The Bush Administration do have moral values. Their moral values are very explicit: shine the boots of the rich and the powerful, kick everybody else in the face, and let your grandchildren pay for it. That simple principle predicts almost everything that's happening.

It also seems beyond controversy that moral responsibilities are greater to the extent that people "have the resources, the training, the facilities and opportunities to speak and act effectively."

It's roughly the case that if systems become too complex to study in sufficient depth, physics hands them over to chemistry, then to biology, then experimental psychology, and finally on to history. Roughly. These are tendencies, and they tend to distinguish roughly between hard and soft sciences.

The Republican and Democratic Parties are only factions of the Government Party.

It is not that I am not a fan of American exceptionalism. That is like saying I am not a fan of the moon being made out of green cheese - it does not exist. Powerful states have quite typically considered themselves to be exceptionally magnificent, and the United States is no exception to that. The basis for it is not very substantial to put it politely.

If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.

For the last couple of hundred years, there have been struggles about this. Even the Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the constitution talk about personal rights.