Fred Branfman on Torture and Being Good Americans

This is an excerpt of an essay written by Fred Branfman and printed in truthout today. The link to the entire article is in the title.

Every generation or so an evil arises which is so monstrous, so degrading to the human spirit, so morally bankrupt that even to debate it is a sign of moral corruption. Native American genocide, slavery, totalitarianism, and Jim Crow laws are evils so unspeakable that we cannot understand today how anyone with a shred of decency could have once supported them. Today, torture, a practice far more degrading to us than to our victims, represents such an evil.

It certainly got my attention in a hurry.

Every generation, the citizenry has stood by and allowed these evils to take place. Every generation, the rationalization was the same - "we didn't know".

In this age of instant communication that excuse is no longer valid, if indeed it ever was. Of course we know.