"In the last few years, we have seen the executive branch declare itself outside the law — in prosecuting a war on terror. The law against torture has been suspended. The balance between the executive and legislative branch has been dismissed by signing statements and the theory of the unitary executive. The executive has declared its right to suspend habeas corpus indefinitely, to tap anyone's phones without court warrants and to detain and torture anyone it decides is an "enemy combatant." In that sense, we have already left the realm of constitutional government in favor of a protectorate outside the law promising to keep us safe (but never from itself). But this new move to create a de facto dictator for the financial markets, to invest a Treasury secretary with unprecedented powers to buy and sell at close to a trillion dollar level — with no oversight or accountability: this is a new collapse in democratic life and constitutional norms."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Editors from the United StatesCatholics from the United StatesJournalists from EnglandColumnists from EnglandBloggers from England
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
"How Democracies Become Dictatorships," The Daily Dish (29 September 2008)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Andrew_Sullivan
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Andrew Sullivan
45 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Andrew Sullivan →
Related Quotes
"Today's age of politicized and intolerant Christianism seems to me to be one of those moments when Christianity has e…"
"First silence. Then denial. Then support of the insupportable. Then vilification of the dissenters. The pattern is as…"
"Torture was necessary to maintain slavery. It was integral to slavery. You cannot have slavery without some torture o…"
"In thinking about the costs of this war, and thinking about renewing it, we have to reconsider what it has done to Am…"
"At home, the public has come to accept torture as a legitimate instrument of government, something that the Founding …"
"There is no state more abject than the man broken on the waterboarding rack, or frozen to near death, or forced to st…"
"A constitutional republic dedicated before everything to the protection of liberty cannot legalize torture and remain…"
"It is not an opinion that "enhanced interrogation techniques" are torture. It is a legal fact. And it is also a legal…"
"What al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein did was an extreme form of sadistic torture, the kind that psychopaths enjoy and inf…"
"Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terro…"