It looks obvious

One of the more interesting arguments dismissing my concerns, regarding the devastating effects of the Military Commission Act, was what I will call the cultural argument.

The basic idea was that law, any law, is not important outside the cultural context. Many countries wrote constitutions, some of them were very well written documents, but since the culture of those countries didn’t embrace Liberal Democracy the law was a dead letter as soon as it was written. On the other hand the British democracy is strong regardless the lack of constitution.  And since the Patriot Act and the Military Commission Act contradicting the American democratic culture they are not as dangerous as it may seem from reading them outside of the general cultural context.

This is, I admit, a very compelling argument. However it has a major flow - the American culture isn’t the same as the British culture. I would even take the risk of over-generalizing by claiming that the American culture is, more than of democratic culture, a legal culture. Unlike many, if not all, other western countries, that has developed subtlety and cynicism regarding their laws, American tend to take the legal approach extremely seriously.

I have to clarify that this is not a criticism about the American approach. In the years that I live in the US I develop deep appreciation for a culture that assume that everybody obey the law. I can tell me anecdotes, like the immigration questionnaire I had to fill with questions if I instead to be a drug dealer or to carry terror attacks - assuming that people aren’t laying on official documents. When a country system is built on the assumption that its citizen are law abiding it make life in general much more comfortable.

But now we are learning what happens when the law can keep someone in jail for years without a fair trial. And we are learning how the government agencies taking advantage on laws to gather information they should not gather. And if we trusted that the Supreme Court will overturn these laws, we should be very disappointment:

And although the door isn’t completely close, it will take much more work to fix the damage these laws did.

Tags: Human Rights The Military Commission Act The Patriot Act Liberties The Supreme Court Habeas Corpus