Suppose you were stuck in a small boat in shark-infested waters, together with a man who hates you and intends to kill you if he can. What will you do? Of all the strategies you might come up with to save yourself, probably your first choice would not be to sink the boat.

The attempted terrorist attack on Northwest Airlines flight 253 this past Christmas day has set off a fresh round of calls for the United States government to deny criminal rights and judicial due process to terrorists. Such calls intimate that any regard for the rights of a man like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is a form of leniency, and that inasmuch as terrorists deserve no leniency, their rights ought to be withheld. In other words, say those who make such assertions, let's get him by sinking the boat.

It is axiomatic in America that when we protect the rights of individuals, including heinous criminals, we do so not for the sake of the criminal only, but for the sake of all. The reading of the Miranda Rights to some thug is nothing less than a declaration, that we too would have our Miranda rights read to us if we were arrested. The point isn't that the thug has rights, although he does and that matters too. No, the main point is that we have rights and we would keep them, and we make sure of it by making sure that the thug has his. If the thug's rights are jeopardized, we say, then so are ours.

We exhort other nations to respect these same rights. We aspire to export the American Way to all

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people, firm in the belief that it will make the world a better place. But see how when we arrest a foreigner for terrorism, immediately we hear the cries to deny him rights because he is not an American. We give the lie to our proselytizing. We reduce a mighty egalitarian idea to the stature of a property deed.

Is this just another case of far-left idle whimsy? The 13,000 people arrested after Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus wouldn't think so. The 120,000 Japanese-Americans incarcerated without charge during World War II wouldn't think so. All of us who were, or are, or may have been, or might yet be spied on without warrant under the so-called Patriot Act shouldn't think so.

The call for the abridgement of the rights of the worst criminals is a first step in a journey that ultimately ends in vigilante justice. It is the philosophy of those who would order society according to their individualistic ideas, by any means necessary. For violent attempts to put precisely this philosophy into practice, John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcom X, and Harvey Milk and Matthew Shepard all paid the price.

This is basic high-school civics, so how is it that ostensibly mature, well-educated men with long careers in law and government could get it so wrong? Is it political pandering? Base self-aggrandizement? Simple stupidity? Puerile emotionalism? Probably it's some or all of each. Which category do the recent assertions by Tom Ridge fall under? Or Dick Cheney? Or Pat Buchanan? Or Newt Gingrich?

Does it seem a stretch to speak of such luminaries almost in the same breath as with the likes of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab? Perhaps, but such is the breadth of human behavior and opinion. If we are to have a system of justice that endures, it must be capable of spanning that same distance. After "Justice with mercy," the most important words in our judicial system ought to be "no exceptions."

It is disappointing that so many of today's conservative leaders, most of whom spent the majority of their careers in the employ of the American people, should harbor misconceptions so inimical to a democratic political philosophy, never mind to a love and respect for the American Way.

Chris Mills lives in Groton with his wife. He has three adult children. Chris welcomes reader feedback at cmills@gis.net