Take a close look..

The other day Jon Stewart pointed out that the American media has been quick to condemn Boston marathon suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev without due process.   After Dzhokhar was read his Miranda rights (the right to remain silent, etc) he took them to heart and stopped talking.  The media (Fox News to be specific) has been pushing to have Dzhokhar treated as a enemy combatant.  Doing so would mean he can be whisked away, subjected to ‘enhanced interrogation’ and refused his normal rights, even though he is an American citizen.

I have no doubt that such a procedure would sate our collective thirst for justice a lot more than treating him the same as every other criminal in the system.  But as Jon pointed out on his April 24^th show, “In the wake of an assault on our freedom and way of life, we have quickly jettisoned the 6^th amendment right to a fair trial, and the 5^th amendment right to avoid self-incrimination.  What’s next?”  In the show, there is an immediate cutaway to various Fox News commentators suggesting waterboarding, wiretapping of mosques, search and seizure w/o warrants, etc.  All clearly illegal under American law.  One even suggested barring foreign students based on religious beliefs (a clear violation of the 1^st amendment) and another suggested Dzhokhar’s wife be imprisoned for wearing a hijab (a violation of the 9^th amendment). 

The amusing point Jon was making is that the one constitutional right that America won’t jettison or even tamper with is the right to buy assault weapons without so much as a background check.  The irony of such hypocrisy is profound.  It would be laugh out loud funny if it weren’t also true that random gun violence in America has killed 265x as many people as terrorism. 

It would be easy to dismiss that as a lesson about the blind spot of the political eye.  Yet the truth is that if we look closely – on a very different scale than nationalistic ranting - we might very well find similar blind spots in our own individual lives.  They might be less perturbing, but the principle is exactly the same. 

“The wisdom of the sensible is to understand his way, but the foolishness of fools is deceit.”

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/lawmakers-ask-who-knew-what-about-bomb-suspect

http://www.thecomedynetwork.ca/shows/thedailyshow?videoPackage=133701