The post Rule of Law America

Glenn Greenwald provides a succinct description of the depths that America has sunk to under the Bush administration and where it will remain if McCain is elected to extend Bush's presidency to a third term.

What we've done over the last seven years -- at least much of it -- isn't a secret. It's worthwhile to state frequently in clear, dispassionate terms what our country has done. Our Government has kidnapped people off the street and from their homes and sent them to places like Syria to be tortured for months (including completely innocent people) and then invoked National Security claims to bar them from holding our Government accountable in a court of law. We've disappeared others into secret prisons beyond even the reach of the Red Cross, or encaged them in a lawless black hole on a Cuban island. We've tortured them, sometimes to death, even with the knowledge that many were innocent. We attacked and completely demolished another country that couldn't attack us even if it wanted to. And our President openly declared that he has the power to break our laws, spy on U.S. citizens with no warrants, and indefinitely imprison even our own citizens with no process of any kind. Those are all just facts that aren't really subject to dispute or debate.

Worst of all, having done all of that -- not for weeks or months following the 9/11 attacks, but for years, still -- we've collectively decided, without much turmoil or debate, that it should all be forgiven, that none of it should be punished or even investigated, that it's best just to keep these crimes concealed and, when accidentally disclosed, to immunize the criminals. And all of that is being done right out in the open, so that our formal human rights reports are self-evident, almost laughable, farces, and even countries like Zimbabwe, when their governments want to engage in tyrannical acts, can and do rationally point to the U.S. as the leading example which they're following.

It's difficult to reconcile what teachers say is America's Constitutional Democracy with this shocking new America, this product of the century of war (also known as the twentieth century.) This new America has taken its form from the Reagan Revolution and the conservative movement.

The nation, looking back at the "glory" of WW II, began to try to solve every social problem with some form of war and military or police government discipline. As it has done so, the American Constitution has been shredded like a flag in a hurricane.

Is it too late to try to resurrect the America of the Founding Fathers who felt that the American Revolution had created a nation based on the sovereignty of the people instead of the sovereignty of tyrants and offered the American ideal to the world as a demonstration of how a great nation should be run? Has the spark from 1776 died away in a new tyranny? Is Liberty dead?

Because that is what is really meant when people say that "America has moved to the right."