To be an American

The other day I was interacting with someone and said, "President Obama is violating U.S. and international law by refusing to investigate and/or prosecute Bush administration officials for torture." The person with whom I was interacting responded, "that statement places you on the far edge of the looniest, most rabidly anti-American fringe in our history."

The fact that President Obama, or at least Attorney General Eric Holder, is violating U.S. and International law by refusing to investigate and/or prosecute Bush administration officials for torture, is easy to verify. The Convention on Torture ("Cot") is, by virtue of that treaty's ratification by the U.S. Senate, binding U.S. law pursuant to our Federal constitution. The COT makes investigation of credible allegations, and prosecution of provable cases, of torture, mandatory. And both President Bush and Vice President Cheney have admitted authorizing acts that constitute torture under the definition of torture provided by the COT and federal law.

That's all old news. What's interesting is that pointing any of this out now renders one a member of "the far edge of the looniest, most rabidly anti-American fringe in our history" in the minds of millions of Americans who consider themselves to be hyper patriotic.

When I hear things like that, I wonder what do these people think "America" is? How do they think about America? What does "being an American" mean to them? Don't they see the irony of calling a citizen who openly criticises a sitting American President for refusing to "faithfully execute the laws of the land" a member of "the far edge of the looniest, most rabidly anti-American fringe in our history."

I was thinking, how much more American could I be? What different planets we occupy.

Within a very short period of time, our understanding of "America" has dramatically deteriorated. "America" used to mean a North American political entity within which the citizens were united by their loyalty to very basic political ideals - the rule of law, separation of powers, a limitation on Government power against individuals (particularly those with unpopular views or practices or ethinic origins), pluralism, civil liberties, due process, equality before the law, representative government, a rebuttable presumption in favor of liberty, and so forth. No American in that sense would ever call someone acting the way I did "Anti-American."

I have no idea how to describe the "America" envisioned by these other Americans.

Joe H.