For centuries, Guy Fawkes Day marked the event. Englishmen were taught of the need to be vigilant in the defense of the realm, and particularly to remember the threat from within, from the disloyal Catholics. But mostly they enjoyed the privilege of lighting bonfires and engaging in pranks on a chilly autumn evening.

But today Britons have a take on Guy Fawkes that is much at odds with the historical one. Once Fawkes was a symbol of the traitor within. The people were called to be on guard against his like. No longer. Today Guy Fawkes is increasingly viewed as the heroic figure prepared to stand against an unjust and oppressive state, as a martyr and a victim of torture. What are the lessons of Guy Fawkes Day for 2007? I propose three:

When was the last time that the American secretary of state’s senior legal adviser was an object of near-universal ridicule in the international legal community? In my lifetime, only once: right now. The legal adviser in question is Jim Bellinger. Earlier this year, he delivered a talk at The Hague. A British colleague who had attended alerted me to it, and I wrote about it in “The Report from Cloudcuckooland.” The audience’s reaction, I was told, was “derisory, barely polite.” And the reason for the public contempt consistently shown Bellinger by the legal community is simple: He finds it impossible to condemn torture. No legal adviser before him had any problem with that proposition. Alas, Bellinger is responsible for defending the posture of the Bush Administration, which “does not torture,” except, of course, when it tortures with gusto.

Bellinger professed his defense of torture most recently in a debate with Professor Philippe Sands, one of Britain’s preeminent international-law authorities. And in so doing, Bellinger used almost exactly the same studied dodges and evasions that were used by Michael Mukasey in his recent appearance before a Senate committee, which suggests that they have now emerged as some fairly formal doctrine.