Random Thoughts
US Supreme Court
now Follows Sharia
Anyone who has read Eric Schlosser's Reefer Madness would wonder where the legal system is heading in reference to drug related convictions. I condemn and not condone illicit use of drugs and am opposed to any sub rosa attempt to sneak legalized drug use, even though the jury is still out on decriminalization of minor drug offences and its consequences. The life sentences for moderate offenses worries me because we are becoming a punitive society without the milk of human kindness, just like Islam. The three strikes and you are out law in California has had unintended consequences where a person convicted of minor non-violent theft for the third time ends up with a life sentence. This has been upheld by the Supreme Court and is the latest folly in the long sordid, merciless history of the judiciary, which Tocqueville predicted would be the final arbiter of all American disputes, because of the national folly of litigious proclivities. One almost regrets the sophistry of Marbury vs. Madison and leaves John Marshall, the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court standing in the dock of the accused, for what he has wrought on the path of good intentions. Even the otherwise benign John Adams helped pass the aliens and sedition act and put down a second millstone around the neck of the new republic whose slavery was a mocking hypocrisy of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson's greatest contribution to the nation was the repeal of this
heinous law.
The latest decision of restricting visitation rights of the relatives of prisoners and holding them hostage to mandated behavior is so much like the inhuman and merciless punishments prescribed by the Muslim code of Sharia, that one wonders whether we really are a Christian nation. If the shadow of true justice would fall on all with equal disregard for status, influence or ethnic origin, then one could rationalize these draconian measures as a harsh attempt to deter errant behavior, in a just but merciless society with a punitive penchant, dedicated to the greater civic good of eliminating crime. Unfortunately the scales of justice are used to tilt them in favor of the privileged by the invisible hand of the government as the myriad nolo contendre decisions in favor of the rich and powerful prove.
America is now degenerating into a society comparable to eighteenth century England, where property rights were supreme and one has to read The Fatal Shores by Robert Hughes to appreciate the travesty of justice it created. Madison was much influenced by it, as were many of the founding fathers. I am no foolish Marxist rebelling against human nature or reality and am in complete favor of unleashing selfish human greed for the unintended progress of humanity, but completely against this chariot of progress, left to the whimsy of unthinking forces of greed and ego inspired stallions, without any reins of decency, humanity or consideration for the weak, or for a social zero sum game of winner takes all. As Hillel or Maimonides, I can't remember who said, "If I am not for myself, who am I, but if I am only for myself, what am I?" William Blake put it even better, " Everything that lives, lives not for itself or by itself, alone." Darwin and nature teach us that survival by habitual deprivation of future generations leads to extinction of such pathologically Narcissistic genes.
There is a rabid fear now being purveyed in this country to numb and deaden decent human compassion and it is succeeding brilliantly, because the origins of altruism are based in selfishness, as M. Ridley's book on The Origins of Virtue, so neatly proves. Once again it is not rooted in the uplifting of the general public, but for the narrower, meaner and despicable purpose of the re-election of the President and the payback of the favors by the vested interests, who bankroll his nefarious campaign, so that the mindless puppet can serve his paymasters.
Religion, God and government were not invented for fear and ego alone, but as a hope for ultimate justice for the down trodden and unfortunately, today they have become like lighthouses, which were to serve as a beacon to avoid dangerous shoals and now serve as false signals to wreck the ships of the gullible innocents, so that the privileged minority can feast on the misery of the misled and shipwrecked. Historically such wreckers made a comfortable living in early Carolinas legally as did many New England Brahmins by piracy in the Atlantic and by selling opium to China. Truly the dispossessed, uneducated and unwilling to be informed are cursed to a life of tyranny, oppression and deprivation, and this is why Madison and his cohorts formulated the constitution mainly for the rights of property. They were weak and the new kids on the block and therefore put in a clause for freedom of speech and prohibition of arbitrary seizure, but the devil has now matured and sees no need for any constraints to the unrestrained abuse of power and privilege, especially if the deprived are aliens or those disenfranchised by felony or otherwise struck of the voter rolls by fraud, subterfuge or design.
13-Jan-2003
More by :
Gaurang Bhatt, MD
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