We must not live in fear but fight to preserve our rights
We cannot allow a president to claim that speech is free only when people say things that he approves of. We cannot allow a president to claim that the right to due process may be ignored whenever the president decides that ignoring it is convenient for him.
This piece originally appeared in The Fox Cities Progressive
A woman I know well who has lived peacefully and happily in this country for almost sixty years is now afraid to go out on the street alone. She entered this country legally as a young woman, and she became a citizen nearly 50 years ago. Now, she is afraid to go out by herself. She sees people arrested randomly and deported, and she wonders if she will be next. She is not alone. Many of our fellow citizens are living in fear today.
Is this what we have come to? Is this the country we love? Why is this happening?
It is happening because our president, the Grifter in Chief (GF) finds himself in a bind. In his election campaign, he promised to deport millions of immigrants, but he cannot keep that promise for two reasons. First, he cannot keep his promise because if he were to deport millions of farm and factory workers, he would damage the economies of almost all of the red states, and he would lose political support in those states. Second, he cannot keep his promise because it would be very costly to do so. He wants to reduce taxes, but the deficit hawks in Congress will prevent him from doing so unless he can cut federal spending drastically. This is no time for him to propose spending billions of dollars for a program of mass deportation.
So, he is faking it. He is pretending to keep his promise by deporting a relatively small number of people randomly chosen from among citizens and residents who represent no threat to American workers or to the United States. Some people are deported because they are alleged without proof to be members of gangs that are labeled “terrorist organizations.” Other people are deported because they have spoken out in support of Hamas, although support of Hamas was never mentioned in his campaign. Still other people are deported through "administrative error!" The latest absurdity in this tragic comedy is that a two-year old child who is an American citizen has been deported.
Our rights are disappearing before our eyes
To do all of this the GF has had to ride roughshod over the rights to due process and to free speech. He has arrested a judge, and he has threatened others with impeachment because they made decisions that he didn’t like. He has pressured universities to teach only what he approves of. He has pressured law firms not to represent clients who oppose his policies. Without warrants or due process, he has arrested foreign students who supported Hamas and put them in detention facilities. He has said openly that he cannot carry out his program of deportations without eliminating the right to due process. In effect, he says that no one has a right to due process if the president decides that it is an impediment to something he wants to do. In other words, he claims that he can ignore the rights enshrined in our Bill of Rights whenever it is convenient for him to do so.
We cannot accept the destruction of our constitutionally protected rights
We must understand clearly the implications of the deportation of students who support Hamas. As a Jew and a supporter of Israel (although not of its actions in Gaza), I can easily understand why people are angered by support for Hamas, but I can also see that the right to free speech cannot apply only to speech that I approve of. The right applies also and perhaps especially to speech that is unpopular. If we allow the president to deport these students, we are accepting the idea that he is allowed to decide when speech is free and when it is not.
That is completely unacceptable. We cannot allow a president to claim that speech is free only when people say things that he approves of. The same applies to the issue of due process. We cannot allow a president to claim that the right to due process may be ignored whenever the president decides that ignoring it is convenient for him.
Otherwise, my friend and millions of other American citizens will continue to live in fear in their chosen country, and our rights as Americans will be destroyed merely because the GF needs to appear to be keeping a campaign promise. If we do not act now, we will soon all be living in fear.
