Your comments are appreciated as usual. What the constitution is designed to do and does are common discourse in your country as they are in others, and for supreme courts to interpret and adjudicate, not always with compliance.
The long struggle for constitutionally provided rights for blacks and Guantanamo come to mind. Successive presidents abuse constitutional rights despite the courts. States changed their laws at point of a federal bayonet.
As for lying, your presidential aspirants lie consistently, and for all its errors in reporting history on the fly, your national newspaper of record, The New York Times, is recognized as one of the greatest newspapers in the world.
Its major role in defying federal laws to publish the truth and remove the curse of the Vietnam war---possibly saving the lives of those who served with you---was a singular victory in the public interest everywhere.
No country in the world has stood for freedom as effectively as the US. No country in the world is making the actual level of commitment for it still.
Is our history punctuated with failings, yes. We inherited slavery from the British and failed to buy it out like they did enriching the slave owning class to end that evil. Note the buy down was the single greatest handout of taxpayer dollars in British history. We instead fought a very bloody war and resolved it in part and 100 years continued to fix the unfinished business of equal rights and protections.
No nation is without some action it regrets or growth in its world view. No nation is without issues, even your own
The only problem with Guantanamo is that we did not immediately either prosecute them as saboteurs as they failed to wear a proper uniform on the battlefield and if found guilty execute them or treat them as prisoners of war straight up and as long as the war on terror is unresolved permanently held them until their side actually ceased hostilities in every way (likely life sentence as they will never give up).
I am not to keen on the previous administration, much less so the current administration policies reference the prisoners from the battlefield (which is really anywhere in the world as it is a global war which the terrorist play without respect to any rules of war). Unlike many have have personal experience of Abu Gharib and the challenges and failures in leadership there. Still regardless of the things done wrong, we could not in our worse actions parallel the actions of our opponents (not that I want to be compared toy Islamic terrorism standards of misconduct)
We are dealing with an opponent who will not play by civilized rules. We have little option but to execute the guilty and incarcerate forever those who cannot be turned.
For our presidential candidates I care to make no defense except to say their ours for better and the worse, and sickened though I maybe, our system will give us the choice of two _____
The lack of perfection on candidates' part does not immunize the NYT for a carte blanche ends justifies the means level of intellectual rot. Saying that while they lied too is a pitiable defense and unworthy.
As a journalist I know that you espouse that papers should pursue stories honestly and layout an honest depiction.
As for Viet Nam, my father did two tours while leftist in the NYT and along the coast worked overtime to sell out to the communist who in the end did exactly as predicted in terms of oppression and human rights violations. The killing fields of Cambodia are a great example of progressive ideology amuck. Just as modern Cuba and Venezuela are today.
I cannot say much for Nixon, no one in my family ever voted for the fellow, but I have no doubt the ultimate American policy aims to hold back the spread of communism was both true and good.
The totalitarian communist/socialist philosophies espoused by our opponents and their fellow traveler co-conspirators and or willing dupes are a threat that has not disappeared. It is unfortunately embodied by in the modern Democrat party. Hilary and her it takes a village commune makes me puke as the bait and switch is in the detail.
I honestly believe the modern liberals(progressives) do not actually care about American lives as their primary motivation (save for the dupes) I believe it is only a vehicle to get them elected. Disarming the public is important side benefit as well because to them an armed populous is harder to control. If American lives were primary, why ignore the human cost to American citizens of illegal immigrant caused deaths? Why double the national debt mortgaging our children's future?
Why continually centralize the control and influence of the lives of Americans with policies originated in the halls of bureaucratic Washington. Say school lunch and bathroom policies, say Water of the US Policy, putting everyday water use on even the smallest plots away from major tributaries under the EPA. I could go on but that party wants to run my life because it knows better. If they want to destroy California and the voters let them fine (it is sad and the diaspora of dupes to other places like Colorado, Montana, and Oregon bites) I want less Washington, not more.
I grew up in the suburbs of DC long enough to know they don't know.
I curse the miserable Jane Fonda like lefties who acted as shills and willing dupes. I curse more the dupes of today.
