One Small Step Closer to the Gulag

On the day I begin re-reading One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Democracy Now host Amy Goodman is arrested in St. Paul, Minnesota for protesting the arrest of two of her colleagues. All three have journalist credentials and Press ID, and yet police in riot gear manhandle them as if they’re members of the Weather Underground. Fortunately, some alert soul captures this outrage on video and posts it on YouTube.

For all of Barack Obama’s soaring and inspiring rhetoric, we didn’t hear much in his convention speech about restoring civil liberties. I wonder if Bill Clinton’s call for restoring the American Dream at home also meant turning back the emerging American police state.

The police state will prevail unless and until the arrest of a journalist as prominent as Amy Goodman is front-page news. As of this morning, at least on the New York Times and Los Angeles Times websites, it’s not even worth a mention. I don’t suspect that Diane Sawyer or Matt Lauer will lead with the story, either, though in the grand scheme of freedom and liberty, the arrest of Amy Goodman and the systematic stifling of dissent in this country is more important than Hurricane Gustav or the hypocrisy of Sarah Palin.

Dissent is as fundamental to a real democracy as free and fair elections. The Constitution still guarantees the right of free speech and free assembly, but when peaceful protestors – with a permit -- are met by police in full riot gear and journalists trying to do their jobs are arrested, one wonders what the Constitution means.

I first read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in 1979. Back then America seemed as far from the Gulag as the moon is from Pluto. Today the distance is far shorter. We’re in the process of trading some of our most precious civil liberties for a false sense of security. No nation on this planet jails as many of its citizens as we do; we torture prisoners and invade countries that pose no threat to us. And, like Pravda in the days of the Soviet Union, the American media feeds the population a steady diet of half-truths, whole lies, and mind-numbing trivia.

We can ignore what happened to Amy Goodman in St. Paul, but not for long. Tyranny happens gradually.