I am as big a fan of Andrew Sullivan as can be, but I was impressively disappointed by his memorial of the tenth anniversary of 9/11. I don’t disagree with the general point, that ten years on what is most salient is that our “homeland security” response – invasion of foreign countries, unregulated torture of any who are not U.S. citizens, and surveillance of all – is not an unalloyed good. But Sullivan’s adjectives betray a lilt of hysteria. And for Orwell’s sake, let us retire once and for all the phrase “shredding the constitution.” A decade is long enough for sober maturity. No constitutions were literally shredded. It is quite helpful to enumerate how its prescriptions were violated. But mindlessly repeated metaphors – Hannity and Palin will tell you Obama is shredding the constitution, and Dan Savage will tell you Nancy Pelosi is shredding the constitution, and Sullivan says Cheney shredded the constitution, and on and on and on – reveal real dangerous vacuity of mind.
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