Study the United States

GUEST: Ralph Paynter, husband of Lynne Stewart, one of America's most important political prisoners, talks about the efforts to get medical treatment for his wife and about her ordeal at the hands of the US criminal justice system.

You want the system to be better than it is. Lynne's conviction was a travesty, and a payback for all those years that she defended Black Panthers, Muslims, radicals, and others that the elites always want to throw in jail and shut up. 

The system is also vindictive, and hardly interested in due process or a defendant's rights for a fair trial. Lynne's treatment by our criminal justice system show how little legitimacy it has left. It is not run by people who believe in justice at all. The police, the courts, and the prison system are forms of oppression, warnings to those who would advocate for the powerless.

The last decade has been particularly damaging to the image of America as a country ruled by law. There were the massive war crimes committed in our invasions of other countries. There was the constant erosion of civil liberties and the rights to privacy. And finally, this lawyer sleeps at night chained to her bed in a small cell, while being denied medical treatment that might save her life. 

These are the travesties we confront when a nation loses its way. In its protection of the rich and powerful against all forms of democratic expression, the machinery of force used to murder and torture abroad has come home to be part of our own lives. 

Study Nazi Germany to understand fascism? Study the United States in the beginning of the 21st century.