Can Fear Kill Off

The American Dream?

By Roger Ennis

For years, assigned reading for my high school students included George Orwell's "Animal Farm." In this visionary and timeless text, a group of farm animals rebel against their cruel, dictatorial, and inept leader, drive him off the farm and gain control of their own lives and destinies.

At the outset, the rule is that all the animals are equal. However, it quickly becomes apparent that they need some sort of government. Since the pigs are the smartest of them all, they agree to let the pigs be their rulers. They are careful to articulate the rules that give Animal Farm its unique identity, and they write them down so no one will be able to forget the dream that Animal Farm is meant to exemplify.

However, the pigs quickly learn that they can manipulate the other animals through FEAR-fear that the farm will come under attack and lose its identity. The pigs steadily gather more and more power, making the others uneasy. But Boxer, the loyal and hard working (but not-so-smart) horse, adopts a slogan which the other animals accept as truth: "If the Leader says it, it must be right..."

Over time, all of the rules meant to protect their freedoms are broken. The animals give up, one by one, all their rights and freedoms for the promise of the safety and security proferred by the pigs. And in the end, the animals lose the dream that meant so much to them. They wind up with neither freedom, nor security, nor equality-unless one accepts the pigs' explanation that some animals are "more equal" than others. In the end, the animals are ruled by a dictatorial government as bad as the one against which they had rebelled.

I thought (and taught), that this story was a wonderful allegory of the Russian Revolution. Lately I've begun to wonder if Orwell's genius might have something to say to us in our present situation.

Consider: through the trials of the American Revolution and the hard times of establishing a new Constitution, our forefathers wrote in clear terms, a dream that they envisioned for "America." It would be a place in which people would be treated as equals; a place in which certain rights would be regarded as unassailable. Because of their memory of hated English practices, they were firm in their determination that these things would not happen here.

They carefully separated power into three separate branches, with an ingenious and even-handed system of checks and balances. They wrote the Bill of Rights as a clear statement of the limitations of the power of the new government. This was the dream of their "noble experiment"-the United States of America.

In the last five years we have witnessed a wholesale assault by our President and his administration on these fundamental understandings.

+ We are asked to accept redefined definitions of "torture" and "suspected terrorists."

+ We have turned on its ear the assumption of an accused person's innocence until given a speedy trial by a jury of his or her peers.

+ We have accepted the incarceration of US citizens for indefinite periods of time, without access to counsel.

+ And, most recently, we have allowed the government to wiretap citizens' telephone lines without acquiring a warrant, even when a process for obtaining a warrant is well established and easy to follow.

Most distressing to me, however, is a recent poll indicating that a majority of US citizens are willing to accept these changes in our fundamental democracy if doing so will make us safer. The President has assured us time and again that all these modifications are necessary because we are at war, and that even to ask questions on these issues aids our enemies. He has also stated that he expects the "war on terror" to last for at least the rest of our lives, with possibly more "adjustments" needing to be made in the future.

My fear is that we are in danger of losing, as did the citizens of "Animal Farm," the very things that give us identity, that make us unique in the world, and that comprise the dream of what "America" means. We are willing to give up important elements of that dream in order to have safety and security. Like the animals on Animal Farm, we will end up having neither.

Terrorists will never have the power to take away our freedom. Only we can do that, and we are doing a heck of a job of it by ourselves. How much of our American dream are we willing to give up in order to be safe? (Especially when those assurances of safety come from leaders who again and again demonstrate basic incompetence and lack of candor.)

Benjamin Franklin once noted: "Those who desire to give up Freedom in order to gain Security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."

Wise words, well worth reconsidering.

Roger Ennis

(Mr. Ennis semi-retired last year after a long career teaching social studies at Randolph Union High School.)

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