Democracy is hard and forces us to confront our biggest fears.
I'm hearing a lot of scary, totalitarian crap from my friends on the right (as usual) but even more so lately. The other day, a guy a work was looking at the computer, shaking his head.
"Can you believe this? That terrorist guy is going to get a trial in New York, and he's gonna get to whine about how awful we all are and how we deserved to get blown up. They should have just shot him in the head---in public."
I wish this were an uncommon sentiment, but I'm feeling more and more in a minority. People like it easy, and democracy isn't easy. Our core values aren't tested on a bright, sunny day when nothing goes wrong; they are tested after a horrible bright, sunny day when everything goes wrong. It's easy to give a fair trial to a sweet old lady with too many parking tickets. It's a lot harder to do it for a probable mass murderer.
And yet we do it because that's who we are. We are a nation of laws, and the legal debate over how to deal with terrorism suspects reveals a fundamental strength of our society, despite the opposite claim from the Limbaugh's and Beck's. The reason our country is still a model for others is because we don't take people out in the night and shoot them in the head. That's what the other guy does. Our adherence to law, due process, and civil and human rights makes us Americans. To subvert justices and hold public executions creates for us an identity of "Not Them" in which we are like our enemies in all but name. Our true identity lies not in our "Not Them" status but in our status as "We the People" who freely chose, and choose again every day, to walk the hard road of democracy rather than the easier (if not more comfortable) road of totalitarianism.