Are oppressive practices justified?

Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, December 7, 2005

So, our secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, justifies the “renditions” to those secret prisons on the grounds that they “save lives.”

What she asks us to ignore, or maybe she doesn’t really believe it, is that liberty, and the freedom from these oppressive practices, is more precious than life. Life without liberty is not worth living.

Whatever happened to “Give me liberty, or give me death!”?

Norman K. Marsh

Everett