The sermons of cowards

The powerful nations of the West are fond of preaching sanctimonious sermons about freedom and democracy to tin-pot dictators like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, but are too chicken to speak the truth to power when it come to the evils in their own back yards.

Ten years ago, if anyone had suggested the US would reintroduce torture, the answer would have been ‘impossible!’ Yet the impossible has happened. Amnesty International has described Guantánamo as ‘the gulag of our times’. Despite their history of condemning human-rights violations, no western nation has condemned the US government for Guantánamo.

Even more tellingly, in the US there has been a broader reversal on many civil-rights issues. In the face of threats from terrorism, the population has, in effect, accepted a reduction of civil liberties, symbolised by the Patriot Act. In so doing, Americans have revealed that in a crunch they behave no differently to other societies.

When presented with a choice between doing good and feeling good, the west almost always chooses the latter because it costs less.

Labels: politics