Leadership Quote by Tom McClintock

McClintock’s line is doing political jujitsu: it frames a procedural complaint as a civilizational litmus test. “I believe” softens the entry, but it’s a feint; the real payload is the pairing of “free” and “civilized,” words that sound descriptive yet function as moral credentials. If America is both, then holding prisoners incommunicado isn’t merely a questionable tactic - it’s an identity crisis.

The intent is clear: box the state in with its own branding. “Incommunicado” is a lawyerly, high-voltage term that evokes black sites, indefinite detention, and interrogation regimes without naming them. That vagueness isn’t accidental. It lets the listener supply the scandalous specifics - Guantanamo, CIA “enhanced interrogation,” post-9/11 detention policies - while the speaker maintains plausible deniability and a clean, constitutional posture.

Subtext: secrecy isn’t just harmful to the detainee; it corrodes the society that authorizes it. The sentence makes the prisoner almost secondary. The real subject is “free and civilized societies,” a phrase that turns due process into a boundary marker between “us” and the authoritarian “them.” That’s a classic move in American political rhetoric, especially from officials arguing that security policy must remain tethered to constitutional norms.

Context matters because McClintock is a contemporary U.S. politician speaking into debates where fear is routinely used to justify opacity. The quote aims to reclaim moral high ground by insisting that the point of liberty is not how it performs under calm conditions, but what it refuses to do when threatened.