3053 Where Have All the Civil Liberties Gone?

Speakers: Michael Linz and Robert Keithan

Sponsor: UUA Staff

Prepared for UUA.org by: Bill Lewis, Reporter; Jone Johnson Lewis, Editor

"What is unique about the Bill of Rights?"

It protects us from our own government.

"What is unique about the American Civil Liberties Union?"

The ACLU doesn't care whose ox is being gored.

After 9/11, we did things in this country we should be ashamed of. We rounded up a lot of folks based on their nation of origin or their religion. We required them to present themselves for "registration" and then summarily deported many of them. We locked others away without access to attorneys, friends or family. After we invaded Afghanistan, we imprisoned "enemy combatants" outside our borders without formal charges and with no time set for the end of their imprisonment.

The remedies for many of these abuses are contained in the Bill of Rights. But who is to enforce the Bill of Rights? Not the Executive Branch of the Federal government – that's who the Bill's provisions are designed to protect us against. Instead, the people must go to a Federal court to ask them to stop the government. That's why the government deliberately chose to house its prisoners at Guantanamo Bay – to avoid the reach of the courts.

When cases brought by the ACLU, with others, reached the United States Supreme Court, the Court said, 'No, these prisoners are due a hearing." To that, the government said "OK," and then ignored the Court's decision.

The most egregious example of the government's excesses is the case in which they picked up an American citizen off of the streets and held him without any hearing or any other recognition of his rights. How? By declaring that citizen to be an "enemy combatant." How long might they hold him? "Until the war is over." What war? "The War on Terror, of course." And how will we know when that war is over? What nation will surrender? When and where can we expect a treaty to be signed? "Well,..."

Michael Linz, an attorney who volunteers for the Texas ACLU, and Rob Keithan, director of the UUA's Washington Office for Advocacy, reviewed these abuses and others committed by our government in recent years. To effectively combat such abuses, they suggest two parallel courses of action. In addition to organizing advocacy groups in their own congregations and communities, concerned citizens can join the ACLU, both locally and nationally, and they can put themselves in touch with the Unitarian Universalist Association's Washington Office for Advocacy.

Concerned and interested persons can contact the American Civil Liberties Union through their site at www.aclu.org. The Washington Office for Advocacy can be contacted through www.uua.org/uuawo/.

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