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Originally Posted by sleepyjeff
Sorry...guess I should have filled that in a little. This whole thing just struck me as somewhat silly....the end of America and this is 1930's Germany all over again and these are the darkest times theme just made me think that people may have forgotten what things were really like not so long ago.
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"It could be worse" is not a valid argument in my eyes for allowing abuse of executive powers to go unchallenged. And, as stated above, it's not about the particulars of whether waterboarding is torture or not. It's about the lies, manipulation, and blatant efforts to silence dissenting voices.
I also think people have forgotten the past, but, as alluded to by Olberman's nod to Murrow, what they've forgotten is how easily the door to loss of freedoms can be opened with the guise of protection from an evil idea. It took someone with the courage of Murrow to wake everybody up to it then. Unfortunately Olbermann is not afforded to stature that Murrow had (unfortunate in the sense that it means he won't have as much impact, not in the sense that I think he should have the same stature as Murrow), nor was his commentary as much of a personal risk as Murrow's was, so there is little hope that the any significant change in social attitude will come of it. But I applaud him for helping the process of chipping away the facade of fear in hopes that someone will eventually hit the right spot and create an actual crack.