I Used to Be Smart.

I can’t say whether I was listening to conservative talk radio on purpose, or just in passing. However, there was no missing the intent of the loud man screaming at me. He was billed as the only man in America who “gets it,” and he was screaming from my speakers: “IF ONE AMERICAN, ONE AMERICAN CAN BE SAVED BY WATERBOARDING, WOULD YOU OPPOSE IT?!?!?!”

I know that he thought his question was rhetorical, and I know that he thought he had phrased his question in such a way as to make dissent impossible, and I know that he was just a disembodied voice traveling over radio frequency to my speakers as part of a diatribe, I had to answer him.

Yes.

If waterboarding — if any torture could save even a single American, I would still be opposed to it. Even if he could have objectively proved to me that waterboarding had saved some specific American life, I would still oppose it.

Why?

There’s an artist I like. I’m sure I’ve never professed my love for his music before, so this will come as a total shock, but Bruce Springsteen can condense it far better than than I can.

That you know flag flying over the courthouse
Means certain things are set in stone
Who we are, what we’ll do and what we won’t.”

If anything is true about this country in which we live — if I’m going to choose not to be cynical, and to believe that this country is founded on principles and those principles are indispensable for how we do life in this country — then I have to agree with The Boss. There are certain things that must define us as Americans, that will tell us who we are, what we’ll do, and what we won’t do.

I have to believe that torturing people, even if it means that something good comes out of it, is one of those things that we will be utterly committed to not doing.

It’s a funny thing, being an American. Very few of us chose to be born here. However, we’ve all become a part of this great experiment of (as Lincoln would say), “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” So how are we to conduct ourselves? How are those, ESPECIALLY those in executive positions sworn to uphold the Constitution supposed to act?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Thomas Jefferson was on to something.

Before I idolize Jefferson and the Founders, I’m aware of the problems. I am aware of Jefferson’s slave holding story. I am aware of the ways in which “all men”, the Founders, meant “all land-owning white men.” However, I also don’t doubt that we have transcended their inadequacies, and truly transformed the heart of our country into the proposition that every single person is created equal, and that they have all been endowed with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

While our forefathers may have been small minded, can we afford to follow in those footsteps? If we have expanded the definition of “all men” to include all American citizens, can we do them one better?

Can we really believe that all people, everywhere, regardless of nationality, are created equal, and can we treat those people as if they were created equal? If we do that, we will not abide things like tortue.

It seems to be our duty to believe this. The great many of us did not choose to be Americans. We were lucky enough to have been born here. To reimagine that luck as hubris would be utterly disastrous. We are not privileged, we are lucky. We must treat this experiment that is America with great delicacy, because it is still unprecedented. We must not fail in carrying on the experiment.

And if we carry on America in name only, and turn it into something those who have gone before us would not recognize, then we have failed those who have created what we seek to protect.

Perhaps I’m making no sense, but I believe that we must have principles. We must adhere to those principles, regardless of consequence. If we must violate those principles to preserve America, than we have preserved it in name only, and our victory has been hollow.

whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 9:37 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.