Sixth Amendment"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense." If you are completely unacquainted with the above, you are probably either a citizen of some country other than the United States, or are a U.S. congress-person. (Or is it just the First Amendment that many in the House of Reprehensibles refuse to read?) The quote above is Amendment Six to the U.S. Constitution. The original ten Amendments are known as the Bill of Rights. Along with some (but not all) of the Amendments that were added later -- after the original ten -- they specifically limit how the national government can interfere with citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment made it clear that these same restrictions also apply to state and local governments. If the Federal government is restrained from punishing citizens by cruel and unusual methods (Amendment Eight), your local city council probably can not just decide that sawing offenders in half would be a worthy deterrent to crime. "Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State 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." The appropriate application of written law to practical human interaction is not always effortless, which is why the third branch of American government is the Judicial. However, one helpful aspect of our Constitution and Amendments is that it is written in plain language. Anybody who reads above a fifth-grade level (college level, by current California standards) can get a pretty good sense of what it is about. So read the Sixth Amendment again. Here's a quiz on the material, open book, of course.
In case you are a congress-rodent or a child, we put the answers at the bottom of the page. Bear in mind, the Fourteenth Amendment makes the principles of the Sixth Amendment applicable to state and local governments. By its intent, it is axiomatic that no person or institution representing government within the U.S. should be allowed to interfere with these rights granted a person accused of bad behavior. These rights are part of what makes the United States presumably one of the more fair (and free) countries on the planet. Secret allegations, anonymous accusers and penalties on the basis of unknown charges are hallmarks of dictatorships. One word that is often used to describe these practices is Kafkaesque. The German novelist Franz Kafka wrote books,including The Trial, about impassive interrogations, false trials and other abuses of power by oppressive regimes.
ElianYoung Mr.Gonzalez has been the focus of an incredible amount of attention. His mother -- who took the boy without the father's consent -- died trying to get herself and her son to America. His father in Cuba would like the boy to come home. His mother's relatives and a lot of other people would like the boy to stay, and will apparently say or do anything to try to make sure that happens, including implying in different ways that the child would somehow be in danger if he went back to Cuba. It doesn't take much to imagine what they are telling the boy.I'm sure he is a nice kid and all, but it seems to me that a lot of national energy is being spent on one child, when millions of children around the world are in much more serious danger, regardless of where Elian ends up. If Cuba is such a dangerous place for 6-year-olds because -- as everybody knows -- godless Commies eat their own offspring, perhaps those Miami protestors ought to use their apparently limitless time to start kidnapping the rest of the youth from the island. OK, maybe Cuban communists don't eat their own children (that would be the North Koreans, and only when there's nothing else to eat), but consider what kind of a life Elian could be facing, if the worst happened.
Anonymous AccusationsThe more immediate consequences could involve the political environment in which the boy would be educated. He could end up in a school where students are encouraged to turn in other students -- anonymously -- because they seem dangerous, are considered odd or don't conform to the norm. This anonymous reporting program is administered by an organization with a history of providing shock troops to harass and kill innocent protestors.The ability to anonymously make trouble for a classmate obviously has inherent abuse potential. Children that are unpopular, don't fit in, or even simply dress different are all potential victims. Under this snitch program, because of a spat with a schoolmate, a child -- guilty of nothing -- could be the subject of numerous investigations. You probably understand that if investigators are predisposed to find something amiss, they usually end up believing they have. Under these conditions, a citizen could be dogged by records of bad behavior for the rest of his/her life, affecting employment and quality of life, all because of a childish grudge. I don't know what life might be like for Elian in Cuba. The program about which I am relating -- which encourages students to anonymously accuse each other -- exists in the United States. It may already be present in your child's school, and the movement is growing.
WAVE AmericaThat's what the program is called. It would be more suitable to call it "Wave America Bye-bye". It was started and is administered by the Pinkertons, the original detective agency and providers of private security to many Fortune 500 companies.The Pinkertons have a violent history. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Pinkerton guards were employed by large manufacturing companies as anti-union strikebreakers. They were very effective at this task. Here are some examples of the work of that private army for hire, the Pinkerton Protective Patrol:
Many reasonably ethical companies have inauspicious histories. It is only fair to judge them by more recent history and current practices. WAVE America proves (among other things) that Pinkerton Services Group (a division of the international security firm Pinkerton, Inc.) are still into covert operations today. And they still don't mind cooperating with violations of the rights of individuals. In cooperation with the schools, the Pinkertons are attempting to turn your child into a snitch, and are willing to reward him or her for becoming one.
As originally set up, students were to receive hats and t-shirts. Cash rewards were even being paid for anonymous tips on fellow students. As a result of citizen protests -- including that of the open source software community (Linux, FreeBSD, Apache, etc.) and freedom fighter Jon Katz -- the pay for snitching part of the program has been temporarily suspended. Students are being trained to watch for certain types of behavior, such as depression, and to report students whom they think may become violent. Suspects are reported -- anonymously -- via the toll-free 800 number. Governor Hunt says, "This program is more than just a tip line, it teaches students and parents to look for the early signs of violent behavior and to resolve conflicts constructively." Ignoring for a moment the danger (and absurdity) of trying to teach non-professionals (children!?!) to gauge behavior that is best left to psychiatrists and psychologists, can you say Hitler Youth? American schoolchildren have the same Constitutional rights that American adult citizens enjoy, including privacy, due process, the ability to confront accusers and -- by gawd! -- knowing that accusations against them exist. This has been well established for years by the courts, including in Tinker v. Des Moines School District in 1969.
Juvenile crime (all violent crime, in fact) is decreasing in America. The primary increase is in the failure of government officials -- including North Carolina's governor -- to recognize that the United States was established on principles that are far superior to that of the Nazis, the Fascists, and the Communists. Who is really to blame? "We can no more blame our loss of freedom on congressmen than we can prostitution on pimps. Both simply provide broker services for their customers." -- Dr. Walter Williams
As long as WAVE America is a going concern, it would probably be in Elian Gonzalez' best interest to go back to Cuba and live with his father. In the U.S., the boy would eventually have the opportunity to study the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The dichotomy between those documents and the reality -- what America is actually like -- might be deleterious to his already-fragile psyche.
If you know Americans with school-aged children, please let them know about WAVE America. Send them this URL...
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