This is some shameless lifting, but it needs no amending … here’s Glenn Greenwald on the Tory/Liberal-Democrat government in Britain vowing to restore core civil liberties in the wake of the country’s decade long decent into authoritarian abuse:
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[...] Clegg also inveighed against the oppressive criminal justice system that imprisons far too many citizens and criminalizes far too many acts with no improvement in safety, and also pledged radical reform to the political system in order to empower citizens over wealthy interests. To underscore that this was not mere rhetoric, the Tory/Lib-Dem coalition published their official platform containing all of these proposals, and the Civil Liberties section begins with language inconceivable for mainstream American discourse: “The Government believes the British state has become too authoritarian, and that over the past decade it has abused fundamental human rights and historic civil liberties.”
Most striking of all, the new Government (specifically William Hague, its conservative Foreign Secretary) just announced that “a judge will investigate claims that British intelligence agencies were complicit in the torture of terror suspects.” More amazing still:
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The judicial inquiry announced by the foreign secretary into Britain’s role in torture and rendition since September 2001 is poised to shed extraordinary light on one of the darkest episodes in the country’s recent history.
It is expected to expose not only details of the activities of the security and intelligence officials alleged to have colluded in torture since 9/11, but also the identities of the senior figures in government who authorised those activities. . . . Those who have been most bitterly resisting an inquiry — including a number of senior figures in the last government — may have been dismayed to see the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition formed, as this maximised the chances of a judicial inquiry being established.
What an astounding feat of human innovation: they are apparently able to Look Backward and Forward at the same time! And this concept that an actual court will review allegations of grave Government crimes rather than ignoring them in the name of Political Harmony: my, the British, even after all these centuries, do continue to invent all sorts of brand new and exotic precepts of modern liberty.
Most readers have likely been doing so already when reading these prior paragraphs, but just contrast all of this to what is taking place in the United States under Democratic Party rule. We get — from the current Government — presidential assassination programs, detention with no charges, senseless demands for further reductions of core rights when arrested, ongoing secret prisons filled with abuse, military commissions, warrantless surveillance of emails, and presidential secrecy claims to block courts from reviewing claims of government crimes. The Democratic-led Congress takes still new steps to block the closing of Guantanamo. Democratic leaders push for biometric, national ID cards. The most minimal surveillance safeguards are ignored. Even the miniscule limits on eavesdropping powers are transgressed. And from just this week: “Millions of Americans arrested for but not convicted of crimes will likely have their DNA forcibly extracted and added to a national database, according to a bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday”.
Can anyone even imagine for one second Barack Obama standing up and saying: “My administration believes that the American state has become too authoritarian”? Even if he were willing to utter those words — and he wouldn’t be — his doing so would trigger a massive laughing fit in light of his actions. While Nick Clegg says this week that his civil liberties commitments are “so important that he was taking personal responsibility for implementing them, and promised that the new government would not be ‘insecure about relinquishing control’,” our Government moves inexorably in the other direction.
I don’t want to idealize what’s taking place in Britain: it still remains to be seen how serious these commitments are and how genuine of an investigation into the torture regime will be conducted. But clearly, what was once a fringe position there has now become the mainstream platform of their new Government: that it’s imperative to ensure that their country is not “a place where our children grow up so used to their liberty being infringed that they accept it without question.”
That’s exactly what the U.S. has become, as each new Terrorist attack (or even failed attack) prompts one question and one question only, no matter which party is in power: “which rights do we give up now”? And each serious government crime engenders new excuses for vesting political leaders with immunity. And no new government power of detention, surveillance, or privacy-invasion is too extreme or unwarranted. Unlike in Britain, the term “civil liberties” or the phrase “the state has become too authoritarian” is, in the U.S., one which only Fringe Purist Absolutists utter. Unlike in Britain, efforts to impose serious constraints on unchecked government power are, in the U.S., the exclusive and lonely province of The Unserious Losers among us. And unlike in Britain, the notion that political leaders should actually do what they vowed during the campaign they would do is, in the U.S., a belief held only by terribly un-Pragmatic purist ideologues. Whatever else is true, it is encouraging that a major Western country — one that has been the victim of a horrific terrorist attack and that has a substantial Muslim population — has a government that is explicitly advocating (and, at least to some extent, implementing) these ideals.