It just so happens that I am spending this week teaching 7th graders about the achievement that is the U.S. Constitution. Right now, we’re learning about the writing of that document. We’ll follow with studies of its meaning in the larger context. We’ll explore the Bill of Rights and the 14th amendment. We’ll talk about the 19th amendment. Invariably, I’ll be called upon to explain why such freedom-loving people permitted the continuation of slavery and the exclusion of women. I’ll help my students to wrap their minds around the ways that our history has fallen short of the great promise contained in the Constitution. I’ll show them how the promise of freedom was eventually offered to all Americans. I’ll feel proud of my nation and it’s commitment to powerful ideas.
But not today.
Today, the Senate released its heavily redacted report on CIA-directed torture of detainees and prisoners in the custody of the United States. It is deeply disheartening. In advance of the release, Senator Diane Feinstein gave a speech in which she told the nation that, “…history will judge whether or not we are a just society, governed by law.” And then she issued a report that detailed that many ways that we let down the cause of justice and have disappointed history’s expectations of us.
It’s horrifying to read about the things that our government did in the name of keeping us safe. In this report is the evidence that in the war on terror we lost sight of who we are and what we believe in. The price of our national safety cannot be brutality. If it is, we have crossed the line into being our own enemy.
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