Mark Danner: |
Well, because you are taking-- I mean,
it's also the most illiberal policy, the sort of most
diametrically opposed to what we are as a polity. A
liberal state has as its heart the notion that government
is limited. That there is an area of privacy of our daily
lives in which governmental power, state power, cannot
intervene. And torture takes over someone's
nervous system. Torture takes over what they feel.
Torture takes over and penetrates into their mind and
into their body. It's not only illegal, it's immoral. And
it's against-- it's against the heart of what the
American political tradition stands for, which is an
enlightenment tradition. And in which the abolition of
torture, by the way, in the 18th and 17th century, was
extremely important. So it's going back into darkness, I
think, in a very dramatic way. |
