My local paper was too wimpy to publish this. It’s the second installment in my personal fight to be heard by my congressional representatives.
An Open Letter
A few weeks ago, I filled out a form on the ACLU website
expressing my opposition to a proposed constitutional amendment
banning gay marriages and sent it to both Kansas Senators and my
House Representative. I included an e-mail address if their
offices wished to reply. Todd Tiahrt and Sam Brownback, as
expected, didn’t send anything back. But to my surprise, I found
an e-mail from Pat Roberts in my inbox soon after.
What it said, however, both shocked and dismayed me. It was a
form e-mail that began this way: “Thank you for contacting me is
[sic] support of amending the Constitution to prevent same sex
marriages.” It then went on to provide more pro-amendment
propaganda.
Not only was it poorly edited, Roberts’ message completely
ignored my point of view! It was like sending a letter to Wal-
Mart complaining about the way it drives small-town businesses
under and getting back a sales brochure.
Disappointed, I hit “reply” and fired back an e-mail trying to
explain that, no, he’d gotten it all wrong, that I was against
the amendment, not for it. And I added a few things in there
about how he should probably get his staffers to edit their
official form letters better before they get sent out. I was
flabbergasted, however, when the message bounced off his server
and came back to me as “undeliverable.”
No wonder people feel distanced from their government.
But there’s something far more disturbing afoot here. Not only
was my point of view ignored by Roberts’ office, my ability to
express how upset I was by that was electronically denied. The
real message was clear: there’s only one perspective here, and
that belongs to Pat Roberts.
Sadly, this sort of behavior has become typical in American
politics. When President Bush declares Prisoners of War “enemy
combatants” he ignores the Geneva Conventions. When the
administration calls attacks on American troops in Iraq a “sign
of our success,” he ignores basic realities.
George Orwell had a word for all this: Newspeak. It was the
language the totalitarian government of his novel 1984 used “not
to extend but to diminish the range of thought.”
Representative democracy thrives when there is an open
marketplace of ideas, when even threatening notions can be freely
expressed, debated, mulled over. When ideas are denied by those
representatives, even ideas they disagree with, democracy dies.
–Lael Ewy
Todd Tiahrt
4th District, Kansas, Representative
2441 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Representative Tiahrt:
Having already informed Senator Roberts of the egregious error he
has committed in his electronic correspondence with me concerning
a form I filled out on the ACLU website regarding the
constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, I now turn to
correcting a similar error on your part.
I am in no way a supporter of the amendment. In fact, I vilify it
and all that it stands for, viewing it not only as a positive
denigration of basic human rights, but also as un-American, and
(this may come as a surprise to you) absolutely un-Christian.
The fact that your letter to me of 8 December indicates my
“support” for the amendment is not only erroneous, it is a gross
distortion of the simple facts. Did you or your staffers really
think that an e-mail originating on the ACLU’s server would
support such a travesty as the amendment you “proudly co-
sponsor”?
Perhaps you’re simply in the habit of ignoring all opinions from
those you purport to represent that run counter to your own. In
that case, you are a representative in name only.
Any records you may be keeping in regards to how many of your
constituents support this vile amendment should therefore be
corrected to read one fewer. I expect nothing less for my portion
of the tax dollars that go to support your salary than some type
of return correspondence indicating that you have corrected this
problem.
I also suggest that, in the future, you keep in mind just who it
is you work for. And if you view your boss as primarily a Jewish
carpenter, consider that He, at least, would have listened.
Warmly (to say the least!),
Lael Ewy
I’ve heard a lot lately, notably last week on NPR’s All Things Considered , about what we should do with the “unlawful combatants” (heretofore referred to as the more popular, but less in accord with White House language, “enemy combatant”) being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba–whether we should try them with military tribunals or just hold them there or whatever.
It is all balderdash. It’s that because all of those who speak on the subject in America assume that we have the right to keep those men with the justification we’re using. The commentators assume that “enemy combatant” actually means something other than persona non grata–or more accurately just persona non. By declaring them “enemy combatants” The Executive has put them in a sort of limbo. By fiat he has made them an impossible category under international law, thus non-people.
Laying aside, for now, the total breach of all that’s moral and sensible and constitutional and American about what Bush has done, he succeeds in contradicting himself. By declaring war on terrorism, Bush makes all those he captures in that war Prisoners of War, thus subject to all the rights accorded them under the Geneva Conventions, to which the U.S. is a signatory and of which, until this, the U.S. was a primary proponent. Even without a formal declaration of war, The Executive has acted and spoken in such a way as to indicate his intentions. He has, on numerous occasions, called his recent actions against global terrorism war. And lack of formal declarations of war in Korea or Vietnam did not stop the U.S. from treating its prisoners under the Conventions nor of crying foul when our own captured men were not.
The term “enemy combatant” is therefore verbal, intellectual, legal, and moral excrement which has been smeared all over the body politic and, by extension, the American People by this administration.
It is immoral because it denies humanity to captured enemy soldiers.
It is verbal sleight-of-hand, Orwellian Newspeak that shuts down honest and truthful consideration of other humans.
It places undue power in the hands of The Executive by allowing him to uncreate the status of an entire group of people by simple declaration. It is utterly unprecedented in American history and gives The Executive the de facto rights of a king or a lesser diety. And while Bush may think himself selected by Divine Right, that does not change the actual status of those “contained” at Guantanamo Bay–they remain Prisoners of War.
This action by George W. Bush sets an incredibly dangerous precedent not only in that it will allow terrorist groups or foreign governments to declare U.S. soldiers or civilians “enemy combatants” as well, but, more importantly, because it allows The Executive to name anyone he sees fit the same, thus stripping the so-declared of his rights and his humanity.
If allowed to stand, Bush’s actions may very well mark the beginning of the end of American democracy as we know it.
Continue Reading…
Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts contends it means suicide: when a heart-disease-ridden, hypertensive, morbidly obese man decides to take PCP and cocaine and confront police, he chooses death.
But isn’t this the same as saying that when a regular ol’ black man decides to drive in a white neighborhood after dark he chooses to get pulled over? It’s not the fact of Jones’ erratic behavior or self-destructive habits that is at issue. It is the fact that the policemen who dealt with him chose to use such excessive force. Would they have treated a white man in the same circumstances the same way?
On the other hand, individual responsibility does come into play. Our mythos requires of us a certain common sense. It’s the law of the West, after all: one does not go into winter without laying up a good stock of fatback and firewood. Likewise one does not request a showdown with the local tin star constabulary after a night of drinking at the saloon and expect to be the one left standing when the credits roll.
It is painful to watch the police cruiser video of Nathaniel Jones. But must he die so that our myth may live?