Ever since his election, Putin, harkening back to
what he undoubtedly remembers as the fond days of the Soviet Union, has been
taking harsh actions to suppress criticism of him, his actions, and his regime.
To avoid being seen as an opponent of freedom of speech, however, he uses
Russia’s system of a tightly regulated economy and a complex tax system to go
after his critics by charging and prosecuting them with tax and regulatory
violations.
Putin’s actions should remind us Americans of the
real value of a regulated economy and a complex tax code, at least from the
standpoint of government officials. It provides a means by which governments
can keep the citizenry in line because there is always some regulatory and tax
provision that people, especially those in the business sector, have violated.
Have you ever noticed that the heads of big U.S.
companies and banks don’t speak out publicly against the federal government’s
policies, especially those in foreign affairs? That’s because they know that the
federal government can retaliate in the same way that Putin does. That’s what
keeps the powerful heads of the business and banking arenas within the United
States submissive, quiet, and compliant.
One businessman, Joseph Nacchio, went the other way
and, not surprisingly, paid a high price. When President Bush enlisted the
support of various American telecoms to permit the federal government to engage
in illegal monitoring of their customers’ accounts, many of them said yes. Not
Nacchio, the CEO of Quest. The federal government took the same action against
him that Putin takes against recalcitrant businessmen. It looked for tax and
regulatory violations and went after Nacchio on some ridiculous insider-trading
violation. They got him and he’s now in jail, much as many Russian businessmen
are now in jail for ridiculous economic crimes for not going along with Putin.
Back in 1963, immediately after he assumed the
presidency, Lyndon Johnson engaged in the same sort of sordid tactics, as
related in Robert Caro’s latest volume on Johnson, The Passage of Power. To
suppress reporters who were delving a little too deep into Johnson’s illegal
and unethical actions before he assumed the presidency, Johnson simply
threatened newspaper owners and editors with IRS audits or unfavorable
regulatory treatment. It worked. The newspapers got in line and suppressed the
critiques. There is little doubt that major newspapers all across the United
States got the message: Come after us and we’ll come after you with regulatory
and tax violations or denial of favorable regulatory and tax benefits.
Where the U.S. government lost all moral standing to
criticize Putin was with respect to the U.S. government’s war on terrorism.
When U.S. officials recently criticized Putin for his suppression of civil
liberties, all Putin had to do was point to the actions of the U.S. government
at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere around the world as part of its
war on terrorism.
Kidnapping, indefinite detention, torture, abuse,
rendition, assassination.
That’s what Putin pointed to when the U.S.
government criticized him for human-rights violations. He essentially said: How
dare you criticize others for human-rights abuses when you have been doing
those things to people for more than 10 years?
What could the U.S. government say in response? It
couldn’t say anything, at least not on that point. Ironically, it responded in
the same way that Putin would respond: by imposing economic sanctions on
Russian officials.
But Putin is right. The discomforting fact is that
the U.S. government has used its war on terrorism to embrace policies that are
characteristic of totalitarian regimes, including communist ones.
Oh, it’s all justified under “national security,”
the two most meaningless, but also the two most important, words in the lives
of the American people. Nonetheless, no one can deny that the U.S. government,
with its war on terrorism, has been able to maneuver around the constraints in
the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eight Amendments, including due process of law,
trial by jury, protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, prohibition
on cruel and unusual punishments, the right to confront adverse witnesses, and
speedy trial — procedural rights that once distinguished America from the rest
of the world.
Putin’s actions remind us once again that democracy
does not constitute freedom. Putin, like George W. Bush and Barack Obama, has
been democratically elected. Nonetheless, he, like Bush and Obama, is
exercising dictatorial powers over the citizenry. Democracy is good for
achieving a peaceful transition of power but it is certainly no guarantee of
freedom. Freedom turns on the extent to which government officials, including
the president, lacks the powers to engage in totalitarian actions against the
citizenry.
About the author: Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and
president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
This article was published by The Future of Freedom
Foundation.
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