It's disturbing that so many people want Oliver North to get a pardon. It's disturbing that people like Nacky Loeb and Jim Finnegan, who dress themselves as staunch defenders of individual liberty, would call someone who subverted the Constitution a "hero." The historian Richard Hofstadter once remarked that the American people are never far away from wanting to give up the ambiguities of democracy. The veneration of Oliver North shows how accurate he is.
Oliver North, whatever his qualities as an individual, is a dangerous man. I would have liked to ask him, during his testimony to Congress and his trial, what he thought he was defending when he took an oath to defend the Constitution. I think that despite his often cloying homilies to freedom and democracy, North had no loyalty to the Constitution. His loyalty was to something I would call the ethic of obedience. The Constitution, at least in its Bill of Rights, is about the extent to which government must be obedient to the people, not the other way around. The first ten amendments are based on the premise that a democracy needs to protect an informed and vigorous opposition by individuals to the state's appetite for tyranny.
North subverts that premise, and thus the Constitution. North thrills to following a command from the state. He delights in obedience, believing that filling the orders given by a superior is the highest ethical act. What's frightening about this concept is that it confuses a Mussolini-like affection for efficiency with defending individual freedoms. I'm sure there were times when North, having finished off a tricky bit of maneuvering, felt that he'd made the Free World just a little bit stronger. This is the basic formula for fascism, substituting the efficiency of the state for the messiness of laws, individual choice, and disagreement. Prosecutor John Keker was right when he equated what North did to what Nazi officers did.
So how can anyone call North a "hero"? Why should we honor a martinet with a pardon? I think there's more important work to do, like impeaching George Bush. Senator John Kerry's recent report on drug trafficking among the contras and the 42-page memorandum released during North's trial clearly show that Bush was very much in the loops of the Iranamok shenanigans. He's lied to the people about his involvement, and what he did helped break the law. If we're really interested in honoring the 200th birthday of the Constitution, then we should exercise our democratic muscles and drive the burned-out Bush from office. Now that would be an heroic action.
Ethics In The Schools
New Orleans