Our Shared Beliefs

Most Americans would strongly agree with all of the following:

• Our country was founded on the ideals of Freedom and Justice
• Following the rule of law is critical to the success of a Democracy
• The United States Constitution is the backbone of our Democracy and must guide our actions
• Political speech is protected by the first amendment, and people should not be arrested based on views they express
• People should not be sent to prison without being convicted of a crime
• We should treat others the way we would like to be treated

Yet somehow, in recent actions involving people born outside our borders, agreement on these points has evaporated.  The two political tribes twist facts and exaggerate to whip up support for extreme points of view.  Our biased media channels echo and amplify those twisted and exaggerated arguments to reinforce those extreme positions.

I’ve already written a blog about immigration, so check that out if you haven’t already.  My focus in this post is not on immigration, but about the need for us to uphold our fundamental values of Freedom and Justice.

Our Founding Principles

The Declaration of Independence strongly emphasizes liberty and justice.  It famously states that “all men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights, including Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”  I’ll emphasize that it says “all men”, and that these rights are “unalienable”…meaning that they cannot be justly removed by any government or authority.

The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution states that the government shall not “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”  It specifically calls out “any person” in this section, while using “citizens” in other places.  It also specifically says that any person shall not be denied “equal protection.”  It is clear that nobody should be denied due process of law.  As our pledge of allegiance states, we really do stand for Liberty and Justice for all.

Equal protection includes the First Amendment protections for free speech and freedom of the press.  These protections are crucial to a free society.  Our commitment to free speech has been so strong, that the Supreme Court has ruled to protect inflammatory speech of Klu Klux Klan leaders, protesters with offensive signs at military funerals, and burning of the American flag as a form of protest.

The Law Protects Us From Abuse of Power

As we see hundreds of men sent away to a foreign prison without due process or any evidence of crimes, masked government agents taking people off the street because of what they wrote in a newspaper, and international student visas being revoked without explanation, it is clear that we are not upholding the founding principles of liberty and justice.  We have repeatedly seen mistakes made by the government, including deportation due to administrative error, erroneous firing of critical government workers, and US citizens wrongly detained by immigration agents.  As an engineer, we are taught to design out potential failure modes that could lead to severe negative consequences.  Allowing the government to detain people without charging them with any crime, and sending people to foreign prisons without any criminal conviction, risks much greater abuses than we have already seen.  What would stop government actors from putting US Citizens that speak out against government actions on a plane to an El Salvador prison, where they are no longer afforded their constitutional rights as US Citizens?  We must eliminate that possibility.

Justice requires adherence to the rule of law.  The courts are intended to be a check on executive power, to prevent our leaders from abusing their authority.  When government leaders fail to uphold the constitution and ignore court orders, they weaken our democracy and threaten our freedom.  This must not be normalized or accepted.

What We Can Do

We are not powerless in the face of government abuses of authority.  Our leaders derive their power from us.  They are elected by us to serve us.  We cannot stand by and watch the founding principles of liberty and justice get shoved aside, no matter what reasoning may be given.

So what can we do?

• Don’t fall for the arguments that bad people don’t deserve constitutional protections – who decides if they are bad? How do we know they deserve a punishment if there is no public process to determine it?  Secret government “vetting” is not enough.
• Tell our elected leaders that we expect them to follow the rule of law, and to hold others in the government accountable.
• Use our voting power to protect our democracy by voting for upstanding leaders that will share power as intended, follow laws, and protect freedom and justice as defined by our Constitution.