Understanding freedom

“If you don’t have the freedom to understand, you won’t understand that you are not free.”
— Prem Rawat, speaking in Hamburg, Germany

We have received lessons in the last several years about how far governance through fear can be taken. Hopefully, we’ve learned our lesson. Next election may tell. Judging from past history, the advanced class is really a bummer. I sincerely hope we drop out.

This was made possible of course because of the classes we’ve received in our cities and towns. Fear is an uncomfortable emotion. Governance through fear is an unnatural state that must consistently be re-taught, lest one forget the lesson. The latest example before us is Troy Anthony Davis.

Why has the Georgia board of parole seen fit to ignore the facts, that seven out of nine witnesses against him have recanted, claiming coercion by the authorities, and one of the remaining two implicated Troy to prevent himself from being charged with the crime? Why must his execution go forward at this point when his case has garnered letters of support from Pope Benedict, former President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, The European Union, Senator Carol Moseley-Braun, Congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee, Congressmen John Lewis, Congressman Henry Jackson Jr., Bob Herbert of the New York Times, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, among others, urging that the facts in the case be revisited? That justice may, at long last, be served, since Troy has been in prison since 1991?

No. To question the verdict at this point would be to question the system that gave rise to his sentence, and that would be to trouble the foundation on which we stand. The system requires periodic sacrifices, so that fear, which has become synonymous with order in the minds of its supporters, be maintained. An example, no different in effect than a lynching, must be periodically given, that it does not matter who you are, where you are, what you have done in your life, or if you are guilty or innocent; the power of your life and death is outside your hands in the power of the state, and to this power you must bow.

We make pretty phrases about equality in our laws on paper, and claim we are a nation of law, not of men and women, but we are a society of men and women, and this is how we choose to live: Rush to judgment, sacrifice the innocent to the idea of security, and leave unexamined the unequal nature of our society that leads some, often living in desperation, to perform acts of violence.

The police are our Praetorian Guard defending the gates of our homes, which we’ve mistaken for our freedom, from the barbarian horde in our very midst. Such is our mindset. It is less important therefore that the right person be charged for the crime, than that an assault on the system be avenged. This attitude was certainly on display in the media from the moment the crime occurred, so it is little wonder that it seems to have prevailed all the way through to the parole board hearing.

Now at the eleventh hour, a stay has come. May it allow time to examine facts which I believe will lead to an acquittal of Troy, for I am convinced he is innocent, but more importantly time for us to acquit ourselves, before we commit murder in the name of security again.