"America Sans Democracy!"

What makes America America...

A Relevant Reminder:

America is one of the few places on earth with a government that is based upon a document that protects individual freedoms and guides the government in their enforcement..
The Founding documents are the elements in a contract that Americans agree to; it provides protection and freedoms for its citizenry that is the envy of the World.

Some of its features include the First Amendment that protects privacy for the individual against snooping and eavesdropping. Our laws allow people to consult with their lawyers so that they will not incriminate themselves. We have other important laws that make us the stand out democracy on earth. Among them, habeas corpus which requires that anyone who makes a case against you has to present his charges in a court of law within a specified time period so that you aren't just forgotten in jail as you might be in some banana republic. Far different from places like South Korea where you could be picked up walking on the street for whatever reason and held in jail indefinitely!...

Freedom of speech is another feature of American democracy that stands apart. Even in England, under the War Secrets Act you can't openly speak your mind.

America was also created as a Republic where the concepts of church and state were prevented from intermingling. This was because of the experience of our early founders who for the most part were fleeing religious oppression. Among those who were to design our government, it was recognized that the questions of religion had no business in government.

Government was of the people and our representatives were charged with the responsibility for representing their districts and their constituents. And to make sure that all people were represented and protected according to the laws of the land, the Senate and House had different jurisdictions and each division of government had the ability to balance the other two divisions.

To keep government on the up and up, we even had a free media that because of its size and diversity, operated to assure the public of balanced news reporting.

We were also a government free of the prospect of the military taking over inasmuch as certain laws on the books precluded such an eventuality such as Posse Comitatus which ruled that no US military could be stationed in America.

But, today, it grieves one to realize that most of these guarantees that are at the very foundation of America are negotiable and can be disposed of arbitrarily by a sitting government. These protections which were seemingly carved in stone, for the most part have been jettisoned without the hue and cry of the American people, our courts, our elected officials and the media. Now, we learn after the fact, that our government is free to snoop on us, read our paperwork, listen to our conversation--without even the protections of the Courts—in the purported fight against the invisible forces of terrorism..

Today, American citizens can be confined--and tortured according to the definition approved by the president and not have access to legal guidance. And this is called American.
Today, the machinery has been set up to erode the protections of posse comitatus in violation of the law of the land. . To add to our concerns, the government has also made it possible to exercise Martial Law in America if the government deems it necessary.

The government has also absorbed the power of the other two houses so that it operates virtually independently without intervention to produce legislation that it wants to pursue in the interest of its narrow base that is viewed as extremist right wing.

The protections of the Constitution have been tossed aside virtually at will and, consequently, by this very act, government has attenuated or, in effect, effectively ended the contract that existed for more than two hundred years between the American people and its government. DeToqueville made the point one hundred plus years ago when he commented that American democracy is without equal, but it suffers from one flaw that it is a form of government that it is easy to manipulate and change into a form of tyranny without the people being the wiser.

And all of this has been done through the government's ability to usurp power and impose its own authority to fight terrorism.

In the end, it may appear to some that in the pursuit of terrorism and the exercise of fear, we have lost most of those freedoms and constitutional rights that differentiate us from most of the rest of the world. What are we if we cannot point to our freedoms and protections, including the rights of habeas corpus, the right to engage a lawyer on our own behalf, the right to plead one’s own case, the right to protection against imprisonment, torture and the other heinous forms of dictatorship that have made themselves apparent in this so-called War against terrorism. Aside from asking ourselves whether we are any safer today than we were on September 10th, we must face the reality that we have morphed under this government to a Superpower that rules by Divine Right without the advice of the people or their necessary support, absent the balance provided by the Fourth Estate. In the end, when such a government can maintain its place and when you tally all the scores, it seems clear that the terrorists have already won!

Les Aaron The Armchair Curmudgeon