Torture: the discussion we shouldn't have to have

Recently a reader of this blog commented that America hasn't been a "shining beacon of freedom" for decades. I believe this reader didn't catch my irony when I employed the phrase. But those of us who were raised here in the U.S. grew up to want our country to be something like the America of the history books, the country that came to Europe's rescue twice in the twentieth century.

That country may not have existed for decades, but that hasn't stopped many of us for wishing that it had or wanting to fight against the long, dark night I call the New Normal that has overtaken us.

How far we have fallen is highlighted by the very fact of the torture debate raging in the U.S. today. A passion advocate of the abolition of torture is Andrew Sullivan. He's right and his argument is central. Here it is in TNR.