Saturday, November 21, 2009

Discourse

Our current political and policy discourse is profoundly broken.

Beginning in the first two weeks of May, Obama took harder lines on government secrecy, on the fate of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and on the prosecution of terrorists worldwide. The President was moving away from some promises he had made during the campaign and toward more moderate positions, some favored by George W. Bush.

TIME

Indefinite detention without trial or charge is a "moderate" position? The routine monitoring of everyone's phone and mail is a "moderate" view?

The Overton Window now puts the Constitution into some crazy left wing corner in the attic?

1 comment:

Woody (Tokin Librul/Rogue Scholar/ Helluvafella!) said...

Iirc, there were folks who, after the first couple of weeks in May, sounded warnings that Obama's positions on Secrecy were all but indistinguishable from those of the previous regime.

There were people who warned all along that a President returning powers to the legislative and judicial branches after their 'necessary' arrogation for some crisis was the exception and not the rule, was an anomaly, a rarity, not to be counted upon.
May we now judge how that has turned out?