Patriot, loyalist or worse yet in assault of liberty

By PHILIP C. RESTINO, Daytona Beach News Journal

The recent passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 eliminated habeas corpus, a detainee's right to know the charges for his detainment and his right to defend himself against those charges in court. The act not only allows information coerced by means of torture to be incriminating, but it also retroactively changes the law so as to protect anyone in the Bush administration and under its command from prosecution for war crimes dating back to Sept. 11, 2001.

Habeas corpus originated in the year 1215 and was shamelessly removed from the American way of life by President Bush "The Decider" on Oct. 17, 2006. The vague language of the Military Commissions Act also allows the president to decide what qualifies one as an "enemy combatant" and to whom that qualification applies, to include American citizens. All to protect us from terrorism.

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 is eerily similar to Germany's Enabling Act of 1933, the passage of which followed Germany's own "Sept. 11" in the burning of its parliament building, the Reichstag, on Feb. 27, 1933. The 1933 Enabling Act allowed Germany's own "Decider," Adolf Hitler, to take that country from one of a people's parliamentary government into one of a dictatorship and into the horrors of Nazism that spread throughout Europe for the next 12 years. The rationale given to the German people in 1933 for the removal of their liberties was that dictatorial powers were necessary to protect them from terrorism.

Our own liberties have been removed for the very same reason. Shouldn't we be paying attention here?

The Reichstag fire was blamed on a Communist "terrorist," Marinis Vanderlubbe, who was quickly tried in a show trial, similar to the ones provided for in the language of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which our so-called "representatives" in Congress voted for and which "The Decider" ceremoniously signed into law Oct. 17. It was after World War II during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials of 1945, that strong evidence emerged indicating that German SS operatives had set the Reichstag fire.

Also at Nuremberg, Nazi Reich Marshal Hermann Goering made the following statement, which bears remarkable resemblance to the Bush administration's strategy for control over the past five years: "The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

I encourage the reader to turn off your television set and learn about the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the Patriot Acts, the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act of 2007, which now allows our "Decider" to declare martial law without states' consent, and then take a few minutes to read the Bill of Rights, if not the entire U.S. Constitution.

Those who refuse to listen to anything unless it's from a member of the "Party of Lincoln," might consider the following from President Lincoln himself: "America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

And to those sycophants masquerading as "love it or leave it" Americans living in our "land of the free and home of the brave," Lincoln had this to say: "To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes cowards out of men."

A patriot is defined as a person who loves his or her country. Waving the flag and blindly submitting oneself as an unquestioning loyalist to individuals who have taken charge of the government, in our case a government "of, by and for the people," as President Lincoln described on the bloody fields of Gettysburg, does not make one a patriot.

Being a loyalist is easy. Being a patriot takes the courage to speak out in protest, albeit courage that any one of us can muster. Mark Twain wrote, "In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."

During these very troubling times in our country's history when our basic liberties are under attack, we can choose to be a patriot, a loyalist or worse yet, to continue to sit it out.

Restino is co-chairman and a founding member of the Central Florida chapter of Veterans For Peace and a member of Military Families Speak Out -- Florida. He lives in Daytona Beach.