"it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer" -- Ben Franklin...
Today it seems the government believes it is better for 100 innocent persons suffer than to allow 1 guilty to escape....
Today it seems the government believes it is better for 100 innocent persons suffer than to allow 1 guilty to escape....
Slavery was a grave error of that time. But it doesn't devalue the other, unrelated principles of yore as presented in that Ben Franklin quote of the GP.
But the fact that, centuries ago, non-whites and women weren't considered Persons with a capital P still doesn't negate the fact that the USA has abandoned its most important foundational principles (rule of law, fundamental and inalienable civil rights, freedom of speech) over the past 12 years.
I'm not claiming that the USA unhypocritically perfectly adhered to its stated values in the past. We broke the law and tortured people in WWII, in Vietnam, and in the guerrilla wars of South America, too. But you had to do those things below the radar. There were eventually consequences, if it was found out.
Now the US government disappears its citizens, or kills them (and whatever men, women and children that happen to be nearby) right out in the open, and the President goes on TV to talk about what a weighty thing it is on his conscience for him to approve all these murder lists in advance.
It's true, as some point out, that unconstitutional, illegal, and immoral things have always been done by the US government (and pretty much any government). However, it seems to me a fundamentally different thing when it is done without even pretending to adhere to the law or the constitution, in any more meaningful way than Nixon's claim that "when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal"[1][2].
[1]: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon
[2]: https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_white...
We shouldn't let past abuses excuse future abuses.