We like believing we're a country of laws, not men. It's far from true, won't ever be unless demanded from the grassroots, and under the Bush administration it's pure fantasy. Its officials scorn the law at home and abroad. Van Bergen counts the ways:
-- refusing to adhere to the four Geneva Convention treaties that are the supreme law of the land;
-- opting out of the International Criminal Court (ICC) 104 other nations belong to, including virtually all Western democracies; in addition 42 others signed the Rome Statute but haven't yet ratified it;
-- condoning torture and allowing or ignoring other human rights abuses; the Nazis called torture "Verscharfte Vernehmung," or "enhanced interrogation" leaving few telltale signs of abuses committed; George Bush secretly authorized his own version of harsh "enhanced interrogation" in a July, 2006 executive order; it was unmentioned on October 5 when he confronted a public uproar and contemptuously stated: "This government does not torture people;" he also ignored secret Department of Justice (DOJ) legal opinions confirming his administration condones "the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the CIA;"
-- scorning Bill of Rights laws that guarantee free expression, religion, assembly, representation by competent counsel in a criminal proceeding, fair and speedy trials by a jury of peers, protection from illegal searches and seizures and much more.
These and other rights are constitutionally guaranteed that in a nation of laws "is considered the bottom line" and inviolate. Not so in the age of George Bush with the DOJ and courts taking great "balancing test" liberties when the administration raises issues of national security, justified or not. Van Bergen asks "Do we want a country of laws and not of power-mongering men?" Getting it means earning it and that begins with understanding our rights and how legal systems work.
They're all underpinned by the supreme law of the land in the benchmark Constitution most people know about but not what's in it, what it means, and how, in fact, it works for good or ill. In spite of it, governments always side with privilege and especially capital interests. Ordinary private citizens are hard-pressed to get justice without competent and generally expensive legal counsel few can afford.
Our Individual Rights
Here Van Bergen focuses on due process, free speech and association, legal representation, and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. She notes these rights aren't absolute because democratic governments try to balance the "good of the one" against "the good of the many" when it comes to issues of peace and security. The result is individuals often lose out for the supposed greater good that may only be the workings of a repressive state. That's what's happening today in America.
Due Process
Also called "procedural due process," this term only applies when a person's "life, liberty, or property" is at stake, and the government is constitutionally required to provide due process legal procedures so a person gets a proper defense. Often in the past, this right wasn't afforded. Today it's being willfully swept away under police state justice.
First Amendment Freedoms - Speech, the Press, Religion, Assembly and Association
No rights are more vital than these as without them no others are possible, but today, under George Bush, they're being lost. As Van Bergen puts it: "democracy cannot exist without these freedoms." Indeed not, and it's why earlier crumbs of them are now threatened more than ever under Patriot Act justice and other harsh laws like the Military Commissions Act enacted after Van Bergen's book was published. She points out free expression, the press and right to assemble are most threatened today even though they're constitutionally guaranteed.
That doesn't deter George Bush who on July 17, 2007 issued another of his "one-man" Executive Order (EO) decrees "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq." Nothing in the Constitution implicitly or explicitly allows for EOs, but once issued, even illegally, they become the law of the land unless or until courts rule otherwise. This one criminalizes dissent so that all anti-war protests are now illegal, and persons participating in them are subject to arrest, prosecution and loss of their property. That's how a police state works, and that's the condition in America under George Bush's contemptuous flouting of the law to crush all opposition.
I am a 72 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.
