From Sublime to Foolish

In a scene from the Tom Hanks movie The Green Mile, miracle-worker John Coffey describes how a killer made a little girl be quiet and not sound an alarm when he took her sister: "He killed them with their love. With their love for each other. That's how it is, every day, all over the world." (Quick wrap-up of the movie: the killer murders both of the girls, but receives justice later.)

Love is an emotion that is basic to humanity. It takes a special kind of psychopath to turn something like that into a weapon to be used against innocents.

Likewise, freedom and justice are principles basic to humanity and civilization. Freedom and justice are virtues universal enough to be written into the U.S. Constitution, and form the backbone of our country.

Now those same virtues are being used against us. Recently, a misquided soul has written a series of letters to a smalltown newspaper, promulgating the fact that he hates George W. Bush, Republicans, Conservatives, everything they do, and all they represent.

His latest tirade deals with habeas corpus, and a recent move by the Senate to limit the ability of Guantanamo Bay detainees to access U.S. courts. The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled against a GB detainee's access.

There are too many details to go into about this, but one thing the abovementioned myope, and others who feel as he does, chooses to ignore is that these people were captured trying to kill Americans at war.

The tactic they want to use -- and which is oh-so-clear to me -- is to use our own systems against us. The GB detainees want to choke the court with cases, subpoena-ing the President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense et al, in order to disrupt the government. Meanwhile, they'll be able to get headlines every day as the press rushes to report every tidbit of scandal they can gather or make up. As we've seen in the Duke lacrosse "rape" case, the press doesn't need facts in order to run a story.

(Sidequote on the press: "The press supplies an endless stimulus to popular imagination; the press lives upon heat and coarse drama and incessant restlessness." The Conservative Mind, written by Russell Kirk in 1953! Some things never change.)

Likewise, the imams want to 1) Tie up the courts with their lawsuit; 2) Use the specter of a charge of racism to dull the senses of the citizenry's watchful eyes; 3) Push the envelope as much as possible, testing our security so much that abnormal activity is considered normal.

As wonderful as our society is, as well as our system of government (while recognizing its flaws), the US Constitution, as someone has said, is not a suicide pact. We must find a way to fight attempts to corrupt our system. Otherwise we're simply acting like Wells' Eloi while the Morlocks devour us and our way of life.