By Jim Hoover

If as Americans you are not embarrassed by the response of jailers at a Tehran prison to two captured American hikers released this month, then you should be. I know that I am.

The two American prisoners reported that when they complained about conditions in their Iranian prison, the jailers would “immediately remind us of comparable conditions at Guantanamo Bay.”

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama declared himself a champion of civil liberties. Certainly as a constitutional scholar and as a standard-bearer of a political party that supposedly champions civil liberties, we thought we had good cause to believe him.

But not only has he retained Bush policies of abusing civil liberties, he has expanded them.

We still have Guantanamo. We still have rendition. We still have torturers who are free to gloat about their crimes of torture, the most notable and prominent, Bush and Cheney.

Just as we allowed Bush to represent us in violating the human rights of prisoners of our country, we are doing the same in allowing Obama’s abuse of others in our name. But even beyond that, in our silence, we help foster a culture that tolerates the idea of torture, excuses the gloating of war criminals in our midst, and summarily betrays an image of fairness and justice in the whole global scene.

I find it intolerable, if not painful, that Obama gives us nowhere else to turn for a representative who defends liberty, for the position of the Republican Party is probably worse. Furthermore, the longer we tolerate this aberration of civil rights, the more jaded and intolerant we become.

We see cheering at Republican debates for multiple executions in Texas. We see jeers of honorable members of our military who happened to be gay. We see movements and whole political parties that revel in denying the right to health care, even the right to life and liberty if you cannot pay for the so-called privilege.

Our society did not develop this attitude overnight. It was conditioned for it.

Over the last several decades, the Republican Party has demonized whole segments of the population that don’t fit into their policy of favor for the rich. If you are poor, if you are unemployed, conservatives suggest it is like a venereal disease – your appetite or your laziness brought it upon yourself.

Now Obama has even brought us into the fold of permissiveness for the criminality of the elite, and those that politicians coddle: Wall Street looters, torturers, private contractors who defrauded taxpayers and killed Iraqis, and Bush administration members whose abuse of power was not prosecuted.

If we favor the death penalty for those unfortunate enough to be poor or are among society’s discards — never mind innocence or guilt – we should wonder about the value of excusing crimes against hundreds of thousands who were caught in the middle of Bush’s bogus war in Iraq, or the American service men who were electrocuted by faulty wiring in structures built by no-bid contractors in Iraq, or collateral deaths in Pakistan from UAV missiles intended for terrorists, or those unjustly put in Guantanamo without a trial or those who die for want of health care…you might be able to think of other injustices.

President Obama is doing our country harm through his policies on civil liberties. I can bet that he thinks he is doing the best he can, besieged by opposition conditioned for a cynical and heartless hypocrisy.

If you really think about it, do you agree?