The Boston Bombings: What Would the Founding Fathers Do?

Well Ted Nugent is at it again. Despite his claim more than a year ago, that he would either be dead or in jail if Obama won reelection, Nugent is once more spouting off. Most recently he went on a rant in the World Net Daily about the need to “stretch the neck of the jihadist punk” behind the Boston bombings. His column is little more than 650 words of “voodoo” this and “pathetic” that. But basically it boils down to a call for a public lynching of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the remaining alleged Boston bomber. Tsarnaev should be strung up within the next 60 days, Nugent howls. That is justice in Nugent’s universe. But it won’t happen, Ted whines. Why? The aged rocker explains:

“If he’s ever executed, it will be many years from now after our so-called justice system goes through its strange eternal, time-wasting, court-and-lawyer maneuvers from hell.”

“Trials, appeals and maneuvering,” it would appear in Nugent’s world are a “legal charade” and an insult to those killed and terrorized. If unobstructed justice was good enough for the founding fathers Nugent asserts, it should be good enough for us. Who can argue with such stellar logic?

It’s hard to blame Nugent for feeling this way. Surely, the killing of Bostonians in a way that terrorized the entire city and cast a pall over the country screams for the casting aside of legal niceties. What is worse, the suspects are “outsiders” certainly undeserving of our legal protections. No one in their right mind would argue men such as this deserve a strong defense.

No one, expect perhaps our founding fathers.

How do we know this? Because its happened before, in Boston no less.

It was March 5, 1770, the date that would later become known as the Boston massacre. It began with a minor altercation between a British soldier and a Boston wig merchant who was demanding payment from a British officer. The altercation turned into a shoving match, which attracted a crowd. The crowd quickly turned unruly, hurling insults and snow and ice at the soldier. British reinforcements were called, but the eight soldiers who turned out were outnumbered. The situation escalated, someone yelled “fire” and the soldiers unloaded their muskets into the horde. When the smoke cleared, five American citizens lay mortally wounded.

The soldiers were quickly arrested and brought up on charges including murder. Cries for swift and deadly justice were heard throughout Boston. As one can imagine, the soldiers had a hard time securing legal representation.

Into the fray stepped John Adams. Mr. Adams was a young Boston lawyer who knew defending the soldiers could hurt his legal practice, but took the case anyway. Adams deeply believed that all men when charged with a crime deserved a strong legal defense.

The case was brought to court in November of 1770, a full nine months after the massacre. Adams was able to cast doubt upon the prosecution’s case, securing the acquittal of six of the soldiers, yet the remaining defendants were convicted of manslaughter.

Despite his taking the case, or perhaps because of it, Adams became one of the nation’s founding fathers helping to draft the US constitution, the very document that guides our nation to this day. Adams later served as George Washington’s Vice President and succeed Washington as the nation’s second President.

So why did this founding father believe the British soldiers deserved a strong defense? Adams put it this way:

“It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished.

But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, “whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,” and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.”

A strong legal defense is in Adams mind, the cornerstone for creating justice, justice promotes domestic tranquility, which leads to the security for us all.

The Boston Marathon bombings were an attack on America, a strike at our ideals and values. The bombers know they cannot defeat our cause on the battlefield; there only hope for victory is if we voluntarily abandon what is good. Sadly, Ted Nugent appears to have swallowed the Tsarnaev brothers’ bait, advocating for the surrender of what is just.

Thankfully, we have the example of John Adams to guide and remind us what is actually needed to defend a just society from internal and external enemies.

Sean Smith is a student of American history and writes political thrillers such as Unleashing Colter’s Hell. Follow him on Twitter: @parkthrillers or on his blog at: www.seandavidsmith.blogspot.com

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