Human Rights vs. National Security

If you can watch this, see what is being done in your name, and keep on talking about what a free country this is and how “national security” trumps human rights, you’ve officially forfeited your own humanity. Yes Hillary Clinton, I’m talking to you. Torture is a crime, it violates every natural law and a lot of man-made laws to boot, and people who use it or advocate it are the only people I can think of who deserve to experience it.

And to everyone else, keep in mind as you watch this that as of right now there is absolutely NOTHING to stop the US government from arbitrarily deciding that you and I are terrorists, stripping of us our citizenship, and shipping us off to guantanamo or wherever else to be tortured and interrogated indefinitely. And if you really believe the old tripe about how only the guilty have something to fear then not only have you forfeited your own humanity, but you’ve obviously neglected your study of history as well. Remember, the KGB, the SS, the Red Guard, and a hundred other similar agencies have used similar tactics for similar goals justified by similar logic.

When “security” trumps human rights then you have neither. Nation-States are secure when there is nothing that can threaten them, after all, and in any society the biggest threat to the power of the State is the power of ordinary working-class people, acting together, to demand change. In other words, Human Rights are themselves guarantees of security for individuals against the State, and the State gains security by depriving ordinary citizens of those rights and the security they provide.

And that, dear friends, is exactly the conversation that is going on in the halls of power today. When a member of the political elite argues on national television that national security – that is the security of the Nation-State – trumps Human rights – the security of individuals – you know we are in a very bad place as a nation. And when her opponants are publicly derided as being “soft” on terrorism instead of supported for having enough humanity not to passively endorse torture and barbarism in this way, you know just how low we have sunk as a nation.

I am not a liberal or a Democrat, I have never voted for a Democrat in my life and I doubt I ever will, and this type of bullshit is why. If this is the “lesser evil” relative to the Republicans then I have to wonder just how “lesser” it really is. This election, like the last one and the one before that, I’m going to walk into the voting booth, check “other” and write in “none” because “none” is precisely how much respect I have for any of these bastards.

Posted: November 23rd, 2007 under culture war, politrix, video.
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