Class Issues in the Different Approaches to “Law and Order” by Liberals vs. Republicans [View All]

I am sick and tired of hearing the word “liberal” used as a pejorative term in American politics, and I’m sick and tired of the related implication that Republicans are better or “tougher” on “rule of law” or “law and order” issues than are Democrats or liberals. The assertion that “law and order” is the purview of Republicans is a myth with no relationship to reality, which nevertheless, the Republican Party has used for political purposes to great advantage for the past four decades.

The truth of the matter is that the differences between liberals and Republicans on “rule of law” issues are mainly class related. Most liberals have a great reverence for the Constitution of the United States, especially its Bill of Rights, with its several guarantees of due process. Our Constitution protects us against arbitrary infringements against our life, liberty, and property by our government. Related to this, liberals tend to have the following political views which open them to attacks of “permissiveness” from Republicans:
1. They tend to disfavor severe punishment for victimless crimes, such as drug possession.
2. They tend to be against the death penalty.
3. They strongly favor our Constitutional guarantees of due process for those suspected of crimes.

Note that these are all issues that affect the poor and minorities much more than the white middle class or the wealthy. For whatever reasons, the poor and minorities occupy our prisons for drug offenses, receive death sentences, and are victimized by infringements against their Constitutional rights to due process at much higher rates than are other people. Some claim that the reasons for this are that the poor and minorities use more illegal drugs and commit more capital offenses than do other people.

There may be some truth to that claim, but it is highly doubtful that it fully explains the highly disproportionate rate at which the poor and minorities are imprisoned and receive death sentences. Rather, there are numerous “irregularities” in our justice system that account for these disparities. And that is mainly what liberals object to. Liberals are acutely aware of the arbitrary nature with which justice is often meted out in our country, and that saddens them very much. In other words, liberals passionately believe in fairness.

Republicans have for decades used that characteristic of liberals to characterize them as soft on crime, weak, permissive, and a string of other pejorative adjectives. But the truth is that liberals have more, not less respect for the rule of law than do most Republicans. Whereas liberals believe that all people, regardless of class, should be treated fairly and are entitled to the unalienable rights specified in our Constitution, Republicans are adamant about being “tough” on suspected lower class and minority criminals, while they tend to be much more lax about the rule of law when it infringes on their own interests. Let’s consider how this has played out over the last several decades in our country:


Rich Nixon’s crusade for “law and order”

The 1960s was a time of protest (Vietnam War, Civil Rights), turmoil, racial tensions, and much progressive legislation enacted into law Medicare, Medicaid, Voting Rights Act of 1965, Civil Rights Act of 1964) in our country. It was also a time of rising rates of violent crime, which continued into the late 1970s.

Richard Nixon exploited the fears engendered during those turbulent times in his Presidential campaigns of 1968 and 1972, as described here:


Thus it was that Nixon’s Democratic opponent in the 1972 Presidential election, George McGovern, was tarred with the brush of “permissiveness” for advocating the decriminalization of marijuana, a women’s right to choose abortion, a quick end to the Vietnam War, and continued abolition of the death penalty.


The war on drugs

Since Richard Nixon declared a “War on drugs” in 1971, the prison population of the United States has multiplied manifold. From 300,000 U.S. inmates in 1972, the U.S. prison population grew to about one million by 1990 and, according to Bureau of Justice statistics, there were 2.1 million people incarcerated in U.S. prisons as of mid-year 2004. And this is despite a falling crime rate since 1991.

2006 international statistics show that the U.S. incarceration rate of 738 per 100,000 residents is now the highest rate in the world. Russia is a distant second, with 607 per 100,000 residents, and the highest rate in Europe is Poland, at 228 per 100,000 residents. The United States, with only 5 % of the world’s population, holds one quarter of the prison population of the world.

Of the total U.S. prison population in 2004, more than one quarter, 530,000, were imprisoned for drug offenses, and almost a tenth of those were for marijuana only. And many of those were for mere possession, rather than manufacturing or selling. For example, of 700,000 marijuana arrests in 1997, 87% were for mere possession, and 41% of those incarcerated for a marijuana offense were incarcerated for possession only. This is not surprising when one considers that most non-violent first time offenders guilty of drug possession today in the United States get a mandatory minimum sentence of 5 years with no parole, or 10 years with no parole if a large quantity of drugs is involved.

The racial disparity in the United States for imprisonment for drug offenses is well known. Though the Federal Household Survey (See item # 6) indicated that 72% of illicit drug users are white, compared to 15% who are black, blacks constitute a highly disproportionate percent of the population arrested for (37%) or serving time for (42% of those in federal prisons and 58% of those in state prisons) drug violations.


The death penalty

I have to confess that I used to be in favor of the death penalty – largely due to my ignorance on the relevant issues. As I read more about it my opinions changed. The most important discoveries that changed my mind about it were my awareness of the shockingly large numbers of people who are falsely convicted of murder and the fact that there is no evidence that the death penalty deters violent crime.

For example, one study identified 328 criminal cases, including 199 murder cases, where already convicted criminals were exonerated when new evidence (such as DNA evidence) became available. Since those cases represent only the tip of the iceberg – i.e. cases where substantial additional investigation took place after conviction – the study’s authors concluded that there are probably thousands of innocent people in prison today, including many on death row.

I was brought up to believe that in our country everyone is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Given the highly disproportionate numbers of poor and minorities who receive prison and death penalty sentences in our country (only 45% of 3,370 death row inmates as of July 1, 2006 were White), and given the lack of access of the poor to good legal counsel, it would seem that the bar for reasonable doubt is often quite low and that our justice system is characterized by a good amount of arbitrariness. Under those conditions it seems criminal for the state to put people to death.


Rights for those suspected of hostilities against the United States

In his book “Ghost Plane – The True Story of the CIA Torture Program”, Stephen Grey, Amnesty International Award-Winning Journalist for Excellence in Human Rights Reporting, meticulously documents the illegal and horrendous system of torture and other human rights abuses that George Bush has perpetrated upon the world as part of his so-called “War on Terror”. That system has three major components: Known U.S. operated prisons at Guantanamo Bay and in Iraq and Afghanistan, where torture and other grave abuses of human rights occur routinely; Secret U.S. prisons throughout the world where similar or worse abuses occur routinely; and, the program of “extraordinary rendition”, whereby U.S. officials kidnap (or otherwise gather into their custody) men or boys and transport them to prisons in countries where few or no barriers to the most horrendous kinds of torture exist, in full knowledge that those men are likely to be systematically tortured and never released until dead, with no access to any kind of a system that attempts to determine their guilt or innocence. In his book, copyrighted in 2006, Grey estimates that 11 thousand have encountered such a fate since the onset of George Bush’s “War on Terror”.

Grey emphasizes the almost total lack of human rights accorded to those suspected by George Bush and his minions of hostilities against our country by comparing the system that George Bush has constructed to the Soviet Gulags of Joseph Stalin:




High crimes and misdemeanors committed by Republican presidents

It is truly astounding how many of our recent Republican Presidents have committed crimes deserving of impeachment and removal from office – irrespective of the fact that they were not actually impeached for those crimes:

The resignation of Richard Nixon and his successor’s pardon of him
Nixon had three articles of impeachment drawn up against him by the House Judiciary Committee on impeachment: Article 2 accused him of violating the Constitutional rights of American citizens by using the powers of the federal government to unlawfully spy on them; Article 1 accused him of obstructing justice by unlawfully impeding investigations into violations of the Constitutional rights of American citizens; and article 3 accused him of refusing to comply with lawful Congressional subpoenas.

Because the evidence against him was solid and removal from office was a near certainty, Nixon resigned his Presidency in August 1974. In order to save him from having to suffer the consequences of his crimes…. or as our new Republican President Gerald Ford said, “to heal our nation’s wounds”, Ford preemptively pardoned Nixon for any crimes he may have committed that were related to the impeachment charges against him.

The Presidential administration of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush
Ronald Reagan’s Presidency was also marked by a scandal that suggested a very high likelihood that he and his Vice President, George H. W. Bush, had committed impeachable offenses. The Iran-Contra scandal involved illegal selling of arms to Iran, with diversion of the funds from those arms to the Nicaraguan Contras, which had been expressly prohibited by Congress. Congressional investigations into the scandal resulted in the convictions of several high level Reagan administration officials, but the investigations petered out before directly implicating the President and Vice President. No impeachment hearings were ever initiated, undoubtedly because of (unfounded) fear of the political consequences.

The many impeachable offenses of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
I’ve discussed the impeachable offenses of Bush and Cheney so many times that I’ll just very briefly summarize the most important ones here:

 Appending “signing statements” to more than 800 laws enacted by Congress to circumvent those laws.
 Conducting a warrantless domestic spying program that deprives us of our Fourth amendment rights.
 Violating our Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights to due process of law, as described above.
 Approving torture in violation of our Eight Amendment rights.
 Using his Justice Department to disenfranchise tens of thousands (or much more) voters.
 Repeatedly lying to Congress and the American people about his reasons for invading Iraq.
 Repeatedly refusing to comply with Congressional subpoenas.

Note that the second and last of the above noted impeachable offenses are exactly the same ones for which articles of impeachment were drawn up against Nixon


Bribery involving high level elected Republican officials

Because Republicans stand for a legislative agenda that is contrary to the interests of the vast majority of American citizens, they require huge amounts of advertising money from wealthy corporations and individuals in order to spin their message in a way that will convince the gullible to vote for them. In order to accomplish this they accept bribes, legal or illegal, from corporations and individuals in return for legislative favors. In 2006 they over-reached, stepping over the thin line from legal to illegal, and many of them got caught.

At the center of the 2006 bribery scandals was Jack Abramoff. The core of the charges against Abramoff, to which he has plead guilty, was the swindling of Indian tribes for $82 million, which was used to bribe Republican Congressmen to use their official powers to favor those Indian tribes (and their competitors as well, which is why the word “swindling” is used to characterize those interactions.)

Another central figure in the 2006 scandals was Tom DeLay, former Republican House Majority Leader (until he had to resign in disgrace), good friend of Jack Abramoff, and the man who ordered a mob of Republican lackeys to stop the counting of presidential votes in Miami-Dade County Florida during the 2000 presidential election by threatening violence (which they successfully accomplished). DeLay was indicted for illegally raising money (i.e., accepting bribes) to get Republicans elected to the Texas state legislature, which was integral to DeLay’s plan to redistrict U.S. House seats from Texas, thereby switching five seats into the Republican column. DeLay also solicited money from an energy company right before a House vote that was crucial to that company, and he offered a bribe to a fellow Congressman right on the floor of the U.S. House in order to persuade that Congressman to vote for George Bush’s scam Medicare bill.

And here are a few others: Duke Cunningham (R-CA) pled guilty to accepting $2.4 million in bribes; Bob Ney (R-OH) pled guilty to accepting bribes from Abramoff; Pete Sessions (R-TX) received over $20 thousand from Abramoff clients for signing letters that benefited them; Jerry Lewis (R-CA and Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee) underwent investigation for shaking down various victims for money; Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT) was shamed into returning $150,000 he received from Jack Abramoff; John Doolittle’s (R-CA) wife created a lobbying firm to steer money from Abramoff to her husband’s campaign; John Sweeney (R-NY) was asked to explain why he failed to report an Abramoff sponsored trip to the Marianas Islands; and Abramoff was found to have logged in hundreds of visits to the George W. Bush White House.


International law

The purpose of international law, as described in the preamble to the Charter of the United Nations is in part:


It was the liberal U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt who conceived of the United Nations, and it was his liberal successor, Harry Truman, who led the international effort for its establishment. Liberals revere the principles proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations. In stark contrast, many Republicans in general and George Bush in particular have shown nothing but contempt for international law. Here are a few examples:

Though President Clinton signed the Statute for the International Criminal Court (ICC), George Bush announced in 2002 that he was unsigning the statute. And he has gone well beyond non-participation, to active sabotage. For example, the American Service members’ Protection Act authorizes the American President to “use all means necessary and appropriate” to release any American national who is “being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the ICC”; it prohibits all American cooperation with the ICC; and it prohibits participation of American troops in UN peacekeeping operations unless they are granted complete immunity from the ICC.

On December 11, 1997, the United Nations adopted by acclimation the historic Kyoto protocol, a complex international plan to address the problem of global warming. U.S. Vice President Al Gore signed it in November 1998 – though it wasn’t submitted to Congress for ratification because of excessive opposition from our Republican Congress.
Shortly after taking office George W. Bush pulled the United States out of its international commitment to the Kyoto protocol, leaving us and Australia as the only two industrialized countries uncommitted to the international effort to respond to the threat of global warming. And to justify his irresponsible actions, George Bush has repeatedly misled the American public on this issue, for example by attempting to silence our country’s leading climatologist, James Hansen, in his efforts to educate the American public.

I have already noted George Bush’s unlawful detention and torture of his prisoners, which violates both the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. And his invasion of Iraq clearly constituted a crime against peace, since Iraq posed no threat to our country.


Conclusion

The difference between liberals and Republicans in their approach to “law and order” is not that liberals are “soft” on crime and Republicans are “tough” on crime.

Liberals believe passionately in the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law, and they want to see it applied fairly across the board, regardless of class or race.

Republicans on the other hand condone a very uneven approach to the rule of law. As applied to the poor and minority races they believe it should be applied so harshly that it circumvents or even violates the unalienable rights guaranteed to all Americans in our Constitution. And they castigate liberals as being “soft on crime” or “soft on terrorism” for their insistence that the rule of law be applied fairly and in accordance with our Constitution.

In contrast, when applying the law to the affluent, Republicans tend to be much more forgiving. Consequently, high level Republican elected officials often get away with crimes of monumental national importance without suffering a great deal of news coverage from the wealthy corporations who own our national news media, and without incurring much outrage from most rank and file Republicans.

In short, liberals believe in fairness and the rule of law. Republicans believe in… well, let them explain what it is that they believe in.