November 12, 2007

By Robert Metcalf (View author info)

November 12, 2007

Today is Veterans Day. This is the day that has been set aside to pay tribute to all the American citizens who have given their lives and flesh to preserve the freedom that all of us prize so dearly. It's ironic that on this very day it was reported in The Gazette, a Colorado newspaper that Jan Jackson was fined $10,000.00 plus costs for exercising her right of free speech Source.

The judge, Thomas Kennedy, must have been absent from law school the day they taught the Bill Of Rights. This is an especially troublesome development. Apparently, we have now arrived at the point where corporate officers, the board, acting as public officials in a quasi-governmental setting are legally beyond criticism. I do not know the particulars about the dispute between Jan Jackson and her board, but regardless, if the board members want to parade around as "elected leaders" spouting the principles of "leadership in democracy" they ought to be willing to accept the heat. Remember what Harry Truman said.

But then that's the trouble with private government isn't it? Being a private corporation, the average HOA has about as much democracy as a banana republic. I watched Michael Moore's "Sicko" over the weekend. At the end of the movie he asks a question, "Who are we?". It applies here as well. Who are we when we let the very fabric of the Bill of Rights suffer death by a thousand cuts, through incompetent judges and corrupt legislators? Who are we when we let one of our most cherished relationships, that of being neighborly, be systematically destroyed by the incessant incursion of today's "take no prisoner" corporate culture? Who are we when we let the very fundamental concept of citizenship be replaced by a cheap facade in places like Kentlands or Reston? Who are we when we let the legal system, a right promised to us in the Constitution, become so polluted and perverted at the hands of rapacious attorneys that the mere thought of actually using it sends us running for cover?

The founders of this nation understood that freedom must be tempered by the rule of law. At the same time however they understood that the only way to prevent the subversion of the law's power by those who ruled was to make it public, let it see the light of day. They also understood that the only way to prevent the tyranny of the majority from enslaving the minority was to establish unyielding rights for individual citizens. Rights that trumped every law that would ever be enacted. Rights that could not be denied.

As our democracy slowly but inexorably continues its fade to fascism at the hands of people like George Bush and Dick Cheney, we can only hope that somewhere, somebody with sufficient public stature will stand up and say "Enough!". For Jan Jackson I can only hope that the judge who hears her appeal will have a broader field of vision then the myopic Mr. Kennedy. Realizing, that regardless of what the particulars of the case may be, Ms. Jackson's right to speak up and criticize her government, be it private or public, is absolute and immutable, and that suppressing that right only furthers the deepening death spiral of personal freedom and liberty that this country currently finds itself in.