Arthur Miller was most famous for marrying Marilyn Monroe, although he won a Pulitzer Prize for his play, Death of a Salesman. I was a child when Miller and Monroe married, but I recall my mother saying, "How could she marry him? He looks like a toad!" to which my father replied, "Maybe he’s a prince in frog’s clothing." His eyes did protrude somewhat, and my mother saw a frumpy Jewish man instead of a brilliant playwright.

Years later, when I read The Crucible, I understood how accomplished, and brave, Miller was in his use of the play as a parable for what was happening in his own society. In 1956 Miller defended our civil rights before Sen. McCarthy’s House of Un-American Activities Committee. He was blacklisted by Hollywood and unfairly tainted with the label of being a communist for standing up for our constitutional rights. It was a shameful time in our history. That a senator could ruin the lives of so many people by red-baiting and causing such fear seems unfathomable.

In January of 2005, the month before Miller died, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation published a two-year, million-dollar, national study of high school students’ understanding of the rights Miller defended, our First Amendment rights: freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, of assembly and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. It found that American youth, without the benefit of journalism and civics classes, have little understanding of America’s basic freedoms. Without knowledge of the Constitution, there is little resistance by the populace when the government seeks to restrict our freedoms. With the concern for national security after 9/11, Congress passed the Patriot Act (without even reading the massive document). It limits many of our basic rights. It began a process of restrictions that may make the McCarthy witch hunt look tame in comparison.

President Bush claimed in his 2000 State of the Union Address that Saddam Hussein had gotten uranium (yellowcake) from Niger and had the capability to build, or probably had already built, nuclear weapons. It was his administration’s reason for a pre-emptive attack on Iraq. This information was given to him by George Tenet, head of the CIA. However, Ambassador Wilson, who had been sent to Niger by the CIA to ascertain if the purchase documents were real, had proved they were crude forgeries. He felt the public was being lied to. He wrote an account of his findings in the New York Times. In retaliation, the administration used news sources to leak Ambassador Wilson’s wife’s identity as the head of a covert anti-terrorism network. Robert Novak published Valerie Plame’s identity, but Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller sat on the information. They are being prosecuted for refusing to identify the leak. Novak faces no jail time for his story, yet it ended Plame’s career and could have endangered her life. We still do not know who in the White House released the information, which may be a treasonable offence. Tenet later stepped down from his position, but President Bush gave him the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. In the buildup to the invasion, when journalists & writers questioned the need to go to war with Iraq, they were labeled unpatriotic.

In other ways this administration undermines the Fourth Estate. One example is the paying of journalists to promote its agendas such as No Child Left Behind and the marriage initiative. Following these revelations, the president disavowed the practice of paying syndicated columnists.

Another example of an ethical violation was when "Jeff Gannon" asked President Bush at a White House press conference on Jan. 26, 2005, how he could work with Democrats "who seem to have divorced themselves from reality." For the two years he had been attending press conferences, Gannon had been lobbing soft questions, but this one was so low that the bona fide reporters were offended. They checked into his background and discovered that he was really James Guckert, a highly paid prostitute who advertised in full-frontal nudity on the Internet for his male stud services. One of "Gannon’s" articles had accused John Kerry as being pro-homosexual. He also owed over $20,000.00 to the government in back taxes from 1991-1994. The White House refused to say how he was vetted as a Press Corps correspondent under an assumed name. When shills are sprinkled in the audience to ask questions benefiting the administration, we must question this undermining of a free press.

John Ashcroft made headlines as Attorney General when he stated that the government had never used the Patriot Act to snoop in libraries. Immediately the American Library Association documented over two hundred such occurrences (not all librarians lodged complaints, but the majority were quite irate at that provision.) When Mohammed Junaid Babar’s court case made it clear his arrest was based on his library Internet usage, Ashcroft’s statement was proven to be another of the many administration untruths. The Patriot Act also allows the FBI to search your home, telephone records, and computer without your knowledge. The government only has to say it suspects you of terrorism. This threat in itself undermines free speech.

Freedom of religion was included by our forefathers because so many who came to our shores had been persecuted for their religious beliefs. However, Christianity is now promoted as "American" and Muslims are being turned into scapegoats—our evildoers. We have allowed our FBI to infiltrate mosques in the U.S. and spy upon their worshipers. Is this freedom for their religion?

During the Inquisition the Jews and then the witches were scapegoats. "The Church, backed by the secular authorities, led the campaign of persecution. The crusades had shown that wars waged against external enemies were an effective way of distracting the public. After the collapse of the Christian venture in the Holy Land, the grip of central authority was maintained and tightened by stirring up fears of internal enemies."  ¹

The Inquisition used torture to force confessions of witchcraft. We know these disclosures under duress were false, yet we have stooped to the use torture. In Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, we have shown the failings of our own moral fiber. When our soldiers tortured those who were imprisoned under their responsibility, only the reservists in the field were held accountable. Staff Sgt. "Chip" Frederick pleaded guilty to the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, but said he was following orders of military intelligence. Major General Antonio Taguva said the techniques were established at Guantanamo for sexual humiliation of Muslim males by female interrogators. By classifying people as terrorists it allowed us to treat them as less-than-human and opened the door for their torture. This use of torture exposed the fallacy of the American way of life as being a world cure-all, and put our government on the same level as the previous regime’s. We imprisoned other nationals in Guantanamo as terrorists for years, only to release them when Australia and England finally demanded an investigation. When returned to their countries, their own governments refused to arrest them based on the lack of evidence.

American citizens are currently in prison in the United States without having stood trial, labeled as terrorists. Attorneys are trying to redress their grievances, but are met with governmental refusal based on "national security". If they ever do go to trial, will the "evidence" be as flimsy as it was for those released from Guantanamo? Their imprisonment under the Patriot Act could happen to anyone whom the government deems a terrorist.

During the sixties, the protest movement was the harbinger of the end of the Vietnam War. By using the right to assembly, the children of the time protested the government’s sending them off to fight a foreign war they did not believe in. By making their voices heard they contributed to the demise of a never-ending war. Our current administration would not allow any protest near the Republican Convention in New York or the recent Inauguration in D.C. Those who were arrested while trying to protest in New York were illegally held in detention camps and are suing the government to address that wrong.

When the right to assembly is limited to only those who agree with the administration, it should spark intense media comment. Instead, it became a sound-byte on the evening news. When a government kowtows to business and allows the media to be owned by monopolies, it sets the stage for controlling its populace.

Vice President of the United States Henry Wallace (under FDR) wrote in the New York Times in 1944: "The really dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States, in an American way, what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never to present the truth to the public, but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power…They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection."²

It is our duty as citizens to protect our rights. We were given the right to question, the right to speak, the right to congregate and exchange beliefs, the right to worship in freedom, and the right to hold our government accountable. The administration wishes to pass Patriot II, which will make the Patriot Act permanent.

If we do not protect our rights we will face a restricted world even worse than the McCarthy era, when authors had to hide their truths in allegory and parable. If we challenge those who try to restrict the first amendment, we will help Arthur Miller rest easy in his grave.