How Democracy and Freedom Are Lost

I was watching part of the Star Wars saga last night and there was a scene where the Senate of the Republic votes extraordinary powers to the Chancellor and a comment is made by one of the characters on how democracy dies to the sound of applause. At the time the movie was released there was some commentary that the scene was George Lucas's comment on the Chimperator's regime. If it was, it was an accurate statement as one of Andrew Sullivan's posts today underscored in my opinion. Since 9/11, so much freedom has been lost in this country and the moral standing of the USA has been destroyed and discredited by a regime that lies - pretty much to everyone, both citizens and foreign governments - and now approves torture and conduct that place former Nazis on trial for war crimes. Yet far too many Americans seem to have noticed or, worse yet even cared. It is a very, very sad state of affairs. I am both ashamed of my country and sad that this regime has reduced it so low. Here are some highlights from Andrew's post:

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The manner in which free societies lose their moral compass is always incremental. Step by step by step, certain core values are whittled away. There is rarely a moment at which a government stands up, and asks its people if they wish to abandon such "quaint" notions as the Geneva Conventions, the rule of law, humane interrogation or habeas corpus. These things are abandoned incrementally or secretly, slice by slice, euphemism by euphemism, the chronology always clearer in retrospect than at the time. And each incremental step is always portrayed as a small but essential temporary sacrifice for the sake of security in a time of great and imminent peril.

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We now know, moreover, the following undisputed facts: the president of the United States and his closest advisers devised, orchestrated and monitored interrogation methods banned by the Geneva Conventions at Guantanamo Bay and subsequently in every theater of combat; these techniques were used not only in the extra-legal no-man's land of Guantanamo Bay but also at the prison at Abu Ghraib where photographic evidence of many of the actual techniques explicitly authorized by the president - stress positions, hoods, mock-executions, etc. - was incontrovertible.

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We have also discovered that the president is still insisting that he has the power to violate Geneva at will on a case-by-case basis, rendering the rule of law moot and the Constitution toothless. . . . We no longer have torture as an extreme last resort in the face of a ticking time-bomb; we have authorized it simply "to prevent a threatened terrorist attack." That means any time anywhere by anyone authorized by the government after 9/11, no? And if a foreign government were to use such a standard? What do we say then?

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We also know that the torture and interrogation camp at Guantanamo Bay has become for many of its inmates the functional equivalent of a lunatic asylum. It is not very hard to see why. If you were not crazy before you got there, it will not take long for the abuse and isolation and total hopelessness of the place to get into your head. No one locked up in these conditions has been tried or convicted of anything. . . . These things are continuing for all we know. This is what the United States has become. To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.