The Necessity of Shock

I identified strongly with Dahlia Lithwick's commentaries (1, 2) on the state of torture in America. We are gradually losing our capacity to be appalled by descriptions and even direct visual evidence of inhumane treatment. The public and our elected officials are becoming inured to greater atrocities in the name of the national interest. The things that used to shock us are both continuing and gaining ambiguous (and sometimes outright) legitimacy while we are debating the legalities of even grosser violations of human rights. I recognize the need to protect the nation as best we can from violence, but surely there must be some means that the ends do not justify. The growing acceptability of torture epitomized by the waterboarding discussions and the encroachment of our rights as citizens epitomized by the PATRIOT Act bring to mind the quote often misattributed to Benjamin Franklin, ''Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.'' There are things we must not do as a nation, actions that we must not condone and crimes we must not pardon, regardless of their life-saving or catastrophe-averting potential. Aren't there?