The first of the three that I recommend is Tram Nguyen’s post excerpted here:

Tram Nguyen: Beyond Guantanamo – Politics on The Huffington Post
If Americans did understand the stakes, we’d realize that the civil liberties debate isn’t only about the right to privacy and dissent and other good things citizens enjoy, but the integrity of the Constitution and the human rights of all persons under its jurisdiction.

One of the things I most appreciate about her analysis is that she makes connections that escape most writers on these subjects. In this case she does a fine job of connecting the dots between constitutional issues related to both the debate around illegal immigrants and detainees at Guantanamo.

Of the other two posts, one is an excerpt from The Genius of America: How the Constitution Saved our Country and Why It Can Again, by Eric Lane and Michael Oreskes. On the basis of the excerpt alone, I can recommend it as an important contribution to public awareness and conversations about the Constitution. (And there’s a handy link to Amazon.com on the right of this page, to order it sooner rather than later.)

The third post is a commentary on The Genius of America: How the Constitution Saved our Country and Why It Can Again by Larry Sabato, who also has a book out about the Constitution: A More Perfect Constitution. If anyone needs to be shaken into understanding the necessity of paying attention to these books and conversations, some of Sabato’s statistics ought to do the job:

A survey of teenagers conducted by the National Constitution Center found that while 71 percent could name the first three letters of any Web address (www), just 35 percent knew the first three stirring words of the Constitution, We the People. A Zogby International poll revealed that the “Three Stooges” can be named by 78 percent of Americans, while just 42 percent knew the names of the three constitutional branches of government.

Buy the books, engage discussion, and remember to connect the dots back to state and local levels. We can’t count on a top-down flow of governmental transparency and accountability anymore than “trickle down” economics worked to improve the lot of working people and the economy in general. Justice needs to begin in our own back yards and spread out from there.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen