The High Inquisitors of Gould, Arkansas
By Moe White
On July 19 the New York Times’s Robbie Brown reported that the City Council in Gould, Arkansas, had adopted an ordinance the week before “making it illegal to form any kind of group without its permission.” The ordinance proclaims, “No new organizations shall be allowed to exist in the City of Gould without approval from a majority of the City Council.”
As a long-time reader and fan of the “Harry Potter” series, I thought immediately of Dolores Umbridge’s Educational Decree Number 24, in Book 5, which reads in part: “No Student Organization, Society, Team, Group, or Club may exist without the knowledge and approval of the High Inquisitor.”
As Brown wrote in the Times, “Be careful before starting a Boy Scout troop in Gould, Ark. Or a Harry Potter fan club.”
Constitutional Government
It seems clear that the Council members in Gould think of themselves as the High Inquisitor for their town of 1,129 (as of July 2009). It’s equally clear they have no idea what the U.S. Constitution is all about, and that none of those voting for the ordinance has ever read the First Amendment, which states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. [italics added]
The Times story describes how the mayor, Ernest Nash, Jr., is a member of the Gould Citizens Advisory Council (GCAC), a political group that has clashed with the City Council over a number of issues. So City Council, having accused the group of “causing confusion and discourse among the citizens” by criticizing local officials at public meetings, passed two additional ordinances, one requiring that the citizens advisory council cease to exist, the other making it illegal for the mayor to meet with “any organization in any location” either “inside or outside Gould city limits” without the Council’s permission.
The City Council, in other words, decided to abridge the freedom of speech of members of the Gould Citizens Advisory Council (and the mayor), and to deny them the right to assemble and to petition the government. This triple whammy of unconstitutional excess reflects both the ignorance of this group of elected officials and the constant threat of tyranny that lurks in the shadows of even the most enlightened, Constitutionally-protected nation.
From Corruption to Violence
Two weeks after the ordinance was passed, the GCAC and some other citizens filed suit challenging the election of two council members, one for violating election residency laws, the other for ineligibility as a convicted felon.
That same evening (July 28), Mayor Nash was confronted on the street, attacked, and pistol-whipped, according to the Arkansas Blog, an online news service of the Arkansas Times (www.arktimes.com/arkansasblog/archives/2011/07/28/ accessed 8/7/11). The mayor, in an interview on the local TV station, asserted that one of his assailants was a relative of a council member, and that during the altercation another councilman picked up a rock.
He noted that he had previously confronted a council member who was following his wife in her vehicle and that that council member blamed him for the citizen lawsuits and threatened to continue stalking him. Then, during the TV interview, Councilwoman Sonya Farley approached the interviewer and the mayor demanding that her side of the story be heard; after she was restrained and led away by police, Mayor Nash identified her and her companion as among those who had assaulted him.
The Tyranny of Power
It is human nature, perhaps, to resent those who disagree with us. It is the nature of the political being to try to gain power and, once holding power, to impose the policies one prefers. But neither normal human beings nor most politicians—and I do differentiate between them—are given to permanently silencing their opponents, legally banning them from joining together, or physically attacking them.
That behavior is the province of tyrants, and it’s seen in nations as different from each other as China, Syria, Libya, Russia, and Hitler’s Germany. However varied their particular forms of government—party politburo, hereditary dynasty, leadership self-selected by a coup, one-party “democracy,” or power taken by election but imposed by force—all have one thing in common: they tolerate only one political party and one political viewpoint.
Encountering such an example of tin-pot tyranny in these United States is a reminder that, in the words of Lord Acton, “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It also reminds me of incidents in American history when tyranny has indeed corrupted our body politic (I do not include the 1960s riots in Detroit, Oakland, and elsewhere for the simple reason that they were uprisings of the powerless against the powerful, not the reverse.):
• In 1856, SC Representative Preston Brooks beat Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner with a cane over the latter’s support for abolition.
• In 1898, hundreds of citizens of Wilmington, NC, were terrorized by white-supremacist business leaders and anti-Reconstruction Democrats who overthrew the elected, biracial Republican/Fusion City Council. They destroyed the office of the black newspaper, engineered a political coup, and killed as many as 100 black citizens, while hundreds more fled the town and took refuge in nearby swamps.
• In the 1950s and 1960s, white citizens councils throughout the South, legitimized and even organized by such elected officials as Lester Maddox, Orval Faubus, George Wallace, and Bull Connor, terrorized and killed scores of African Americans during the struggles over school desegregation.
• Even during the last election campaign, we watched on television as a group of supporters of then-candidate, now Senator, Rand Paul attacked a woman who publicly questioned his positions; they forced her to the ground with her head against the sidewalk curb and stomped on her shoulder and neck.
The several steps from power to absolute power to tyranny to violence may seem long, but each one alone is a quick and easy stride. Often it is only after violence sets in that we realize—or admit—that tyranny has taken root in our society.
Letting Them Get Away With It
People of good will tend to deny venial motives, to put the best face on things, to forgive and overlook and excuse “momentary excesses,” rather than calling them what they are. President Obama regularly extends the benefit of the doubt to those who have professed their desire to destroy his presidency; he deems the Republicans’ most vitriolic diatribes just the usual political hyperbole and imagines they’ll all be friends at the end of the day—despite the fact that since the day of his inauguration the Republican Party has consistently fulfilled its promises, or threats, of unrelenting obstructionism.
Such willful naiveté, whether by a president or individual voters, invariably makes it more likely that we are taken completely by surprise when the step-by-step stages of a coup are, suddenly it seems, a fait accompli.
The blind eye and forgiving nature of the public, the assumption of good will despite all evidence to the contrary, is counted on by those who would subvert our democracy; they know that we, ourselves people of good will, will not notice until it’s too late.
But suddenly we have a chance to notice the tyranny early on. Right there in the small town of Gould, Arkansas, power-hungry politicians are determined to take absolute, and absolutely corrupt, steps to overturn the Constitution; they want to turn their opponents into enemies and grind their enemies into the dust. With absurdist claims, illegal laws, and physical violence, they hope to drive those they don’t like to hide, cower, move away, flee their own home town.
What’s particularly dismaying to this writer is that this is not another case of small-town, Southern, unreconstructed racists challenging a minority government; nor is it a group of good-government activists opposing a good-old-boy City Council running roughshod over them.
The sad fact is that Mayor Nash, and Councilwoman Farley, and their supporters on each side, and 85 percent of the population of the entire town of Gould, are black. They of all people should know the dangers when tyranny rears its ugly head.
