And David Frum has been one of the few reasonable right wingers of late. Even he says that torture might be ok if it works. This morning on "Wait, wait, don't tell me," someone joked that this debate was similar to the shoplifter arguing, "call it what you will, but look at all this stuff I got!."
Just amazes me that the people who criticized liberals for their moral relativism, now embracing the tactics of the former Soviet Union and third world dictators. And, as Joan Walsh points out here, Ronald Reagan was notoriously soft on terrorists and too concerned about the rights of evil people to torture them.
Sigh.
2 comments:
Streak- I guess I'm a governmental skeptic. In general I am skeptical of our current political climate being capable of good governance, oversight, and doing what's in the general best interest above the personal political agenda. With Bush in power I was cynical/hopeless so I guess skeptical is a great improvement recently.
With your latest few posts you've hit on the strange reasoning I get from the articles you've linked and conversations I've had with republican friends lately. They complain that government is the problem and can't solve our economic situation. Free enterprise is better. (I don't completely disagree in principle - moreso in scope). On the other hand, when we talk about preemptive war, torture, illegal wiretapping, etc... suddenly the same group of politicians or their appointees become trustworthy agents of our agenda. The same "government" that isn't capable of overseeing anything effectively is now trusted to use good judgement in which interrogation techniques to use, when to invade, and who to wire tap. I agree that all of these topics are open for discussion and evaluation, but the conversations I've had lately have baffled me in what I see as a strange double standard as to when "government" is okay.
Later
BB
BB, you raise some excellent points. Many people refer to a left leaning gov't that asserts a great deal of control over people's lives as a "nanny state." Republicans often complain that this type of gov't infringes too much on personal freedom and that we would be better off without so much control.
These same critics seem to support gov't control in other areas, such as (like you mention) spying, wiretapping, and torture. They also seem fine with laws preventing gay marriage, limits on some kinds of speech, and other various laws dealing with morality. This is a huge double standard.
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