It is absolutely stunning that Americans have acquiesced so readily and even enthusiastically to the abridgement of constitutional rights. It has become accepted that this is the usual response of this nation in the face of crises. Of course nothing could be further from the truth.

This country endured a stubburnly protacted cold war against a peer superpower without widespread abridgment of rights. It endured a depression that fundamentally disrupted society in ways even more profound perhaps than the world wars, and constitutional rights were not sacrificed. It endured social upheaval, massive civil resistance to a unpopular war, and chaos in our inner cities in the sixties, and rights were preserved.

But we are told that the current crisis is different, that it is greater and more threatening. We're asked to believe that the threat rivals those faced during the only two periods in our history when rights were substantially abridged: the civil war and WWII.

In my experience it is futile to argue with right wing about the relative gravity of this threat; we're all familiar with their hysteria and lack of perspective on the matter. But there are certain things they cannot deny, things that argue persuasively that the nation's response has been, in virtually all areas other than rights, inconsistent with confronting a crisis. We have repeatedly cut taxes. We have decided it is unnecessary to significantly increase the size our military, and have declined to institute a draft. And domestic security measures of any significance have been almost non-existent but for measures that impinge on our privacy.

Quite simply, bush and cheney have it backwards. They've taken an approach completely different than Lincoln's and Roosevelt's. Lincoln and Roosevelt, and the Congresses and courts of their times, nationalized substantial parts of economy before thinking to abridge our rights. They conscripted our children, so great were these crises, willing to sacrifice their lives for the cause. They raised the tax burden radically. Only then did they ask us to surrender our rights.

The country was rended in two for nearly 18 months before Lincoln issued a general suspension of habeas corpus. It was nearly five months after Pearl Harbor before Roosevelt ordered the internment of Japanese Americans, a tragic mistake but one the consequences of which were felt only by a small part of our population, the vast majority of which was never required to suffer even the most modest impairment of their first or fourth amendment rights.

It was axiomatic in those crises that abridgement of rights came last. It was understood that the government would first seize control of vast parts of the economy, raise taxes massively, and even conscript our children to fight these wars. It was understood that these measures were necessary to defend our constitutional rights. It was understood that our constitutional rights were not resources available to be diverted for our defense, but the very assets we were defending. And so we preserved them even as lives were sacrificed, gas rations issued and victory gardens planted.

But with these punks it's always "rights first." No need to raise taxes; keep shopping. No need for a draft; we'll just keep rotating the same overburdened troops. All they want are our rights, to privacy, to due process, to petition the courts. Because rights aren't as important as dollars, or as lives, are they? These right wing frauds will dismiss our concerns over our rights and way of life even as they insist that these rights and way of life are so important that Americans must die in Iraq to defend them,, and they'll smugly assert this contradiction without any seeming awareness or sense of irony.

They have it completely backwards. They've had it completely backwards all along. In a sense every American who has ever died for his country died for these rights that are now so casually traduced.

Some of our misguided right wing citizens are fond of asserting that the Constitution is not a “suicide pact.” I couldn’t agree more. Goddamn right. It’s a “fight to the death” pact. It’s a pact that says we’ll cease to exist as a nation and as a people before we’ll surrender these rights. It’s something bush and his pimps can never acknowledge. It’s something they’ll never understand.

I am appalled at your support for people who commit felonies. I find your “soft on crime” approach shameful. If you do not support the rule of law then you are violating your oath of office. The telecom industry colluded with the admitted breaking of the law by the Bush administration when it violated the privacy rights of the American public. The fact that you would sponsor a blanket amnesty for law breakers is, in itself, deplorable and a violation of the public trust.

"some of our country's richest, largest, most powerful and most well-connected corporations were caught breaking laws that have been in place for decades, such as Section 222 of the Communications Act of 1934, which provides that "[e]very telecommunications carrier has a duty to protect the confidentiality of proprietary information of . . . customers." 18 U.S.C. 2511 makes warrantless eavesdropping a felony; 18 U.S.C. 2702 requires that any "entity providing an electronic communication service to the public shall not knowingly divulge to any person or entity the contents of a communication" without a court order; and 18 U.S.C. 2520 provides for civil damages for any violations." Glen Greenwald October 14th, 2007

If I were to commit a felony, I would hope that someone would come along and decide - without the issue having ever been tried in a court of law - that I was to be forgiven my trespasses. I hope that your personal integrity would prevent this miscarriage of justice. I cannot remember a time in our history when a sitting President has lied so freely and then admitted breaking the law of the land - only to be let off the hook, not only by his own party, but also by the alleged opposition. When I voted for you, I was under the impression that you were not only a member of the Democratic Party, but also someone who took the separation of powers and the Articles of the Constitution seriously.

Well - this is what I wrote - and sent to the San Jose Mercury, the Sacramento Bee, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the LA Times -

Don't think any of those made it into print, though.