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01/25/2006:

"Nat Hentoff: 'Victims of the darkness'"

One of the Supreme Court's more ardent protectors of the Bill of Rights was William O. Douglas, who, in 1976, responding to a speaking invitation from young lawyers in Washington state, cautioned them that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights "are not self-executing... As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression... There's twilight... and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."

Justice Douglas' warning was quoted in the Jan. 3 issue of Port Folio Weekly, a community-based newspaper in Norfolk, covering southeast Virginia. (The publication prints several syndicated columns, including mine.) In his editorial, "Twilight in America," Port Folio editor Tom Robotham noted that by no means is the darkness immediately at hand. "We continue," he wrote, "to enjoy unprecedented freedoms in this country." Therefore, it isn't surprising, he added, that despite widespread news coverage of outraged reaction to the president's permitting warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens within the United States by the National Security Agency, "the vast majority of Americans regarded the story as irrelevant to their own lives."
washtimes.com