The Shredding of Our Fundamental Rights and the Common Good

The Shredding of Our Fundamental Rights and the Common Good


By Noam Chomsky

AlterNet July 10, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/story/156237/noam_chomsky_on_the_shredding_of_our_fundamental_rights_and_the_common_good

Editor's note: This column is adapted from an address
by Noam Chomsky on June 19 at the University of St.
Andrews in Fife, Scotland, as part of its 600th
anniversary celebration.

Recent events trace a threatening trajectory,
sufficiently so that it may be worthwhile to look ahead
a few generations to the millennium anniversary of one
of the great events in the establishment of civil and
human rights: the issuance of Magna Carta, the charter
of English liberties imposed on King John in 1215.







What we do right now, or fail to do, will determine



what kind of world will greet that anniversary. It is



not an attractive prospect - not least because the



Great Charter is being shredded before our eyes.







The first scholarly edition of the Magna Carta was



published in 1759 by the English jurist William



Blackstone, whose work was a source for U.S.



constitutional law. It was entitled "The Great Charter



and the Charter of the Forest," following earlier



practice. Both charters are highly significant today.







The first, the Charter of Liberties, is widely



recognized to be the cornerstone of the fundamental



rights of the English-speaking peoples - or as Winston



Churchill put it more expansively, "the charter of



every self-respecting man at any time in any land."







In 1679 the Charter was enriched by the Habeas Corpus



Act, formally titled "an Act for the better securing



the liberty of the subject, and for prevention of



imprisonment beyond the seas." The modern harsher



version is called "rendition" - imprisonment for the



purpose of torture.







Along with much of English law, the Act was



incorporated into the U.S. Constitution, which affirms



that "the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended"



except in case of rebellion or invasion. In 1961, the



U.S. Supreme Court held that the rights guaranteed by



this Act were "(c)onsidered by the Founders as the



highest safeguard of liberty."







More specifically, the Constitution provides that no



"person (shall) be deprived of life, liberty or



property, without due process of law (and) a speedy and



public trial" by peers.







The Department of Justice has recently explained that



these guarantees are satisfied by internal



deliberations in the executive branch, as Jo Becker and



Scott Shane reported in The New York Times on May 29.



Barack Obama, the constitutional lawyer in the White



House, agreed. King John would have nodded with



satisfaction.







The underlying principle of "presumption of innocence"



has also been given an original interpretation. In the



calculus of the president's "kill list" of terrorists,



"all military-age males in a strike zone" are in effect



counted as combatants "unless there is explicit



intelligence posthumously proving them innocent,"



Becker and Shane summarized. Thus post-assassination



determination of innocence now suffices to maintain the



sacred principle.







This is the merest sample of the dismantling of "the



charter of every self-respecting man."







The companion Charter of the Forest is perhaps even



more pertinent today. It demanded protection of the



commons from external power. The commons were the



source of sustenance for the general population - their



fuel, their food, their construction materials. The



Forest was no wilderness. It was carefully nurtured,



maintained in common, its riches available to all, and



preserved for future generations.







By the 17th century, the Charter of the Forest had



fallen victim to the commodity economy and capitalist



practice and morality. No longer protected for



cooperative care and use, the commons were restricted



to what could not be privatized - a category that



continues to shrink before our eyes.







Last month the World Bank ruled that the mining



multinational Pacific Rim can proceed with its case



against El Salvador for trying to preserve lands and



communities from highly destructive gold mining.



Environmental protection would deprive the company of



future profits, a crime under the rules of the investor



rights regime mislabeled as "free trade."







This is only one example of struggles under way over



much of the world, some with extreme violence, as in



resource-rich eastern Congo, where millions have been



killed in recent years to ensure an ample supply of



minerals for cellphones and other uses, and of course



ample profits.







The dismantling of the Charter of the Forest brought



with it a radical revision of how the commons are



conceived, captured by Garrett Hardin's influential



thesis in 1968 that "Freedom in a commons brings ruin



to us all," the famous "tragedy of the commons": What



is not privately owned will be destroyed by individual



avarice.







The doctrine is not without challenge. Elinor Olstrom



won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in



2009 for her work showing the superiority of



user-managed commons.







But the doctrine has force if we accept its unstated



premise: that humans are blindly driven by what



American workers, at the dawn of the industrial



revolution, called "the New Spirit of the Age, Gain



Wealth forgetting all but Self" - a doctrine they



bitterly condemned as demeaning and destructive, an



assault on the very nature of free people.







Huge efforts have been devoted since to inculcating the



New Spirit of the Age. Major industries are dedicated



to what political economist Thorstein Veblen called



"fabricating wants" - directing people to "the



superficial things" of life, like "fashionable



consumption," in the words of Columbia University



marketing professor Paul Nystrom.







That way people can be atomized, seeking personal gain



alone and diverted from dangerous efforts to think for



themselves, act in concert and challenge authority.







It's unnecessary to dwell on the extreme dangers posed



by one central element of the destruction of the



commons: the reliance on fossil fuels, which courts



global disaster. Details may be debated, but there is



little serious doubt that the problems are all too real



and that the longer we delay in addressing them, the



more awful will be the legacy left to generations to



come. The recent Rio+20 Conference is the latest



effort. Its aspirations were meager, its outcome derisory.







In the lead in confronting the crisis, throughout the



world, are indigenous communities. The strongest stand



has been taken by the one country they govern, Bolivia,



the poorest country in South America and for centuries



a victim of Western destruction of its rich resources.







After the ignominious collapse of the Copenhagen global



climate change summit in 2009, Bolivia organized a



People's Summit with 35,000 participants from 140



countries. The summit called for very sharp reduction



in emissions, and a Universal Declaration on the Rights



of Mother Earth. That is a key demand of indigenous



communities all over the world.







The demand is ridiculed by sophisticated Westerners,



but unless we can acquire some of the sensibility of



the indigenous communities, they are likely to have the



last laugh - a laugh of grim despair.







Noam Chomsky's most recent book is ``Occupy.'' Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at



the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.