Tuesday, May 12, 2009

More on habeas Corpus

More on Habeas Corpus


I listen to debates in the Senate and who is to say what the motives are behind the desire to weaken or erase habeas corpus. What is the motive behind the reluctance to outlaw torture? What is the motive behind attacking Iraq without a declaration of war from the Senate?
Like most motives I suppose they are mixed and run the gamut from heart felt conviction to lust for power and these motives have been with us for a long time.
The ingredient missing in the mix we have today is a reasonable populace.

Problems can't be solved in a vacuum. Education can't be a successful enterprise in an atmosphere that gives only lip service to the concept. Education can't be fixed with patches, you have to start with convincing people it is a good idea.
In the 1960's I learned that "working within the system" meant, "Go away, kid, and talk about it to your committee. Don't bother me. I've already made the decision."
The problem with committees and commissions is that they are ignored. Take, for example, the 9/11 Commission.
The way to protect The Constitution is to start with education and by education I mean teaching rational thought and critical thinking. For a populace to be reasonable it has to know how to reason.
If a reasonable population decides an issue in a way that may be contrary to the way I would have decided it, so be it. The population thought about it, I can ask for no more. If a reasonable population decides to change The Constitution, so be it. That is the will of the people because they thought about it; thinking about it instead of believing what someone tells them to think.

A Mathematical Look at the Theory of Destroying Values

Senator Frist (R-TN) says that the terrorists are trying to destroy our values. This lives up to the usual absence of information in the Senator's comments.
What values are we talking about? Honesty in business? Honesty in politics? Honesty in personal relationships? Did the terrorists make Abramoff pull his scams?
I don't know what values the good Senator has but I have a sense of honor, a sense of responsibility to my children, indeed, to humankind in general and a sense of the value of human life. I think I should pay my debts and not cheat people.
I don't see how the terrorists can destroy my values. How does someone blowing up a bomb change my values? I didn't start robbing stores and beating my kids on 9/11.
Maybe the only value at stake is the value of The Constitution although I don't feel that my appreciation of The Constitution has diminished since the war on terror began. I value my freedom more, not less, since the war started.
The only people who can destroy our values are ourselves. Only we can we say it's OK to torture, that habeas corpus is unnecessary, that we can start wars with impunity.
The irony is that in fighting the terrorist war we could well destroy our constitutional values in the attempt to win it, only realizing too late that the terrorists had won.
Funny how that works out.

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