Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Death of American Values?

Eugene Robinson nails the legacy of the Bush Administration:

This, I am convinced, is how future generations will remember George W. Bush: as the president who abandoned our traditional concepts of justice and human rights, choosing instead a program of state-sponsored kidnapping, arbitrary detention and abusive interrogation techniques such as "waterboarding."


Bush has abandoned his oath of office, to "preserve, protect an defend the Constitution of the United States."

Note it doesn't say "homeland." I agree the government has a prime duty to provide for our national defense -- but not by sacrificing our national values of justice and individual freedom. America is above all an idea, a set of values. Bush and others have argued the terrorists hate us because of those values. Ironic, then, that these same leaders would surrender those values in the face of terrorist threats.

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