Reply #16: Pretty much agreed, but I would add one distinction or note as follows [View All]

[Land Shark]

Joe Chi Minh said, in part (expressing caution about parallels with Nazi Germany):
{There's a danger of too much} "We are the angels, they are the demons" in a way that detracts from the force of the absolute proscription against torture."

Well, to appropriately counterbalance that danger, I hope, I opened with Justice Jackson's comment that the rules apply equally to the victor nations, which of course specifically included the USA.

A few years back, not sure how many but not too terribly many years, I'd have said "right on" to the above, for many reasons. But now, I think this new torture stuff is so heinous and so much of a game changer that we stare right in the face a pendulum-type swing to the opposite pole: Specifically, a swing to America as THE evil empire, at least in way too much world opinion, and the great danger of throwing the baby (american ideals violated over the last decade much more than ever) with the bathwater (crimes).

These ideals, which are not strictly USA ideals but human ideals, had a birth or rebirth here circa 1776 in which what I call "guidestars" of equality, freedom and democracy were consciously set up to benefit all of mankind (as Franklin noted colonists "commonly recognized" the broader applicability of the struggle from empire) and also consciously recognized the ideals were to guide us for all time, or "all posterity" as Henry Clay put it a tad later. Such lofty ideals, analogous to the ideal of honesty, are set up to calibrate our moral/political compass by, like the polar star. Though we NEVER REACH the polar star, we are not thereby "hypocrites" if we are making progress in light of its direction. Thus, we may freely accept and even love imperfect humans WHO ARE TRYING to follow the guidestars.

What we can't accept is direct movement in the wrong direction, like torture. That's hypocrisy and much worse than that. No danger of America=always an angel thinking so much anymore, IMHO. But I agree wholeheartedly if what you mean is that more humility is required on the part of the USA. To be sure! That can't hurt any person, or nation. Bold in spirit, humble in attitude seems a good slightly paradoxical combination as another kind of guidestar.