By ERNA PARIS

Author of The Sun Climbs Slow: Justice in the Age of Imperial America

Since the tragedy of the Twin Towers, George W. Bush has broken, or self-servingly rewritten, more laws than any other American president. He has appropriated exceptional powers for himself and claimed the authority to ignore or alter long-established rules to suit his purposes. With the complicity of U.S. lawmakers, he recast the meaning of the Geneva Conventions in order to deny legal protections to captured prisoners.

For years, he has held hundreds of men in detention camps around the world, the vast majority without charges. He has flouted the norms of due process by creating military commissions that eschew basic standards. Torture – a moral taboo since the time of the Spanish Inquisition and illegal since the United Nations Convention Against Torture came into force in June, 1987 – became policy under Mr. Bush’s watch, although information so gleaned is inherently unreliable. So did the extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects to countries that practise torture in their domestic prisons become policy. When Congress finally woke up in 2006 and prevented the military from carrying out cruel, inhumane and degrading acts, the President turned to the intelligence agencies. Playing mouse to Mr. Bush’s cat, the lawmakers extended the prohibition against torture to the CIA. But Mr. Bush did not give up. At this writing, he is expected to veto the new law.

Mr. Bush has catapulted what we once quaintly called civilization into a new dark age. However, as the electoral primaries continue to confirm, ordinary Americans are in a hurry to turn the page, if possible. Historically, they have looked with pride upon their country’s 20th century contributions to human rights, global justice, and the rule of international law. According to the quasi-religious mythology that informs American national identity, the United States was founded as a “City on a hill” to beam the light of reason and justice around the world. How this President managed to dismiss or reshape long-standing law in one of the world’s proudest democracies is a subject that will occupy scholars for years to come. Certainly, the “fear factor” was real enough after Sept. 11, 2001, but so was the instrumentalization of fear – a time-honoured tradition in troubled times, as students of modern history will know. Almost overnight, shock severed supposedly unalterable American commitments to democratic values and individual rights.

But what about elsewhere? Was there slippage in other countries, too, after it became evident that the world’s most powerful democracy was prepared to disdain established laws?

Think about Canada and our oft-stated values: respect for cultural diversity, multilateralism, human rights, the protection of civilians during conflict, the rule of international law. These form the basis of our national identity in the same way as the “City on a hill” informs American civic patriotism. But our values and beliefs are just as vulnerable as they proved to be in the nation to the south.

More than a decade ago, I wrote a book, The End of Days, about the way seemingly rooted components of national identity may be transformed before a population entirely understands what has happened. The subject of that work was medieval Spain . And the question I asked myself was about process. How did it happen that the most open, tolerant and religiously diverse country in Europe had evolved, over time, into the most ideologically narrow community on the continent? We live in a vastly different era, but the exploration of the way entrenched cultural values may become eroded is as interesting today as it was 500 years ago – especially when you realize the gap in perception that existed in Spain between the reality of shifting laws and diminished state-sponsored protections, and the general understanding that such changes had occurred.

We’re changing too. There’s been a notable spillover from George W. Bush’s “war on terror” to law and practice in Canada . First came the cautionary tale of the Canadian engineer Maher Arar, who was sent to Syria by the Americans and tortured with the complicity of Canadian officials. The chilling words that made our collusion in his deportation possible were uttered by RCMP officer Mike Cabana in testimony before the Arar Commission: “the caveats are down,” he said. In other words, the normal protections are no longer relevant. In its urgency to demonstrate loyalty to the United States , Canada allowed the war on terror to subvert our domestic law.

Next, the news agencies Canadian Press and Associated Press reported in February, 2006, that CIA planes had refuelled in Canada 74 times since September of 2001. But when Alex Neve, secretary-general of Amnesty International Canada, wrote to ask for precise information, he was stonewalled. All the same, Mr. Neve’s letter created nervousness. As a report from Canada Border Services (obtained under Access to Information) indicated: Because they knew that complicity in the secret transportation of detainees to a third country was illegal under Canadian and international law, senior intelligence officials from six federal agencies met to discuss what to say to the media.

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