Wednesday, October 30, 2002

Thank You Canada       The Canadian government issued a travel warning today, telling Canadian citizens that if they were born in certain Arab countries that they should avoid travel to the U.S., because they are likely to be mistreated by American authorities.   It is really refreshing in this age of fear and hypocrisy to have a government say something honest.   Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham said “Canadian citizens are Canadian citizens and both the United States and Canada are countries that are multicultural in nature and based on immigration.”   As a result, he refused to countenance a police state where some citizens are more equal than others, where some citizens risk detention, deportation, or arbitrary arrest, and other citizens go unchallenged.  Last month the U.S. took a Canadian citizen born in Syria, who was simply changing planes in New York, and refused to allow him to travel on to Canada, but sent him back to Syria.   In the same way that Jews learned that it was dangerous to travel in Nazi Germany before the war, Canadians of Arab descent, if they were born overseas, are learning that they can be arrested and detained in the U.S. because of their race.   In a typically Canadian approach to the dangers of arbitrary arrest and detention in foreign countries, the government has advised its citizens not to risk travel to the dangerous areas.  Thus the U.S. joins such wonderful places as Iran, Yemen, and parts of Indonesia, where travel has become too dangerous for certain people.   Although there is humor in the U.S. being hoisted by its own petard, the sad fact is that this is another example of the creeping totalitarianism we are experiencing in our daily lives.   Our country is based two ideas whose roots are hundreds of years old.  One is that all citizens are equal before the law.  The illegal detentions without charges or access to the courts single out some citizens for arbitrary arrest in a way that strips them of rights guaranteed all citizens under the bill of rights and the constitution.  The second, more modern principle is one of racial equality, that government decisions such as whom to arrest, to execute, to keep under surveillance or to reward cannot be made on the basis of race.    Many 20th century writers confronted the rise of fascism and dwelt on the phenomenon of diminishing freedoms, as more and more groups were first marginalized as outsiders, and then arrested as enemies of the state.  This is now happening here.  But of all the writers, sixteenth century John Dunne said it best, with his poem, part of a larger meditation.   “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."   Our freedoms are diminished as our government singles out groups for totalitarian treatment.  We must not allow citizens to be marginalized, whether Canadian or American.  It is time to literally fight for our freedoms if we are to preserve them. 11:15:17 PM   comment []

© Copyright 2002 Toby Sackton. Last update: 12/26/2002; 9:30:57 PM.