DE-NAZIFY THIS!

Good Times Make Lousy Americans

NEW YORK -- At the end of World War II, the American occupation army subjected Germans to de-Nazification. The way some Americans are turning against basic tenets of freedom makes one wonder whether we'll soon need to do the same thing here.

First came last month's meaningless, yet still shocking, vote by the House of Representatives calling for a list of the Ten Commandments to be posted in public school classrooms across the country. Never mind that hoary separation of church and state; what really matters in this precursor to next year's presidential race is empty posturing and kowtowing to the right wing of the Republican Party -- not that a bunch of Democrats refrained from joining this contemptuous bum's rush on the Constitution.

Then the perennial cry of dim-witted cloth worshippers once again found support in the Capitol in a revived push for a constitutional anti-flag-burning amendment, seemingly inspired by the laws of some backwater Third World dictatorship. One can take comfort this time that the conniving congressional cowards promulgated their faux patriotism through legal means, but if it ever passed, such an amendment would trivialize the document to the point of rendering it meaningless.

Now, in the ultimate indication that another post-liberal, retro-Reagan, '80s-esque period of political constipation is upon us, the public is turning against free speech. In a poll undertaken by the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, 53 percent of Americans believe the press enjoys too much freedom.

These people obviously don't read the same newspapers or watch the same television programs that I do. They've evidently failed to notice The Cincinnati Enquirer's shameful wuss-out on the Chiquita banana story. (A reporter stole company voicemails to obtain evidence that the company was hiring goon squads, and was subsequently cut loose by the paper -- not because the story was wrong, but because his methods were technically illegal. I say, give the guy a medal!) Perhaps they missed the CIA-led counterintelligence operation, led by The New York Times, to discredit San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb's series on the connection between U.S. support of the Nicaraguan contras and the '80s crack explosion. Most important, they clearly haven't noticed that newspapers and TV news have become moribund, generic and irrelevant to the lives of Americans under retirement age. What excesses of freedom could possibly worry these suburban neo-fascists?

Even more frightening, 35 percent of Americans say that papers shouldn't be able to publish a story without approval by a government censor -- and that's up from 20 percent in 1997. "The survey doesn't address why," Ken Paulson, the center's executive director, says, "but common sense tells you the airwaves and newspaper columns have been filled with Monica Lewinsky, Marv Albert and the aftermath of the O.J. Simpson case." Yeah, but since when does coverage of a Democratic president who models himself after Caligula and a black guy who kills his white wife make liberals look good? Nah, many Americans are simply un-American.

A friend who edits a major national magazine thinks that everyone, whether or not they're born here, ought to be required to pass a citizenship test every three years. This poll is proof that he's right. If you don't understand the fundamental importance of maintaining our right to say anything we damn well please, short of slander or libel, you ought to be deported.

The last time the proverbial pendulum swung this far backward it was 1980. By most objective standards, economic times were good. Unemployment -- the single most relevant statistic to the average citizen -- was low, and double-digit inflation (which was, incidentally, typical of the '80s boom economies of Japan and Israel) was more than surpassed by increases in wages. Nonetheless, reactionary fundamentalist Christian nutcases elected a senile former actor over a moderate Southern Democrat. Sound familiar?

Penny-ante bigotries (flashback: anti-Ayatollah bumper stickers) and antipathy toward the press are this decade's early-warning signs that we may be heading once again into an '80s-style rollback of basic civil liberties, spectacular tax giveaways to a tiny coterie of superrich and economically ruinous policies of wage stagnation and repression of workers. And don't forget: Reagan's trickle-down economics was a disaster for the middle class. It's almost as if, after five or six years of incredible economic growth, right-wing, flag-waving, Bible-pounding twits would rather see their own portfolios evaporate than watch poor people and minorities begin to enjoy the American dream.

Nothing lasts forever, but good things invariably get murdered.

(Ted Rall, a cartoonist and columnist for Universal Press Syndicate, is author of the award-winning graphic novel "My War With Brian.")