Bleeding Heart Liberal

The NYTimes just published an opinion piece by former President Jimmy Carter which unequivocally damns the entire country and our leaders' approach to global human rights. The main point:

While the country has made mistakes in the past, the widespread abuse of human rights over the last decade has been a dramatic change from the past. With leadership from the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 as “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” This was a bold and clear commitment that power would no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people, and it established equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal protection of the law and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention or forced exile

The declaration has been invoked by human rights activists and the international community to replace most of the world’s dictatorships with democracies and to promote the rule of law in domestic and global affairs. It is disturbing that, instead of strengthening these principles, our government’s counterterrorism policies are now clearly violating at least 10 of the declaration’s 30 articles, including the prohibition against “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

See the whole article at the NYTimes. Or, if you've used up your viewing credits, I have an illegal pdf here.

It's pretty depressing how we got from Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Carter to where we are now...