Un-Good Americans

Author of the linked article points out the conundrum of being a modern American comparing us with being a German citizen during the reign of the Nazis. He points out that we are saddling our children with having to explain our generation's inaction in the face of a leader who is clearly violating moral and legal standards.

Every generation or so an evil arises which is so monstrous, so degrading to the human spirit, so morally bankrupt, that even to debate it is a sign of moral corruption. Native American genocide, slavery, totalitarianism, and Jim Crow laws are evils so unspeakable that we cannot understand today how anyone with a shred of decency could have once supported them. Today torture, a practice far more degrading to us than to our victims, represents such an evil.

...

Bush's demand is unprecedented. No leader in all human history, not even Hitler, Stalin, or Mao, has publicly demanded the right to torture. All others have behaved as Bush did before the amendment when he secretly tortured on a scale unseen in American history even while saying he wasn't. Forced into the open by the McCain amendment, however, Bush chose to openly demand the legal right to torture. Most experts assume he will continue to torture.