Ford Was Right

And I'm not talking about pickup trucks -- not this time at least.

I was thinking yesterday, which we know can be a dangerous thing.  My mind wandered back to the first time I encountered the atmospherics and the entourage that surround the President of the United States.  

Secret Service agents hustling President Ford
away from Squeaky Fromme, September 5, 1975

It was September 1975 at Stanford Law School, where as a first year student I had a third tier seat for a speech by Gerald Ford at the dedication ceremony of the brand spanking new law school complex.  A few weeks earlier Squeaky Fromme had threatened to take the President out with a misfiring handgun on the grounds of the California state capitol.  As a consequence, security was especially tight.  The buildings surrounding the law school quad were topped by mean looking dudes dressed top to bottom in black, with automatic assault weapons drawn and ready.  Helicopters circled above.  The grounds crawled with uniformed law enforcement plus an army of sun glass wearing, ear pieced Secret Service agents.  That much I remember.  But I didn't recall the speech.  So I thought I'd look it up.

President Gerald Ford (at podium in foreground) addressing
guests at Stanford Law School  Crown Quadrangle dedication.

As Nixon's VP prior to tricky Dick's resignation just over a year previous, Ford had a quintessential VP assignment --  Chairman of the Domestic Council Committee on the Right of Privacy.  President Ford pivoted off that experience to say that "one of the worst offenders" of the individual right of privacy was "the federal government itself."  Ford positioned the issue of privacy in the broader context of law and liberty.  He said the accumulation of laws (which has continued at breakneck pace and today we refer to as the Nanny State) "cumulatively threaten to strip the individual of privacy and reduce them to a faceless set of digits in a monstrous set of computers." He saw the government's requisition of information and use of information in anything other than in the lawful and intended way as a dangerous attack on liberty.   Imagine that!  Could you possibly see the IRS, for example, requiring information unlawfully and then using that along with lawfully secured information improperly, squelching disfavored views? 

Then Ford took what seemed to me at the time a bit of a pretty big leap, an alarmist point of view.   He said,

I see the great challenge of the next one hundred years as the advancement of our individual independence -- of specific steps to safeguard the identity of each and every American from the pressures of conformity.  These pressures close in upon us from many quarters -- massive government, massive management, massive labor, massive education, massive communication and massive acquisition of information.

My God he was prescient.  President Ford, characterized as a dolt by the media that were every bit as biased and inept as today (also portrayed as spasmodic by the media despite being probably the most athletic ever president), foresaw the power of the Sheeple before the word was invented.  Fine job Gerry, I wish we had paid more attention back in the day.