11 January 2010 By By Jacob G. Hornberger
The alleged attempt by that passenger to explode a
bomb on that flight to Detroit confirms how much
conservatives hate America. Oh, I’m not saying that
conservatives don’t love their federal government. Of
course they do. Everyone knows that. But that’s the
problem. In the process of loving their government,
they have a deeply seated antipathy against our
country. Think about angry conservatives get when anyone
criticizes the federal government, especially in its
operations overseas. Their reaction is always
something along these lines: “I can’t understand why
these critics hate their country. If they don’t like
it here, why don’t they just leave it”? Since
conservatives conflate the government and the country,
they cannot fathom a mindset that not only separates
the two but actually places the country over and above
the government. Or consider conservative outrage over flag-burning,
which entails the fundamental right of people to do
whatever they want to their own property (it’s their
flag) and the fundamental right to protest. The reason
that conservatives get outraged over such conduct is
that they view the flag as emblematic of the federal
government. After all, have you ever seen a
conservative get angry or outraged over the burning of
the Constitution or the Bill of Rights? Of course not,
because conservatives think that burning things that
express a distrust of government to be no big deal.
Now, a clarification is in order here. Actually,
it’s not so much that conservatives love the entire
federal government, it’s actually that they love the
executive branch — that is, the ruler branch — the
branch that dictates, orders, controls, invades,
occupies, sanctions, embargoes, jails, tortures,
fines, etc. — the branch that has the president, the
military, the CIA, the DEA, the IRS, the bureaucrats,
and the other people who employ force against others.
It’s in the executive branch of the federal
government that conservatives place their faith and
their trust. Thus, not surprisingly, they deeply
resent not only criticism of the president, the
troops, the CIA, and the other bureaucracies of the
executive branch, but also criticism of restrictions
on the power of such people. It would be difficult to find a better example of
conservative disdain for America and her founding
documents — the Constitution and the Bill of Rights —
than the Detroit bomb incident. Under our system of justice, the man is presumed
innocent of the crime that he is being accused of.
What he is accused of is, in fact, a federal criminal
offense, which is why a federal grand jury has already
returned an indictment against him. The presumption of innocence operates all the way
until he is found guilty by a jury or judge in a
trial. And a trial is required before the man can be
punished. At that trial, he is entitled to an attorney to
cross-examine witnesses, present witnesses, and make
arguments on his behalf. The judge at the trial is required to suppress or
exclude illegally acquired evidence or incompetent
evidence, even if that results in the freedom of the
man. Moreover, if the man is acquitted, the judge must
release him, even if the prosecutors and everyone else
is convinced that he really did commit the offense.
Like it or not, that’s our system of justice.
That’s the system that our ancestors bequeathed to us
in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Unfortunately, conservatives hate it, in large part
because it serves as a restriction on the power of the
president and the bureaucrats in the executive branch
of government — the part of the government that they
love. In their minds, the president, the prosecutors,
the military, the CIA, and the bureaucracies should be
given unfettered authority to do whatever they think
is right for the country, and we should just place our
faith in them. For conservatives, distrust of the
president and his cohorts — the distrust implied in
the Constitution and the Bill of Rights — is akin to
heresy or even treason. Consider why conservatives established their prison
camp and military-tribunal system in Cuba rather than
the United States. It wasn’t because they felt that
terrorism wasn’t a federal criminal offense. That
terrorism is a federal criminal offense is an
undeniable fact. It is a federal criminal
offense. That’s why people are indicted by federal
grand juries for terrorism. It’s listed in the U.S.
Code as a federal crime. No one can deny that. So, conservatives established their prison camp and
new-fangled military judicial system in Cuba not
because they felt that terrorism was an act of war
rather than a crime, it’s because they didn’t want
federal officials to have to jack with the rights and
guarantees in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights
when going after people they were convinced were
guilty of the crime of terrorism. After all, don’t forget that the Pentagon isn’t
treating its inmates at Guantanamo as warriors. It is,
in fact, prosecuting them for the crime of terrorism.
That’s what the military tribunals are all about.
Their purpose is to provide a forum where accused
terrorists can be brought to trial, albeit in a
different manner than those indicted in the federal
courts. The difference is that it’s the military doing
the prosecuting before military tribunals rather than
U.S. Attorneys doing so in U.S. District Courts. Why Cuba? Because conservatives were sure that
their camp and judicial system at Guantanamo Bay would
be a Constitution-free zone, one in which the military
could run a judicial system that punished terrorists
without having to concern itself with what
conservatives consider are the technical inanities in
the Bill of Rights. What better proof of conservative hatred for the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights — and for America
— than that? The conservative dream at Guantanamo was omnipotent
government, one in which there would be no
restrictions whatsoever on the president, the
military, and the CIA, to punish people who were
accused of the federal crime of terrorism. It is a
dream that conservatives have longed for here in the
United States, especially in their decades-long war on
drugs, where they have succeeded in carving out
countless exceptions to the rights and guarantees in
the Bill of Rights. Look at how conservatives have responded to the
grand-jury indictment of the Detroit suspect. They
think it’s outrageous. After all, he’s obviously
guilty, right? Everyone knows that he had explosive
liquids on him, right? He tried to ignite the bomb,
right? He confessed, or did he, and who cares anyway?
Who needs a stinking trial? String him up and hang
him now. But there’s just one big problem: Like it or not,
that’s not our system of justice. That’s the system of
justice in Burma, Cuba, or China. Here, no matter how
convinced people are of the guilt of an accused, the
government must nonetheless still go through the
process of formally charging the person, prosecuting
him, and securing a conviction with competent evidence
that convinces a jury or judge beyond a reasonable
doubt that the person truly has committed the offense.
And that includes, by the way, bringing a chemist to
trial to testify under oath that the liquid on the man
was, in fact, an explosive material rather than water.
But conservatives don’t like it. They, in fact,
hate it. “Turn him over to the military! Torture him
into talking! Put him before a military tribunal and
then execute him!” Just like they used to do in the
Soviet Union. Have you ever noticed how much conservatives resent
libertarians? It’s partly because of the following
fundamental differences that separate us: Conservatives love the government and place their
faith in it, causing them to hate restrictions on the
government, such as those in the Bill of Rights, and
to condemn people who criticize the government. Libertarians, on other hand, love liberty and
distrust the government, which causes them to support
and defend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and
oftentimes induces them to defend the country against
the government. Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The
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