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Jewish World Review May 3, 2000 / 29 Nissan, 5760

Chris Matthews

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Show of force!


http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- NEWSPAPER PEOPLE know the power of pictures. Forced to choose last weekend between one of a federal agent pointing in the general direction of a scared-to-death 6-year-old and a snapshot of the same kid with his father, they knew which had the firepower.

They went with the newsmaker, the AP photo guaranteed to win the Pulitzer, the picture that screams "Show of Force!"

This is the message delivered by that fellow toting the automatic weapon. He was a police detective presenting his badge to a potential suspect. He was not a deputy U.S. attorney general standing at the door of a Southern university saying it was his duty to ensure its peaceful integration. He was a "fed" showing he had more firepower than anyone else in that little Miami household and, for that reason, they damned well better turn over the kid.

The American lawyer for Juan Gonzalez spotted the specter immediately. By afternoon, he had a picture running on the newswires of happy son and father reunited.

But while that second photo made a good case for the enduring paternal bond between the two Cubans, the first cast a grave light on that between the government of the United States and the American people it was created to serve. It showed a well-armed Big Brother -- Big Sister in Janet Reno's case -- using his vastly greater firepower to show the little folk who the Boss is.

That's not a good picture. It says that the way to measure and display legitimate authority is by having the biggest gun capable of shooting the most bullets the fastest.

Charlton Heston must love it. He comes into our living rooms like a 21st century Paul Revere to tell us that federal agents are already in their cars, dead set on disarming us.

Comrades to his right speak in even darker tones of choppers heading in our direction to dictate the arrival of a new world order, in which guys like us take orders from Washington and guys like Clinton take them from some foreign bureaucrat in the United Nations.

Before that Saturday such folk had "Ruby Ridge!" and "Waco!" in their vocabulary of rage. Now they've got a handy picture to nail on the clubhouse wall.

A government that knew its people better might have avoided giving its critics such a weapon. Even the most loyal, most law-abiding of us resent the arrogance of governmental power.

After all, we Americans are different. When the Canadian government told its people to begin using the metric system, they did it without thinking. When our government did the same thing, we stuck to our p's and q's, kept buying milk in pints and quarts. We kept checking how fast our kids were growing in inches and feet.

And why do you think both Al Gore and George Bush are both basing their campaigns in Austin and Nashville?

We were not put here for Washington, you see. Washington was put here for us.



JWR contributor Chris Matthews is the author of Hardball. and hosts a CNBC show of the same name. Send your comments to him by clicking here.

Up

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