{"id":21696,"date":"2012-08-21T18:18:54","date_gmt":"2012-08-21T14:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=21696"},"modified":"2012-08-21T18:19:17","modified_gmt":"2012-08-21T14:19:17","slug":"beautiful-words-melt-in-face-of-the-muslim-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/showcase\/beautiful-words-melt-in-face-of-the-muslim-threat\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Beautiful Words’ Melt in Face of ‘the Muslim Threat’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

MANY years ago while I was a legal affairs reporter in Los Angeles, I interviewed a Superior Court of California judge about whether he had at times believed he sentenced a wrongly convicted man to jail. He paused for a moment, looked at the ceiling as if to find his answer, and then replied, \u201cno.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he wasn\u2019t quite ready to let his answer be the final word. He observed that the United States has the \u201cbest judicial system in the world\u201d although not without flaws. If an innocent man was wrongly convicted of a crime it was the price society paid to ensure that justice for all citizens persevered. Sometimes there was collateral damage and innocent people got in the way.
\nI didn\u2019t argue his interpretation of the US judicial system, but I always wondered about that guy sent off to prison for a crime he didn\u2019t commit. Apparently his role in society was to help maintain the rule of law. I\u2019m not so sure he would have gone along with that idea.<\/p>\n

My interview with the judge was before DNA became the vital law enforcement tool to catch criminals. Now, of course, we have come to recognize that through such organizations as Project Innocence and the use of DNA that nearly 300 defendants were wrongly convicted crimes and imprisoned.<\/p>\n

Whenever a county district attorney\u2019s office brags about its \u201c97 percent\u201d conviction rate, I shudder to think how many innocents were jailed to satisfy a prosecutor\u2019s competitive nature of us versus them.A recent ruling by a federal judge in Orange County, California, reminded me about that interview and the precarious nature of personal civil liberties when compared to the good of society.<\/p>\n

US District Judge Cormac J. Carney dismissed a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The lawsuit alleged that FBI agents conducted a \u201cdragnet\u201d to target Muslims by planting listening devices in their homes and offices to monitor private religious conversations.<\/p>\n

Carney ruled that he had no choice but to dismiss the complaint because \u201cthe state secrets privilege may unfortunately mean the sacrifice of individual liberties for the sake of national security.\u201d<\/p>\n

By allowing the lawsuit to proceed, Carney feared that sensitive government secrets would be exposed. In a secret meeting with FBI agents, Carney read confidential declarations and accepted the government\u2019s position that \u201cintelligence that, if disclosed, would significantly compromise national security.\u201d<\/p>\n

So here we are with another case of preserving the greater good of society by sacrificing individuals\u2019 civil liberties.
\nThis Orwellian logic paints a rather desperate portrait of a government that has lost its way in the name of national security by pursing a path of fascism. \u201cFascism\u201d is a label freely used in our society as a means to smear just about anybody who disagrees with your point of view: Republicans, Democrats, Islamophobes, Tea Partiers, Occupiers.<\/p>\n

The word, along with \u201cNazi,\u201d has been so overused that its meaning has been diminished. But in the case of Carney, he is in effect sacrificing the constitutionally protected rights of individuals that enforce a fascist agenda.
\nHe did not evaluate the evidence in open court. He did it in secret, as if telling Americans, \u201ctrust me,\u201d the FBI is telling the truth about the Muslim threat to national security.<\/p>\n

ACLU attorney Peter Bibring told a reporter after the ruling: \u201cThat\u2019s terribly unfortunate that there\u2019s a doctrine in the law that allows courts to throw out cases that allege serious constitutional violations based on secret evidence the judge reviews behind closed doors that never sees the light of day. That shouldn\u2019t be in a democratic society.\u201d<\/p>\n

The question on many Americans\u2019 minds is whether we are willing to sacrifice our civil liberties for national security. A September 2011 poll by the Associated Press-NORCO Center for Public Research at the University of Chicago found that 86 percent of Americans feel their individual freedoms have been affected since 9\/11. Fifty-four percent said they want their rights and freedoms protected. And just 23 percent favor using wiretaps on US soil without a warrant.<\/p>\n

Suppression of civil liberties is not unprecedented in the United States. President Woodrow Wilson sought to intimidate critics of the US involvement in World War I by passing the Espionage Act of 1917, followed by the Sedition Act in 1918. The government prosecuted hundreds of individuals for simply opposing the war.<\/p>\n

American historian Alan Brinkley in a 2005 American Academy publication wrote that the concept of civil liberties as stated in the US Constitution can ring hollow when a government is preoccupied with national security.<\/p>\n

Brinkley referred to Zechariah Chafee, a 1920s and Depression-era civil rights advocate, who wrote about perceived threats to national security. He said, \u201cThe First Amendment had no hold on people\u2019s minds, because no live facts or concrete images were then attached to it. Consequently, like an empty box with beautiful words on it, the amendment collapsed under the impact of Prussian battalions, and terror of Bolshevik mobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Civil liberties in a post-9\/11 world are subject to the same challenges. If the Muslim community is perceived as a threat to America\u2019s national security, then all the beautiful words in the Declaration of Independence like \u201clife, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness\u201d and the Constitution\u2019s guarantee of \u201cfreedom of religion\u201d are meaningless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ROB L. WAGNER: U.S citizens are, it appears, willing to give up many of the freedoms enshrined in their Constitution when presented with a large enough threat. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":21697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,83,692,60,482,135],"tags":[423,14615,2404,7469,5964,125,785,4857,91,1849,1808,18302,7112],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21696"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}