I also can get quite demoralized by what I see in our political discourse, and that I lay at the feet of both parties. It does not matter if it is John Ashcroft implying I am a traitor because I criticize the president in a time of international conflict or if it some on the left who far too readily violate the principle espoused by Godwin and begin to affix appellations of Nazi and Hitler to the Republicans.
I read the news reports today and see Democrats unwilling to speak out forcefully against a proposal that to me is clearly unconstitutional. I see evidence that this administration is prepared to argue - against the weight of all jurisprudence since Marbury v Madison - that it is the president who gets the final interpretation of the Constitution and not the Court. I cannot avoid the abandonment of principles such as habeas corpus and trial by jury that go back half a millenium or more before the writing of the Constitution and which are an essential part of the governmental framework from which the Constitution is derived. I reread the Declaration and JeffersonGÇÖs words about
a decent respect to the opinions of mankindand wonder when we abandoned such a key idea from our assertion of our right to be independent, when those words became, in the ironic expression of Ron Ziegler during another constitutional crisis (for it is in such we are now engage), GÇ£inoperableGÇ¥?
As a nation we have prosecuted and executed others for things we are now willing to official and ex post facto grant immunity to ourselves. How is that a decent respect for the opinions of mankind, and how does that maintain the idea that we are a government of laws and not of men? Does merely passing a law justify something that the Constitution and ratified treaties which are therefore also part of the Supreme Law of the Land prohibit somehow overcome the weight of more than 200 years since Marbury that if a statute can change the Constitution then the very idea of a constitution becomes meaningless? Marshall argued that the intent of a Constitution was to limit to the power of the government. We now seem ready to abandon that idea.
I have, as regular readers know, continued to wrestle with whether I can in honesty continue to teach government and the Constitution. Perhaps this week I found my answer. I told my AP students that the reason I continue to teach is them. My generation, and the generation of their parents (for at 60 I am significantly older than most of their parents, who are usually in their 40GÇÖs) have not left them a happy situation, and it will be up to them to save the idea of a liberal democracy, a democratic republic, lest the nation that created the model finally abandon it.
I also urged them to recognize that there are no permanent coalitions in an society and political ethos as diverse as ours, which is why they must teach us again how one can disagree without being disagreeable - that the Machiavellian principle of the end justifying the means - when used to justify personally destroying one who is at this moment your opponent - ultimately results in the ability to have the support of that person when you need it on some other issue.
I find myself moving ever closer to the point of civil disobedience, even at the loss of my vocation of teaching in public schools, of my liberty, of my life. I cannot in conscience remain quiet when I see our nationGÇÖs heritage being destroyed. I will not be a frog in a pot of what was cool water remaining in that liquid as the temperature is raised until I am boiled to death.
It will not be in my name and on my behalf that torture is done, that abandoning of the Constitution is justified. I am supposed to teach the Constitution, not the distorted misinterpretations advocated by David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, Dick Cheney, and George Walker Bush. I will continue to do so, to challenge my students to read the document, read the history, see the price we paid historically when we moved away from such principles, and urge them to be true patriots - to stand up for what the Constitution represents.
When I read the Preamble, I do not see as a principal reason for ordaining and establishing the Constitution the aggrandizement of one political party or another, of one individual or another, of one economic or social class or another. The last of the reasons is to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. We do not maintain that ideal by abandoning the very underpinnings of liberty, by removing oversight by Courts and Congress intended to act as a check on unreasonable or even tyrannical executives, but abandoning the principle of habeas corpus which assures some reasonableness in the decision to arrest and detain someone. The Constitution would not have been ratified without the commitment to the limits on the power of the Federal government found in the Bills of Rights. The Sixth Amendment clearly gives each accused the right to confront the witnesses against him, and since no evidence can in a criminal trial be introduced except through the testimony of a witness, that means there can be no secret evidence used, no exceptions of evidence that cannot be challenged as to its provenance, how it was obtained, and so on.
The executive branch is claiming a right to interpret - free from oversight or checks and balances - the Constitution in a fashion that unleashes it to do whatever it wants. That very notion is alien to the Constitution, and every Congressman and Senator should recognize that in acquiescing to such a position they not only abandon the Constitution to which they have committed their support by oath or affirmation, they reduce themselves, their offices, their legislative bodies to the position of rubber stamps, of becoming Potemkin Village legislative bodies, devoid of substance, meaning, power, or authority. Any legislator unwilling to challenge such an approach has violated his or her oath of office, and should be challenged and rejected for that reason alone.
Our nation is at a crisis. That is how I justify continuing to teach, so long as I can, what our nation is supposed to be. It is why I am challenging my students. I tell them that they can disagree with me. I also point out that they are being allowed a larger amount of intellectual freedom than some politicians are willing to grant their political opponents. I tell them that what matters is not the grade that they get from me, or how well they do on the AP exam, but whether they grasp how important the subject with which we wrestle is to them, to their future, to the future of this nation. If they will confront that seriously, they will do fine both as to grades and as to AP scores. If they do not, then grades and scores will ultimately avail them not.
Perhaps I will eventually be fired. That may be, but I will not be silenced. I do not tell my students WHAT to think, but I insist that they DO think, and not to accept from any authority - including me or their textbook - merely because it is an authority. Ask why, explore the possible answers, discuss, listen to one another.
Perhaps Keith Olbermann and I will be roommates at Guantanamo? Are you prepared to join us there?
I have done my part. I will continue to challenge, to speak out. I am beyond caring what the cost may be.
You will decide what matters to you.
When I came back, I learned about the American institutions and saw it work under the Clinton administration. I liked what I saw. Every side got a say on policy, and there were many interesting compromises. The one I liked the most was the balanced budget, with both sides having to grant something dear to them for a common goal that helped us all.
I especially liked it that Congress was a balance to the executive. This is because in Mexico, where one party controled all branches, there was no such balance, and the president was a dictator, in practical terms.
I also liked seeing how the courts could stop the legislative excesses that Congress passed.
The system work. To me, the framers of the Constitution had created an increadible machine that let everyone participate and prevented sudden political swings from damaging the country. And it guaranteed political liberties and brought prosperity to the country.
And it also had the quality that the system was self-correcting, allowing for the correction of wrongs. It may take a long time, but things got addressed, mostly in paceful ways. Compare that with Mexico's decades of civil war after civil war, and having 3 constitutions in the 19th century. The current Mexican constitution, created in 1917, is still not 100 years old.
And I loved the U.S. political system because of that.
Everything changed when Bush got into office. Congress gave up on his role of being a check on the executive. And recently, Bush was successful in stacking the court with conservative ideologues.
The U.S. starting to politically look like Mexico, except for the few blips of dissent from McCain and Warner and a few others, we live in a one-party country. Democrats have a similar role as the minority parties had in Mexico during the PRI-years.
And the current situation has damaged our youth. In history forums, I have debated young, college-age Americans on torture, the role of the president, and on what is allowable dissent. Many of these young people find the current situation as normal. And those well publicized surveys on how many young Americans believe in curtailing free speech seems to confirm that my personal observations are a generalized.
I thank you for staying on the job and teaching these young people the true meaning and spirit of the Constitution. Now more than ever we need people to do it.
Given the politics of the political world and the politics of the education world, mixed with today's bombastic, A.D.D. laden, instant gratification, politically correct information delivery methodologies, it is easy to envision a world where the next generation can not think for itself. Every teacher such as yourself who fights to introduce students to the thought process and encourages them to use it, should be commended. Keep up the great work Ken.
Out of curiousity, how has it been going in the classroom? Are the students accepting these *crazy* notions of thought and employing them?
"Demcracy dies when people turn on their TV sets."
Since many (but not all) of our leaders are not leading at this moment, we need leadership from the "ground up." Far be it from me to equate you (Ken) with being at grass roots level, for you have a clearer grasp of our system and its Constitution and laws, and are more of a leader than many of our formal leaders who write (and administer) the law now.
Unfortunately, it's a one-person-at-a-time effort just to prompt enough people to question. It's taken five years since 9-11 and 3 years since the Iraq war broke out for enough to question and disbelieve what the White House has spun. Time's a'wasting. And there's a whole generation needing to read the documents, not historical revisionism. A look at http://mediamatters.... will show the latest on hour disinformation si being spun to our citiznes. It's a government teacher's job to raise skeptical, questioning voters, not clones. This is real life, not a football game. Unfortunately, too many adults treat what's before us as as simplisticly as "rooting for the home team," and nothing more. But citizenship is not a spectator sport. And it's not jingoism either. Meanwhile, our real govermental history could be lost, except for teachers such as you. Bravo!
Personally speaking, I WAS a real businessman’s defined Republican in the seventies (except for Nixon where I did worse, I didn’t vote) with a Law Enforcement Public Safety flavor to that as well. When in the middle 80’s the political world evolved under Reagan, I found most of my positions and interests staying put, but the Republican party started to shift further right…. That made me an independent and I must admit I voted for H. Ross Perot the first time if only for a protest vote about what I felt was happening. In the early to mid-90’s when the American political world shifted again drastically to the right and they roasted Clinton for what would have been acceptable in any other democracy in the world, I found myself become a moderate Democrat. What helped this along was big dose of business air-travel first domestically and then everywhere internationally teaching technologies and speaking. When you see things through the eyes of Koreans, Chinese, Africans, and the diversity of cultures from all over Europe. Or spend time in the pubs in Ireland or the bars in Prague and call home a townhouse in London for a few years, it changes you….. and almost everybody of the American/Canadian Ex-Pat communities we lived with over there.
I think it should be a requirement for graduation from high school here in the USA to have to spend a non-vacation someplace else in the world for even a month. It teaches you what it means to be an American citizen and all the things we take for granted or just ignore. It also has taught me, my family and most of my friends the value of our vote and the need to be active politically. In our case, Moderate but very active Democrats…..
Keep up the good work!
By the way Webb FINALLY made it to Lynchburg ( late). He didn't show up to lunch but did show up downtown where he was well received! He had a shave at the 9th St. Parlor which is becoming a favorite stop for politicians ( it's an amazing 'man spa' place)!
Lynchburg is really getting it done and as one of our LDC members. Alison Chadbourne, stated yesterday even Tom Oliphant has noticed that Lynchburg is turning blue ( in an interview w/ Al Franken on his radio show).
Keep teaching, Ken! Public schools need you!
Like the guy who'd lived in Mexico (Hugo Estrada? If I've got the name wrong, please forgive me), I too "have looked at clouds from both sides now" -- I grew up in communist Poland.
To see this country's parliament make a big deal of defending a symbol (flag-burning ammendments) while using the *substance* -- the very skeleton around which this country has grown, its Constitution -- like a piece of toilet paper is really disgusting as well as scary.
Shoot... Even commie Poland and USSR used to, at least, pay lip service to the basics of human rights, whatever they did on the sly. This administration wants its thuggishness *legalized*. And the sad thing is that the "legislators" posture a bit for a photo-op and a sound-bite then meekly fall in line... It's not even a rubberstamp congress; it's a marionette one.
Plus, John Kerry, did not mince any words about torture on Hardball two weeks ago:
MATTHEWS: What do you think is appropriate torture?
KERRY: There is no appropriate torture, period.
MATTHEWS: What is appropriate ...
(CROSSTALK)
KERRY: And we‘ve been arguing that for a long time. They have been arguing to be allowed to torture. This is the first administration in American history the vice president of the United States says we should be allowed to torture. They argued for torture, for a loophole that allowed them to do it. Now, the president stands up and says the United States doesn‘t torture.
Well, I think that they have ignored the fact that the Geneva Conventions were not in place because we are nice. They weren‘t put in place to be soft. They were put in place to support and defend the interests of our troops in the battlefield, so that if young Americans are captured, we know that we‘ve done the best to be able to have them treated properly.