CIVLIBpacket.editorial

> > > "Aware of the tendency of power to degenerate into abuse, the worthies of our country have secured its independence by the establishment of a Constitution and form of government for our nation, calculated to prevent as well as to correct abuse."
> > > Thomas Jefferson

> > In Support of the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights

> > by Valerie Gremillion, The Global Dialog Project

> > What historically sets apart the United States of America as a nation is its establishment of a Constitution and the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. These documents not only granted, but protected, the civil rights and liberties of the American people. They established freedom of speech, religion, assembly; judicial process, including rights to a lawyer, a trial, fair punishment if convicted, knowledge of the evidence against you so it may be contested; and rights to privacy of person and possession.

> > These ‘civil liberties’ were the same freedoms that had been trampled on by the British before the United States broke away in the American Revolution. These civil liberties were set out clearly and separately in the Bill of Rights by the Founding Fathers to specifically protect them from ever being trampled on again. Because the purpose of the Founding Fathers was to insure the liberty of the people no matter what the circumstance, the liberties in the Bill of Rights were named specifically to guard against their infringement or violation by any later government, or for any purpose. Too easily are good intentions twisted to bad consequence, they reasoned – some things belong to the people, and should NEVER be taken away.

> > The Bill of Rights thus laid out the rights of the people – and in so doing they established a foundation for democratic government that has stood more than 200 years, and served as a model for countless later democracies around the world.

> > Yet according to legal experts, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are under unprecedented attack. Rights to due process, to freedom of speech, to privacy of person and possessions, and to many other fundamental liberties we take for granted, are being infringed, violated, or stripped away by the War on Terror.

> > Sadly, the Bush administration has pitted our guaranteed freedoms against ‘security’. Yet it has not in any way demonstrated that violating our freedoms makes us more safe, and it is clear that none of these violations of our civil liberties would have prevented the horrible tragedy of the World Trade Center airline bombings on 9-11-01.

> > The terrorists of 9-11 have thus done more than topple the twin towers of the World Trade Center: through their actions and the response of our own U.S. government, they have begun to topple our foundation, the Constitution of the United States. We cannot allow this to happen, and still call ourselves patriotic Americans. We cannot allow this to happen, and still be free.

> > Our federal officials, sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America and the Bill of Rights, are not doing so. Instead, they are violating our guaranteed freedoms through the so-called USA PATRIOT Act, through Executive Orders by the President, and through changes in regulation of the FBI and other domestic law enforcement. They have created secret military tribunals, implemented widespread wiretapping without customary judicial oversight, legislated secret entry to our homes and businesses, and granted access to private records without probable cause. Further, through accusing all of those that disagree with these policies of being ‘unpatriotic’, (as well as making it a felony to report some of these invasions of our privacy), they have created a climate which threatens the rights of assembly, of free speech, of the press, and of religion.

> > They do all of this without evidence that these rampant violations of our liberty will make us safer – and these violations will certainly not safeguard our freedoms.

> > It is NOT unpatriotic to disagree with those who would remove our rights and freedoms. It is, instead, patriotic to protect the foundations of our nation – the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the constitutional rule of law. These lay down the democratic principles of the United States of America, and it is not only patriotic, not only our right, but our duty, to protect these founding principles and foundations of our democratic system.

> > The United States of America stands for freedom, liberty, truth and justice for all. If we destroy our own precious freedoms – if we destroy the truth through unnecessary secrecy, if we support injustice rather than justice through loss of due process, if we destroy and decrease liberty rather than strengthen it; and if we allow the current administration to jettison our guarantee to rights and liberty, the Bill of Rights – then we will have lost the very freedom we claim to make ‘secure’.

> > It is because our federal officials are not upholding their oath to protect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that we, local citizens from towns and cities around the country, must remind them of their duties, must join as citizens in support and affirmation of the Bill of Rights and the foundations of liberty in the United States of America.

> > You can email Valerie at democracy@global-dialog.org