my son is now.

So is the world my son is has entered better or worse than the one in which I toddled? It's hardly a decisive verdict, but de Rugy points out:

Looking at the whole social picture, it's hard to tell blacks, Jews, gays and women that they are less free today than they were in 1968. As a woman, I can enter and leave the work world freely, whether I have kids or not. I can get an abortion, file for divorce, enter into a lesbian relationship, marry a black guy, or have several lovers, all without worrying about legal consequences (or being drummed out of polite society). While some restrictions persist, the breakdown of social barriers, many of them formerly enforced by government edict , has done much to increase my freedom and that of other once-restricted groups.

Indeed, in a year in which we mourn the passage of three state constitutional amendments banning recognition of same-sex marriage, it's worth remembering that laws against simple homosexual conduct were upheld as recently as 1986. And not only was the right to terminate pregnancies an unsettled matter in 1968, but protections for the right to simply use condoms and birth control pills were only three years old.

And as we fear the muzzling of political voices on radio and TV by renewed censorship, lets not forget that the content-controlling Fairness Doctrine was black-letter law 40 years ago. Government officials happily gagged critics in the broadcast media back then, and there was no Internet or satellite radio to provide an alternative.

Heller finally recognized the right to bear arms as an individual right this year, but a restrictive gun control law clamped down tighly on firearms manufacturers, sellers and owners in 1968.

And while I warn of the incoming administration's obvious interest in mandating national civilian service, a military draft sent many unwilling young men to their deaths in 1968.

Economic liberty was equally constrained in some areas. Veronique de Rugy points out, "The deregulation of the airline, telecom, and trucking industries in the 1970s, and the marginal tax rate cuts and control of inflation in the '80s, contributed to the widespread prosperity of the '90s."

No doubt. In an era when politicians are again beginning to whine about the supposed evils of markets that function with minimal input from ... well .. politicians, it's easy to forget just how horribly controlled and utterly unresponsive to consumers some industries were not so long ago. Writing for the Hoover Institution, John Robson, one-time chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board reminded us:

The CAB held extensive and elaborately staged hearings on nearly every single request regarding routes or prices, including requests by existing and new carriers to start additional service between two given cities. Those hearings were often predictably scripted in their outcome. More often than not, requests to establish new routes were denied or approved with restrictions. Further, the process was expensive and time consuming; it took the CAB eight years to give Continental Airlines permission to fly between San Diego and Denver.

Yes, in some important ways, we are more free now than we were 40 years ago.

But not in all ways. The tentacles of the state reach far and wide. We are more thoroughly searched, recorded in databases and monitored than ever before in history. Bar owners in many places can't allow their customers to smoke, the war on drugs has resulted in militarized police forces conducting sometimes-lethal midnight raids on the homes of people suspected of selling or simply using intoxicants the government doesn't like, food ingredients and menu listings are micro-managed to an increasingly bizarre degree, and an always-growing government has more resources than ever to devote to pursuing and punishing infractions it simply let slide out of necessity in years past.

The world into which my son enters is, in many ways, more free and tolerant, but in others it is more closely regulated and controlled.

So while I don't want to play the role of monotonous doom-sayer in a world that offers both good and bad, I see no reason to make life easy for politicians such as Barack Obama, even when he has yet to take office and establish a track record. Frankly, if somebody want to exercise the power of the ATF, CIA, DEA, FBI, IRS and the U.S. military, among other wonderfully lethal agencies, I see no reason to subject him or her to anything less than an hourly scrutiny of proctological thoroughness. Don't like it? Go back to a productive job in the private sector.

That's especially true when I spend the week following the election playing ideological whack-a-mole with the president-elect's IT staff, linking to pages on the new chief executive's Change.gov Website for the purposes of criticizing policies outlined there, only to find the language on those pages revised in significant ways or removed entirely after I publish.

Not only do I wonder if the new guy is being a bit disingenuous about his proposed policies, I also start wondering if a spotlight of attention is all that's necessary to trim the man's sails when it comes to control-freakery. Frankly, if all it takes to defeat bad ideas is to stay up late and write more columns, I'll make an extra pot of coffee and highlight every intrusive proposal I can find.

Overall, I don't fear stormtroopers in the streets. What I worry about is a gradual upset in the balance -- less deregulation and repealed legislation, and more social workers, regulators and tax collectors. I'm concerned that, one law and executive order after another, the world in which my son grows up will get a little more constrained, a little less free, and a little more dominated by government officials who substitute their values and judgments for the preferences of millions of Americans who have the right to make their own way in the world.

But as much as I worry, it's almost worthwhile to see bigots in an anxious sweat over the the possibility of an oppressive regime controlled by somebody other than themselves.

Contact J.D.: civilliberties (at) tuccille.com