Sleepycatz

Stress Positions

In 1788, Alexander Hamilton, in defending the Constitution, wrote:

The observations of the judicious Blackstone in reference to the latter, are well worthy of recital: “To bereave a man of life, [says he] or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government.” And as a remedy for this fatal evil he is everywhere peculiarly emphatical in his encomiums on the habeas corpus act, which in one place he calls “the BULWARK of the British Constitution.”2

Hamilton was arguing that America could not nor could ever forgo the basic rights of English common law; thus, there was no need to include a Bill of Rights into the proposed Constitution. Ten score and eighteen years later, we have shamefully betrayed the hope and convictions of America’s founding fathers. Today, our government will revoke the Great Writ, and endorse the practice of torture; all in the name of partisan politics. America has lost the greatness that it once held - the greatness which drew hopeful immigrants from around the world in order to make a better life, and escape tyranny. America’s greatness was never to be found in its shopping aisles, its financial markets, or its factories; it was found in America’s laws, its philosophy, and its rejection of tyranny. When one man, be him president, pope, or king, can deprive anyone of due process and liberty that man must instantly be labeled a tyrant. It is far too easy to blame only our representatives who, out of desperation and fear, acquiesce to such a tyrant. Much of the blame - or responsibility - lies within our own fears and apathy. Our country was founded by men of enormous courage. At a time when most of the world was ruled by kings and potentates, our leaders decreed that our country would not be governed by one man, but by all men; that power would never be concentrated in a single office, but shared among branches of government - that our land would not be subjected to the whims of imperial power. That courage has faded over the years, and today it is nearly invisible in our government and newscasts. Those of us who speak up are shouted down with cries of traitor or go unheard, drowned out by the constant calls for strength and protection. Somewhere we hope that there lives that small still voice in our nation conscious that will cry out against tyranny and fear, but we also know that, by then, it may be too late. Arbitrary imprisonment and torture are self perpetuating engines. A man is tortured until he implicates co-conspirators; another is arrested and tortured, and so on and so on. The soils of Chile, Ukraine, and Cambodia bear the blood of this awful truth. The scratch stained walls in the prisons of Soviet Russia, China, and Iran are the murals testifying to ultimate, arbitrary, state power. America now claims the right to perpetrate what we once condemned. Our greatness is lost. The only question that remains is whether we shall recover it, or shall we follow the history of other corrupt empires.

As always Glen Greenwald has the details

This entry was posted by steve on Thursday, September 28th, 2006 at 4:31 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.