Torture and the decay of gov't

While there are, sadly, quite a number of apologists for torture in this country (most of whom appear to be conservatives who argue its necessity for the all-encompassing "national security"), the good majority of Americans are still repulsed by the notion, and sickened that our gov't should engage in it, or even appear to engage in it.

Torture, secret prisons, and imprisonment without charge or trial were, pre-9/11, things that only dictatorships engaged in. (One could very well argue that that is still the case....) They are, in and of themselves, terrible acts of pain, suffering, and gross injustice for their victims. There are, however, reasons why even those not involved in it should oppose it. The damage done by such practices are not confined to their victims, but also infect the offending gov't with the seeds of its own eventual downfall: secrecy & unaccountability, destruction of vital checks & balances, a dampening of citizen engagement, undue presumption & practice of power, and the inevitable abuses and corruption that follows from any and all of these.

The dynamic between citizenry and gov't can be a fragile one. If the citizenry gets free reign over gov't, you get tyrannies of the majority, and gov't run by desires rather than reason. France would seem to be a good example of this, with its whiny citizens calling national strikes for any little thing they don't like, and the gov't usually caving in. At the other end of the spectrum, with gov't having free reign over the citizenry, you have dictatorship, kleptocracy, and brutal rule. The examples of this are all too numerous.

It is probably much better to err on the side of a too-powerful citizenry, though the results can be the same: a tyranny of the majority can be every bit as harsh as a dictatorship of one. Oddly, though, the two also have a similar root cause. In both cases, the gov't has too much power. Who wields that power, a leader or the masses, is less important than the fact that too much power in the first place always leads to bad results.

The ideals that America was founded on recognize this key fact, and our Constitution is one of the few ever to place explicit limits on the power of gov't, as well as to set up checks and balances against the accumulation and abuse of power. The Founders knew that the way to maximize both liberty and prosperity was to minimize the power of gov't. Checks & balances, accountability, and transparency were all designed to keep gov't from growing into the monster that so many previous regimes had.

Torture. Secret prisons. Imprisonment without charge or trial. Widespread, secret surveillance of citizens. These are acts that no just, healthy gov't should ever engage in, for any reason. They are a sickness, an infectious agent that can turn a healthy gov't into a deranged one, a responsible one into an unaccountable one, and a gov't for the benefit of the people into a gov't that exists only for its own benefit. For several years now America has been sliding down the path of gov't decay. It's time we stopped it.