Nazi Germany

Editor,

What is being overlooked in the hysterical rush to legitimate self-incrimination, locking people up forever with no right to habeas corpus, torturing them, and trying them in kangaroo courts is that the prohibitions against these practices are intended to protect INNOCENT not guilty parties.

Paranoid delusions can seem airtight to government officials who harbor them. Protests of innocence by the INNOCENT can easily be scoffed at and ignored. But the entire system of justice in what used to be the United States of America was predicated on the assumption that an accused person is INNOCENT until proven guilty.

Recent disasters based on elaborate theories are legion: unregulated markets, unregulated oil exploration, extraordinary rendition, WMD, Guantanamo, Baghram, military commissions, the Canadian guy sent to Syria to be tortured for a year. It's impossible to remember them all.

So your next door neighbor is convinced you are cavorting with the devil -- or fraternizing with terrorists -- and two and two seem to the local prosecutor to dovetail perfectly. But you know what. You're just a kooky non-white neighbor who doesn't speak English very well. Harmless as an ant. That's why we have a Bill of Rights.

I don't want to live in some 21st-century reincarnation of Nazi Germany.

re: "Obama Seeks to Ease Rules on Questioning Terror Suspects" (5/10/2010)