8oo years!!! Can you imagine…after 800 years a government can casually set aside an historic (truly historic!) legal safeguard that scores of people fought for and safeguarded through thick and thin, through civil war and revolution. And where is the outrage from the erstwhile trumpeters of freedom and liberty?
Hark to the words of a Boston merchant in 1776. His name was Theophilus Lillie, and he owned a store on Middle Street, specializing in dry goods and groceries. This is what he said after the Boston Massacre, when the mob (terrorists?) murdered Loyalist remnants of the Boston garrison:
“Upon the whole, I cannot help saying – – although I have never entered into the mysteries of government, having applied myself to my shop and my business – – that it always seemed strange to me that people who contend so much for civil and religious liberty should be so ready to deprive others of their natural liberty……..
If one set of private subjects may at any time take upon themselves to punish another set of private subjects just when they please, it’s such a sort of government as I never heard of before; and according to my poor notion of government, this is one of the principal things which government is designed to prevent.”
Sympathizers with Epicurean ideals cannot just sit back, like the Germans under the Nazis, and say, “If the Government arrests them then they must have done something wrong.” That is sloppy and irresponsible thinking.
Isn’t it sad? In a country that claims to be under the rule of law, the government can attack Habeas Corpus, a keystone of that law, and there is barely a whimper, particularly from conservatives, who pretend to be upholders of the Constitution. The very fact that this posting attracted not a single comment (except from the person who originally posted it!) shows how tuned out and irresponsible the public has become. Well, if you don’t actively support democracy and the rule of law you lose it, and nobody else in the world is going to come in with planes and ships to protect it. Nobody else cares.