Big Lie

In the bleakest predictions of the future put forth by novelists in this century, society is run by governments that turn truth upside down. But readers of “1984” and “Brave New World” could hardly have imagined that they would one day be confronted with William Bradford Reynolds, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, who last week called the opinions of Justice William J. Brennan Jr. “a major threat . . . to individual liberty.”

This preposterous statement comes in response to a speech by Brennan last month in which the 80-year-old U.S. Supreme Court justice hailed the 14th Amendment as perhaps the most important part of the U.S. Constitution. That amendment, one of three passed after the Civil War, guarantees “the equal protection of the laws” to all people in the United States.

In his speech Brennan correctly called that phrase “the legal instrument of the egalitarian revolution that transformed contemporary American society,” and he noted that “the goal of universal equality, freedom and prosperity is far from won.”

The truth of Brennan’s statement is self-evident to anyone but authoritarian ideologues. Brennan is the protector of individual liberties, and if there is a threat to them it comes from Reynolds and other officials and appointees of the Reagan Administration who consistently seek to deny rights to minorities and other victims.

Reynolds and his sympathizers on the Supreme Court always side with the authorities over individuals, and would trample on the protections of the Bill of Rights while accusing their opponents of threatening liberty.

The Reagan Administration is at war with rights, but justices like Brennan are standing in their way--protecting us, the people, from the force of their assault. It’s no wonder that the Justice Department is sending out its intellectual hooligans to weaken the opposition, but no one should be fooled. Reynolds’ speech is a lie--a Big Lie--and the people know enough to reject it.