Back then, conservatives and liberals were equally proud of the system. They taught their children that Constitutional rights were good things and those rights made us different from other countries. In some other countries, we were told, the government could often jail people without proving they were guilty of anything. In some places, people were assumed to be guilty until they proved they were innocent. At that time, we were not taught the underlying assumption that our system was flawed and was failing, and rights needed to be disposed of. Rights were seen as being just, good things.

The attitude that rights are bad things was part of the Reagan revolution. It is my understanding kids are now taught about our Constitutional rights with some negative tongue-in-cheek sarcasm. The message they are given is that Constitutional rights were a sort of "mistake", and that individual rights are a sort of bad things which just allow criminals to go free. Not much emphasis is placed on how rights protect us all from the government, or why we need such protection (e.g. power corrupts, and governments will always tend to use power abusively unless the law prohibits it).

"Truth", at the time I was schooled, was viewed as being something which came out of a fair process of debate in a public setting, based on evidence. That is, it was something which was discovered by openly allowing all parties to present their arguments and evidence from their point of view. Truth is now considered to be something which is simply "known" by the police, and it is simply supposed to be accepted as such because the police are "good, reliable people", and because they have authority. Under conservative reasoning, whatever the police say is true is simply considered to be truth, and the value and validity of court procedures are judged in terms of whether or not the court agrees with the police. This is called authoritarianism. It is a very different way of reasoning from what I was taught as a child, and it is hard for me to get my mind around it. It also is completely at odds with the logic underlying the vast majority of our laws before Reagan.

The authoritarian attitude has become so widely accepted that it led to the Bush presidency, which suggests some large proportion of the people actually believe the Executive branch of the government is not bound by law, and the Executive is the final arbiter of truth. The Executive can do anything it wants, simply because it has the authority. At the local level, the Executive is best represented as the police, and the police are seen as the ultimate arbiters of truth in most communities. Due process is seen as a confusing and ineffective mistake -- a sort of old-fashioned tradition that nobody knows the reason for it or the purpose of it. Constitutional rights are seen as something that simply helps criminals, as if the founders liked criminals or supported crime. Courts are expected to defer to the police version of truth, and they are criticized and hated to the extent that their decisions deviate from the pronouncements and policies of the police.

As children, we were taught that the American system of justice was unique, and was designed to protect citizens from arbitrary and capricious attack by the government. This was all presented in the context of being a contrast to the justice system imposed on Americans by the British and the religion-dominated states before independence and the Constitution. In those systems, individuals had fewer rights, and the criminal justice system was used to silence political dissent and to attack people for religious reasons. We were taught that the fundamental ideas behind the American criminal justice process were these:

1. If the government arrested a person for a crime, the person had the right to ask the court to order the government to release them, because all Americans are free by default, and can't legally be held against their will.

2. If the government didn't want to release them, but wanted to punish them for a crime, then the government had to ask the court to put the person on trial.

3. At the trial, the government had to prove the person was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It had to be exceptionally strong proof, because the government was so much more powerful than the individual to begin with. Also (and very important to your dissatisfaction with the meaning of "not guilty"), it was considered to be more acceptable for a crime to go unpunished than for an innocent person to be wrongly convicted, or to be convicted for religious reasons or for political speech.

4. Until the government's proof was accepted by a jury and the court found the person guilty, the person was presumed innocent.

5. If the jury found the person not guilty, then the presumption of innocence was never dropped or discarded. It remained the official presumption about the person.

We were taught that this was the beauty of our Constitutional rights, and we were proud. Americans are innocent until proven otherwise. We are assumed to be good people. If the government attempts to prove otherwise and fails, then we remain innocent. Americans are innocent unless they are found guilty in a court by a jury (or otherwise if they agree to it). That is our Constitutional birthright.

Conservatives present this process as being unacceptably flawed because they say it is possible for criminals to go free under when these restraints are placed on government. They think it is more important to be certain that every crime is severely punished than it is to be sure that innocent people are not convicted. They think the only way to be sure that all crime is punished is to do away with our rights and the presumption of innocence. They believe if we just select the right people to be the authorities, and we take measures to be sure that the authorities are "good people", then we shouldn't ever question what they do. We should just allow them to imprison or otherwise punish anyone they want without question. That way, they reason, we will be safe from criminals. They think it is more important to guarantee that every crime is punished than it is to guarantee that innocent people are not wrongly accused and punished, and that the authorities cannot use their power to imprison and punish people for reasons other than violation of laws. They see the threat of crime as being more of a threat than the threat of authorities who have absolute power.

The truth for me is that we cannot be sure every crime is punished. At some point, there is a balance between the risk of being victimized by crime and the risk of being victimized by government. When people are given power, and they do not have to answer for their actions, nor do they have to explain or justify their actions, then they slowly begin abuse that power. It is only natural.

So, when you say there are people who are found "not guilty" who actually did something wrong, I don't disagree. The difference between me and most people nowadays is that I don't see that as being a major problem. That is, the risk and damage that results from that miscarriage of justice is not worth giving up our rights for. I see scores of men who have spent decades in prisons who were innocent, but who were convicted because of the conservative attitudes which govern our criminal justice system. I think we are ultimately safer with a few criminals escaping punishment in some situations than we are with a government which has no restraints on its power. Criminals who lie can eventually be caught. I can run from or protect myself from criminals. I am powerless against the government. They are a much bigger threat. Governments with no restraint are very hard to stop. There are many opportunities and many ways to eventually stop a criminal.