Writers and Writing Dangers to Free Government
FITCH, ROBERT E.
WRITERS and WRITING Dangers to Free Government National Security and Individual Freedom. By John Lord O'Brian. Harvard. 84 pp. $2.00. Reviewed by Robert E. Fitch Dean, Pacific School of...
...O'Brian presents an incisive argument for his thesis, then his experience would seem to warrant it...
...The Godkin Lectures at Harvard University for 1955, which make up this volume, are supposed to treat of the "Essentials of Free Government" and also of the "Duties of the Citizen...
...During World War I, he was head of the War Emergency Division of the Department of Justice, supervising the internment of enemy aliens and handling trials for subversive activities...
...John Lord O'Brian is interested only in the second group...
...He has also been a Regent of New York State and an Overseer of Harvard University...
...Apart from the invasion of individual rights that is involved here, there is the stupid futility of the whole program...
...He believes also in the religious and moral foundations of our democracy, and trusts that in time we shall recover the sanity and the regard for fair play that spring from these roots...
...Doubtless he is aware of the extent to which his own analysis of the problem is legal rather than ethical, and appreciates the degree to which both our security and our freedom were endangered by persons who failed to exercise their liberties with a full sense of moral responsibility...
...He has great faith in the power for effective action of a vigorous minority that is really dedicated to the goals that it serves...
...Thus "what appear to be slight aberrations of procedure" develop in time into "major invasions of constitutional freedom...
...The fanatical (and the fearful) are those who sensed the reality of the Communist threat, blew it up to monstrous proportions, and then exploited it to destroy both our security and our freedom...
...O'Brian calls not for abolition but for drastic revision of the security program "by men soundly educated in the history of freedom and in the history of constitutionalism...
...In World War II he served in the offices of the OPM and WPM, receiving the Presidential Medal of Merit for his work...
...Reviewed by Robert E. Fitch Dean, Pacific School of Religion By this time it is pretty clear that, apart from the activities of the Communist party itself, the threat to our national security and to our individual freedoms has come from two directions: from the fatuous and from the fanatical...
...And what does he want done about the present situation...
...Actually he is interested not in persons but in principles, and in what Cardozo called the inevitable tendency of a principle to expand itself to the limit of logic...
...2. The presumption of guilt is taking the place of the presumption of innocence...
...But since his analysis is a sober one, he tells the story of how those whom I have called fanatics came to their present position by a series of moderate and reasonable steps...
...Here is a device that affects the right to work of half a million men...
...The fatuous are those who played along with the party line out of motives compounded of vanity, idealism and credulity, and screamed with self-righteous indignation about civil liberties whenever anyone ventured to point out how they were being duped...
...Tied in with all this are: the denial of the right of cross-examination to the accused, the use of secret information contributed by anonymous accusers, the deprivation of constitutional protection by judicial review, the Attorney General's promulgation of lists of organizations thought to be subversive, and the limitation on freedom of travel by American citizens...
...If Mr...
...Once we allow ourselves, in an age of anxiety, to become obsessed with the craving for security, then the growth takes place in subtle and insidious ways...
...Perhaps these dangerous developments may be summarized under three main headings: 1. There is the increasing transfer of cases from judicial to administrative jurisdiction...
...3. There is a disposition to try men not for overt acts but for motives, ideas, suspected intentions...
...Yet, with due respect to persons employed in these capacities, I think no one will want to argue that, as a consequence of this security program, the seamen and the longshoremen have been morally elevated to the point where they represent a concern for the national welfare which is superior to that shown by other organizations of workers...
...Maybe there is just a little bit more to be heard on the second half of this topic...
...For instance, no seaman or longshoreman may have access to United States ships or to restricted waterfront areas without first getting clearance from the office of the Commandant of the Coast Guard at Washington...
...O'Brian realizes, of course, that working out an adjustment between national security and individual freedom is attended with great difficulties at any time...
Vol. 38 • December 1955 • No. 51
