This I Believe

As a twelve year old boy I have seen my share of identities and I know that beliefs differ from situation to situation. My belief is in justice and fairness,that you are equal to another and that before the law you are the same. That the court shall not act differently upon others depending on their appearance or on beliefs.

The idea of justice comes up in our everyday lives. Some may believe in equality, others don’t. To me I believe in this because sometimes in the eyes of others, race and class deteriorate our chance in court. "We constantly speak of human beings in ways which implicitly deny their humanity - in words which reduce them to being mere representatives of a class, mere symbolic representations of some principle... Most people would hesitate to torture or kill a human being like themselves. But when that human being is spoken of as though he were not a human being, but as the representative of some wicked principle, we lose our scruples." - Aldous Huxley, speech delivered at the Albert Hall, London, 1936.
Speaking of people as if they are not human is just as Hitler did- he made the Jews look like non humans, different from us, with propaganda posters, and cruel advertisements. Emphasizing the idea of ‘different’ and ‘the enemy’ almost to a point that made them look nonhuman so at that time we loose all sympathy and we can let ourselves make those difficult decisions.

What idea that I grasp onto and keep close is that justice is the single greatest act of man today. Having a justice system links back to the middle ages when king Henry ll created judges and put everything under the state, or when the nobles forced King John to sign the Magna Carta saying that everybody was equal before the law. But that idea of justice differs from area to area, person to person. Some people think the law has the right to strip us of our possessions without a word.

I once had a teacher in second grade that I got in trouble with, also with me was her son. We got in trouble because the teacher heard a loud noise in the hall. She took us in and at the time she was the prosecutor, judge & jury. Despite that I was put against her son she looked across that and knew I was innocent. That’s when the light shined on me. I realized that in front of her I was his equal. I had the same chance as he did. The law had seen me through regardless of who I was.

The day we stop believing in law is the day we lose all order and respect towards other people. The law makes everybody equal and says that nobody can be convicted without just cause. I have faith in the idea that we all deserve a chance and that our race or religions shouldn’t influence how we are viewed. I believe in justice.