« Independents and some Conservatives turn on GOP | Main | Parallel Universes »

September 25, 2007

Civil Rights Under Attack From All Quarters

What has happened to this country? Nobody acts while security personnel taser a kid for persistently asking John Kerry a tough question. In fact, nobody seems to care that tasers are frequently being used on people they should not be used on, and the horror stories just keep coming in. Outrageous cases include the tasering of children, the disabled, and the elderly. Innocent political activists are being surveiled and intimidated into submission by government agents. We are turning into a place where human beings don’t matter.

And it seems we’re not content to let the federal government or even our local governments have a monopoly on the abuse of civil rights. More and more we’re hearing about people doing it to each other. The horrifying saga of the Jena 6, who are facing a maximum 100 years in prison (compared to the maximum 10 years being faced by two white guys who beat a black man with a hammer simply for being black), is just one example. We have people actually arguing that homosexuality is not a civil right because, they believe, homosexuals haven't suffered as much as black Americans. And student newspaper staff, who dared to use the very same language upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Cohen v. California as a “lyric[al]” expression protected by the First Amendment, are rewarded by their college with a 10% pay cut for speaking out against the abuse of civil rights on their campus.

It’s like the Patriot Act mentality has opened a Pandora’s Box of tolerance for - and participation in - abusive behavior. What has happened to this country?

Posted by Becky at September 25, 2007 09:50 AM