Liberty Or Tyranny?

Conor Friedersdorf tries to get conservatives to open their eyes:

If I may address the skeptics on the right directly, it is penny wise and pound foolish to worry about creeping tyranny via government-run health care or gun control when we’re another terrorist attack away from popular support for an archipelago of secret prisons where anyone can be whisked away and tortured without any evidence against them. Look to Europe if you doubt whether government-run health care or black sites run by secret police are a more immediate threat to the liberty of innocents.

Do you think that I exaggerate?

Know that one of the Gitmo Three was arrested at age 17, held for some years without being charged, and scheduled for release at the time of his death due to the military’s conclusion that no evidence linked him to al Qaeda or the Taliban. We may never know exactly how he and his fellow detainees died: A conclusive, independent autopsy is impossible because their bodies were returned to their families with their throats missing.

It is, in my view, simply indisputable that if a Democratic president had tried even an ounce of this, Mark Levin and the GOP would have demanded impeachment a long time ago. Which tells you a lot about what their real principles actually are: power, power and power.

2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan