http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2016/images/lawyerswithoutrights.jpg Donald Trump and his allies have announced their agenda. It includes torture, denial of basic human rights, military action that violates the laws of war, racial injustice, misogyny, and xenophobia. What role and responsibility do we have? I am a lawyer, teacher, and writer. So I speak to those in my profession and those preparing to enter it. To repeat: don't mourn, organize. Some of my friends are saying, "Well, Trump and Co. will soon calm down, so I don't think we need to worry. After all, his rhetoric has already improved." Reminds me of Alexander Pope: "Vice is a monster of so frightful mien / As, to be hated, needs but to be seen; / Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, / We first endure, then pity, then embrace". . . . So lesson number one is: Those who do not understand history are condemned to repeat it, and the lessons grow more severe with each repetition. Over the past 50 years, I have litigated human rights violations. The violators have fought back with an ever-expanding list of legal devices that deny access to judicial review. These devices have been devised and used by every presidential administration of my adult lifetime -- Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama. As we prepare to defend human rights, we already know what our opponent looks like. We have met him again and again. From the cold war ideology that brought us Vietnam through the interventionist policies of the 1980s and 1990s, and now into the perpetual battle for oil and treasure in the Middle East, we have learned what Hedy West taught us: "We'll be controlled by manipulated fear."

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