Truth Must Count.

In the history lessons I learned as a small child, I learned that the United States penal code derived from English penal code, which in turn had evolved to meet the needs of a people with an diverse collection of origins and an equally diverse range of religious viewpoints. One of the key outcomes of this chaotic process was the Magna Carta which, in contrast to the French penal code, required that the State declare its clear purpose and accountability in holding someone a prisoner.

We inherited that system. It lives in our Constitution. Article I, Section 9:

The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.

This isn't even in the Bill of Rights, this is more fundamental: this is an order to Congress by the founders of our country. (Nobody better give me the bullshit that the attack of 9/11 or the potential presence of terrorist sleeper cells constitutes an "invasion".)

When Richard Epstein testified before Congress, he said

At stake is the fundamental right of any prisoner to test the lawfulness of his detention. Truth must count. Innocence must matter. An optional system of limited judicial review sidesteps both. Only habeas corpus can meet the need. To strip the federal courts of habeas jurisdiction for individuals captured in the war on terror would tear a hole in a fundamental guarantee of liberty. Unless we remain true to our own constitutional tradition, our efforts to advance the cause of freedom will be seen a cynical exercise in hypocrisy.

[Emphasis mine.] The world now knows: America has no principles. We have abandoned them. In the quest for "a little safety," we have given our President (and he is ours, no matter how much in our hearts we may believe otherwise) the power to declare someone an "unlawful enemy combatant," a phrase that will go down in history as a synonym for "enemy of the People," and disappear that person.

Forever.

Anyone.

That includes you, Mr. American Citizen. Section (iii) includes "any person who has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a competent tribunal established by the President of the United States." No safeguards. No oversight. No alternative route of appeal. The president's star chamber and out. Your likely destination, if you remain in the country at all, is Wallabout Bay Military Prison in South Carolina, where over 10,000 Americans died during the Revolutionary War, held in squalid, fetid conditions by British soldiers.

We have allowed our Senators and Congressmen to legalize indefinite and incognito detainment. This cannot stand. Please, if you have the power to vote, do so. Come November, get someone-- anyone-- running who has sworn to return our government to its principles, and get them elected.

Which principles? Start with this one:

Trial by jury is the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.
-- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Thomas Paine 1789

This sickens my soul this day. My beloved nation is no longer.

Lifted from the comments.

fallenpegasus asked: So how did we handle this issue in our past wars?

Prior to the Convention, disgracefully. Until recently, we have done better. Not perfectly, but well enough to be regarded as an example. We did admirably in World War II and the Korean War. Our treatment of Iraqi soliders in Gulf War I is something for which we can be proud.

This is about living up to our principles, not our history. If all we wanted to do was be as good as our past, we'd still be slaveholders. It was in the name of Jeffersonian principles that we signed on to the Geneva Convention; we're abandoning it out of expediency and the quest for "a little security", out of ignorance (McCain, who voted for torture, said the White House has declined to tell him the techniques being used so he doesn't know what he just voted for), and out of cynicism (The repubs are gleeful that they have something to beat the dems over the head with this season. This vote was an election ploy, for Buddha's sake!).

I'm a libertarian because I believe that the unaccountable power of the gun is an inherently corrupting power. I'm a libertarian because I believe that being free to choose creates a marketplace of competition and cooperation that ultimately generates socially desireable outcomes. From those beliefs come a simple collection of principles that guide how I write, teach... and vote.

The betrayal of those principles is now on brutal display. And I am not happy about it.

I agree with Chomsky on one thing: there is no reason to believe that a relationship exists between the way a country treats its citizens, and the way it treats outsiders. I once hoped that the principles of American civility (if not democracy) would, over the years, evolve to embrace more and more outsiders. Instead, those principles have now crumbled and the tyranny we were capable of inflicting on others-- even if we were not already doing so-- has now been authorized by law to be inflicted upon ourselves.

The terrorists have acheived their most desired aim: American liberty is dead. We may not become dhimmis, but we have become something worse: we live in world where Susan Matthews's books are not a warning, but a how-to manual.

I believe:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

And still, life goes on.

Even in my weakness and my melancholy (as he is very potent with such spirits), life goes on. It's funny; Yamaraashi-chan and I were talking about the banality of evil the other day, mostly in the context of World War 2. We talked about what it means to have principles, and how most people had never actually sat down with a sheet of paper, listed their priorities in life, established their principles, and tried to live up to them, and to deal with the temptations of context that lead to banal wickedness. I wasn't quite ready to hit her with the whole bit about my appreciation, in principle, of hypocricy, while reserving my anger for janus-faced cynicism. She's only nine.

Odd, too, that FallenPegasus should remind me of the way libertarianism and socialism diverge: both are passionate about politics, both are frustrated with the system as it stands, and both are opposed to political entrenchment as it stands, yet both are very different beliefs. Where they diverge is that socialism believes that motive matters: that if we just got the right people into the right places, everything would be fine. Libertarianism says that motives cannot be trusted: history and experience teaches us that motives don't count for much, that context matters, that power corrupts, that the expectation a politician could withstand the temptations of power is more than we should ask of any human being, and that it is the duty of the people to restrain political overreach.

Odd mostly because I'd just written about those two very subjects in a story (15,000 words and counting) so far removed from any of today's subjects that the connection seems tenuous at a distance, but becomes solid close up. It's about Misuko going home, to her homeworld of Abi where AI is forbidden, and "coming out" to her parents and her family, and what she discovers is the banality of prejudice: drop any of the third-generation Abians anywhere else in the known galaxy and they'd become as cosmopolitan as she, but they'd also drop back to dissing the "filthy waldos" and "machines with delusions of sophonce" the second they came home.

I also wrote another story, only about 4,000 words, that unfortunately I had to delete immediately afterward. Don't ask why. Suffice it to say that the robot character Ruse Angel will never be seeing the light of day after all.

Odd as well that FallenPegasus and I should also start back up into the gym in the same week. I've been beating myself up this week, mostly arms and chest, but also a lot of abs work. Having the iPod back really helps. The funny thing is, I was starting to feel flabby but I'm apparently in much better shape than others in my department. I went to the gym with one of my project manangers and two guys from QA, and I seem to be able to press and circuit much more than they can, despite the fact that they've been going much longer and more consistently than I have.

Schadenfreude

The congressbeast from my mother's district, Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), announced today he is resigning from the House. The head of the house's Committee on Missing and Exploited Children could no longer stand the heat after transcripts of his attempts to seduce young boys online became publicly available.

Have a giggle. But then go back to the business of figuring out what to do next.