I believe in human decency.
I believe that there is a moral obligation to be decent to other human beings, even when there is no legal one. And I believe this obligation falls with special weight on those in power. Those who have the power to make the lives of others miserable...or not...face an especially weighty moral responsibility to embody basic human decency as they exercise that power.
This moral obligation extends even to people who can do nothing for them: people who can't vote for them or won't vote for them, for example. It extends, for example, to immigrants, even to those who do not have proper visa or residency status, and to people who in other ways violate our laws.
We can uphold our laws without being indecent. And we should uphold our laws without being indecent.
If elected officials and their agents, tasked with upholding the laws of the land, can do so in ways that show human decency and in ways that don't, they ought to choose the former even if the latter is not illegal. And if they choose the latter, we should call them out for their indecency and insist they do better.
If they refuse, remember: they are our employees. As citizens and voters, we have both the right and the obligation to fire them.
I believe in due process and our legal system's presumption of innocence.
Every fair system of justice aims to prevent the wrongful conviction of the innocent even as it aims to apprehend and convict the guilty. Due process, in which an impartial system weighs evidence of guilt, is essential for achieving these aims.
The presumption of innocence--and the related requirement to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt--exists in part because we view the wrongful conviction of the innocent as a graver error than inadvertently acquitting the guilty.
But there is another reason for this presumption: it constrains would-be abusers of political power. It is a bedrock feature of a free society, because it prevents those in power from using the justice system as a tool to terrorize and punish political critics and opponents.
This is why we should always be on guard against efforts by those in power to circumvent due process. Leaders who look for and try to exploit loopholes in due process requirements may be motivated by a sincere desire to efficiently protect the public. And the loopholes they claim to have found may be real and mean that their actions don't technically violate any law.
But even when we think this is true we ought to regard such moves with suspicion, and we should look with scepticism at the purported loophole. If we don't, then at best we set a dangerous precedent, and at worst we facilitate the efforts of would-be tyrants.
A variant on the due process norms that guide criminal justice should be in play when it comes to deporting noncitizens. It is true that those who are in this country illegally do not have the same due process rights as citizens and legal residents, especially when it comes to removal from the country. And even for legal nonresidents, deportation to their country of origin does not require the same level of due process protection as is required for criminal punishment. This makes some sense, since being returned to one's country of origin is usually (but not always) a less costly burden for an innocent person to bear than is criminal punishment.
But even with the deportation of nonresidents, whether here legally or not, any effort to bypass due process altogether is something we should be deeply wary of. Partly this is for their sakes: we shouldn't needlessly disrupt the lives and activities of those who are here legally and doing nothing wrong.
But at least as important is the following fact: due process is how we make sure that those being deported are not citizens or permanent legal residents who have been misidentified.
Due process is how we make sure that American citizens and legal residents aren't deported to an entirely alien place with no family or friends and nothing but the clothes on their backs (or worse, to some foreign prison)--either because of some tragic mistake or because of someone's misuse of power.
I believe in empathy.
By this I mean the practice of putting oneself in the position of others, to imagine what it feels like to be them.
Humans beings are limited creatures and we get things wrong, so we often fail to accurately imagine what another's situation is like. But if we consistently strive to listen to others with compassionate attention, we can get better at it.
More seriously, we are often limited in the scope of our empathy: it extends to some people but not others. We empathize spontaneously with people who are "like us" but fail to empathize with those who are different. We empathize with "us" but not "them."
This is not a reason to be suspicious of empathy but to be suspicious of its selective, tribal application. It is a reason to call for more empathy rather than less, a reason to practice empathy in contexts of diversity, a reason to aspire to cultivate our capacity for and disposition towards empathy such that it is stronger than our tribalism.
I believe in freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.
Our nation's founders wrote protection of both into our constitution, in the very first amendment of the Bill of Rights, because they are foundational for a free society.
The right to free speech does not mean that everyone has the duty to offer their platform or their microphone. Part of free speech is the right to decide what to do with your platform and your microphone--who to lend it to, and who not to lend it to.
So what does it mean? Above all, it means the government should not prohibit or punish mere speech, even speech that is deeply unpopular, and should not prohibit nonviolent assembly, even when it involves unpopular messages.
A nation that cares about free speech does not seek to dole out as little of it as possible or look for legal loopholes that can be exploited to create fear of speaking honestly about what we think. It does not target those who can be legally targeted for their speech (such as by using political expression as a basis for granting, withholding, or revoking the visas of foreign nationals) in order to create fear, fear that if we express opinions unpopular among those in power then they may find a way to target us, too.
I believe in the rule of law.
The rule of law contrasts most clearly with the rule of an autocrat. Under the rule of an autocrat, the "law" is identical to the will of an individual. That person's will might follow an inner moral compass and so have a law-like character, but there is no guarantee of this. Instead, the autocrat might make decisions based on whim or self interest.
Under the rule of law, there is a clear public code, and all people in society can count on being treated in accordance with this code, whatever the whims or interests of those in power might be.
No one is above the law, no matter how rich or powerful.
And no member of society is excluded from the protections of the law.
The rule of law affirms equality under the law.
Under the rule of law, laws might change, but they do so in accord with a public deliberative process designed to preserve stability and predictability. People can *count* on the law. People should not be afraid that their law-abiding behavior today will be retroactively declared illegal, or that legal agreements they base decisions on will suddenly be dissolved.
Under the rule of law, no one who abides by the law is arbitrarily stripped of rights or liberties available to others; and anyone accused of violating the law is given due process in the form of fair trials based on evidence.
This is not an exhaustive account of what the rule of law means, but it offers some highlights.
Every society has fallen short in one way or another of fully living up to these ideals. But I believe the justice of a society is a function of how much it strives to live up to these ideals, and how well it success in doing so.
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