A city on a hill has to be different

"Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us — and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill -- constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities."
-- JOHN F. KENNEDY, 1961

Americans have been talking about the city on the hill for nearly 400 years, but the first recorded use of the term came in the Sermon on the Mount. As Christ saw it, and as others have seen it since then, living in a city on a hill brought with it responsibility. Things that happened in such a city could not be hidden, nor should they.

That's why the debate over whether President Obama should have released the Bush administration's "torture" memos is important. Republicans are arguing that Obama has made us less safe as a nation by telling the world what procedures we used to get information, while many Democrats want to prosecute the people who argued in favor of torture.

As expected, Rush Limbaugh weighed in Friday, and he thought he had a great point to make when he said the fact that North Vietnamese torturers had "broken" POW John McCain proved that torture works.

Of course, in a city on a hill that isn't the point at all.

Many presidents have referred to America as the "last best hope of mankind," a phrase most often credited to Ronald Reagan. But it was an earlier president who made the point first.

"Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. ... We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth."

It was Abraham Lincoln who spoke those words to Congress in December 1862, and one point he was making was that to be an American meant something. It meant standing up for freedom and for the rights of human beings.

Many of us see those rights in different ways. To some it means the opportunity to make as much money as possible, while to others the right to own weapons and protect themselves is paramount. But one right that goes all the way back to the Magna Carta -- nearly 800 years ago -- is the right against self-incrimination.

That's where Limbaugh and other conservatives miss the point. The question isn't whether torture is effective. it's whether torture is something Americans should be doing. It's part of that age-old question about whether the end justifies the means.

Certainly some would say yes, while others would say there are no ends and it's all about the means.

I tend to come down on that side.

I tend to believe it's how we live our lives that matters most.

As for those who say torture is the only way to protect America from terrorism, I'm reminded of the famous quote from the Vietnam War.

"We had to destroy the village in order to save it."

I don't believe we can save America by destroying what it means to be American.