Consent of the Governed

How can we stand by and watch our own pathetic demise and not flood our streets with outrage?

From Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo to Mr. Ng, is not anyone asking the horror we have become? Tuesday, August 12, 2008, The New York Times does a story on Hiu Lui Ng, an immigrant from Hong Kong who died in Custody on August 5, 2008. His story made me weep.
 
A year earlier Mr. Ng had been taken into custody. Mr. Ng had been a productive member of society.  He had come to the U.S. when he was 17 and worked as a computer engineer; he had a house in Queens and two American- born sons.

There was an error on the part of the immigration office and a notice for a hearing in 2001 was sent to an unknown address. Mr. Ng never received the notice. When he showed up for his final Green Card Interview with his wife - a U.S. citizen- in July of 2007, he was taken into custody. 
 
The details of the case are heart-wrenching: for a year he suffered from pain in his back and cancer growing in his body, but was told he was faking it and did not get help until he and his lawyer appealed to a federal judge. By the time he got an MRI - which showed a fracture in his spine and cancer rampant throughout his body- he was so sick that he died a few days later.
 
What we as citizens must own of this is beyond heart-wrenching.
 
Every society, every organization, and every community both shape and reflect their leadership in the social mores that are passed down. We are condemning Russia for their treatment of Georgia, but why can we not see the despicable acts we, ourselves, are committing? We have landlocked prisoners that we are torturing. It doesn't matter how we utilize our language to release ourselves from responsibility; it doesn't matter that some of these things happen in other countries though within our jurisdiction. They are happening within our territory, inside the walls of what we parade as Freedom and Justice. 
 
It makes my stomach cringe just to say those words. Freedom. Justice. 
 
Mr. Ng was not granted his civil rights; he was denied the Constitution. The Bill of Rights had become a vague fantasy circling around the Capitol Building while this man was unjustly arrested, abused by being denied medical care, and not given due process – even though he was entitled to it because he had been following the rules laid out for him by our system. The system made a mistake, and Mr. Ng died a brutal death because of this.
 
We can say, okay, there was a mistake, but how do we justify the treatment he was given? How would we justify this for any man woman or child, immigrant, resident, "terror" suspect, or prisoner of the enemy? How can we stand by and watch our own pathetic demise and not flood our streets with outrage??? Where is the democratic part of our supposed democracy? Where are the voices speaking out so that the government will have to listen??? Remember, every senator and congressman and presidential candidate care most about election and re-election. We do have power here if we threaten (and follow) to reroute our votes. Candidates will then surface who will speak to our democratic call for…justice. Justice, justice, justice has been besieged by fear. And we have allowed our democracy to be overrun by our own terror.
 
The greatest terror threat to our nation is the disintegration from within, for great nations fall because they do not utilize the information before them. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, "Information is the currency of democracy." We all know what is happening, the torture in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. We know that Mr. Ng and countless others like him have been subject to inhumane treatment and robbed of their constitutional rights. Why, then, are we not acting out in ponderous ire?!
 
Constitutional rights have become a privilege in this country, not a right, and the mortar that has held our society in place has corroded. We are each and all responsible for the torture, treatment, and loss of freedoms to anyone in our custody. We are the keepers of our democracy. Our nation was founded on the idea that power lies in the people. The Declaration of Independence was drawn up in reaction to a government that had misused its power. 
 
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
 
In a democracy, the people must approve the actions of their leaders.

If we consent to such grave injustices, we must accept the horror that we, the people, have become.