in a democracy, there are means which no ends can justify

In the process of unifying China over 2200 years ago, its first emperor Qin Shi Huang Di attempted to crushed all dissent and debate. The great Chinese historian Sima Qian records the Qin Emperor's chief adviser, Li Si, saying thus:

"Now the August Emperor has unified all under heaven, distinguishing black from white and establishing a single source of authority. Yet these adherents of private theories band together to criticize the laws and directives. Hearing that an order has been handed down, each one proceeds to discuss it in the light of his theories. At court they disapprove in their hearts; outside they debate it in the streets. They hold it a mark of fame to defy the ruler, regard it as lofty to take a dissenting stance, and they lead the lesser officials in fabricating slander. If behavior such as this is not prohibited, then in upper circles the authority of the ruler will be compromised, and in lower ones cliques will form. Therefore it should be prohibited.

"I therefore request that all records of the historians other than those of the state of Qin be burned. With the exception of the academicians whose duty it is to possess them, if there are persons anywhere in the empire who have in their possession copies of the Odes, the Documents, or the writings of the hundred schools of philosophy, they shall in all cases deliver them to the governor or his commandant for burning. Anyone who ventures to discuss the Odes or Documents shall be executed in the marketplace. Anyone who uses antiquity to criticize the present shall be executed along with his family. Any official who observes or knows of violations and fails to report them shall be equally guilty. Anyone who has failed to burn such books within thirty days of the promulgation of this order shall be subjected to tattoo and condemned to 'wall dawn' [convict] labor. The books that are to be exempted are those on medicine, divination, agriculture, and forestry. Anyone wishing to study the laws and ordinances should have a law official for his teacher." An imperial decree granted approval of the proposal.

Ah, the good old days. While Li Si's doctrine may be abhorrent to modern minds, his rhetoric is clear and uncomplicated. That's because in the ancient world, the idea of absolute rule was accepted and desired. That emperors could have banned the different schools of philosophy is not questioned, only its desirability.

Of course, since the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the individual has displaced the ruler at the center of government. Governing required consent of the governed, and hence, appeals to the interests of the governed. So political philosophers and the rulers who employed their ideas (and sometimes them) have had to invent schemes to increase their power using the language of individual liberty and political equality. So they invented doublespeak.

Starting almost three years ago, however, many Americans have been made to feel such fear that they "freely" expressed a desire to give up some individual rights. In this timorous climate, certain members of our government dropped their coded language and began to speak frankly about the desirability of certain speech. They would spout atavisms like:

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.

And later, they objected when anyone questioned their authority to denigrate those who questioned anything at all:

Anyone who reported this morning that he criticized anyone who opposed him was absolutely wrong and in doing so became a part of the exact problem he was describing.

The first quote is from John Ashcroft, and the second comes from his spokesperson, Mindy Tucker. The second in some ways scares me more than the first, because through his mouthpiece Ashcroft moved beyond targeting certain criticisms of the war on terror, to denigrating anyone who questioned him.

The quotes, which I've cut and are analyzed in full here, are from December 2001. But the same people still run the Department of Justice, and their views have not changed. In fact, those views have not changed in over 2000 years.