From the 18th century on, the people of this land have resisted government contempt for the rule of the law�starting with King George III. Richard Nixon was forced to resign. There have been local, state, and national rebellions against official racism, and most recently, the breakthroughs of the gay rights movement.
But seldom before has there been so widespread a refusal to trust the national government�cutting across political, religious, ethnic, and other divisions�as the current rising refusal, even during a war on international terrorism, to yield to the Bush administration's subversions of the Constitution in the urgent cause of national security.
Read the rest of what Nat Hentoff has to say about it here in his "Liberty Beat" column in The Village Voice.