NYTimes.com Op-Ed Article: Their George and Ours

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Ted Dolotta" <Ted () Dolotta ORG>
Date: July 5, 2004 2:26:18 PM EDT
To: "IP List" <dfarber () cs cmu edu>
Subject: FW: NYTimes.com Op-Ed Article: Their George and Ours
Reply-To: <Ted () Dolotta ORG>

After all the hot dogs and fireworks, this makes for good read
(if you missed it).

ted
===============================================================
Their George and Ours

July 4, 2004
By BARBARA EHRENREICH

When they first heard the Declaration of Independence in
July of 1776, New Yorkers were so electrified that they
toppled a statue of King George III and had it melted down
to make 42,000 bullets for the war. Two hundred
twenty-eight years later, you can still get a rush from
those opening paragraphs. "We hold these truths to be
self-evident." The audacity!

Read a little further to those parts of the declaration we
seldom venture into after ninth-grade civics class, and you
may feel something other than admiration: an icy chill of
recognition. The bulk of the declaration is devoted to a
list of charges against George III, several of which bear
an eerie relevance to our own time.

George III is accused, for example, of "depriving us in
many cases of the benefits of Trial by Jury." Our own
George II has imprisoned two U.S. citizens - Jose Padilla
and Yaser Esam Hamdi - since 2002, without benefit of
trials, legal counsel or any opportunity to challenge the
evidence against them. Even die-hard Tories Scalia and
Rehnquist recently judged such executive hauteur
intolerable.

It would be silly, of course, to overstate the parallels
between 1776 and 2004. The signers of the declaration were
colonial subjects of a man they had come to see as a
foreign king. One of their major grievances had to do with
the tax burden imposed on them to support the king's wars.
In contrast, our taxes have been reduced - especially for
those who need the money least - and the huge costs of war
sloughed off to our children and grandchildren. Nor would
it be tactful to press the analogy between our George II
and their George III, of whom the British historian John
Richard Green wrote: "He had a smaller mind than any
English king before him save James II."

But the parallels are there, and undeniable. "He has
affected to render the Military independent of and superior
to the Civil power," the declaration said of George III,
and today the military is indulgently allowed to
investigate its own crimes in Iraq. George III "obstructed
the Administration of Justice." Our George II has sought to
evade judicial review by hiding detainees away in
Guantanamo, and has steadfastly resisted the use of the
Alien Tort Claims Act, which allows non-U.S. citizens to
bring charges of human rights violations to U.S. courts.

The signers further indicted their erstwhile monarch for
"taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable
Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our
Governments." The administration has been trying its best
to establish a modern equivalent to the divine right of
kings, with legal memorandums asserting that George II's
"inherent" powers allow him to ignore federal laws
prohibiting torture and war crimes.

Then there is the declaration's boldest and most sweeping
indictment of all, condemning George III for "transporting
large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works
of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with
circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in
the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a
civilized nation." Translate "mercenaries" into contract
workers and proxy armies (remember the bloodthirsty,
misogynist Northern Alliance?), and translate that last
long phrase into Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

But it is the final sentence of the declaration that
deserves the closest study: "And for the support of this
Declaration . . . we mutually pledge to each other our
Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." Today, those who
believe that the war on terror requires the sacrifice of
our liberties like to argue that "the Constitution is not a
suicide pact." In a sense, however, the Declaration of
Independence was precisely that.

By signing Jefferson's text, the signers of the declaration
were putting their lives on the line. England was then the
world's greatest military power, against which a bunch of
provincial farmers had little chance of prevailing.
Benjamin Franklin wasn't kidding around with his quip about
hanging together or hanging separately. If the rebel
American militias were beaten on the battlefield, their
ringleaders could expect to be hanged as traitors.

They signed anyway, thereby stating to the world that there
is something worth more than life, and that is liberty.
Thanks to their courage, we do not have to risk death to
preserve the liberties they bequeathed us. All we have to
do is vote.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/04/opinion/04EHRE.html? 
ex=1090051535&ei=1&en=7bbc65009b6f8c13

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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