|Freedom| = -Torture
We talk about freedoms that relate to the digital world. We complain when DRM makes download music less valuable then music from a CD. We don’t want to have to face interrogation and harassment when we board a flight.
…But we really don’t want to be tortured.
Despite never delivering an applause-generating one-liner, McCain delivered the only sensible answer to Fox News’ ridiculous question. A government that suffers torture, let alone one that practices it, is a government that has lost all moral authority. All of our freedoms are rendered meaningless if we can be whisked away and held indefinitely without trial.
Of course, the Supreme Court could put an end to this tomorrow if they wanted to. Currently, the US Government’s Constitution doesn’t apply on land that is rented. By that same logic, I could make crystal meth if I rented a house in Mexico. US law applies to US citizens everywhere in the world. The same should be true of the US government.
The fact that we’re even debating torture is a giant step backwards. Anyone who suggests that we should expand the shameful and criminal program at Guantanamo Bay should be shunned as a fascist.
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Have you listened to the “This American Life” on Guantanamo? You really need to. It just one a Peabody, for what that’s worth.
It’s hard to tell with the sound quality, but are those people clapping?! This looks like a satirical game show of the future, in which politicians express how we should eat the elderly and burn the homeless for fuel while gang-raping the children of our enemies. That’s scary.
People in the US really take our current system for granted, and don’t realize that it’s only diligence and will that keeps us from falling into tyranny. Listening to the crowd respond to that speech sounds just like listening to a speech by der Führer.