The current US state has fundamentally changed the relationship that has existed between citizen and state for a long time in this country. They have posed the choice in impossible terms: would you rather be safe from terrorist attack with a reduction in legal and constitutional protections, or would you rather permit enemies of the United States to act with impunity? Our leaders express no respect for the rule of law and our rights of liberty, association, or expression. Their rhetoric is about fear, enemies, and patriotism, rather than the rule of law, civil communities, and the rights of individuals against the arbitrary power of the security state. They pretend to support American values — but in truth they make a mockery of those values by acting lawlessly.

If there is an opening for American authoritarianism, this is it: a government explicit in its willingness to use the power of the state as it sees fit, without a deep loyalty to the idea of the  rule of law and constitution.

And what really motivates this administration? It isn’t even the ideology that the current administration professes, their neo-conservative view of the world. It is instead the naked pursuit of continuing political power for their party. The firing of the US attorneys didn’t have to do with values and ideology. These firings all too plainly had to do with attempting to use the power of the Department of Justice for political advantage. It was pure Richard Nixon politics. It is the administration’s cynical willingness to use whatever levers of power that can be found to preserve the power and ascendency of the party.

Surely the most basic obligation of political morality is to respect the rule of law and to preserve the system of constitutional protections we have historically enjoyed. To their shame, this administration has shown its contempt for those values.