Extremism...

(Excerpt from Bill O'Reilly's radio program.)

O'REILLY: No, no. I want you to read it. Go to LATimes.com. I want everybody in the country to read this editorial, 'cause it just -- I mean, you'll be sitting there pounding the table like I did. How can they -- how can they think this way? How can anyone think this way? You know, "Shutting down Guantànamo and giving suspected terrorists legal protections would help restore our reputation abroad." No, it wouldn't. I mean that's like saying, well, if we're nicer to the people who want to KILL US, then the other people who want to KILL US will like us more. Does that make any sense to you? Do you think Osama [bin Laden] is gonna be more favorably disposed to the U.S. if we give the Guantànamo people lawyers?

E.D. HILL (co-host): No, of course not.

O'REILLY: I mean, but this is what they're saying. It is just -- you just sit there, you go, "They'll never get it until they grab Michael Kinsley out of his little house and they cut his head off." And maybe when the blade sinks in, he'll go, "Perhaps O'Reilly was right."


Perhaps O'Reilly was right? How can we, as a nation, stand for certain freedoms, but consider them to be disposable at our whim? We refer to these as "basic human rights". Our Declaration of Independence calls them "inalienable rights", and that all men were created equal, but apparently Bill O'Reilly thinks that that should read "...all men are created equal as long as they are American citizens".

There are certain rights which non-citizens should not get here, those would be the rights which relate to responsibilities they do not have. For example, I'm in favor of denying social programs (welfare, food stamps, etc) to non-citizens until they have paid some taxes and actually partaken in some of the RESPONSIBILITIES that go hand in hand.

But we don't say in either of the most two important formative documents of this country that people have the right to welfare. We do say that they have right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", and our legal system is set up to make sure that none of these rights is unfairly infringed. We all agree that you can give up these rights if you perpetrate crimes in our society, certainly there's nothing inherently immoral in incarcerating criminals, but we put our legal system in place on the theory that it's better for 10 guilty men to go free than an innocent incorrectly punished.

And yet people like Bill O'Reilly and (it seems) our current Presidential Administration feel that rights are negotiable, and should be suspended whenever they are inconvenient. The Patriot Act. Torture of prisoners. Ever increasing infringements on our own rights. (If you don't believe they are ever increasing, here's one article from The New York Times about a new plan to give the FBI broader powers to track mail.)

How can we possibly expect other nations to respect us, how can we even look at ourselves in the mirror, when we're so quick to throw away the rights which are core to our nations beliefs?

If being against breaking the core values this country was founded upon is a liberal value, then I'll happily accept the label.

Liam.