This year’s election most important ever

JOSEPH N. BELL

Sherry and I will be watching the election returns Tuesday at the

home of close friends who share our political convictions. The joy or

the agony of this night needs the companionship of soul mates,

especially if you believe, as I do, that this is the most critical

national election in my eight decades on this planet. I couldn’t risk

suffering it alone.

We had invited our hosts to our house, but they asked that we come

there so they might watch with their two teenage sons who, said their

mother, “are passionately concerned with how the election goes

because it’s the first time that they are really aware of the

issues.” I like the idea of watching this election with young people.

I know my two 20-something grandsons in far-off places will be

sweating it out, too. The kind of country they will live in will be

deeply effected by the results posted on this night.

If they were here, I would tell them that protecting their right

to speak out against their own government when they disagree with its

policies is greatly at risk in this country today. Only the

aggressive expression of contrary views can counter the tough guys

now in Washington -- many of whom have never seen a war or even

military service, but who wield patriotism like a sledge hammer.

I would tell them that the attorney general of the United States,

representing the Bush administration, told a Senate committee shortly

after the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001: “To those who scare peace-loving

people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your

tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and

diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies and

pause to America’s friends.”

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney put the same

sentiment into one simplistic sentence: “If you aren’t with us,

you’re against us.”

To paraphrase the attorney general, I would respond: Those who

scare peace-loving people with weapons that don’t exist, vague

warnings of impending dangers that can only cause fear and threats if

they disagree with a government they didn’t elect only aid

terrorists, for they erode the underpinnings of democracy and give

ammunition to America’s enemies and consternation to America’s

friends.

I would tell these young people that 60 years ago when -- along

with millions of other citizen soldiers -- I proudly gave four years

of my life to serving my country in the U.S. Navy in World War II, I

was fighting for the preservation of what John Ashcroft

contemptuously called the “phantom of lost liberty.”

It was no phantom to me -- then or now -- but a very real freedom

of speech and action that I was determined no foreign oppressor would

ever take from me. Now, I’m just as determined that my own government

won’t take it from me or my grandchildren, either. If we allow that

to happen under the guise of patriotism, then the terrorists of Sept.

11 have truly won. And when our leaders in Washington who say they

want to unite us begin to refer to free speech as a “phantom of

liberty,” then we are well on our way to compromising that liberty.

Through the eight decades and multiple wars of my life, I have

never seen my country as divided as it is today. The only parallel is

Vietnam, when families were torn apart and 50,000 Americans were

killed fighting a war for reasons many of us -- both at home and in

battle -- neither understood nor agreed with, rather like the growing

reports from the families of our troops in Iraq today. It took

Americans three decades to recover our national equilibrium after

Vietnam. God knows how long it will take after Iraq.

That depends largely on who is running the country after Nov. 2.

Whomever it is, the next time any of us are told to buy into this

baloney that we are undermining our troops by not swallowing the Bush

party line on Iraq, we should ask ourselves honestly how we would

feel about sending a son or daughter or grandchildren to risk their

lives in Iraq for the reasons -- which change almost weekly -- being

floated by our present government for our presence there. As John

Kerry -- in one of his few successful attempts at humor -- said in

the second debate, attacking Iraq after the tragedy of Sept. 11 was

rather like the U.S. attacking Mexico after the Japanese bombed Pearl

Harbor.

Never before -- and quite possibly never again -- will we have an

opportunity to choose between national directions so disparate that

will deeply affect the health and well-being of our young people for

many years to come. The disaster of Iraq has clouded such vital

domestic issues as an emphasis on conserving energy rather than

despoiling our environment to produce more energy; pulling back from

taxing policies that make the rich richer while the country goes

deeper into debt; research based on the work of our finest scientists

rather than religious beliefs that would prevent such advances as the

cultivation of stem cells; protecting the hard-earned rights, now

being threatened, of women to manage their own bodies; ruling in the

open rather than secretly; and extolling reason in government rather

the rigidity that doesn’t allow for either mistakes or changing one’s

mind.

Instead of being urged to think through such issues and vote our

convictions, we get bumper stickers about patriotism and TV

commercials about the ominous threat from the boogeyman of

liberalism. Meanwhile, the quicksand of indifference into which

elections have been sinking steadily in this country for several

decades is happily showing patches of solid footing.

There are strong signs in Newport-Mesa -- as there are all over

the country -- that voters aren’t going to sit this one out, either

locally or nationally. And that young people will be tuning in at

other homes besides the one I’ll be visiting on election night.

That gives me hope. In my 83 years, I’ve watched this country

taken many times to the edge of disaster. But in every crisis I can

remember, we have always pulled back, even if sooner would have been

better. We’re there again, and -- five days before a national

election -- I choose to look at history rather than polls.

I’ll be voting to protect my right to free speech and to retire

John Ashcroft and his views about “phantoms of lost liberty.” I

realize that in doing so, I’ll be protecting his rights to free

speech, also. That’s the way it worked when I went off to war. It is

also the way it should -- no, must -- continue to work in the years

ahead for the young folks I’ll be joining on Tuesday night and for my

grandchildren who will be there in spirit.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.