[Peace-discuss] Cindy Sheehan and saving American Democracy

[Paul Patton]

Published on Monday, August 15, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Jefferson Would Have Stood With Cindy Sheehan
by Thom Hartmann
 
Nationally, it was clearly a phenomenon when several truckers called
into a radio show on Sirius Satellite to say that they were
interrupting trips through central parts of the USA to head to
Crawford, Texas. One even reported live as he experienced a (friendly)
reception by the local sheriff, who helped him find a place to park
his rig. Locally here in Oregon, it's not unusual to see cars with
signs taped to their rear windows - printed in inch-high letters on an
8 1/2" x 11" piece of paper - that say variations on: "We're With
Cindy!" or "Answer Her Questions!"

Ambassador Joe Wilson represented a political threat to Bush by
credibly exposing part of Bush's lie and its methodology, and so
Wilson had to be taken out by destroying his wife's career. Cindy
Sheehan now represents a similar political threat, and for this job
right-wing hate radio, Drudge, and extremist bloggers have zeroed in
on her. Meanwhile, thousands of patriotic Americans, tired of being
lied to by the Bush regime, are heading to Crawford, or visiting
www.meetwithcindy.com or www.crawfordpeacehouse.org.

Often history tells us how the future may turn out: Bush Junior isn't
the first president to have lied to us about foreign affairs and war,
or to use lies to justify eviscerating the Constitution. For example,
Lyndon Johnson lied about a non-existent attack on the US warship
Maddox in the Vietnamese Gulf of Tonkin. William McKinley (the
presidency after which Karl Rove has said he's modeling the Bush
presidency) lied about an attack on the USS Maine to get us into the
Spanish-American war in The Philippines and Cuba.

But most relevant to today's situation were John Adams' version of
Bush's Saddam stories when Adams sent three emissaries to France and
criminals soliciting bribes approached them late one evening. Adams
referred to these three unidentified Frenchmen as "Mr. X, Mr. Y, and
Mr. Z," and made them out to represent such an insult and a threat
against America that it may presage war.

Adams' use of "The XYZ Affair" to gain political capital nearly led us
to war with France and helped him carve a large (although temporary)
hole in the Constitution. Similarly, much like Bush's corralling of
protesters at gunpoint into so-called "Free Speech Zones," and saying
he has the power to lock up Americans (like Jose Padilla) without
charges and without access to a lawyer, John Adams jailed newspaper
editors and average citizens alike who spoke out against him and his
policies.

At that time in the late 1790s, Adams was President and Jefferson was
Vice President. Adams led the Federalist Party (which today could be
said to have reincarnated as the Republican Party - thus the attempts
by Republican historians to rehabilitate Adams' legacy and trash
Jefferson), and Jefferson had just brought together two
Anti-Federalist parties - the Democrats and the Republicans - into one
party called The Democratic Republicans. (Today they're known as the
Democratic Party, the longest-lasting political party in history. They
dropped "Republican" from their name in the 1820-1830 era).

Adams and his Federalist cronies, using war hysteria with France as a
wedge issue, were pushing the Alien & Sedition Acts through Congress,
and even threw into prison Democratic Congressman Matthew Lyon of
Vermont for speaking out against the Federalists on the floor of the
House of Representatives. Adams was leading the United States in the
direction of a fascistic state with a spectacularly successful
strategy of vilifying Jefferson and his Party as anti-American and
pro-French. Adams rhetoric was described as "manly" by the Federalist
newspapers, which admiringly published dozens of his threatening rants
against France, suggesting that Jefferson's Democratic Republicans
were less than patriots and perhaps even traitors because of their
opposition to the unnecessary war with France that Adams was
simultaneously trying to gin up and saying he was working to avoid.

On June 1, 1798 - two weeks before the Alien & Sedition Acts passed
Congress by a single vote - Jefferson wrote a thoughtful letter to his
old friend John Taylor.

"This is not new," Jefferson said. "It is the old practice of despots;
to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order. And those who
have once got an ascendancy and possessed themselves of all the
resources of the nation, their revenues and offices, have immense
means for retaining their advantage.

"But," he added, "our present situation is not a natural one."
Jefferson knew that Adams' Federalists did not represent the true
heart and soul of America, and commented to Taylor about how Adams had
been using divide-and-conquer politics, and fear-mongering about war
with France (the "XYZ Affair") with some success.

"But still I repeat it," he wrote again to Taylor, "this is not the
natural state."

Jefferson did everything he could to stop that generation's version of
the PATRIOT Act, but Adams had the Federalists in control of both the
House of Representatives and the Senate, and pushed through the Alien
and Sedition Acts. Jefferson left town the day they were signed in
protest.

Jefferson later wrote in his diary, "Their usurpations and violations
of the Constitution at that period, and their majority in both Houses
of Congress, were so great, so decided, and so daring, that after
combating their aggressions, inch by inch, without being able in the
least to check their career, the [Democratic] Republican leaders
thought it would be best for them to give up their useless efforts
there, go home, get into their respective legislatures, embody
whatever of resistance they could be formed into, and if ineffectual,
to perish there as in the last ditch."

Democratic Republican Congressman Albert Gallatin submitted
legislation that would repeal the Alien & Sedition Acts, and the
Federalist majority in the House refused to even consider the motion,
while informing Gallatin that he would be the next to be imprisoned if
he kept speaking out against "the national security."

But a new force arose.

When Adams shut down the Democratic Republican newspapers,
pamphleteers - like those who had helped stir up the American
Revolution - went to work, papering towns from New Hampshire to
Georgia with posters and leaflets decrying Adams' power grab and
encouraging people to stand tall with Thomas Jefferson. One of the
best was a short screed by George Nicholas of Kentucky, "Justifying
the Kentucky Resolution against the Alien & Sedition Laws" and "
Correcting Certain False Statements, Which Have Been Made in the
Different States" by Adams' Federalists.

On February 13, 1799, then-Vice President Jefferson sent a copy of
Nicholas' pamphlet to his old friend Archibald Stuart (a Virginia
legislator, fighter in the War of Independence, and leader of
Jefferson's Democratic Republicans).

"I avoid writing to my friends because the fidelity of the post office
is very much doubted," he opened his letter to Stuart, concerned that
Adams was having his mail inspected because of his anti-war
activities. Jefferson pointed out that "France is sincerely anxious
for reconciliation, willing to give us a liberal treaty," and that
even with the Democratic newspapers shut down by Adams and the
Federalist-controlled media being unwilling to speak of Adams' war
lies, word was getting out to the people.

Jefferson noted, "All these things are working on the public mind.
They are getting back to the point where they were when the X. Y. Z.
story was passed off on them. A wonderful and rapid change is taking
place in Pennsylvania, Jersey, and New York. Congress is daily plied
with petitions against the alien and sedition laws and standing
armies."

Jefferson then turned to the need for the pamphleteers' materials to
be widely distributed. "The materials now bearing on the public mind
will infallibly restore it to its republican soundness in the course
of the present summer," he wrote, "if the knowledge of facts can only
be disseminated among the people. Under separate cover you will
receive some pamphlets written by George Nicholas on the acts of the
last session. These I would wish you to distribute...."

The pamphleteer - today he would have been called a blogger - was
James Bradford, and he reprinted tens of thousands of copies of
Nicholas' pamphlet and distributed it far and wide. Hand to hand, as
Jefferson did with his by-courier letter to Stuart - was how what
would be today's postings to progressive websites were distributed.

In the face of the pamphleteering and protests, the Federalists fought
back with startling venom. Vicious personal attacks were launched in
the Federalist press against Jefferson, Madison, and others, and
President Adams and Vice President Jefferson were scarcely on speaking
terms. Adams' goal was nothing short of the complete destruction of
Jefferson's Democratic Party, and he had scared many of them into
silence or submission.

"All [Democratic Republicans], therefore, retired," Jefferson wrote in
his diary, "leaving Mr. Gallatin alone in the House of
Representatives, and myself in the Senate, where I then presided as
Vice-President. Remaining at our posts, and bidding defiance to the
brow-beatings and insults by which they endeavored to drive us off
also, we kept the mass of [Democratic] Republicans in phalanx
together, until the legislature could be brought up to the charge; and
nothing on earth is more certain, than that if myself particularly,
placed by my office of Vice-President at the head of the [Democratic]
Republicans, had given way and withdrawn from my post, the
[Democratic] Republicans throughout the Union would have given up in
despair; and the cause would have been lost forever."

But Jefferson and Gallatin held their posts, and fought back fiercely
against Adams, thus saving - quite literally - American democracy.
Jefferson and Madison also secretly helped legislators in Virginia and
Kentucky submit resolutions in those states' legislatures decrying the
Alien & Sedition Acts. The bill in Virginia, in particular, gained
traction.

As Jefferson noted in his diary, "By holding on, we obtained time for
the legislatures to come up with their weight; and those of Virginia
and Kentucky particularly, but more especially the former, by their
celebrated resolutions, saved the Constitution at its last gasp. No
person who was not a witness of the scenes of that gloomy period, can
form any idea of the afflicting persecutions and personal indignities
we had to brook. They saved our country however. The spirits of the
people were so much subdued and reduced to despair by the X Y Z
imposture, and other stratagems and machinations, that they would have
sunk into apathy and monarchy, as the only form of government which
could maintain itself."

The efforts of average people like that century's Cindy Sheehans, and
fearless politicians like today's Howard Dean, John Conyers, and
Bernie Sanders, made great gains. As Jefferson noted in a February 14,
1799 letter to Virginia's Edmund Pendleton, "The violations of the
Constitution, propensities to war, to expense, and to a particular
foreign connection, which we have lately seen, are becoming evident to
the people, and are dispelling that mist which X. Y. Z. had spread
before their eyes. This State is coming forward with a boldness not
yet seen. Even the German counties of York and Lancaster, hitherto the
most devoted [to Adams], have come about, and by petitions with four
thousand signers remonstrate against the alien and sedition laws,
standing armies, and discretionary powers in the President."

Americans were so angry with Adams, Jefferson noted, that the
challenge was to prevent people from taking up arms against Adams'
Federalists.

"New York and Jersey are also getting into great agitation. In this
State [of Pennsylvania], we fear that the ill-designing may produce
insurrection. Nothing could be so fatal. Anything like force would
check the progress of the public opinion and rally them round the
government. This is not the kind of opposition the American people
will permit."

Like Cindy Sheehan, Jefferson knew that peaceful protests had greater
power than violence or threats.

"But keep away all show of force," he wrote to Pendleton, "and they
will bear down the evil propensities of the government, by the
constitutional means of election and petition. If we can keep quiet,
therefore, the tide now turning will take a steady and proper
direction."

A week later, February 21, 1799, Jefferson wrote to the great Polish
general who had fought in the American Revolution, Thaddeus Kosciusko,
a close friend who was then living in Russia. War was the great enemy
of democracy, Jefferson noted, and peace was its champion. And the
American people were increasingly siding with peace and rejecting
Adams' call for war.

"The wonderful irritation produced in the minds of our citizens by the
X. Y. Z. story, has in a great measure subsided," he noted. "They
begin to suspect and to see it coolly in its true light."

But Adams was still President, and for him and his Federalist Party
war would have helped tremendously with the upcoming election of 1800.
In France some leaders wanted war with America for similar reasons.

Jefferson continued, "What course the government will pursue, I know
not. But if we are left in peace, I have no doubt the wonderful turn
in the public opinion now manifestly taking place and rapidly
increasing, will, in the course of this' summer, become so universal
and so weighty, that friendship abroad and freedom at home will be
firmly established by the influence and constitutional powers of the
people at large."

And if Adams' rhetoric led to an attack on America by France? "If we
are forced into war," Jefferson noted, "we must give up political
differences of opinion, and unite as one man to defend our country.
But whether at the close of such a war, we should be as free as we are
now, God knows."

The tide was turned, to use Jefferson's phrase, by the election of
1800. The abuses of the Federalists were so burned into the people's
minds when Jefferson's party came to power, and he freed the
imprisoned newspaper editors so reform-minded newspapers were started
back up again, that the Federalists disintegrated altogether as a
party over the next two decades.

All because average citizens and pamphleteers stood up and challenged
the lies of a war-mongering president, and politicians of principle
were willing to lead. Cindy Sheehan is the George Nicholas or Rusticus
of our age. Jefferson would have stood with her.

America has been burdened by lying presidents before, and even one who
tried to destroy our Constitution. But in our era - like in
Jefferson's - we are fortunate to have radical truth-tellers like
Cindy Sheehan and Joseph Wilson to warn us of treasonous acts for
political gain, and bloggers and progressive websites to carry the
truth.

If we stand in solidarity with today's truth-tellers, and politicians
step forward to take a leadership role, then its entirely possible
that with the elections of 2006 and 2008 American democracy can once
again prevail.

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored
Award-winning best-selling author, and host of a nationally syndicated
daily progressive talk show and a morning progressive talk show on
KPOJ in Portland, Oregon. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books
are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection," "We
The People," "The Edison Gene", and "What Would Jefferson Do?"