The City on the Hill

With the release of the "torture memos", two debates have begun spreading across America. The first is whether the actions by the CIA and other agents acting on behalf of the United States Government should be considered torture. This debate has many legal ramifications and will greatly affect future intelligence gaining operations. It will likely be settled in the judiciary after many long precedings. There are many questions about what constitutes torture and how close we should come to that distinction. Even though this debate has it's share of demagogues and partisan hacks on either side that are more concerned with scoring political points then the truth, it is still a debate that must be had.

Unfortunately, there is another debate that threatens to do even greater harm to what's left of the remnants of America's ideals. The new question that is increasingly being posed is if it is ever alright for the American government to torture. The answer is and should always be emphatically no. It does not matter if these "enemy combatants" are not American citizens or don't fall under the Geneva Conventions. We are America, the shining beacon, the city on the hill, and we should never torture. A human life, no matter how terrible, is still a human life and, at the very least, should be respected. No matter how angry we are for what was done, or how much we hope to prevent by our actions, it is never acceptable to cross that line. We are not our enemies. If we have fallen so far as to question whether we can tolerate torture then it is likely that we have crossed the line past being redeemable.

Furthermore, if supposedly the nation with the best military, technology, and intelligence gathering in the world cannot use the means that it already has (many of them crossing various bounds as well), then how will torturing someone change that? The question is often posed as: "Should the government torture someone if it save 1,000 lives?" Who then should the government have tortured to prevent 9/11 or the first WTC attacks? What do we have left to say that the government cannot do? Another argument is that there are still more memos that prove the effectiveness of these techniques. If any technique is determined to be torture, then that should not even come into play. There is no doubt that when Saddam attacked the Kurds, there were some that had plans against his life. What he did was still wrong. Is that really what we want to become?

Liberty or Safety?

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor, November 11, 1755.


If the last eight years and the next four (eight?) will teach the American people anything, it should be that trading any amount of liberty for some security, no matter how much is promised, is a fool's endeavor. Unfortunately, it appears that the majority is still willing to turn over their liberties at an alarming rate any time some crisis occurs. The safety is no longer just protection from various enemies, both real and imagined, but from every negative aspect of human life. We now expect the government to protect us from being poor, to video games, to lifestyles that we disapprove of. Even when it comes to things that the government is supposed to protect us from, we are all to quick to give up our liberty in the name of "efficiency".

This was never more true then in the aftermath of 9/11 (with the possible exception of WWII). From the President to Congress to the people themselves, there was a cry for action. New departments were created and bills were passed that granted sweeping new police powers to various agencies both Federal and local. When questions were raised about the validity of these new powers, they were brushed aside. These new powers are here to help us! The 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th amendments just get in the way anyways. It's not like the government would abuse this power. Besides, we know that the government never abuses any of its powers.

The same can be said about the government "protecting" us from the woes of the economy. As the Federal Reserve and the Treasury print money, buy up "toxic" assets, and insert themselves more into the "free" market, the claim is that they are only protecting us. They are saving our retirements, or making sure that we can still get credit, or any other number of reasons. Never mind that this is coming at the cost of people paying punitive 90% taxes on their bonuses or the President firing CEOs. Those people aren't us and the government would never ever abuse this kind of power.

Every other thing that the government now "protects" us from has the same consequences. We are too lazy to make sure our children aren't watching t.v. or listening to music or playing video games that we find offensive so we turn to various government agencies to do it for us. We forget that when we give them the power to do this, it is them deciding what's indecent. For one administration that may be a curse word, but for another that may involve the Fairness Doctrine. Every time we secede power to the Federal Government, we are putting our fate in their hands. Even things that seem was benign as "Network Neutrality". We have many that want to turn to the government to protect us from the evil ISPs, but we don't see that it's just a door to regulation of the internet. They would never do that though, right?