[lbo-talk] progress!

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 8:13 AM -0700 4/18/03, Brian O. Sheppard wrote:
>"Political rights do not originate in parliaments; they are rather 
>forced upon them from without.  And even their enactment into law 
>has for a long time been no guarantee of their security.  They do 
>not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of 
>paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, 
>and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent 
>resistance of the populace."
>
>&
>
>"All the political rights and liberties which people enjoy today, 
>they do not owe to the good-will of their governments, but to their 
>own strength.... Great mass movements and whole revolutions have 
>been necessary to wrest these liberties from the ruling classes, who 
>would never have consented to them voluntarily. What is important is 
>not that have government have decided to concede these rights, but 
>why they had to do so."

Once liberties and rights are wrested and conceded, great mass 
movements and revolutions tend to demobilize.  For a time, gains 
remain customs institutionalized by governments, what people can take 
for granted.  Then, taking advantage of demobilization, the Right go 
on the offensive.  Since the Right are not stupid, they seldom attack 
the rights and liberties wholesale, imprisoning or massacring 
millions at one fell swoop.  They attack the most vulnerable -- the 
suspect, the despised, the stigmatized, the "indefensible" to whose 
defense no one but the most fearless lawyers would rise -- "aliens," 
"fanatics," "extremists," "drug lords," "terrorists," "enemy 
combatants," the "obviously guilty," etc.

There has been no mass protest in defense of the rights and liberties 
of Jose Padilla, Yasser Hamdi, etc., nor will there be one in the 
future, I'm afraid.
-- 
Yoshie

* Calendar of Events in Columbus: 
<http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>
* Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
* Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
* Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>