- Fein and Nader
Bruce Fein, ’72, and Ralph Nader, ’58, spoke Wednesday at noon at this year’s Forum entitled “America’s Lawless Empire: The Constitutional Crimes of Bush and Obama.”
In his address, Nader called for law students to act to protect the Constitution. “You speak with moral authority to working lawyers and faculty and judges,” he said to attending law students, “You may not know that. But when, in the past, law students put up petitions and proclamations, the rest of the profession knew that those were heartfelt expressions of idealism. They knew that the law students did not have a commericial retainer to motivate them. They knew the law students did not have an axe to grind. And that’s why they knew the law students had moral authority. And you can communicate with tens of thousands of law students, free, over the Internet, which we did not have. And you can mount a movement to restore constitutional practices and the greatest idea of Western civilization, which is due process. Go for it.”
Fein and Nader both criticized President Barak Obama for signing the National Defense Authorization Act. “We are living under a national security state,” Fein said, “All of our rights are at the whim of the President.”
- Fein speaking
Nader echoed that sentiment in his address. “We are two major terrorist strikes away from a police state, the likes of which we will never be able to imagine,” he said.
“It is not an option in a democracy to be a spectator,” Fein said, calling for attendees to act to repeal NDAA, “We have a moral obligation to use our eyes and ears to be a check on the government.”
Nader was also highly critical of Obama:”There are well over 300,000 Americans who die from preventable causes and certainly should reside under the definition of national security that aren’t even part of a single dialogue in any political campaign of the major parties. They are not the preoccupation of Barack Obama, who has spent more time figuring out how to kill a suspected terrorist overseas in his briefings every morning than he has spent on all of these preventable American deaths.”
- Nader and Fein answering questions
- Event attendee
- Fein answering question from an attendee
The NDAA only goes to further stifle our Constitutional Rights without the approval of the Americans, just as the Patriot Act was adopted WITHOUT public approval or vote just weeks after the events of 9/11. A mere 3 criminal charges of terrorism a year are attributed to this act, which is mainly used for no-knock raids leading to drug-related arrests without proper cause for search and seizure. The laws are simply a means to spy on our own citizens and to detain and torture dissidents without trial or a right to council. You can read much more about living in this Orwellian society of fear and see my visual response to these measures on my artist’s blog at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2011/09/living-in-society-of-fear-ten-years.html
I think you have the ages of the two reversed!
The numbers beside their names are a reference to the year they graduated Harvard Law.
President of the National Lawyers Guild got it right.
‘NLG condemns NDAA provisions on indefinite detention’,
http://www.nlg.org/news/announcements/nlg-condemns-ndaa-provisions/
As the country seeks to redefine itself on civil liberties among other places in society, these debates and presentations are necessary for people to form an opinion and see viewpoints from different angles. Ralph Nader the famous consumer advocate and Bruce Fein a constitutional lawyer both vigorously defend civil liberties and seeing them whether you agree with them or not will help people is sure to spark interest in the subject.
http://www.legalfunding.com