Well. Maybe they are terrorists, maybe they aren’t. Some are, I’m sure. The problem is, it’s the government who says so, and they are holding all the cards to their chest. We don’t get to see the government’s evidence because of “security.” So the openness that is critical to keeping government power in check isn’t there.

That the closure of open government hasn’t been scaring the Hell out of everyone has been, to put it mildly, just a little irritating.

It’s also frightening to see just how easy it is to get people to agree that anything at all can be done to a group of people as long as they are “dirty rotten so-and-sos.” Whether those so-and-so’s are “terrorists,” or “enemy combatants,” or “not citizens,” being able to treat them that way hinges upon defining them as “not us.”

Any time you have to define a group of people as “not us” in order to treat them differently, you have set up the conditions that make it very easy to do frightening things to people. There is no other reason to redefine people that way.

I’m not saying that our detainment camps are full of boy scouts, or that we should be naive Dudley Do-Rights. I’m saying that anyone who is willing to take the government’s word alone about who’s in the camps or what is or ought to be done with them has a trust for authority that is appropriate for a toddler but dangerous for an adult to have.