It can't be understated how antithetical a "preventive detention" system is to democracy.

What it does is create two categories of persons: those who have basic civil liberties and those who do not.

Are gov't was created with the premise that the gov't's legitimacy springs from the recognition that its purpose is to guarantee , inalienable, fundamental human rights. Preventive detention alters that dynamic; it means that those rights are indeed alienable, that government is granting rights.

That is why it so dangerous to establish a "national security court" which operates largely in secret and parallel to our legal system in order to inprison enemies of the "homeland" indefinitely without trial. It provides a means of subverting and/or circumventing the rule of law.

Wife: Arrest him!

More: For what?

Wife: He's dangerous!

Roper: For all we know he's a spy!

Daughter: Father, that man's bad!

More: There's no law against that!

Roper: There is, God's law!

More: Then let God arrest him!

Wife: While you talk he's gone!

More: And go he should, if he were the Devil himself, until he broke the law!

Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down - and you're just the man to do it - do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

-- A Man for All Seasons, Act 1 Scene 6, Robert Bolt

"We cannot protect ourselves from that possibility by keeping the handful we have in custody locked up forever, whether in Guantanamo or some Super Max prison in the US."

"To try to do something which is inherently impossible is always a corrupting enterprise." - Michael Oakshott

"Alluding to the extreme pressure that had previously been exerted by the White House on then-AG John Aschroft to legally authorize the illegal NSA spying program ..."

From The Dark Side by Jane Mayer

During the week that [Goldsmith] deliberated [resigning], Goldsmith trice called James Comey, in whom he had huge faith, for advice. Comey was traveling at the time, but in a series of late-night phone calls, the two worked out a plan. They were both so paranoid by then about the powerful backlash they had provoked inside the administration that they actually thought they might be in physical danger. Goldsmith and Comey, who knew more about the domestic surveillance program than practically anyone else in America, also feared that their communications were being monitored. To foil possible surveillance, they talked in codes. Together they devised a strategy of timing the withdrawal of the torture memo to Goldsmith’s resignation letter. If the White House refused Goldsmith’s advice to withdraw the torture memo, they knew, Goldsmith’s resignation would look as if he quit in protest. The threat was implicit that he could go public, setting off another political storm.

former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega thinks that a case can be made against the Bush administration of a criminal conspiracy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZsVwGOVolk

"And, importantly, unlike Venezuela in 2002, this particular episode doesn't appear to be the handiwork of the CIA."

Yes, but the coup leaders come from the School of the Americas tradition of getting trained by the US military then going back home to wreak havoc upon their population.

http://blog.buzzflash.com/analysis/843

In addition to Scott Horton, there's the interpretation of Strauss from the British philosopher Simon Blackburn, who considers Plato's Thrasymachus character to be the ancestor of modern neoconservatives and an inspiration for Strauss.

Salon's own Alex Koppelman wrote about it in his interview with Blackburn about his exceptional biography of Plato's Republic

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/06/25/plato_neocons/

Here's Blackburn talking about Strauss's erroneous take on Plato

Another reading of him, which is I think even worse, is due to the American political theorist Leo Strauss, who saw him as in some sense endorsing the idea that it's a dog-eat-dog world. This was kind of a covert message, Strauss thought, of [Plato's] text. Strauss thought that this covert message or esoteric message was supposed to be perceived only by a number of people of special illumination, amongst which he included himself, of course. And that was the ideology that eventually became American neoconservatism, the view that the servants of the state are entitled to do anything -- to lie, to manipulate, to foment war, to destabilize neighboring states, to disguise their actions under a hypocritical cloak of goodness. So it's an extreme example of realpolitik, which I think is just a 180 degree misreading of what Plato is about. But it just shows that you can put down the clearest words on the page and it will be read saying the opposite.

I think that [Strauss's reading] is very perverse. You have to ignore what seems to me the very obvious thrust of ["The Republic"]. The book is largely given over to Socrates, and Socrates was largely arguing against the kind of things that Strauss represents. So you have to really pick up little bits and corners and say, "Ah, that's where Plato's speaking in his own voice or that's the message he wants us to take away." I always find that kind of reading very perverse. You know, it's not much better than finding the name of the beast in the order of the letters in the Talmud or something.