David and Charles Koch have been the targets of a campaign of vituperation and assault, choreographed from the very top.
By THEODORE B. OLSON
How would you feel if aides to the president of the
United States singled you out by name for attack, and if you were
featured prominently in the president's re-election campaign as an enemy
of the people?
What would you do if the White House engaged in derogatory
speculative innuendo about the integrity of your tax returns? Suppose
also that the president's surrogates and allies in the media regularly
attacked you, sullied your reputation and questioned your integrity. On
top of all of that, what if a leading member of the president's party in
Congress demanded your appearance before a congressional committee this
week so that you could be interrogated about the Keystone XL oil
pipeline project in which you have repeatedly—and accurately—stated that
you have no involvement?
Consider that all this is happening because you have been selected as
an attractive political punching bag by the president's re-election
team. This is precisely what has happened to Charles and David Koch,
even though they are private citizens, and neither is a candidate for
the president's or anyone else's office.
What Messrs. Koch do, in fact, is
manage businesses that provide employment to more than 50,000 people in
North America in legitimate, productive industries. They also give
millions of dollars to medical researchers, hospitals and cultural
institutions. Their biggest offense, apparently, is that they also
contribute generously to nonprofit organizations that promote personal
liberty and free enterprise, and some of those organizations oppose
policies advocated by the president.
Richard Nixon maintained an"enemies list" that singled out private
citizens for investigation and abuse by agencies of government,
including the Internal Revenue Service. When that was revealed, the
press and public were outraged. That conduct will forever remain one of
the indelible stains on Nixon's presidency and legacy.
When Joseph McCarthy engaged in comparable bullying, oppression and
slander from his powerful position in the Senate, he was censured by his
colleagues and died in disgrace."McCarthyism," defined by Webster's as
the "use of unfair investigative and accusatory methods to suppress
opposition," will forever be synonymous with un-Americanism. Army
counsel Joseph Welch's "Have you no sense of decency?" are words that
evoke the McCarthy era and diminish the reputations of his colleagues
who did nothing to stand up to him.
In this country, we regard the use of official power to oppress or
intimidate private citizens as a despicable abuse of authority and
entirely alien to our system of a government of laws. The architects of
our Constitution meticulously erected a system of separated powers, and
checks and balances, precisely in order to inhibit the exercise of
tyrannical power by governmental officials.
Our Constitution even explicitly prohibits bills of attainder so that
Congress may not single out individual citizens or groups for
disfavored treatment or unequal application of the force of government.
Prosecutorial power is rigidly constrained and judicially supervised so
that government may not accuse private citizens of crimes or investigate
them without good cause.
Whoever may be the victim of such abuse of governmental authority,
the press and public almost invariably unify with indignation against
it. If a journalist, labor-union leader or community organizer on the
left can be targeted today, an academic or business person on the right
can be the target tomorrow. If we fail to stand up against oppression
from one direction, we abdicate the moral authority to challenge it when
it comes from another.
This is why it is exceedingly important for all Americans to respond
with outrage to what the president and his allies are doing to demonize
and stigmatize David and Charles Koch. They have been the targets of the
multiyear, carefully orchestrated campaign of vituperation and assault
described above—and much more. It has been choreographed from the very
top.
When the president personally takes leadership, his political
surrogates and army of allies in the press and Congress quickly and
surely follow the direction and tone he sets.
The misuse of government power to damage or demean one's political
enemies is abhorrent and the very antithesis of a free society and a
government of laws, not men. It is time for the public to ask those
engaged in these practices, "Have you no sense of decency?"
Mr. Olson, a lawyer in Washington, D.C., and a former solicitor general of the United States, represents Koch Industries.
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