Polly Dogood

Upon the Return of the Redcoats

Wherein the Author finds the Grievances of 1776 newly in Print, and asks who is paying the Printer.

To the Readers of this Publick Blog,

I have been reading the Declaration of Independence again. I recommend it. It is shorter than you remember, and most of it is not the famous Part. Most of it is a List: a long, angry, particular List of the Things King George had done to the People of these Colonies. I had always read it as History. This Week I read it as the Newspaper.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

We have them again. They come in Masks now, with no Names upon their Coats, and they come into our Neighborhoods, our Courthouses and our Parking Lots, and they take People away.

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury.

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.

We do that too. We have simply grown impatient with the Trial.

In my Grandmothers' Boston, in 1761, a Lawyer named James Otis stood up in Court against the Writs of Assistance, the general Warrants that let the King's Officers search any House they pleased, for any Reason or none. Mr. John Adams was in the Room, and wrote long afterward that then and there the Child Independence was born. That Child grew up to be the Fourth Amendment. I should not like to see it put out of the House.

I am told, by the more patient Gentlemen in my Correspondence, that I am being dramatic, because these are Immigrants, and Immigration is a Matter apart.

It is not a Matter apart. It is the Matter.

Read the Fifth Amendment. It does not say that no Citizen shall be deprived of Life, Liberty, or Property without due Process of Law. It says no Person. The Framers knew the Word Citizen; they used it elsewhere in the very same Document. Here they chose Person, and our Supreme Court has held for well over a Century that they meant it: in 1886, in 1896, and again in 1982. The Bill of Rights is not a Membership Card. It is a Fence around the Government, and it keeps the Government out of everyone's Yard, or it keeps it out of no one's.

For here is the Thing I most want my Readers to understand. A Right that may be taken from one Person is not a Right. It is a Permission. And Permissions, as every Child and every Colonist learns, may be withdrawn by whoever granted them, whenever he likes, from whomever he chooses next.

The Gentlemen reply that these People broke the Law. Suppose some did. It makes no Difference, whatever Wrong they may have committed. Due Process is not a Reward for Innocence; it is how a free People finds out who is innocent. A Right extended only to those who have done no Wrong is no Right at all, for the whole Point of a Trial is that we do not yet know.

And as it happens, most did not break the Law in the Sense the Gentlemen mean. To be in the Country without the proper Papers is, for most, a civil Matter, like an unpaid Fine, not a Crime. And because it is civil, the Accused has no Right to a Lawyer at the Publick's Expense. So we have arrived at this: a Person may be seized by armed Men, held for Months, and carried out of the Country, with fewer Protections than a Boy caught stealing Apples. In 1776 we had a Word for that. We put it in the List.

I will be fair, because I promised to be. My own Grandpapa Franklin, in 1751, complained that the Germans then crowding into Pennsylvania were "Palatine Boors" who would never learn English. He was wrong. Their Grandchildren built half the Commonwealth. Great Men can be wrong about Immigrants, and Great Men can learn. And I will say plainly that a President of the other Party deported more People than any before him, and I had Words for him too. A Right does not become less of a Right because the Man trampling it belongs to the Party you prefer.

❦   ❦   ❦

Now, whom to blame.

Not the Man at the Door. He is the Redcoat of our Day, and the Redcoats, I will remind you, were mostly poor Men a long way from Home, doing as they were told. The Blame belongs to those with the Power to change the Orders, and to those whose Duty was to check that Power, and who have not.

The Constitution gave Congress the Purse, and the Power to investigate, and the Power to say No. This Congress has said Yes, and then gone home. They have already done Nothing. Why, they have done more Nothing than nearly any Congress before them, the famous Do-Nothing Congress included, unless you count their tragic Billionaires' Bill as Something. But even then, that is still worse than Nothing to most. That Bill, I would add, is the very one that bought the Swarms of Officers, some Seventy-five Billion Dollars for ICE, while the Congressional Budget Office reckoned it would leave the poorest Households poorer and the richest richer. That is not Oversight. That is a Subscription.

And here I must speak of Mrs. Collins of Maine, because she is on the Ballot, and because she is the best Example I know of how a pleasant Senator can do great Harm without ever casting the deciding Vote.

A Vote for Mrs. Collins is a Vote for the Majority she sits with, whether she votes Yea or Nay. She voted Nay on Mr. Hegseth, and he was confirmed. She voted Nay on the Bill that bought ICE its Swarms of Officers, and it passed. Her Nay is simply a Decoration disguised as Disdain. It is her Seat that counts, for her Seat chooses the Leader, the Chairmen of every Committee, what comes to the Floor, and whether anyone shall be compelled to answer under Oath. So far, that Majority has shown no great Appetite for compelling anyone to answer for anything. Not for what we pay the Grocer, which is more. Not for what we pay for Coal and Lamp-oil, which is more. And not for the dearest Price of all, which some among us have paid with their Lives. The Bill keeps coming, and no one is ever asked to explain it.

I do not doubt that Mrs. Collins knows better. That is my Complaint. A Tavern-keeper who knows a Man is drunk, and pours him another because he asked politely, bears more of the Blame than the Drunkard. The Drunkard, at least, is not in his right Mind.

And lest I be accused of partiality: were a Democrat to sit with a Majority that did all this, and vote Nay in the same mild Voice while keeping it in Power, I would write the same Letter, and spell her Name just as carefully.

Last, a Word about Remedies, since I have spent a Letter comparing our Government to the one we fought a War to be rid of. I do not want a War. Nor did the Founders want one for us. They fought theirs precisely so that we should never need Muskets again. They left us better Weapons: the Ballot, the Jury, the Courts, a free Press, and a Congress with the Power of the Purse. The Redcoats never had to answer to any of those. Ours do, if we will make them.

So use them. Write, call, march if you like, testify, sit on the Jury when you are called. And on Tuesday the 3rd of November, vote, and remember that you are not voting for the pleasant Person on the Ballot. You are voting for the Majority behind her, and for every Right that Majority has decided is merely a Permission.

P.S. My Grandmother Silence wrote that without Freedom of Speech there can be no publick Liberty. I would add that without due Process there is no private Liberty either. There is only the Hope that no one has noticed you yet.