"But in the Cold War, when our enemies lied, they lied to conceal the wretchedness of their system. Whereas when we lied, we concealed our virtues. Even from ourselves. We concealed the very things that made us right. Our respect for the individual, our love of variety and argument, our belief that you can only govern fairly with the consent of the governed, our capacity to see the other fellows' view--most notably in the countries we exploited, almost to death, for our own means. In our supposed ideological rectitude, we sacrificed our compassion to the great god of indifference. We protected the strong against the weak, and we perfected the art of the public lie. We made enemies of decent reformers and friends of the most disgusting potentates. And we scarcely paused to ask ourselves show much longer we could defend our society by these means and remain a society worth defending."

John LeCarre's uberspy George Smiley in The Secret Pilgrim

John LeCarre wrote those words in the late 80s. He wasn't entirely talking about the past. No matter how right a people may think it is or how justified it believes its actions to be, there are standards. And some good standards to go by are the ones we like to celebrate on the Fourth of July.

It is unfair to paint the Prez as the architect of the present anti-American (in the most basic sense of the term) policies promulgated by our government. Yes, his people have reprehensibly abused international law with the indefinite detention of dozens of "unlawful combatants" in Cuba. And certainly his "we're right, and we don't give a damn what anyone else thinks" position when it comes to Iraq is similarly disturbing. But the real justification for these actions has been floating around our country for a long time.

For the last 20 years or so, it has been legal for law enforcement agencies to seize property from people it suspects of committing a crime. Even if charges are never filed against the supposed criminals, the authorities get to keep the stuff unless the purported offender goes to court to win it back. This highly questionable legal doctrine goes directly against the notion of "innocent until proven guilty," and yet the Supreme Court ratified its use based on the twisted logic that in the one case it considered, the property surrendered to the police wasn't worth enough money to worry about. If you're curious, this "screw the poor" doctrine came courtesy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the most liberal justices on the court. Social class almost always trumps ideology.

Similarly, most states now have some version of "Megan's Law" on the books. These laws require sex offenders who have completed their sentences to register with local authorities wherever they live. Their names and addresses are then placed on a web site, all but encouraging "proper" citizens to make the lives of these "creeps" a living hell. I've never heard of the prosecution of one person for making threatening phone calls or writing threatening letters to registered sex offenders, though police readily acknowledge that such acts are a direct (and common) consequence of "Megan's Law."

These two legal doctrines were conceived as methods of fighting drug crime and child molestation. These are worthy aims, but the methods used are utterly and completely unamerican by any standard.

Many commentators on the right like to compare current American society with the decadence of Rome. They claim that America will fall just like Rome if we do not make our society safer and more moral. And yet acts like restrictive marriage laws (including lifetime banishment and confiscation of property for adultery) during the time of Augustus caused much more upheaval and social problems than the ills they tried to ban.

There is a natural impulse to create a safer (and thus, supposedly, a better) society, especially when the society in question is as affluent as our is. Back in the day these ideas were considered "progressive." Think The Jungle or other screeds which helped to improve the oversight of food products. Or the drive to create the Occupational Safety Hazard Administration, the folks who try to make sure that employers create safe workplaces. The latter-day laws I mentioned do follow in that tradition--except that, like Smiley noted, the new "reforms" target the powerless, not the powerful. The criminal powerless, perhaps, but powerless nonetheless.

I've always taken Thomas Jefferson's contention that a little revolution now and again is good for a nation to mean that a good, rather than safe, society is what we ought to be trying to create. I'm of the opinion that if something bad happens, the most important thing to do is to get past the bad and work toward the good. I don't believe in being a victim, and I don't believe in acting the part of the aggrieved party. This philosophy applies to me personally and also to how I think our nation should react to national tragedy.

We cannot kill all the bogeymen. I happen to believe that the attempt to do so will spawn even more bad guys, but even if that is not true my first position still holds. No matter what we do as a people, the world will remain a dangerous and beautiful place. I simply don't believe it is necessary to remove a chunk of beauty (say, a million lives or more) to remove a sizable piece of danger (say, Saddam Hussein). We are a better people than that. We ought to start remembering what used to make this country great and pledge ourselves to those ideals once more. We ought to remember that the United States works best when it works with the rest of the world and not in opposition to it. We ought not to go out walking with a big stick but rather with the open hand of friendship. Only then can we truly make the world a better (and thus safer) place.

It is not too late.

Jon Worley likes to take the long view of things, but sometimes he gets bogged down in the details.