On re-establishing our Constitution rights…

There must be a sense of urgency if we are to avoid the excesses of the GWB administration in the Obama administration or in administrations yet to come.  Once an office-holder gets power, it is very difficult to reclaim the power and give it back to its rightful owners (“We, the People”).  

It is also clear that Obama will abandon his principles in the name of “getting SOMETHING done.”  This has held true for every controversial issue that has come before us in the last couple of years (and before that when he voted “present” in the IL State Senate).

The only way we can get our rights re-established within the current governmental structure is to enact campaign finance reform in order to shift the power back to the people and seize it from fat-cat Big Business and their special interest groups and lobbyists.  Until we do this, Congress and the Executive Branch will allow them to “pay to play” and will not make decisions that benefit the people.

Campaign Finance Reform is the first and most critical step.

Once that is in place, a healthcare bill can be passed that benefits the people and not the insurance companies, healthcare providers and Big Pharma.

Decisions about how to solve the economy will move back from “welfare for Big Businesses” and the proper restraints and regulations that were eroded since the Reagan years (and even before that) will be re-established.

And, of course, if we re-establish the natural balance between the three branches that the authors of the Constitution intended (and which have worked reasonably well in the past), it stands to reason that our rights and protections will be re-established as well.  All the executive abuses of the past, from torture, rendition and the writ of habeas corpus to Executive Orders and all the provisions in the last few FISA amendments and the Patriot Act will cease to exist in their present form. 

We must acknowledge that “We, the People” do not have to relinquish our constitutional rights and protections in order to be safer.

 

Fear causes us to make bad decisions out of desperation in order to “feel better” or less fearful of our enemies and the potential threats it presents to our country and its citizens.  And what it really accomplishes is to change what is good about our society and form of government based on our fear and desire for safety.  We only have to look in our past to see how we slaughtered Indians by the millions and imprisoned Japanese American citizens in our own concentration camps because we didn’t trust people who didn’t look like us.

And we must pass a rule that amendments that are not germane to a bill cannot be included in any bill.

We also must demand the SCOTUS rule on whether or not an Executive Order is constitutional and binding, particularly if it includes provisions that are unconstitutional (abolishing the writ of habeas corpus, etc.).

And we must clearly establish the Right to Privacy, which will resolve such issues as abortion and homosexual marriage (and, for all practical purposes, many of the wedge issues that have plagues us since 1980).  I believe the Right to Privacy does exist.  If you look at the Bill of Rights, it is quite apparent that our Constitutional framers believed in the “man’s castle” theory which clearly establishes our inherent Right of Privacy.

Anyway, I think we must approach this issue in two ways:

First, get back control over our elected officials, who have reason to fear Big Business and Special Interests because of the enormous cost of running a successful re-election campaign, through passing campaign finance reform.

Second, we must try to educate “We, the People” and make them realize how dangerous it is to set such precedents that shift too much power to either of the three branches and shift power from the People to the government.  We must re-establish the inherent controls and balance between the three branches of government and the unconstitutional shift of far too much government power to the Executive Branch.  Even if we like and trust (or think we do), the guy in office now, we must remember that these precedents, once set, will empower and candidate that occupies these governmental position in the future. 

Unchecked power and unaccountable authority just don’t work, whether we are speaking of individuals or a political party.  We have seen that throughout the ages, and especially since 1980, when the political parties and special interests influenced the general public in becoming more and more polarized.  And that is the real danger. 

A democracy must be “people-oriented” and “people controlled “  Any act or action that contributes to American society by solving societal problems or preventing abuse by a government branch that refuses to acknowledge their accountability to the law of the land and to We, the People, must be effective and results-oriented in order to succeed and achieve the true goals of a democracy.  Every time we allow wedge issues to consume public discourse and further polarize Americans or sit back and watch our inherent constitutional rights and protections “flushed down the toilet” — regardless of any fear that permeates political discourse or public discourse — we move further and further way from the true freedoms that only a democracy can provide.

Abandoning our democratic values in exchange for the delusion that we are safer is the greatest “win” the terrorists could have hoped for…. and we gave this to them out of fear.

The GWB administration was masterful when it came to fear-mongering.  They proved how instilling fear in the general population could successfully empower an unhealthy, unchecked Executive Branch who believed themselves to be above the law.  And we also see how the country was bankrupted by the GWB administration to the point where the People are now financing with their own tax dollars poorly run companies with incompetent or criminal executive management; who deserve to be punished, not rewarded with multimillion-dollar executive bonuses BEFORE they have paid the American taxpayers back for their bailout money… These are the same executives that routinely and for a significant period of time made bad management decisions and were even criminally negligent to the point that their actions consist of a criminal breach of their fiduciary responsibilities.  And then we allow them their million-dollar bonuses while we are punished for their crime by having to carry the load of an out-of-control national debt.

Campaign Finance Reform is the first step

Without it, the Constitution will not be restored to its original intent, real healthcare that first protects the best interests of the People and not Big Business, Big Pharma and other Special Interest will never pass, and Big Business, the NRA and Special Interests will continue to have improper, excessive access to our elected officials, which results in the power to secretly write bills that benefit them or their industry.

Taking back the healthcare debate….

OK, I’ll admit I’m venting a little….

It’s time for a little sanity and rationality. I’m tired of the angry mob ranting and screaming over scheduled speakers in the healthcare town halls even before they get a chance to utter their first word. I have read H.R. 3200 and H.R. 676 and I’m still working on reading the rest of the proposals, so I do at least know and understand what is in H.R. 3200, which is what the media has been referring to when they talk about the healthcare bill.

Let me say upfront that I do not support H.R. 3200 because it does not accomplish what I believe needs to happen for real healthcare reform, which is Medicare for All – a single-payer universal healthcare solution that gets the for-profit insurance companies out of the healthcare business permanently. Why?  Because it is the nature of for-profit insurance companies, mandated by law, that they must make a profit for their stockholders, which increases our premiums and deductibles.

The first responsibility of insurance company executives is to their stockholders, not to their insureds (patients).  And, especially in recent years, we have seen policy premiums, deductibles and co-pays rise astronomically and coverage is continually cut back further and further while insurance company CEOs continue to get hundreds of millions of dollars in yearly bonuses….

Every town hall I have seen on the tube shows people screaming at the politicians or other presenters about unrelated issues or making wild accusations like the Palin comment about “death panels,” which is not just incorrect, it is grossly misrepresentative and a completely irresponsible remark for a former Governor and Vice Presidential candidate to make.

And I am tired of hearing how anyone who does not support the verbal lynchings that go on in the town halls is suppressing free speech and being a bully. Those in attendance of the town halls who are respectful and ask the ranters to be quiet long enough for the speaker to make his or her presentation aren’t being bullies just because we want to hear what the scheduled speaker has to say before we make comments or ask questions. I’m sick and tired of ill informed idiots trying to shout the speakers down rather than have a rational, factual discussion about healthcare…..

This issue is much too important to allow special interests and those only concerned with scoring political points based on propaganda, lies and fabrications to take over the discussion. I fear that the stranglehold that corporations and special interests have over politicians (because we have not dealt with much-needed election reform and campaign finance reform) is coming back to bite us in the butt once again.

There are plenty of logical reasons to oppose any of the healthcare bills — none of them are perfect, nor will they ever be, and some of them may well be worse than doing nothing. But the reality is that there is a huge inequity in our healthcare system because of lack of access to care based on unaffordability, uninsurability (because of pre-existing illnesses) and “job lock” (having to stay at a job you don’t like because changing insurance companies could jeopardize your coverage based on pre-existing conditions). Those who can easily afford the premiums and co-pays are happy with what they have, and why shouldn’t they be? But over 47 million (and counting, since the numbers grow as unemployment rises) people have no healthcare and even more have inadequate healthcare coverage — and worse still, they often don’t know it and don’t find out until the need it.

The town hall ranters speak about “taking their country back,” but from whom?

From my view, it looks like “we the rational” need to take this issue back from “those the hysterical” that are dominating the news!  Some of these demonstrators are simply honest, but ill-informed and easily manipulated, folk being used by the right wing-nuts to score political points.  Some are right wing-nuts or special interests that are deliberately trying to confuse and obfuscate and manipulate Americans using fearmongering to reject healthcare reform, yet again, and, often, not based on their perception of the need for healthcare reform, but because it provides them a convenient opportunity to score political points against a political opponent.  In other words, any issue will do if it creates a backlash against the opposing party.

And, given the change in public attitudes regarding healthcare and the recognition that this crisis has serious economic implications in contrast with the economic and political forces opposing healthcare reform, this may be the last real chance we have for a very long time to make any progress toward solving our healthcare crisis.

At this point, we Americans who understand the importance of this issue are all going to have to stand up and claim ownership of this issue and make a concerted effort to get the debate back to what should be the real focus: single-payer universal healthcare v. for-profit insurance company-dominated healthcare. And our common goal should be working together to solve problems, not fearmonger.

It is amazing to me how many people have no idea what single-payer universal healthcare really is. They think it is socialized medicine, and it is not. It is a “hybrid” system that makes the government the insurer, reducing the overhead of for-profit insurers by about 26%, but the healthcare providers are still privately owned and controlled.

It is equally disturbing to find that many of the people making these wild accusations about what is in the healthcare bill haven’t read any of the proposals yet.  What’s worse, even our elected officials admit they haven’t read the bill(s) either, and some have already admitted they don’t intend to.  It’s hard to wrap my head around the level of arrogance an elected official must have in order to vote on a bill he or she hasn’t read.  Why do they think we put them in office?  We certainly didn’t put them there just so they’d have a media platform, and the ability to get contributions for the next campaign.

A perfect example is the “death panels” comment by Palin. There is no such thing as death panels where government officials or medical professional make life or death decisions about patients in any of the bills. What she was referring to is the end-of-life consultation provision in H.R.3200 which simply allows healthcare professionals to be reimbursed for the time they spend explaining the medical content of Living Wills, et al., to patients. These consultations are completely voluntary on the part of patients, who request a conference with the doctor or nurse practioner to sit down with the patient and explain what each provision in a Living Will (Advance Directive for Healthcare) means, medically speaking.  More about Living Wills later….

The other bill where the “death panel” charge was wrongfully made was regarding the Health Information Technology provision in the Stimulus bill: the provisions contained constitute an amendment to the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 201 et seq.).  See http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/42/usc_sup_01_42.html for complete text). There is no provision in the stimulus bill for “death panels” which would review a patient’s medical records and decide to approve or deny coverage based on his or her value to society (age, general health, etc.).  Oddly enough, insurance companies do that now in their appeals process.

The Health Information Technology section is amending a previous bill that mandates a national database information exchange with a codified format that will allow health information systems to “speak” to each other and to access medical records of individuals. All this must conform to HIPAA standards regarding privacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Insurance_Portability_and_Accountability_Act ).

Now, back to Living Wills and the bogus “death panels” charge regarding the H.R.3200 (commonly referred to by the media as the healthcare bill or ObamaCare) –go to the Library of Congress website (http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c111:1:./temp/~c111whxT0k:e513253), and see SEC. 1233. ADVANCE CARE PLANNING CONSULTATION.  Advance care planning consultation “means a consultation between the individual and a practitioner described in paragraph (2) regarding advance care planning….” and “An explanation by the practitioner of advance directives, including living wills and durable powers of attorney, and their uses;” and “An explanation by the practitioner of the role and responsibilities of a health care proxy [someone designated by the patient to make medical decisions should the patient become unconscious or incompetent],” and so on.

Every individual should have a Living Will (Advance Directive for Healthcare), which is a legal document with instructions on what to do should he or she (the patient) become ill or injured and is unable to communicate his or her wishes directly. The medical practicioner refers the patient to a number of resources (some funded by the government that are free or low cost), including attorneys and other professionals who can help the patient determine his or her resources and the options that are available to him or her should hr or she need hospice care or other special end-of-life services.  There is no “death panel” – no committee of government officials or healthcare professionals voting to see if grandma lives or dies.

Of all the misrepresentations made thus far, I find this the most objectionable, particularly since it is creating fear in the elderly about something which all of us need to address BEFORE WE BECOME INCOMEPTENT AND UNABLE TO MAKETHESE DECISIONS FOR OURSELVES. Shame on you, Sarah Palin, for promulgating this nonsense!

Now, if you recall, I stated early on in the piece that I don’t like the H.R.3200 healthcare bill (ObamaCare); so, you might ask yourself, why am I defending parts of it?  Well, it’s not the bill itself I am concerned about defending, it’s correcting the lies and propaganda.  In order for our country to get past the hyperpolarization and political gamesmanship that pervades the public forum, we must start speaking truthfully with accuracy and clarity about all the issues and bills – whether we like them or not.  In order to “speak truth to power,” we first must begin speaking truthfully.  If we don’t like a bill or are against an issue, we should be able to articulate truthfully the reasons why without resorting to fabrication, emotionalism and propaganda.  My concern is that we as a people have not made good decisions in the recent past, due in large part to the fact that we are too busy trying to manipulate each other rather than respectfully argue the pros and cons of an issue with truth, accuracy and clarity.

I believe that honesty may not always be the best policy, particularly if the truth does not serve your interests, but honesty is ALWAYS the sincerest form of respect.  When you respect someone, you are honest with them.  And it is time that our elected officials earned our respect by showing us the respect of being honest with us.

For those of you who are proactive in nature and responsible enough to want to inform yourselves, go to www.thomas.gov (the Library of Congress website) and search for bills using the word “healthcare.” You will come up with about 250 entries to work your way through. The two major proposals that have gotten some media attention are H.R. 3200 (ObamaCare) and H.R.676 (the only single-payer option that I am aware of), but there are about six other plans.

The bottom line is that we need accurate, complete, clear information. I believe that Obama made a mistake to not have a solid plan to discuss before holding these town hall meetings. However, these meetings could be effective if they were used to discuss possible provisions, their pros and cons, and find out from the people what they need and want rather than dictating to them what the administration thinks they need and want.

Timing is everything. Preparation is the next most important thing, and the administration blew it on both counts. But it is not too late for the American citizens to stand up and take the issue back from the special interests and insist on sanity, clarity and truthfulness. We need to get the country focused on solving problems rather than acting out in anger and ignorance, because whether you like any of the bills proposed or not, healthcare is the one, single most important issue that prevents American labor from being competitive internationally.

And it is a national shame that the richest country in the world ranks only 37th internationally in terms of healthcare – lower than all the European countries and even Cuba. As Robert Kennedy once said of America:  we can do better than this!  And we must if we want to regain our economic power and stability.

Comic boundaries and women

Comedy is a very valuable reflective and introspective tool in our society.  Comics can make us laugh at ourselves or, at least, not take ourselves so seriously.  Comics can put the world in perspective when we get too caught up in political combat to “see the forest for the trees.”  And they can speak truth to power as only a court jester can and has for centuries. 

Comedy is an art, not a legal court proceeding or a news item.  I honestly believe this cause célèbre is more of a distraction than a real issue.  We are confusing the biased and deliberately inaccurate reporting by the MSM with comedy, which is an art.  And, like all arts, art is in the “eye of the beholder.” 

The right to free speech can only be measured by how a society treats the speech with which  it does not agree or approve.  Should there be reasonable limitations?  Of course!  And there are — in factual media:  they are libel and slander law.  But in comedy, where it is clear the comments are not meant to be factual, but rather entertaining, libel and slander do not apply, or, at least, the bar is significantly lower.   And this, for the most part, is a good thing.   Comedians like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and programs like Saturday Night Live may often blur the line between information and entertainment, as Katie Couric called it on her first broadcast, “infotainment,”  but there main function is the entertain.  If they can inform in the process, so much the better.

Was Letterman making a “bad” joke?  Maybe.  Was it in poor taste?  Possibly, but he did not cross the line or even lower the bar — all these kinds of jokes had been made before about other teenager girls (Paris Hilton, Nicole Richey, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Courtney Spears, Chelsea Clinton, Amy Carter, the Nixon girls, the Johnson girls and the Bush twins) in the public forum — even as underage teenagers.  His intended “victim” was the “of age,” formerly married Bristol Palin (who he confused with her younger, underage sister Willow).

Sarah Palin, like all politicians, knew when she entered the political arena that she and her family would be “fair game” for the media, both journalistic and entertainment.  She knew that any mistake her kids made would be subject to public scrutiny. 

She also knew that, when Bristol got pregnant out-of-wedlock and underage, that, given her political beliefs and her public evangelical Christian-based positions, that both she, her family and, especially, Bristol, would be the fodder for many jokes, and, frankly, reasonably so.

When Bristol decided to make “abstinence” ads targeted to prevent teen pregnancy, certainly Sarah should have known and informed her daughter if she didn’t know, that Bristol would be putting herself in the public forum and inviting public scrutiny and public humiliation.

So the false outrage shown by Sarah and her family mischaracterizing what Letterman said was not only a bit hysterical, it was more than a bit hypocritical.

II honestly believe this is “much ado about nothing,” or, at least, almost nothing.  Certainly, it is not a measured and rational response.  Further, it distracts from the real issues facing women.

If women want equality with men in all areas, including politics, they must be willing to accept the good with the bad.  Men in politics have been the brunt of jokes and personal attacks from the MSM for centuries now, as evidenced by every president, especially Bill Clinton and GWB. 

We wanted equality, now we have it.  Suck it up and focus on the real issues that can advance the causes of women.

Intolerance, political correctness and effective government

“An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.” — Edmund Burke

Regarding the recent shooting at the Holocaust Museum, it amuses me that white supremacy, interestingly enough, does not seem to include Jews, which are often white, whether European or Arab. Jews are a “subclass” of whites which apparently don’t “make the cut” for white supremacists.

But the bigger issue is intolerance and the lack of respect for those with whom we disagree. Even more important is our lack of respect for the RIGHTS of those with whom we disagree. Who you are intolerant toward is not so much the issue.  We live in a polarized world where the extremes are constantly at war (verbally or physically) and the middle has to take a side or be considered “the enemy.” In such an environment, there can be no real progress or real stability.  How we fix this, I don’t know. But I do know it is getting worse. And both extremes — right and left — are equally wrong.

“Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness.” — Confucius, The Confucian Analects, Chinese philosopher & reformer (551 BC – 479 BC)

One of the driving forces that led us to become a representative democracy instead of a “pure” democracy is the fact that our Founding Fathers were victims of persecution from the intolerant societies they had escaped. They wanted to ensure that the majority could never infringe the rights of the minority. And their belief that rights were inalienable and God-given was the foundation of this philosophy of individualism.

That’s why, when we see states voting on whether or not a minority segment of our population can enjoy the rights you and I have (to marry whom we please or to speak freely, even if it is against the government or in the form of burning the national flag), it is wrong to even consider holding a vote, or, at least, our Founding Fathers would have thought so based on how they approached structuring our government.

But because most of this intolerance is based on ideology and religion, which requires us to hate those things that are “wrong” and the people who practice these “wrongs”, it is tolerated by our society, or even accepted.  In other words, we demonize those who disagree with us.  We are not content to simply acknowledge that we disagree; we must create a mortal enemy against which we must wage war (or, perhaps, jihad?).  But this intolerance is what is really wrong, and it comes from both extremes in the political spectrum.

There is no justification for murdering a doctor who performs a legal operation that you do not agree with, or hanging a man from a tree on a Saturday night just because his skin is black or a different color than yours, or blaming an ethnic group for all society’s problems because they work hard and enjoy success, or murdering over 2,000 innocent civilians by flying a plane into a building – all these examples are merely expressions of the same problem — extreme INTOLERANCE.  And this intolerance is based on the belief that you have the right to dictate to the rest of the world how they should think and feel and live — a sense of moral supremacy, if you will.  And it’s wrong.

But it’s more than wrong, it’s ineffective. At least, it’s ineffective if your goal is to live peaceably with your neighbors, live your life fully and raise your family to be happy and successful. 

When I was working on an IT project in Manila, Philippines, the manager of the project for which I was consulting was a racist Australian that treated the Filipinos shamefully. He actually announced in the middle of a project meeting of 70 people, many of whom were department managers and the vast majority of whom were Filipino, that “Filipinos are lazy and stupid.” I was shocked. Had he done this in the U.S. or most European companies, he would have been fired that very day. I was embarrassed and ashamed for him and to be working with him, but I held my tongue until after the meeting and followed him back to his office. I told him that he comment was unacceptable and morally wrong, but I wasn’t going to waste my time arguing the merits of his comment with him because I knew that if he believed it was wrong, he wouldn’t have said it in the first place. What I did want to suggest to him was that “It was ineffective.” The successful completion of the project depended on those people that he had just called lazy and stupid to do their job. And to insult the people on whom YOUR success depended was, in itself, stupid, or, at least, INEFFECTIVE. This concept does not only apply to that project, it applies to our nation and our world.

The bottom line was it didn’t matter how he felt about those people, he needed a good working relationship with them to be effective. This is the attitude that we need to reawaken in our society. Our democracy dependends on each of us having the tolerance and the foresight to realize that we can’t be successful as a nation unless we are tolerant of each other and respect each other’s rights — especially when we don’t agree — and work together effectively for common goals. We don’t have to agree to like each other or like each other’s ideas in order to work together effectively. Our success or failure as a society depends on this.

The greatest concern I have right now is the social trend to infringe on our God-given, inalienable right to freedom of speech and sacrifice it on the altar of political correctness. Fashion, fads and opinions change from day to day, if not moment by moment, and what is politically correct today may not be tomorrow. But once we allow any government to infringe on anyone’s right to freedom of speech today, it will still be gone tomorrow for all of us, and, if not forever, certainly for a long, long time.  As MLK said, “If one of us is not free, then none of us are free.”

“You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.” — John Morley

Silence — “shutting people up,” or, oppression –  should not be confused for changing hearts and minds, but it often is perceived as such.  We called that silence which produces the illusion of perceived compliance or acceptance acquiescence.  And this silent approval or the perception of it, is very dangerous.  This is how the Nazis moved Germany from a modern Western country to accepting the Holocaust.  The reason there is a Holocaust Museum is because we need to be reminded of how thin the veil of civilization truly is.

The greatest problem our nation has is not the economy or health care or any other issue like abortion or gay marriage — these are merely distractions from or symptoms of the problem.  It is the fact that our government is not operating effectively.  The gridlock in our government that prevents it from operating effectively is directly due to the polarization in our society and the concept of moral absolutism that prevents compromise and views it as weakness or, worse, evil.

Politics is the art of compromise. It is discernment — knowing which points are negotiable and which ones aren’t — that brings the “art” into play, and this, above all else, is the job of the politician. And until we get over ourselves and our image of ourselves are morally superior and, therefore, entitled to absolute rule, it is not going to get better any time soon.

In the long run, intolerance is a characteristic of a fool, because, just like any foible human being, intolerant people need the compassion and understanding that only comes from tolerance, and if you don’t offer tolerance, acceptance and understanding to others, you have no right to expect it when you need it from them. And you will need it, because we are all flawed and imperfect.

The fact that this shooting occurred at the Holocaust Museum should not be overlooked, because anti-Semitism is on the rise in the Western world due to the efforts of Islamic PACs and organizations supported by Muslim nations (especially Saudi Arabia). The interpretation of multiculturalism as being achieved through political correctness (by suppressing free speech) that is being sold by extreme liberals is starting us down the path of oppression. Such a proposal is before the U.N. as we speak. And, as Edmund Burke said, “Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.”

“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.” — Edmund Burke

And you are accepting a delusion for reality if you believe silencing criticism will lead to acceptance and tolerance.  It will not.  It will simply force the critics and dissenters outside the system (underground) and encourage them to become more dangerous.  Being able to freely criticize (hopefully, respectfully so) any religion or religious practicioner or government or political party or politician is fundamental to our right to free speech that cannot be sacrificed at the altar of political correctness. To sit silently by while others practice hate speech is equally wrong, because failing to stand up for our values is effectively the equivalent of having none.

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” — Narration from Sergei Bondarchuk’s Soviet film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s book “War and Peace” which has been misattributed to Edmund Burke.

Let’s continue to remind ourselves of how easily a Western society slipped into an autocracy led by a madman who committed some of the most heinous crimes in recorded history. And, even more important, this societal descent into madness took only a short time to achieve.

“A human group transforms itself into a crowd when it suddenly responds…
   to a suggestion rather than to reasoning,
   to an image rather than to an idea,
   to an affirmation rather than to proof,
   to the repetition of a phrase rather than to arguments,
   to prestige rather than to competence.” — Jean-Francois Revel

And, finally, we must stop having to “relearn” the lessons of the Holocaust: 

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” — George Santayana quotes (Spanish born American Philosopher, Poet and Humanist who made important contributions to aesthetics, speculative philosophy and literary criticism. 1863-1952)

It’s all about the integrity of the process…

When our founding fathers wrote the Constitution of the United States, they were writing this document from the worldview of immigrants who had fled their home country because of tyranny.  Tyranny came to our founding fathers  in many forms, but most often in the form of lack of religious freedom and the enslavement of the “common” man (not nobility) primarily via indenture (debt bondage) and forced labor. 

Contemporary forms of slavery includes: debt bondage, serfdom, forced labour, child labour and child servitude, trafficking of persons and human organs, sexual slavery, children in armed conflict, sale of children, forced marriage and the sale of wives, migrant work, the exploitation of prostitution, and certain practices under apartheid and colonial regimes. As a legally permitted labour system, traditional slavery has been abolished everywhere, but it has not been completely stamped out. There are still reports of slave markets. Even when abolished, slavery leaves traces. It can persist as a state of mind- among victims and their descendants and among the inheritors of those who practised it –long after it has formally ended. (http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/slavery/rapporteur/index.htm)

Additionally, the ascendacy of individualism left its mark on the authors. 

In political philosophy, the individualist theory of government holds that the state should protect the liberty of individuals to act as they wish as long they do not infringe on the liberties of others. This contrasts with collectivist political theories, where, rather than leaving individuals to pursue their own ends, the state ensures that the individual serves the whole society. The term has also been used to describe “individual initiative” and “freedom of the individual.” This theory is described well by “laissez faire,” which means in French “let [the people] do” [for themselves what they know how to do]. This term is commonly associated with a free market system in economics, where individuals and businesses own and control the majority of factors of production. Government interferences are kept to a minimum.

Individualists are chiefly concerned with protecting individual autonomy against obligations imposed by social institutions (such as the state). Many individualists believe in protecting the liberties of the minority from the wishes of the majority. Thus, individualists oppose democratic systems without constitutional protections existing that do not allow individual liberty to be diminished by the interests of the majority. These concerns encompass both civil and economic liberties. For example, they oppose any concentration of commercial and industrial enterprise in the hands of the state, and the municipality. The principles upon which this opposition is based are mainly twofold: that popularly-elected representatives are not likely to have the qualifications, or the sense of responsibility, required for dealing with the multitudinous enterprises, and the large sums of public money involved in civic administration; and that the “health of the state” depends upon the exertions of individuals for their personal benefit (who, “like cells”, are the containers of the life of the body). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualism)

This is why the authors of the Constitution made sure of two things that: 

1. The system of government they set up could be dynamic (change as needed)  with a peaceful transfer of power and well-defined line of authority and reporting structure, and
2. The rights of all citizens, particularly the minority, could not be infringed by the will of the majority. 

That’s why we have a representative form of government with a well-articulated Bill of Rights. It prevents what we now call “government by polls,” of the Rule of Man in majority “group” form.  In a pure democracy, a vote to determine the will of the people really only reflects the will of the majority — the minority never wins unless they can build a coalition with other minority groups.  If the rights of ALL individuals in a society cannot be protected, the result is a tyrannical rule by the majority based on current public opinion, which lends itself to instability and uncertainty.

The authors of the Constitution knew the difference between the Rule of Law and the Rule of Man.  They understood that a pure democracy was not practical.  The Rule of Man — whether by one man or a group of like-minded men —  is fickle and unstable — there is no consistency or continuity between rulers.  There is usually not a peaceful transfer of power.   Living under the Rule of Law means our founding fathers set up a system with integrity — one that could maintain continuity of government during the transfer of power and consistency regardless of who sat in the White House Oval Office or which party was in power at any particular moment in time.

The best example of how ruling by opinion polls can undermine equal rights and equal protection under the law — in a society supposedly based on the Rule of Law — is California.  I believe that it would have been unthinkable to our Founding Fathers that any state vote could infringe on a minority’s rights, as has the defeat of California’s Prop. 8, which has been held up by the California Supreme Court.

The loss of the sanctity of the writ of habeas corpus (requiring a warrant for arrest, search and/or seizure of persons or property) is the most alarming, because it also involves the loss of due process, meaning that the government (thanks to the Patriot Act) can deem individuals to be enemy non-combatants, arrest them, detain them without arraignment or trial, torture them, and even refuse to give them access to an attorney until they have signed a confession written by the government. Our current president, who campaigned on restoring individual rights that had eroded during the last administration, is now considering the concept of preventive detention, where our government can arrest and detain individuals who have not actually committed an act of terror, but are considered to be potential terrorists.  One of the cornerstones of our system of justice was the concept of “innocent until proven guilty” [by a jury of peers]. 

How can a constitutional scholar and professor not be troubled by the concept of detaining someone BEFORE they commit a crime or even make an attempt to commit a crime?

Oscar Wilde once said “Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.” (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/imitates.html) In the case of this issue, Steven Spielberg’s film, Minority Report, may be closer to our new reality than we think..

When I was growing up, the Soviet Union and Red China were the “boogey-men” who committed these types of human rights atrocities.  America was the country that protested this kind of treatment of individuals.  Now we torture detainees. Now we are the “boogey-man.” I have not doubt that, in years to come, our behavior in reaction to terrorism will be deemed as a shameful time for Americans, much like our treatment of Japanese Americans during WWII.