Dungeons and Beacons

The Statue of Liberty’s innards were reopened for July 4, and a few hardy patriots were allowed to climb up the iconic torch-bearing arm and view 20 miles of New Jersey for the first time in years. Lucky for them that the unsettled global climate has brought virtually nonstop rain and chill to the New York area and kept temperatures below triple digits inside the metallic dame as they performed the 160-stair assault on her digital summit.

We swell with pride at the sight and the symbolism of our audacious experiment in a free society, and I include myself without embarrassment. Grandpa Frasca sailed into port here along with 12 million other immigrants and glimpsed that promising sight as a penniless teenager. I don’t know if foreigners were more welcome then or just better absorbed and exploited. But the statue suggests at least begrudging respect for humanity in all its forms and reminds us of a guiding principle even if it’s honored in the breach all too frequently.

I got a good look at Lady Liberty Friday night on a shipboard dancing party in which I formed part of a distinctly minority ethnicity and couldn’t help thinking about how our various ancestors steamed into the Atlantic shores over the course of recent centuries, some escaping from oppression, others as chattel slaves hopelessly in the grips of it. Although we assume human rights are applicable to all these days, it was quite recently that a tenuous consensus on who might qualify as a ‘human’ has been achieved.

It’s easy to think that times have changed for the better and for good, but history suggests otherwise. How many accounts have we read in just our adult lifetimes of communities living peaceably side by side for centuries—in Rwanda or Bosnia or yes, even Iraq—only to find that external forces suddenly rip through the fabric of civility and turn once cordial neighbors into deranged genocides.

All of which makes the more repugnant our blithe pawning of the nation’s ever-fragile civil protections in exchange for the right to continue punishing the chained up accused enemies in Guantánamo. Hardly a day goes by without another revelation of the ongoing abuse of the defenseless detainees there, accompanied by continuing complicity with state policy by the major media, which, as the incomparable Glenn Greenwald points out, refuse to use the word torture when describing anything done by the Land of Liberty while simultaneously calling it precisely that when done by others. And given the lack of outcry over the scandal, not to mention the smooth adoption of some of the worst Bushite policies by President Obama, the abuses now depart from the category of ‘excesses’ or actions by ‘rogue agents’ or a political faction mercifully ousted. No, they are now crimes for which we bear collective responsibility and for which our descendants will pay a fearsome price.

Speaking of which, I fear I am not old enough to avoid witnessing the eventual consequence of this massive national waffle on the principle of the physical integrity of the bound and helpless. I have no doubt that, sooner or later, others deemed enemies of the state also will be subjected to torture by its agents. As a society we have endorsed, through our actions and through our silences, the torment of the few to guarantee the safety of the many, and the lesson will not be lost upon those wielding power over us.