A Republic - If We Can Keep It - 1787 to 2006

Rabbi Arthur Waskow

In Philadelphia on September 18, 1789, a Mrs. Powel anxiously stood outside the Constitutional Convention.  As Benjamin Franklin emerged from the last session, she asked him: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” “A republic— if you can keep it,” said Franklin.

In Philadelphia today, October 17, 2006, in a cold and driving rain, on 24 hours notice, at noon on a workday, 44 people came to the Federal courthouse to mourn the signing of the Act to Legalize Torture and Suspend Habeas Corpus. We don’t know yet whether it is also the Act to Suspend the Republic. It certainly puts the tools to do so in the hands of any President who chooses to use them.

We had been gathered by The Shalom Center and the Brandywine Peace Community. There were Veterans for Peace,  clergypersons, congregants, teachers, lawyers. 

We read passages from the legal brief filed on behalf of Jose Padilla, a native-born US citizen arrested in 2002 on American soil (Chicago), charged with no crime, named an enemy combatant by the President of the United States,  and then held for ALMOST TWO YEARS in total isolation: no lawyers, no family, no one in the same cell block,  manacled for hours, in his 9’ x 7’ cell. no windows, no sunshine,  no books, no radio, no mattress to cover a cold steel bed, even electronic locks so there were not even guards for human contact — except for interrogations. Deprived of sleep by loud sounds, bright lights.  Forced into stress positions for hours at a time.  First contact with lawyers, 20 months after imprisonment. And even then, most of these forms of torture continued.

For a full text of the legal brief, see—

http://www.shalomctr.org/node/1195

This is one person. Under the new law, it could be anyone. Any number.  Citizen or foreigner, abroad or in the US, WITH NO RECOURSE TO THE COURTS.

At the Courthouse, we remembered that we are taught that every human being is created in the Image of God. That torture shatters God. That on the most solemn day of Christian tradition, Good Friday, Christians mourn the torture unto death by the Roman Empire of a human being suffused with God. That on the most solemn day of Jewish tradition, Yom Kippur, Jews recall the death by torture of ten great rabbis, carried out by the Roman Empire. That this is not only our memory of the past but also our warning for the future: Empires torture.

If you wish to end torture, dissolve empires. Gently, firmly.

We signed letters to Members of Congress, urging them to begin working to repeal provisions of the Act that dirty our souls, debase our nation, and trample on our Constitution.

We beat a drum slowly, tolled a bell lowly. With aching hearts, we held high the American Flag—  with a black cloth of mourning draped across its stars and stripes.  We poured ashes on the black sash,  and vowed to “bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old.”

Rabbi Arthur Waskow