re: #261 Rightwingconspirator

We approach the time where we must sit ourselves down and admit where we did overreact, and where we are over reacting. We need to stop overreacting.

I think your post makes a great case as to why and how many are overreacting to 9/11. Many would argue we are not there yet and all this hysteria is perfectly reasonable. To them I can only say I’m not living that way. And leave all the constitutional rights intact, or face real serious opposition.

Take a look at my post #228. None of this is new. This madness started immediately following 9/11, and it began to grow when we began to abandon our principles.

There’s a reason we have a shared set of principles. It’s so that we don’t have to even have conversations about how many of them we are willing to abandon when we are frightened. It’s so that we don’t have to renegotiate what it means to be a free society on a case by case basis.

The GWOT, framed as such, was a mistake. Abandoning the Geneva conventions on torture was a mistake. Denying people arrested on American soil due process, regardless of how evil they may be, was a mistake.

Once you start down that slope, it’s hard as hell to put the brakes on. The slope started a decade ago, not in the last couple of years. This is a continuation of a process, not the start of it.