The Most Important Issue in the 2008 Elections – Adherence to the Foundations of our Democracy

With our nation teetering on the brink of tyranny, what could be a more important issue for deciding whom to vote for in 2008 than a candidate’s attitude and actions towards the preservation of our Constitutional democracy?

There is a great deal of evidence that George Bush and Dick Cheney are currently taking us down the road to tyranny. I discussed this in a recent post, with special reference to Naomi Wolf’s “The End of America – Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot”. Of all the warning signs that Wolf discusses in her book, the most important in my opinion is the use of secret prisons, in conjunction with arbitrary arrest and indefinite imprisonment, often with torture, and without charges or trial.

Anyone who isn’t outraged by this, or anyone who favors laws that facilitate it, has no business running for President of the United States. Period. And if we refuse to vote for a candidate who opposes such a person because we don’t like where that candidate stands on other issues, then … well, we’re likely to end up with a President who may complete our transition into tyranny.

The best evidence of strong dedication towards preserving our democracy and our Constitution would be efforts to impeach those responsible for trying to destroy those foundations of our nation. Unfortunately, only one of our candidates for President has actually engaged in such efforts or even voiced support for them. That’s a major reason why I intend to vote for Dennis Kucinich. But if Kucinich doesn’t get the Democratic nomination, that still will undoubtedly leave us with huge differences between the major party candidates with regard to dedication to our Constitution.


George Bush’s secret prison system

Naomi Wolf discusses this issue in her book, as one of the ten signs of “fascist shift”:


How many secrete prisons has George Bush established? Nobody knows, since they’re secret, and the Bush/Cheney administration is the most secretive administration our country has ever had. George Bush has admitted that he has them, but we know little else about them. What we do know is that there have been thousands of victims sent off to Bush’s prisons – secret or otherwise, and without charge or trial, for indefinite periods of time. Estimates of the numbers involved vary from about 8,500 to 35,000. In my recent post titled “The Only Way to Stop the Bush/Cheney Torture Program Is to Cut it out at its Rotten Core”, I discuss in detail the abundance of evidence for widespread torture condoned by the Bush/Cheney administration, referencing numerous Bush administration memos, the “International Commission on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration”, the former commander of Abu Ghraib Prison, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Seymour Hersh, an FBI agent, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the ACLU.


Naomi Wolf’s description of the early stages of a secret prison system

Right now we are in the early stage of the establishment of secret prisons by our government. Naomi Wolf explains how it begins:


This is a very sad commentary that accurately characterizes far too many citizens of our nation and of other nations. Too many people think it’s ok to imprison people indefinitely without charges or trial – and even torture them. Why? Because they’re not Americans and therefore don’t have inalienable rights like we do; because they’re not Christians; because they deserve it; because they’re terrorists; or because they seek the destruction of our country – just like Hitler claimed of the German Jews before he began to throw them into concentration camps.

It is not seen as terribly important to most people that no evidence, or only secret evidence, is presented to justify the indefinite imprisonment of Bush’s victims; nor is it seen as important that their imprisonment and torture violates the Geneva Conventions and are war crimes; nor that it violates the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments of our Constitution. These are crimes against humanity whether or not we ourselves are at risk, and whether or not the system expands to eventually involve us.

And I have to say again that anyone who condones this, passively or actively, would pose a great danger to our country if they ascend to the Presidency of the United States with a system like this already in place.

But what reason do we have to think that a secret prison system would stop at this stage?


The progression of secret prison systems

Wolf continues her description of the progression of secret prison systems:


Yes, political opposition alone – redefined as treason or terrorism – can provide an excuse to throw people in jail and throw away the key. Naomi Wolf herself has been repeatedly detained at airports, undoubtedly because of her political opposition to the Bush administration. James Yee, former Muslim Army Chaplain in the U.S. Army, was accused of treason, imprisoned and tortured for several months, simply because he vocally objected to the repeated torture of Muslims under his spiritual care at Guantanamo Bay.

How many of us believe that that couldn’t happen to us because of our own political opposition?


For those who believe that it is currently or will remain safe to criticize our government

On July 15th, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court apparently put a stop to the whole Bush/Cheney system of arbitrary imprisonment and torture. In the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld U.S. Supreme Court decision, Justice Stevens, speaking for the majority, explained that the petitioner Hamdan was “entitled to the full protection of the Geneva Convention”, and that the “military commission convened to try him was established in violation of both the UCMJ and Common Article 3 of the Third Geneva Convention”. Justice Kennedy further elaborated on the Geneva Convention that the USSC determined the Bush administration to have violated:


So, how did George Bush respond to that? He simply intimidated his Republican Congress into passing the Military Commissions Act (MCA), which presumably now legalizes the Bush/Cheney system of arbitrary imprisonment without charges or trial. Of course, it’s still against international laws to which we’re a signatory. And it still violates our Constitution. But it will continue for the foreseeable future, until it’s stopped. How does the Military Commissions Act strip us of our Constitutional rights?

Eliot Cohen explains in this post what the Military Commissions Act does for our democracy. To summarize:

The MCA defines an “unlawful enemy combatant” as “an individual engaged in hostilities against the United States who is not a lawful enemy combatant”. By failing to define “hostilities against the United States”, the possibility is left open that George Bush might consider participation in an anti-war rally or even writing articles hostile to the Bush administration as “hostilities against the United States”. And by suspending the protection of habeas corpus, that means that we can be branded as “enemy combatants” and imprisoned indefinitely without charges or trial, and that we have no recourse or right of appeal. The ACLU is even more concise in their analysis:


Though the MCA prohibits torture, it gives George Bush, as president, the authority to define torture. And to make sure that his hands aren’t tied with respect to torture, Bush appended a “signing statement” to the MCA, declaring that:



How the 2008 Presidential candidates stand on the Military Commissions Act

Clearly, the Military Commissions Act is an affront and a great danger to our Constitution and to our democracy.

It passed in the U.S. Senate with only one Republican Senator (who is no longer a Republican) voting against it. It passed in the House with only 7 Republicans voting against it and 219 Republicans voting for it. Suffice it to say that the Republican Party as a whole sees no problem with trashing our Constitution, and our democracy along with it. Of the 8 declared Republican candidates, I believe that 7 of them have expressed no disagreement with the MCA and give every indication that they fully support it (someone tell me if I’m wrong about that). One of them, Ron Paul, voted against the MCA – though it seems quite unlikely that he’ll be the Republican nominee.

Of the 8 Democratic nominees, 5 of them were members of Congress when the MCA was voted on, and all 5 voted against it. There is little question that the other three (Edwards, Gravel, and Richardson) would have voted against it had they been in Congress at the time.


The bottom line

The United States descended from Great Britain, whose government was purely monarchical until the 17th Century. But even with a purely monarchical government, the need for some sort of protection against arbitrary imprisonment was recognized as early as 1215, with the passage of the Magna Carta:


In 1679 the British Parliament passed the Habeas Corpus Act, which gave persons the right to challenge their detention by the government in a court of law.

Now, with the passage of the Military Commissions Act, George Bush and Dick Cheney have eliminated these most basic rights – so long as George Bush claims that a person has committed a hostile act against the United States. Thus, our “democracy” has reverted to pre-1215 levels with respect to the most basic right that an individual can possess – the right to be free of arbitrary imprisonment by our government.

Anyone who favors that has no business representing the American people in any capacity whatsoever. Yet, other than Ron Paul, there appears to be no objection from the Republican candidates for President whatsoever. Hence, there is a vast difference between the Democratic and the Republican field of 2008 Presidential candidates with regard to their respect for our Constitution, our Democracy and the rule of law in our country.

With our Constitution and our democracy in great jeopardy, this has to be a huge issue for the 2008 elections. All Americans should know where there candidates for President, Congress, or any other office stand on this issue, before they vote.

:patriot: :patriot: :patriot:

This is history we all should have learned in junior high school, and should remember still.

Thank you puebloknot.

Yes indeed, history of this sort needs to be emphasized more in our schools.

Unfortunately, Americans in general, and the Bush administration in particular, are too anti-history. When the "National Center for History in the Schools" produced a guidance document for teaching history in our schools, emphasizing that the bad about our country must be taught along with the good, our Senate condemned it by a vote of 99-1 on the grounds that it portrayed too negative of a picture of our country.

This is the document:
http://nchs.ucla.edu/standards/toc.html

The only nay vote was based on the belief that the condemnation didn't go far enough.

...that founded this country. They were only "Indians," after all. I got straight A's for spewing back what I read in standard textbooks when I was in school.

Very well put. Thanks.

Why not (R)?

Welcome to DU Shanti Mama, I hope you enjoy your time here! With regards to the OP, another great one TfC. Hearing about the condemnation of the proposed history curriculum is very scary indeed. If we can't trust even the democrats to ensure that we have a proper account of history, we're in very sorry shape indeed.

Embarassing things are often dipicted as "national security", so that they can't be discussed. And as you know, the Bush administration has now put a lid on Presidential archives such as we've never seen in our country before. We need some more courageous souls to break the ice and start talking about these "inconvenient" truths (like Dennis Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney have), such as the real reasons that we invaded Iraq. Wonder how that will be depicted in the history books?

Thanks for the welcome. I've actually been hanging out here since 2003. I think I was about the 50,000th subscriber. Then I quit for a bit and recently returned. Great to be back but I spend WAY too much time here and I'm sure it's going to get worse.

And welcome to DU :toast:

:toast:

But what will Hillary (for instance) do? That's a big question.

I guess at least if SHE is empress, we won't have to look at an idiotic smirkchimp anymore...But I hope that she ins't going to be empress.

What I'm really hoping for is that everybody just knows this is fucking crazy, and have serious plans to get things back to sanity when they get in, whether they are talking much about it or not. But the silence still makes me uncomfortable, I think you are right, TFC, we need to hear about this before the primaries.

stoops to language that petty. If she wins the GE, she'll be the President, not an empress. It's perfectly legitimate to wonder what she'd do if she were president, but the silly queen/empress thing reduces the gravity of the question.

if the Military Commissions Act is still in place (which apparently it will be) will inherit the powers of an empress -- or king. In fact, they will have the tyrannical power to arbitrarily and indefinitely imprison people that no king or queen of England has had since 1215.

I hope that whoever inherits that power, whether it be Hillary or anyone else, has enough respect for our Constitution to make it one of their first priorities to repeal the MCA -- and make it very clear to the American people why it needs to be repealed.

Unfortunately, the repeal of the MCA is not likely to be a big campaign issue. There are too many Americans who are so afraid of al Qaeda that they don't at all mind seeing thousands of Muslims imprisoned or killed, without charge or trial, just so that they can feel a little "safer". I subscribe to an Ann Coulter electronic newsletter (for free), and I get e-mails from her and her cohorts all the time that attempt to stir up hatred against Muslims.

So coming out against the MCA will require some courage -- even after being elected. But again, every Democratic presidential candidate in Congress, including Hillary, voted against it. I am hopeful that they will all do the right thing with regard to that if elected.

and the leading debate issue of the primaries. Too bad it isn't.

In my opinion, things are so bad now that Democrats feel that if they spoke up about how bad things really are under the Bush/Cheney regime, they will be made to look paranoid -- with the help of our corporate news media. Thus, they have stifled themselves from saying what really needs to be said, leaving us to wonder whether they really don't recognize how bad things are, or are they just remaining relatively silent because they're afraid of the political consequences.

Richard Durbin found out what happens when he compared Guantanamo Bay with the Communist Gulag system under Stalin and the Nazi concentration camps. His statement was right on target, and badly needed, but it didn't matter. Our corporate media stands by to make sure that nobody goes too far in criticizing our country. Durbin was eventually forced to apologize -- which on a theoretical basis I believe he shouldn't have done, but that doesn't diminish my admiration for him for having the courage to bring it up in the first place.

Still, there is no question in my mind that every Democrat running for President is far superior to every Republican except Ron Paul on the issue of preserving our democracy. Those in Congress all voted against the MCA, and it is highly doubtful that any of the Republicans except Paul would have done the same (McCain voted for it). In my view, that alone is enough reason to vote Dem for president in 2008 -- as if there weren't plenty of other reasons.

the crimes which could address the issue, there still exists the possibility of a president who is against the constitution again taking power while the system is broken and unconstitutional laws remain on the books. Our freedom is gambled on this decision to not impeach.

Or maybe my second greatest fear -- Next to Bush and Cheney staging a coup before the election -- after they start a war with Iran, of course -- and then start rounding up their political opposition and sending them off to secret prisons.

That's one of the main talents of our corporate news media -- one that really burns me up. That's one of the main tactics they use to get people to accept the status quo, story book version of reality. Just spew out the words "conspiracy theorist" every time someone challenges their version of events, and snicker a little bit, and they hope that that will show us up for the paranoid fools that they make us out to be.

It is critical to know that none of “political” processes will work UNTIL we – the American public – are working within OUR “government” for ourselves. The “government” must be purged of contractors functioning a federal employees.

of the country that we "liberated".

Iraq never invaded America and was never a threat