The spirit of the times

The spirit of the times

This is as good a weekend as any to remind ourselves of Benjamin Franklin’s observation that, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” As one of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, Franklin knew a little something about sacrificing a feeling of safety for the reality of freedom.

And so it was unfortunate that the weekend began with a healthy dose of fear-mongering administered by the White House Thursday.

Press secretary Dana Perino raised the possibility that, because of a Supreme Court ruling that went against the Bush administration, the courts could order the Guantanamo Bay detainees set free to roam the streets of our cities.

The court’s June 12 decision written by Justice Anthony Kennedy in Boumediene vs. Bush held that Guantanamo prisoners have the right to ask the federal courts to rule on the validity of their continued detention. The court was suggesting that some innocent men may have been held for years with no evidence that they are “unlawful combatants” and that it is time for the government to provide the evidence.

The alternative is that once the government has someone in custody, it is free to hold that person indefinitely without showing cause.

A leap of logic

In what apparently passes for logic in press secretary school these days, Perino attempted to demonstrate the danger we might face by saying, “I’m sure that none of us want Khalid Sheikh Mohammed walking around our neighborhoods.” Mohammed was al-Qaida’s No. 3 leader and the self-confessed architect of 9/11, among other things. Only a federal prosecutor who got his job on the basis of politics rather than merit would have had any difficulty in meeting the legal standard for keeping Mohammed in custody.

So forget Mohammed, but consider Huzaifa Parhat, a Chinese Muslim who was one of the Guantanamo mistakes. The administration has conceded he was innocent and should not have been locked up. But after having brought him to Guantanamo, the administration can’t find anybody to take him, so he is sitting in a cell.

It is worth remembering that among the more than two dozen grievances ascribed to the British Crown in the Declaration of Independence were these: “For depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury” and “for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses.”

Our Founding Fathers considered such behavior to be grounds for revolution — a revolution they did not take lightly. Some of us have become so fearful, so self-absorbed, that we are willing to place people in cells for years — perhaps for their entire lives — on an undefinable suspicion that such people present a danger to our way of life. The danger, it should be obvious, is that were are selling out the way of life that the Founding Fathers envisioned for America.

The Bush administration is considering sending to Congress proposed legislation on how it should handle the 120 or so detainees it does not plan to try and whom it considers too dangerous to release.

Perhaps the White House thought a little fear might sway things in its favor. It’s worked before.

Which allows us to end, as we began, with a Franklin quote: “Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power.”