By Karen MacNutt,
Contributing Editor

"We have rejected the false choice between our security and our ideals . . ."

With these bold words, President Obama explained his decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. We must remain true to our ideals, the President said, as he took the morally correct stand of banning torture "without exception."

The United States was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment. Those principles held that society is best served when individual rights are elevated above the excuse of collective security.

The Bush administration lost its way. It dragged America into the pit of human rights violations because of fear and an abandonment of the truths of the Enlightenment. Many of America's so-called liberals, agreed that a little torture, excuse me, enhanced questioning, is all right if the goal is to protect public safety. The fact some people died while being "questioned" did not get much public attention. Human rights violations are never justified and seldom improve public safety.

The location of the prison at Guantanamo Bay is not significant. What happened there could have happened anywhere. It is wrong to deprive people of their liberty indefinitely without due process. The question is not, "Should we hold terrorists in prison?" The question is, "Should we hold people suspected of being terrorists in prison without giving them the benefit of a trial to determine if they really are terrorists?" Should such people be tortured to obtain "information"?

An enemy soldier who attacks our troops is no more a terrorist than one of our pilots who drops a bomb on suspected enemy positions. Captured enemy soldiers are prisoners of war (POW). They are entitled to humane treatment. They are only obliged to give their name, rank and serial number. It makes no difference if they have other information of military importance. International law says they can not be forced by humiliation, coercion or physical discomfort to disclose more. A POW can be kept in a prisoner of war camp until the war is over at which time he should be repatriated to his own country. The POW is not a criminal. We must treat those we capture as we would want others to treat our servicemen and women.

If a person taken on the battlefield is not a soldier, and has committed a crime against civil law or the laws of war, he or she can be tried for the crime. If a person dressed as a civilian attacks civilians or soldiers by stealth, then that person may not be a POW. That person is still entitled to humane treatment and a trial to determine if he did the act he is accused of. Coerced confessions are repugnant to human rights and unreliable. People who are found guilty of a crime after a fair trial, may be sentenced to an appropriate punishment up to and including the death penalty. Being in a war zone, however, is not, by itself, reason to arrest and hold someone. Some people are unfortunate enough to live in war zones.
Imprisoning people indefinitely without either POW status or a trial to determine if they are guilty of some offense, is morally wrong. Guantanamo Bay prison represents that wrong. Its closing hopefully marks the end of our government's holding people indefinitely, without status or trial. That is not to say that those who were held should be free to go. That is to say that all those who are being held need to be given appropriate status. If they are POWs, they need to be so treated. If they are suspected of crimes, they need to have a fair and impartial trial to determine the truth or falsity of the accusation. If they were picked up by the military because they happened to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time, they need to be sent home.

Throwing people in prison without status was a common civil rights violation used by the monarchies of Europe at the time of the American Revolution. When we formed our government, we guaranteed people the right not to be imprisoned without due process (a trial), the right to a speedy trial, the right to get out of jail on bail while waiting for a court to determined guilt or innocence, the presumption that one was innocent until proven guilty, the right of habeas corpus (the right to be brought before an impartial judge who would determine if the government had the right to deprive someone of his or her liberty), and the right not to be forced (tortured) into making statements. These great, basic civil rights predated the Constitution. Our Founding Fathers believed those rights were the natural, God- given rights of all mankind. Our Constitution is dedicated to protecting those rights. If our Bill of Rights were abolished, these God given rights would still exist, not just for American citizens, but for all people. We would still have the rights of life (self-defense), liberty (not to be held in prison without due process), and pursuit of happiness (to seek our good in our own way just so long as we respect the rights of others to do the same.
Whenever those trying to influence public policy appeal to our emotions, we must be very careful. We will be told that we must give up our ideals, our commitment to basic human rights, for public safety. We must reject trading personal freedom for the false promise of safety.

The Governor of Massachusetts and the Mayor of Boston have asked the state legislature for a law denying bail to anyone accused of a "gun crime." The right to bail is the right to be released from jail while awaiting trial. The accused posts a sum of money as a guarantee that he or she will show up for court when the trial date arrives. After all, the accused is presumed to be innocent until the government proves otherwise. Massachusetts law allows a court to hold an accused for 90 days if the judge feels the person is danger to the community. There are people in Massachusetts who have been held in jail without a trial for over a year based on that law. Being held without bail works a tremendous hardship on the accused. It almost guarantees the person will lose his or her job and be unable to pay his or her bills. That leads to evictions, foreclosures and destroyed credit. None of those things are changed by a later finding of "Not Guilty" on the criminal charge.

Every aspect of gun ownership in Massachusetts is regulated. "Gun crimes" include having an expired license; being a non-resident without a Massachusetts non-resident license; not properly storing a gun; having a loaded rifle in a car; discharging a gun within 500 feet of a dwelling and hunting on Sunday. The Governor would require all who violate such laws to be held without bail until their case comes to court. It would make no difference if the delay between the time of arrest and trial exceeded the maximum punishment for the crime. Some say that all people with guns are dangerous and should be held in jail no matter how long it takes for the case to come to trial.

Some people are very willing to accept the false choice between security and ideals. Others have no ideals but pander to public fears for political gain.

The truth is now being revealed as to the effectiveness of the "enhanced" questioning techniques (torture) approved by former President Bush. Those techniques were not as successful as first claimed. They were not the preferred methods of the FBI, the CIA or anyone else with extensive interrogation experience. They were the methods of independent contractors not answerable to the public. By accepting the use of torture, we abandoned our ideal of the respect of individual rights in the name of collective security. Those methods were not effective to protect public safety. Indeed, they harmed our reputation and gave strength to others who deny human rights.

Rejecting our ideals does not increase public safety. It is a false promise.

The statement of human rights in our Declaration of Independence was born of revolution. The Bill of Rights was intended to protect all citizens, whether their views were popular or unpopular. It was intended to restrict government in the belief that civil harmony is best achieved by respecting individual rights even when that respect frustrates some short term goal of government. We have come a long way since 1776. The great ideals of the Declaration of Independence were not achieved with the publication of the document. American Civil Rights is a work in progress.

We met and defeated slavery. We extended voting rights. We are still fighting various shades of prejudice. We backslid around 1900 when, in an effort to curb the growth of unions, we attempted to curb free speech. Speech was dangerous, some claimed. After all, Anarchists and agitators were inciting people to violence. The same occurred in the 1950s with the fear of Communism. The fears may have been valid but repression was not the answer.

We do best when we allow our society to be open. If you can sell your "underground" newspaper on every street corner without anyone taking notice, it is hard to be a revolutionary. When you place your ideas before the public and they are rejected, it is hard to believe that the "masses" will rise up to support you. Open expression of ideas mutes radical ideas. The "radicals" move towards the center of opinion to gain greater acceptance by the public.

During World War II, we disarmed, rounded up and placed in concentration camps thousands of Americans of Japanese ancestry. Appealing to prejudice and fear, the government violated civil rights on a massive scale in the name of public safety even though there were no facts to justify what was done.

We have worked to end the "Jim Crow" laws passed after the Civil War to repress black Americans. Some of the first cases to challenge these laws complained that blacks were denied the right to have firearms.

In many respects, the right to be armed is key to many of our other rights. It is especially important if the government is corrupt or turns a blind eye to the abuse of its citizens. That happened in parts of the Deep South during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Not only did police turn a blind eye to violence against blacks and civil rights workers, in some cases they participated in the violence. In the 1970s in New England, organized crime infiltrated the local police, the state police and even the FBI. Those who went to the police to testify against the mob, ended up in unmarked graves on the tidal flats of the Neponset River.

Some city mayors push to limit gun ownership by private citizens. Sometimes it an honest thought. More often it is done to make the electorate think that they are doing something about crime. Crime is a complex problem. It requires the adequate funding of public safety resources. The quality of education, the availability of jobs, the level of civil involvement, and the strength of local churches are all important factors in keeping cities safe.

To stand up to crime, people must feel secure in their homes. With the growth of street gangs, the fact that a criminal is arrested will not prevent his or her friends from trying to intimidate witnesses. Without witnesses you cannot get convictions. Without convictions, you cannot stop crime. People will not testify if they are afraid their families will be harmed. If the police cannot give a witness 24-hour protection (which they are usually unable to do) and the witness is not allowed to have a gun for self defense, it should come as no surprise that people will not testify.

Spokespeople for the Obama administration have been talking about how horrible the crime is in Mexico because of the drug cartels. The people of Mexico are not allowed to have guns. They are at the mercy of organized crime. Those in remote areas have no way of standing up to the gangs even if they wanted to. Perhaps if the Mexican people were allowed to be armed, it would be harder for the gangs to intimidate people.

The Obama administration, however, seems to have a different answer.

"We must," said one commentator, "pass a law against the illegal traffic in guns to Mexico." Think about that. They want to pass a law making something that is already illegal, illegal. It is illegal to export guns or ammunition to any country without an export license from the State Department. There is no right of privacy at a border crossing. There are barriers, people with guns, and search dogs. Illegal guns get through because there is so much money in the illegal drug trade that law enforcement has been corrupted. Passing another law will have no impact. It simply distracts the public's attention from the corruption.

In June of 2008, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment was an individual right linked to the fundamental right of self defense. The Court engaged in an exhaustive discussion of all the gun control arguments before coming to its conclusion. It noted that crime had gone up in Washington, D.C. after the District's gun ban went into effect.

Perhaps it is time we engaged in an experiment. Make Washington, DC, a "shall issue" gun license area. That is, make it an area where anyone who is not prohibited from having guns can have a license to carry a concealed gun. Then sit back for ten years and see what happens to crime in Washington. The results would be most interesting.

The goal of the anti-gun movement is to restrict the ownership of guns held by honest citizens in the false belief that somehow that will reduce crime. All of their "reasonable" laws are designed to restrict gun ownership or harass people into giving up their right to own a gun. Indeed, one of the judges supporting gun control said that given Washington, DC's "special circumstances," banning guns was a reasonable restriction. That thinly veiled racist comment gives great insight to the elitist underpinnings of the anti-gun movement.

Mr. Obama, you had it right when you said we must reject the false choice between our security and our ideals. The concept is a basic truth, those who give up freedom for security achieve neither. The concept applies to all of the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment.

Mr. Obama, stay true to your statement of philosophical principal. Reject the false choice of restricting the right of members of the public to have arms for self defense. All of the data points to the fact that gun control only creates the illusion of security.