They really do hate us for our freedoms.
That when a government fails to respect its own laws, it's going to engage in, well, breaking the law. This lawbreaking can take myriad forms---some relatively benign, others less so---and while our leaders' stated intentions may be pure as the driven snow while they are violating the law, it doesn't take an advanced degree in sociology to know that state-sanctioned lawbreaking eventually leads to a breakdown of societal norms---and sometimes when it happens, it's not very pretty to behold. But this is why we have laws in the first place, and why we expect everyone, including our leaders, to obey them. If the President of the United States doesn't respect the law, what obligation does some 19-year-old Army private have?
Our leaders will console us once again with the Parable of the Few Bad Apples, and some low-lying heads will roll. But from Abu Ghraib to warrantless wiretapping to slaughtering civilians to indefinite detentions to targeted assassinations to urinating on Korans---or even trolling for Colombian hookers---these lawless acts are all interrelated since they are reflective of the basic fact that lawless governments behave lawlessly, and once granted the power to flout the law, they will continue to do so, to ever-more-damaging effect, until the citizenry demands an end to it. When the citizenry doesn't do this, the social order starts to crumble, and the creep towards Mafia/warlord government commences. The view from here is that we're already well along the way to the eventual Mobutu-ization of the Republic.
---Vitelius
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