Page 36 - Fruits from a Poisonous Tree

20 Fruit from a Poisonous Tree

Will these new laws affect you?
Maybe not at first, perhaps. They’ll be used to stop people with whose
opinions you disagree – to jail civilian militiamen from Montana and
Michigan; to put a stop to the KKK, ACLU, Operation Rescue, or Green
Peace. Depending on your political beliefs, that’s a good thing, right?
But the way of judging such a law is not how it operates today, but how
it will operate when your most feared enemy is in control. Who is your most
feared enemy? If no one you know now qualifies for that position, imagine
what use these new laws could be put to by Hitler, Stalin, Osama bin Laden,
or even George Bush, Jr.
How would you safeguard your freedom and those of your friends and
family when your opinions are labeled as terrorist?
My point is this: freedom walks a very narrow road. On one side of that
road stands conformity, censorship of ideas, and the use of force to compel
people in their role as citizen or antagonist. On the other side stands social
engineering and political dissent. The only thing in the middle of the road is
dead skunks and ignorant people.
That narrow road is supported by the Bill of Rights and the settled case
law which support our rights. There’s nothing magical about the Constitution;
it’s a dead tree ground into paper so those immortal, heavenly concepts of
freedom and self-government could be memorialized. It’s a document written
by people for people and interpreted by other people. It can be followed
or it can be ignored. If it’s followed, there are a few precious, fundamental
restrictions on government actions against the individual.
There is in the Constitution, for instance, a guarantee of due process of
law before life, liberty, or property is taken from you. This isn’t a guarantee
that you won’t be wrongly prosecuted, or that you won’t be investigated or
even punished for your beliefs. It’s only a guarantee of exposure to other
people, your fellow peers and the press, including some judges, who will be
watching to see that the rules are being followed.
Sometimes that exposure is enough to make the difference; sometimes
it’s not. The judges are there only to make sure that the rules were followed.
Justice does not reside in the courtroom. If you want justice, go to church:
that’s in God’s hands. All the judiciary cares about is if the rules were followed;
nothing more. The same Congress that has legislated our freedoms away
writes the rules.
But when by our apathy we set aside those few guarantees contained
in the Constitution – when we allow searches made in secret, the seizure of
property without trial, the detention of people without proof of a crime or
opportunity to defend themselves – then that form of democracy becomes a
paradigm for disaster. Our silence is freedom’s death knell.