Tragically, no less than two-dozen victims of exclusion languish in American jails today for all the wrong reasons and are being denied the due process most Americans take for granted. Those human beings America unjustly deemed "undesirable" are stripped of their human rights and are condemned by America to the margins of freedom. Hundreds of thousands more are judged "suspect" and continue to live the gradual erosion of their civil liberties and potentially their freedoms too. On closer inspection, those people are primarily of the Muslim faith.
Obviously, America is yet to deliver one more time on its mission of inclusion. Not unlike the early outcasts, the American revolutionaries and the African slaves, Muslims in America found their guardians too. Historically, those guardians were the constitutional police and the challengers of the status quo preceding each American revolution. They are initially disdained by the mainstream, and their views barely tolerated. Nevertheless, the undesirables and their guardians were always sent to remind us, as in the past, that our American journey is not over yet. Their presence amongst us today is a sign for America to start moving forward again.
AMERICAN THEORY, UN-AMERICAN PRACTICES
The American ideology was so ahead of its time even its early messengers were unable to embody the uncompromising moral principles or foresee the enormity of its impact on the future of mankind. No where else did the followers outperform the prophets than in America. If our Founding Fathers were present today, they would marvel at their ideological descendants' genius. We have succeed where they seemed to have faltered. And if we were to return back in time, we would be condemned as delusional if we offer a glimpse of the future (our present) to our predecessors.
While ideological revolutions tend to peak at the start and taper off with the coming decades, the American ideological revolution took two centuries in its search for greatness. When juxtaposed with its past, America today bares little resemblance to its unrefined ways of early decades. The transformation is startling.
America had a peculiar love hate relationship with its guiding principle, the Constitution. Americans fought hard to be included and they fought hard to exclude. Today, the American umbrella of opportunity and civil liberties is more inclusive than ever but we still fall short of the ideal we have committed to in our seventeenth century Covenant. It took three revolutions to bring America to where it is today. But one final correction remains to be made and it may take a fourth revolution to widen the umbrella of liberty and opportunity in this global village.
In the absence of our Founding Fathers' guidance, the Guardians of the Covenant today are the visionary radicals, constitutional purists, today's ideological mavericks, and tomorrow's engineers of the new mainstream. Some are victims of the status quo and have little to lose in undermining it, but most break off from the mainstream. No one knows how they are chosen, but every American revolution found its honorable rebels. Their most potent weapon is the chasm America often creates between the status quo and the ideals we had committed to. With each American revolution, that weapon proved the most potent of all.
The first American revolution gave us our independence from tyranny and oppression. Those radical revolutionaries were the first Guardians of the Covenant to undermine the status quo and set the stage for our nation's birth. They were dubbed traitors and rabble-rousers. In the end, they did prevail and America was born.
With the Civil War, the second American revolution commenced. Years before, "radicals" began to hammer at the edges of a complacent America calling for the end of slavery. With time, the anti-slavery minority became the majority and the institution of slavery crumbled.
The third American revolution was brewing in the south. The guardians were already plotting against the status quo. When it was over in third America, no one was to be denied life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Another key pillar of our Covenant was upheld and the stage was set for the fourth and final American revolution.
The incongruities between the practices of the Framers of the Constitution and the wording of the Constitution raises some interesting observations as to the power of the human spirit and its ability to transcend its material surroundings and limitations. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were a clear-cut indictment of the American culture of exclusion then and until the Civil Rights movement began to bear some fruits. The American journey to greatness proves three points: America is not capable of tolerating disparities between ideals and practices for too long; America is capable of transcending its limitations; and when America is given a choice between abandoning ideals or abandoning a comfortable status quo and unfair privileges, America chooses the ideals.
What motivates great men such as Thomas Jefferson to set in motion the dynamics of social and political reforms that one day would undermine the comfortable status quo. Foresight or divine intervention? Maybe both.
THE FOURTH REVOLUTION
Today, the final challenge has arrived. Who will unite America with its ideals once and for all and bring the centuries old journey to closure. Who will be first to dissolve the status quo, turn the mainstream upside-down, and draw the final boundaries of the new mainstream in accordance with America's global responsibility and moral authority. In this era of great American triumphs, one would expect an America at peace with itself to be an America ready to deliver on more promises. No American generation has the right to stop the journey forward. Ours not excepted.
Sadly, with no Evil Empires to train our nuclear guns at, America turned its attention to windmills. We have secured our peace in the world and our place in history but chose to deny others the right to their peace.
Instead of lighting beacons of liberty, we chose free trade and petty parochial interests. In a world which stood patient waiting for America to beat the bear hoping we would turn our attention to their plight, America has yet to deliver. Today we stand in the way between the underdogs and their dreams of liberty. Worse yet, we are actively aborting campaigns of freedom while propping up tyranny and oppression.
Locked behind steels bars in America are the avant-garde of liberty in the Third World. They are the enemies of the status quo where tyranny and oppression have struck roots. Predictably, the American mainstream today is preserving a global status quo that is not essential to our livelihood, but comes at a great cost to the lives of hundreds of millions around the world.
America must not continue to arbitrarily draw a line in the sand as to who is worthy of our Constitutional umbrella and who is less worthy. This arbitrary exclusion is reminiscent of our betrayal of native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and other people America deemed marginal at one point. Their only fault, they looked or acted different.
Today, the Muslims of America are enduring what amounts to a systematic dehumanizing campaign so successful even special laws were crafted by our Congress to "deal" with these undesirables. From the FAA's Airport Passenger Profiling to the FBI and INS's "secret evidence" practices, the boldness of these exclusionary laws and procedures must shock decent Americans into action.
In a display of gross injustice, these Muslims are barred by our laws from sharing the American ideals of liberty and justice with their countrymen across the oceans. Why? It is bad for the status quo. As a result, millions of Muslims languish under occupation, tyranny, and oppression around the world. And when Muslims who sought sanctuary in America hoist the banner of liberty and spread American ideals, they end up behind bars, in America. If you too see the disconnect between the ideals and the practices, then you have guessed correctly. This is a sign of another American transformation in the making.
Are we ready to declare the status quo null and void again? If we are fortunate enough, absolute and universal justice will be fashioned in our lifetime and the transformation will be a tranquil one. It is up to America to expedite the final journey towards fulfilling its elusive promise.
Let us remember that in the age of nations, America is an adolescent
nation. We are still witnesses to an America in its formative years. It
is too early to judge us by our trials and errors. Let us be judged by
our will to surmount our weaknesses and how far we have come.