From one of many political blogs that I read on occasion:
This week marks the fifteenth anniversary of my emigration from the Netherlands to the United States. I’ve been in no mood to celebrate.
Truthfully, I’m not even certain I would still move if I had to make that choice today.
Oh, in some ways, I ooze patriotism like never before. I bought an American flag last year — better late than never, I tell myself — and have been flying it on national holidays with a measure of satisfaction. During the last two July 4th celebrations in my pretty New England town, I listened to the band on the green strike up a slightly discordant, quivering-but-beautiful version of the national anthem, and — fairly astonished at my own reaction — I was overcome with emotion, quietly muttering to myself to pull it together.
My love for America persists, unbroken, unregretted, but it’s now often akin to the love one might feel for a family member who, tattered bathrobe and all, slowly slips into Alzheimer’s twilight. Tender, filled with good memories, but tinged with an aching sadness.
Still, that metaphor only goes so far. I’d love someone dear to me unconditionally, warts and all. I cannot muster that much for my adopted nation. Not anymore.
Too much has happened to this country. Too much has changed. And too much is changing still.
Fifteen years on these shores — and two days before that anniversary, America officially joined the ranks of foul two-bit dictatorships by embracing a torture bill that I’d call the final fucking straw if it wasn’t for the fact that more final fucking straws are almost sure to follow.
If future historians are still by law allowed to write an honest assessment of our times, they’ll say this: America wasn’t brought to its knees by ululating jihadists with box cutters, but by brazen traitors in bespoke suits who, with [neither] compunction nor restraint, doodled hateful little black mustaches on the Capitol’s portraits of Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin and George Washington — laughing.
And now? I have hope because I have no choice. Because my life is here. Because I want my two girls to know and love their country as I do, only with less trepidation and less fear for the future. I want them to feel what I felt a decade and a half ago when, employing bluster and bravado, I might have gently mocked the notion of America being the “shining city on the hill” with my mouth, but never with my heart.
Now, like Garrison Keillor, I mark the names of my enemies.
The U.S. Senate, in all its splendor and majesty, has decided that an “enemy combatant” is any non-citizen whom the president says is an enemy combatant, including your Korean greengrocer or your Swedish grandmother or your Czech au pair, and can be arrested and held for as long as authorities wish without any right of appeal to a court of law to examine the matter. If your college kid were to be arrested in Bangkok or Cairo, suspected of “crimes against the state” and held in prison, you’d assume that an American foreign service officer would be able to speak to your kid and arrange for a lawyer, but this may not be true anymore. [...]
None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak in public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of the Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Idea. Mark their names. Any institution of higher learning that grants honorary degrees to these people forfeits its honor. Alexander, Allard, Allen, Bennett, Bond, Brownback, Bunning, Burns, Burr, Carper, Chambliss, Coburn, Cochran, Coleman, Collins, Cornyn, Craig, Crapo, DeMint, DeWine, Dole, Domenici, Ensign, Enzi, Frist, Graham, Grassley, Gregg, Hagel, Hatch, Hutchison, Inhofe, Isakson, Johnson, Kyl, Landrieu, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Lott, Lugar, Martinez, McCain, McConnell, Menendez, Murkowski, Nelson of Florida, Nelson of Nebraska, Pryor, Roberts, Rockefeller, Salazar, Santorum, Sessions, Shelby, Smith, Specter, Stabenow, Stevens, Sununu, Talent, Thomas, Thune, Vitter, Voinovich, Warner.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Actually, Keillor’s article goes on in a way that is even more instructive:
Three Republican senators made a show of opposing the bill and, after they’d collected all the praise they could get, they quickly folded. Why be a hero when you can be fairly sure that the Court will dispose of this piece of garbage.
If, however, the Court does not, then our country has taken a step toward totalitarianism. If the government can round up someone and never be required to explain why, then it’s no longer the United States of America as you and I always understood it. Our enemies have now succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They have made us become like them.
I got some insight week before last into who supports torture when I went down to Dallas to speak at Highland Park Methodist Church. It was spooky. I walked in, was met by two burly security men with walkie-talkies, and within 10 minutes was told by three people that this was the Bushes’ church and that it would be better if I didn’t talk about politics. I was there on a book tour for Homegrown Democrat [a recent book written by Keillor], but they thought it better if I didn’t mention it. So I tried to make light of it — I told the audience, “I don’t need to talk politics. I have no need even to be interested in politics — I’m a citizen, I have plenty of money and my grandsons are at least 12 years away from being eligible for military service.” And the audience applauded! Those were their sentiments exactly. We’ve got ours, and who cares?
The Methodists of Dallas can be fairly sure that none of them will be snatched off the streets, flown to Guantanamo, stripped naked, forced to stand for 48 hours in a freezing room with deafening noise, so why should they worry? It’s only the Jews who are in danger, and the homosexuals and gypsies. The Christians are doing just fine. If you can’t trust a Methodist with absolute power to arrest people and not have to say why, then whom can you trust?
