Join the Conversation
Send your thoughts to Letters to the Editor. Learn more
Over at his blog yesterday Andrew Sullivan posted an incredibly eye-opening indictment of how the rule of law is declining in the U.S.
Number one in his sights? The continued lack of prosecution for people who committed torture in the name of our government.
The piece is almost a must-read. Here's the scathing end of it:
This knowledge tells me one thing. If we are to recover as a nation under law rather than under a prince, it will not be through the channels of the two major parties or through any president acceptable to the mainstream of either party. It will require a citizenry so enraged and protective of its core liberties against this security Leviathan that it compels dismantling this machinery and exposing it to the light of day - not recklessly, not abruptly, but by close examination, judicial review, press inquiry, protest.
There are legitimate trade-offs between national security and liberty. But the protection of war criminals where no secrets are at stake except the scandal of torture itself is not one of them. Alas, there are few such citizens around. And, most tragic of all, those who say they care about liberty above all - the tea-partiers who invoke the founders - seem only too willing to surrender every liberty for the prize of a security against a threat we cannot even measure, and to bow down before a new king (and probably warrior-queen) rather than elect a new president.
Have I been radicalized by this? You betcha. Because this is so plainly not a nation under the rule of law anymore. And there are very few political issues more important than that.