A fundamental flaw in our current foreign policy is that it's absolutely impossible for our leaders to establish a democracy by invading and occupying Iraq if our leaders don't believe in democracy in their own country.

It's increasingly obvious that many of our current leaders do not. That was clear when protesters at the Democratic National Convention were limited to expressing their opinions in a remote area behind fences and razor wire.

Setting aside a concentration camp for Americans wishing to exercise free speech is a particularly Orwellian perversion of our most basic constitutional right.

It gets worse. Leading up to be Republican National Convention, FBI agents have been knocking on doors all across the country to question Americans who disagree with the policies of the current president.

The FBI claims it is seeking any information about potentially violent demonstrations to disrupt the Republican convention. So who better to ask than people who are involved in suspicious political activity such as anti-war demonstrations or voting Democratic?

It's no surprise that these intimidating knocks on the door were approved by the Office of Legal Policy within Attorney General John Ashcroft's Justice Department. That's the same crack legal team that provided legal opinions approving the use of torture against terrorism suspects.

This administration considers anyone who disagrees with it to be a potential terrorist. The government placed Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy on its "do-not-fly" list, apparently fearing the 72-year-old Democrat might hijack an airplane to demand passage of national health insurance.The Wisconsin visits of the presidential candidates demonstrate their understanding of democratic principles. Even though George Bush is president of all the people, only the most fanatical Bush supporters are permitted to attend most of his public events. The screening is intense to guarantee that Bush never has to hear any dissenting voices when he appears in public.

In Ashwaubenon, Outagamie County Supervisor Jayson Nelson was turned away from a Bush speech because he was wearing a Kerry T-shirt under his outer shirt.

You don't have to be paranoid about the surveillance capabilities of Ashcroft's police state to wonder how government agents are able to screen the underwear of citizens attending political rallies.

When Bush held another gated political rally in Wisconsin last week, his spokesman Terry Holt explained that dissenting voices were excluded from Bush's appearances because "a few people can ruin the experience for everyone."

The Bush campaign should know. It was a few obnoxious Republicans at an overflow public rally for John Kerry in Milwaukee who proceeded to drown out Kerry and his wife Teresa with bullhorns and air sirens. After Kerry referred to the demonstrators as "goons," Republicans launched an organized letter-writing campaign to newspapers claiming the disruption was a shining example of free speech and legitimate political protest.

Let's set aside for a moment how odd it is for Republicans to be defending political protest when they are sealing off their president from it and siccing the FBI on Americans who engage in it.

I've never agreed with those who complain public protest violates the free speech of presidents or other unpopular speakers.

When President Lyndon Johnson and members of his administration were conducting an immoral and unconscionable war in Vietnam, they deserved to hear public chants of "Hey, hey, LBJ. How many kids did you kill today?"

So when are demonstrators exercising free speech and when are they goons? Americans have a right to protest any actions by their government or proposed actions with which they disagree.

But that's not what the Republicans were doing. Apparently, they were protesting Kerry's very existence as the Democratic candidate opposing their president.

Perhaps they truly do not understand that in a democracy an opposition party has a right to field a candidate and supporters of that candidate have a right to attend a public rally and hear him.

Of course, Republicans still have a right to show up and offend everybody. And Kerry has a right to call them what they are.

We shouldn't be surprised Republicans have an imperfect understanding of the principles of democracy. After all, in a democracy, the candidate who gets the most votes usually gets to be president.

A narrow Republican majority on the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out that rule last time. If Bush gets more appointments to the court, a lot of other democratic principles could go by the wayside.

The Bush administration's version of democracy in Iraq provides a blueprint for what we might expect. The first act of the new Iraqi government was an emergency measure to allow the government to suspend all legal rights and declare martial law at any time.

Defending himself against charges of establishing a military dictatorship, U.S.-anointed Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said martial law really wasn't any different from the USA Patriot Act.

Copyright 2004 The Capital Times

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