Not sure how much good it will do, but I felt compelled to do it, and thought I'd share it with you all.
Subj: This I believe: including some Garrison Keillor and some background
Dear Mom & Dad,
E and I really enjoyed seeing you all this last weekend. Sorry it was so short what with classes and all. Thank you so much for your hospitality - it was greatly appreciated. I love you all very much and it was very good to see you and long over-due.
One thing I did want to give you some background on. You may have noticed that I arrived very upset, and on the phone to my Senators. What was going on was this: I was trying to stop our government from doing away with the nearly 800-year old right of habeas corpus (as enshrined in the Magna Carta, signed on my birthday in the year 1215), and from stepping officially further along on the path to torture. I was not successful, and the Republican Party (and a number of Democrats) has demonstrated once again that fear and power are more important than the basic American ideals of our inalienable human rights ("endowed by our Creator", I might add).
(more after the fold)
Garrison Keillor had a very good piece on the subject I'd like to share with you: "No need to worry about human rights - we're doing just fine" (http://www.sltrib.com/... as reprinted in the Salt Lake City Tribune).
One thing Keillor gets a bit wrong though is although a federal appeals court has held that the President cannot declare a US citizen an "enemy combatant" (see Jose Padilla case), the President and the Military Tribunals Act still claim the right to whisk away a US citizen on US soil with no charges and detain them essentially forever as "enemy combatants" (as in Padilla). It's not just about "non-citizens". And as of yet, the Supreme Court has still not weighed in on this matter. (And just to be clear, Padilla is in all likelihood guilty of some variety of terrorist plotting, but it is essential that he be charged and tried in a court of law and given due process to determine his guilt or innocence.)
And if you are thinking "We only torture terrorists", I might remind you that we only torture "suspects" -- some of whom may be terrorists, many of whom will be innocent. And we have in fact tortured the innocent, and undoubtedly still do. For example, Maher Arer, a Canadian citizen of Syrian descent (timeline at http://www.cbc.ca/...), was kidnapped by our government at Kennedy Airport while returning home from Tunisia and sent to be tortured in Syria. For over a year his wife and child had no idea that Arar was being tortured in a dank cell in Syria on our government's behalf. Eventually he was returned home. There were no charges filed by our government. The Canadian government still wants to know why.
You may be comfortable taking this path. I obviously am not. This goes against everything I was ever taught to believe about my country and about human rights. (And I might remind you that you helped instill these values in me.) According to the right-wing noisemakers, this makes me "an irrational Bush-hater", a "terrorist-coddler", a "blame-America-firster", "America-hater", and "a liberal". I'll give them the last one, but they seem to think it's a dirty word and something to be ashamed of. Liberal Enlightenment values are what this country was founded on and what I believe in, and what I am most proud of. I want our country to live these values, and I won't be driven into giving them up by fear-mongering.
Al-Qaeda (or any other foreign enemy for that matter) can only attack our country but can never destroy it. Only mendacious and misguided politicians herding a frightened citizenry can destroy our country. Our country is our ideals. When those ideals die, our country dies with them. The oath of office of the President is to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States", not to "protect our people" as Mr Bush is so fond of saying. You can "protect our people" in a police state. If you protect the Constitution, protecting the people takes care of itself. (Alas, part of the problem is we seem to have lots of "consumers" but very few "citizens" these days. An accident? I don't think so. Consumers are much more easily led than engaged and informed citizens.)
An aside: This fear-mongering has led us into losing three wars instead of winning the two we should have been fighting and could have won. We are losing in our justified war in Afghanistan, and are losing the "war on terror" by spawning ever more terrorists by our actions, because our government had a pre-existing agenda for Iraq and lied to get us there. And we're losing that one too.
This "power at any cost" mentality we've seen from the entrenched powers is bearing some other bitter fruit as well. We've got a leadership in power that has been hiding a child sex predator (Mark Foley), encouraging him to run again for his seat while knowing what they knew so they could retain power, and although they knew he has been preying on under-age pages for a number of years, even allowed him to remain as co-chair of "The Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus". Talk about your bitter ironies. On the bright side for the Republican Party, they may be able to turn lemons into lemonade by whipping up a fresh batch of gay-bashing in time for the election, though you and I know that "gay" and "sexual predator" are not the same thing at all. You may be comfortable with this. I am not.
So, once again, I'll ask you to look to your values and open your eyes to who is running Washington and the country, and who is running for office in November. I trust your values - I just ask that you consult them carefully. Just because you shut your eyes to what's going on doesn't mean it's not happening. Are the people in office really representing your values? There's nothing wrong with being a Republican, or being a conservative, and I look forward to a time when there are honest conservatives and Republicans in office again. We as a country benefit from a civilized dialogue between parties in hashing out ideas to solve the many challenges facing us. And I've got my work cut out for me for the next few years getting rid of any Democrats in office who have forgotten our founding American values. I'm working on that too, even now.
I want nothing less than a representative democracy that elects honest and thoughtful officials to carry on the work of just governance on behalf of an informed and engaged citizenry, working to best balance the contending issues for the good of our country and the world. It's a never-ending, and likely impossible, task, but it begins with each and every one of us doing our part. However impossible it may be, it's well worth doing. We deserve nothing less.
With much love from your son,
I'm sure my situation is not unique, and that many of you have letters in you as well. I thought I'd share my story.