Canadian Liberty

10 March, 2007

It would seem that our neighbors to the north are somewhat more concerned about civil liberties than we are. Canada's House of Commons voted last week to not extend provisions in the anti-terrorism legislation that allow for preventive arrests and forced testimony. Like the US, Canada hurriedly passed anti-terrorism legislation in the wake of 9-11, and now, unlike the US, the Canadians seem to have realized that these ill considered laws trample all over the rights of their citizens. It's the second time in a week that Canada has struck down certain portions of its anti-terror legislation. One of Canada's most contentious anti-terrorism measures was declared unconstitutional by the Canadian Supreme Court, denying their government the means to detain foreign terror suspects indefinitely while the courts review their deportation orders. Fortunately for the Canadians, their Parliament and Supreme Court haven’t followed the lead of the US government. When our Patriot Act came up for renewal, Congress meekly extended it for a couple of years, and the Supreme Court has yet to strike it down as unconstitutional.

For many years American “progressives” (that’s a politically correct way of saying left wing “liberals”) have been weeping and wailing about real or imagined human rights violations committed by nearly every country in the world. They hold the American version of democracy up for all to see, as a shining example of government protecting individual rights. In itself that’s all well and fine, even if we don’t have a quite spotless civil rights record. But following the 9-11 terrorist attacks we passed the deceptively named “Patriot Act” which violates not only human rights but our constitutional law as well, and quite effectively turns the United States into a police state. All the liberals seem to have done since it’s passage is shed a couple of tears and mumble something about keeping the public safe, while the conservative right pontificates about national security!

Had anyone suggested to past generations of Americans that this nation needed laws giving the federal government free rein to ignore the provisions of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, we’d have heard thundering denouncements from congress, the supreme court would have been up in arms, and the president would have written “veto” in big red letters all over everything that crossed his desk! Any politician who favored such legislation could have immediately kissed his government career good-by! The American people would simultaneously have been rioting in the streets, liberally equipped with tar, feathers, torches, pitchforks and muskets! Whoever first suggested such a travesty would have been well advised to catch the next ship to France! Had Abe Lincoln tried passing such an act in 1865 as a means to combat another rebellion, the Grand Army of the Republic would have been marching on Washington!

Today we have a somewhat different situation. The President of the United States, a man who took a solemn oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, proposed that the nation ignore our constitutional rights and give unprecedented police powers to the federal government. Our elected representatives to Congress, men sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution, stumbled all over themselves to pass such legislation. Meanwhile, the United States Supreme Court, composed of highly qualified judges sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution, seem to ignore the whole thing! … meanwhile, the American people sit back, basking in their government provided “security”, swilling bottled water, watching mindless “reality” shows on TV, and complaining about the government not providing them with enough “entitlements”!

The American people desperately need to wake up! The Patriot Act literally dumps our Constitution and everything it stands for in the waste basket. Ignoring the Bill of Rights, it allows the government to declare anyone, citizen or not, a “terrorist”, arrest them, and toss them in jail forever, just because some minor government functionary doesn’t like the color of their eyes! If you disagree with a politician, you can be declared a potential terrorist, and jailed until somebody decides you’ve changed your ways! The foundation of our nation, our Constitution, provides everybody, citizen or not, with certain protection of the law. It does not allow the law to mistreat or imprison anyone until they have been proven guilty of a crime. The torture of prisoners, such as the government now claims is a necessary tool in the war on terror, is completely forbidden! Carried to its logical extremes, the Patriot Act allows our federal government to decree what you can say, think, or do. Any opposition to actions of the federal government could get you declared a suspected terrorist and “enemy of the people”, subject to warrentless arrest, incarceration without trial, questioning under torture, and finally execution, all in the name of “public safety”! What’s the next step, black clad, submachine gun toting internal security police standing on every street corner, making sure we properly salute the thirty foot tall picture poster of “our glorious leader”? We fought a war with Nazi Germany over their treating people that way, and we went through a long and difficult Cold War with the Soviet Union over their treating people the same! Now, the United States of America, a nation born in a war against tyranny and since become the worlds bastion of individual liberty, now hands over to our government those same police powers, without so much as a whimper of protest! What happened to all the fine prose about the rights of free men, of our support of liberty, and the vehement protests over violations of those individual and civil rights?

It’s high time we, all three hundred million of us, inform our elected representatives in no uncertain terms, that we will not tolerate this violation of the rights and the liberties upon which this nation was founded, and demand… nay, order, the immediate and total repeal of the Patriot Act! If they fail to do so, then we can readily elect representatives who will repeal this nefarious invasion of our rights. (That’s supposing that the next election isn’t cancelled due to a suspected “terrorist threat”.) We are a nation, as President Lincoln quietly stated at Gettysburg, “Of the people, by the people, and for the people”, not a nation of disenfranchised serfs dedicated by the government, to the governments welfare!

Meanwhile, the Canadians, God Bless ‘em, have begun to take the torch of liberty from our faltering hands.