Thomas Hobbes, the 17th-century English political philosopher, felt that the lives of human beings were naturally "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." He maintains that, in order to survive this grim reality, humanity engages in continual warfare, "every one against every one."

Three hundrred years later, in 1949, George Orwell published his chilling, anti-utopian novel, "Nineteen Eighty-Four," in which the brutish ruling party of Oceania rules society on the basis of slogans such as "War is Peace." In both Hobbes' "Leviathan" and Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" the frightening image of a never-ending war is evoked.

Enter America's unelected president, George W. Bush, and his "War on Terrorism." This war that Bush presents to the American people is a war that will not be over until he says it is. "The prospect of a war without end," writes historian Howard Zinn, in a March 2002 issue of The Progressive, is unlike the wars of any previous administration. "Indeed," writes Zinn, "presidents have been anxious to assurre the nation that the sacrifices demanded would be finite" with an eventual "light at the end of the tunnel."

With the macho bluster of an Old West lawman -- telling America that Osama bin Laden is "Wanted Dead or Alive" -- Bush says his administration will show no mercy toward anybody who harbors terrorists or plans to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Never mind that presidential brother Jeb Bush is governor of Florida, which has long harbored anti-Castro terrorists who've hijacked aircraft and boats without being charged with any crime. Or perhaps the president might explain why one of Pol Pot's chief terrorists now lives confortably in Mount Vernon, N.Y.

Indeed, George Bush's "War on Terrorism" is in many ways a reincarnation of America's "red scare" of the 1950s. It too was used to justify the growth of a war economy, suspension of democratic rights and the silencing of dissent.

The U.S.A. Patriot Act defines a "domestic terrorist" as anyone who "violates the law and is engaged in actions that appear to be intended to influence the government by intimidation or coercion." Such a broad definition might have been used against the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who in fact used civil disobedience to fight segregation and racism.

By keeping the specific elements of his "War on Terrorism" as vague as possible, Bush hopes to make use of it whenever it might be expedient for maintaining his power.

Also, by continuously waving the flag of Sept. 11, Bush hopes that Americans will forget the shadowy means by which he become president in the first place. Under the facade of being a hero in times of peril, Bush can take a light hand with polluters and corporate wrongdoers like Enron while taking a heavy hand to all dissenters and anti-globalization radicals.

As Zinn says at the end of his Progressive article, "Our most deadly enemies are not in caves and compounds abroad, but in the corporate boardrooms and governmental offices where decisions are made that consign millions to death and misery -- not deliberately but as the collateral damage of the lust for profits and power."

It is the responsibility of all of us to move out of the Orwellian shadow that Bush has cast upon the country with his talk of "War on Terror" and "Axis of Evil," and begin to question the political legitimacy of the president and stand up for our First Amendment rights to dissent and question. The painful memory of Sept. 11 must leave us not quivering with fear and manipulated by jingoistic jargon, but motivated by a renewed commitment to democratic rights.

Donald E. Winters, Minneapolis. Humanities professor, Minneapolis Community and Technical College.

© Copyright 2002 Star Tribune

###