Quote of the day -- this one's a keeper

There is still a chance to repair the damage - but given how much we have lost since 9/11, the constitutional consequences of another major attack are likely to be terminal to the American experiment in liberty. If a Giuliani or a Cheney is in power on such a day, we can kiss goodbye to the constitution. If I sound overly alarmed by what has happened to American liberty, it's because I honestly didn't expect to see habeas corpus, the most basic freedom we have, so casually thrown away and torture so casually enshrined in the American system. I never believed an American president would not only claim but exercise the power to detain any person in America and jail and torture them with impunity - indefinitely. But these are the facts; and my own book was an attempt to account for them within the conservative philosophical tradition. Glenn Greenwald comes from a very different place, but we have sadly come to the same conclusion.

America has exchanged some if its basic freedoms for the patina of phony security - and so easily. The Republican party, to its historic shame, has been the main vehicle for the replacement of doubt, empiricism and calm judgment with certainty, fundamentalism and raw force. We have terrible enemies abroad, seeking to destroy our way of life. But this truth should never blind us to the danger within as well. Al Qaeda can only give us death. It is up to us to surrender the liberty they despise. In so many ways, we already have.

There is still a chance to repair the damage - but given how much we have lost since 9/11, the constitutional consequences of another major attack are likely to be terminal to the American experiment in liberty.