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Sometimes what happens in a foreign country holds valuable lessons for the American people. The current, developing situation in Venezuela provides an excellent example of this point.
Like modern-day United States, the governmental system in Venezuela consists of a president, a congress, a judiciary, and a massive, permanent military-intelligence establishment that wields omnipotent powers over the citizenry.
Recently, a presidential election was held. The government’s national election commission declared incumbent president Nicolás Maduro, a self-avowed socialist whose economic polices have devastated the country, to be the winner. The country’s supreme court confirmed that decision.
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However, both of these entities are controlled by Maduro. Supporters of the opposition candidate, Edmundo González, produced tally sheets from around 70 percent of the voting stations showing that he actually won the election by about a 2-1 margin. For his part, Maduro has steadfastly refused to produce the tally sheets for the remaining voting stations.
Massive protests have broken out in the streets demanding that Maduro leave office. He has responded with a severe crackdown that has been enforced by his all-powerful and loyal national-security establishment. Around 2,000 innocent people have been arrested and incarcerated. Most likely, many of them are being tortured because, just like here in the United States, the military-intelligence establishment wields the power to torture people. An arrest warrant was issued for González, which caused him to flee to Spain to avoid arrest, incarceration, and probably severe torture.
One might say that such things could never happen here in the United States. But our American ancestors certainly believed that they could. That’s why they installed protections for the American people within the Constitution itself and, later, in the Bill of Rights. If they hadn’t believed that such a danger existed, they wouldn’t have seen the need to do so. Moreover, let’s not forget that the U.S. national-security establishment has fully supported the type of thing that is happening in Venezuela when it has been done by right-wing military-intelligence regimes. Chile under right-wing Gen. Augusto Pinochet comes to mind. Given the conviction of U.S. national-security officials that what Pinochet did was correct, there is no reason to believe that they wouldn’t do the same thing here if they felt that circumstances called for it.
Consider habeas corpus, which was enshrined in the Constitution and which has been called the “lynchpin” of a free society. When the government takes someone into custody, he or she has the right to file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. If it’s filed in federal court, a federal judge issues an order to the government official who is holding the person, commanding him to immediately produce the person in his court. If the official refuses, the judge issues an arrest warrant that is executed by a team of deputy U.S. Marshalls. Once the detained person is produced, the government is required to show cause why he or she is being detained. If no proof or justification is produced, the judge orders the release of the person. The detained person walks out of the courtroom a free man or woman.
There is one exception, however, to this principle. It’s not an exception provided in the Constitution. It’s a practical exception, one that unfortunately weakens the protection and makes the situation here in the United States similar to that in Venezuela. The federal judiciary are loathe to enforce habeas corpus against the Pentagon and the CIA, given the supremacy of the national-security branch within the federal governmental structure. This was exemplified in the case of a man named Jose Padilla, a terrorism suspect who was being held by the U.S. military. The federal courts declined to intervene, given the overwhelming power of the military-intelligence establishment in modern-day America. It has also been demonstrated in the case of the Pentagon’s and CIA’s torture and indefinite-detention prison at Guantanamo Bay, where people have been incarcerated without trial for as long as 20 years, notwithstanding the speedy-trial and trial-by-jury requirements enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
The greatest thing our ancestors did for us, after the Constitution was enacted, was enshrine the right to keep and bear arms in the Second Amendment. The reason they did that was that they recognized that what is happening in Venezuela today could happen here. They wanted to ensure that the American people, should the need arise, would have the ability to resist tyranny and tyrants through force of arms.
Consider the Venezuelans. They are in a totally different position. They have no guns by which to resist the tyranny under which they suffer. That’s because a strict nationwide system of gun control was enacted some years ago. Venezuelan citizens were required to turn in their guns. The rationale was that this would keep them “safe.” Thus, the Venezuelan people now lack the means by which to be kept safe from their own tyrants. When the government goons today come knocking on their doors (or bashing them down) in the middle of the night to cart them away or when the goons fire on or arrest peaceful protestors, the only thing people can do is submit and obey orders or, maybe, fight back with sticks. They can’t fire back because they don’t have the guns to do that.
Thanks to our American ancestors and thanks to the Second Amendment, that problem doesn’t apply to the American people. If Americans were ever faced with the tyranny that the Venezuelan people are facing, they would have an alternative — fight back with guns. That’s because a very large segment of the American populace is well-armed. In fact, the massive gun ownership of the American people actually serves as an insurance policy because U.S. officials have to be careful not to go too far when it comes to tyranny. Maduro and his goons don’t have to be so careful because they know that the Venezuelan people lack the guns to resist their tyranny.
Current events in Venezuela are showing Americans the wisdom of the Framers and our American ancestors, to a limited extent with respect to habeas corpus but to a much greater extent with respect to the Second Amendment.