Their George and Ours

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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/04/opinion/04EHRE.html?th

 

July 4, 2004

OP-ED COLUMNIST

 

Their George and Ours

By BARBARA EHRENREICH

 

When they first heard the Declaration of Independence

in July of 1776, New Yorkers were so electrified that

they toppled a statue of King George III and had it

melted down to make 42,000 bullets for the war. Two

hundred twenty-eight years later, you can still get a

rush from those opening paragraphs. " We hold these

truths to be self-evident. " The audacity!

 

Read a little further to those parts of the

declaration we seldom venture into after ninth-grade

civics class, and you may feel something other than

admiration: an icy chill of recognition. The bulk of

the declaration is devoted to a list of charges

against George III, several of which bear an eerie

relevance to our own time.

 

George III is accused, for example, of " depriving us

in many cases of the benefits of Trial by Jury. " Our

own George II has imprisoned two U.S. citizens — Jose

Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi — since 2002, without

benefit of trials, legal counsel or any opportunity to

challenge the evidence against them. Even die-hard

Tories Scalia and Rehnquist recently judged such

executive hauteur intolerable.

 

It would be silly, of course, to overstate the

parallels between 1776 and 2004. The signers of the

declaration were colonial subjects of a man they had

come to see as a foreign king. One of their major

grievances had to do with the tax burden imposed on

them to support the king's wars. In contrast, our

taxes have been reduced — especially for those who

need the money least — and the huge costs of war

sloughed off to our children and grandchildren. Nor

would it be tactful to press the analogy between our

George II and their George III, of whom the British

historian John Richard Green wrote: " He had a smaller

mind than any English king before him save James II. "

 

But the parallels are there, and undeniable. " He has

affected to render the Military independent of and

superior to the Civil power, " the declaration said of

George III, and today the military is indulgently

allowed to investigate its own crimes in Iraq. George

III " obstructed the Administration of Justice. " Our

George II has sought to evade judicial review by

hiding detainees away in Guantánamo, and has

steadfastly resisted the use of the Alien Tort Claims

Act, which allows non-U.S. citizens to bring charges

of human rights violations to U.S. courts.

 

The signers further indicted their erstwhile monarch

for " taking away our Charters, abolishing our most

valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of

our Governments. " The administration has been trying

its best to establish a modern equivalent to the

divine right of kings, with legal memorandums

asserting that George II's " inherent " powers allow him

to ignore federal laws prohibiting torture and war

crimes.

 

Then there is the declaration's boldest and most

sweeping indictment of all, condemning George III for

" transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to

compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny,

already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and

perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous

ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized

nation. " Translate " mercenaries " into contract workers

and proxy armies (remember the bloodthirsty,

misogynist Northern Alliance?), and translate that

last long phrase into Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib.

 

But it is the final sentence of the declaration that

deserves the closest study: " And for the support of

this Declaration . . . we mutually pledge to each

other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor. "

Today, those who believe that the war on terror

requires the sacrifice of our liberties like to argue

that " the Constitution is not a suicide pact. " In a

sense, however, the Declaration of Independence was

precisely that.

 

By signing Jefferson's text, the signers of the

declaration were putting their lives on the line.

England was then the world's greatest military power,

against which a bunch of provincial farmers had little

chance of prevailing. Benjamin Franklin wasn't kidding

around with his quip about hanging together or hanging

separately. If the rebel American militias were beaten

on the battlefield, their ringleaders could expect to

be hanged as traitors.

 

They signed anyway, thereby stating to the world that

there is something worth more than life, and that is

liberty. Thanks to their courage, we do not have to

risk death to preserve the liberties they bequeathed

us. All we have to do is vote.

 

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company