Letters to the Editor
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My dream about Jonah
has always been that he's kidnapped by jihadists and is subjected to waterboarding. After he's released I want to hear from him about how great waterboarding is.
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Ron Paul - not consistently Constitutional?
To go off topic again, Salon's Blog Report notes that the blog Making Light has linked to an essay by Ron Paul that includes the following:
The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders’ political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government’s hostility to religion. [...] The Founding Fathers envisioned a robustly Christian yet religiously tolerant America, with churches serving as vital institutions that would eclipse the state in importance.
I had basically believed Greenwald's position that Paul, for better or for worse (and for liberaler or conservativer), sticks to a strict and consistent interpretation of the Constitution instead of being conventionally ideological. (Sorry, GG, if I'm misstating your position, but I don't think I am, at least not too badly.) But doesn't this essay contradict that? In other words, if he's that serious about the Constitution, he almost certainly knows better than to say the things I quoted above, so maybe he's not as principled and consistent as we think? (The whole essay, which is about the 'war on Christmas', is at http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul148.html )
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@ Jef, GG
Since you wandered so far O/T.
My buddy wrote/produced this movie -
http://tinyurl.com/29sfx3
I can't whole-heartedly recommend it (blame the Director for that) BUT - it has some pretty decent (to me, anyway) Fado singing.
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~.torture. Torture is torture.
Sincerum est nisi vas, quodcunique infundis, acessit
or
If the jug is not clean, all you pour into it turns sour.
_
Waterboarding torture? Everybody knows it is sadistic torture!
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@Other Paul
Apology not needed, but accepted... I am equally dismayed by the shift of the cosidetto "Overton window" into realms I consider barely human - but I guess I blame my elders, not the younguns, for that!
I don't have any guesses as to why. "9/11" is certainly part of the reason (and note that I include the govern/media response as part of the overall event), along with the long-term trend of we Americans solving our problems through violence.
When I think of these times, it's Burke and Yeats who come to mind the most. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
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I thought I'd seen and heard everything.
A beautiful wild, yellow, and hungry barn cat went: Meow at the compost pile.
Then the cat ran off, sneakily, with a blank bannana peel. honest.
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She's back rummaging through the pumpkin rinds.
Honest. I don't drink much, and had no yellow honey mead wine today.
O, puke.
I'm out to get some cans of Meow Cat food and a bag of kitty liter. And maybe a 6- pack of Abbey Leffe beer for later.
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Nazis proved that torture works
"To recap his argument: I, Alan Dershowitz am advocating that Democrats follow the policy of the Nazi government which proved that torture (which I am against) works."
-- mattrhames
Ouch. Damn if that doesn't expose the weasel Dershowitz in the town square naked.
I can't help but pile on though and add to the shame and idiocy of Dershowitz remarks by noting the Nazis (along with their torture policies) lost the war.
Let me imagine Dershowitzs response, "ze problem wit lozing de war waz not ze torchure, but dat zey did not torchure enufff!"
Where's colonel Klink when you need him.
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And some Paulaner Salvator Double Bock beer for poor Paul...
Arne,
Cheers.
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When I was in high school in the early 80's
which was just after Reagan took over, Vietnam was still a fairly recent open and sore wound (lots of movies about it had come out in the previous few years, all of which portrayed it as a living nightmare than achieved no good for anyone), the military was in decline and in some disrepute, whether deserved or not--as was the jingoistic brand of faux "patriotism" that passes for the real thing these days among wingnut chickenhawks (and in fact my very first act of civil disobedience was to refuse to stand up and recite the pledge every morning in class, as we were supposed to do according to a recently passed law that was an early sign of the neocon agenda to come)--and the country was in no mood for yet more wars.
I remember participating in a particularly spirited discussion about the military and US foreign policy in history class, the Tehran embassy takeover, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Vietnam, and the apparent decline in US military power and overall global prestige, etc.--i.e. the very topics that neocons were even then concerned about and trying to do something about, in their own crazy ways. This was a fairly liberal NYC public high school, the teacher and students were liberal, and most people agreed that we needed to back off from the tendency to employ military solutions to solve every foreign policy problem (this was before Granada and Iran-Contra, and before Reagan started talking tough to Gorby, who wasn't even yet in power at the time, and before Israel invaded Lebanon), and look more to diplomatic and economic solutions. I.e. soft vs. hard power. People brought up the positive developments with Solidarity in Poland as examples of how the former work, and Vietnam as an example of how the latter didn't.
And then one of the students raised his hand and challenged the rest of us by saying basically what Goldberg and Leeden have said, that the reason that US global prestige both at home and abroad was on the decline was actually because we hadn't flexed our military muscles in a while, and that the failure of Vietnam had not only brought this prestige and morale down, but that it tought us the wrong lesson. Namely, that we needed to back off from the use of militarism. In his mind, we needed more militarism, not less, and that the best way to bolster and maintain US prestige at home and abroad was to basically start a war now and then and kick some ass. I doubt that he had every heard of neoconservatism or made these remarks based upon a deep understanding of the various schools of foriegn policy prevalent at the time. It was simply who he was, and the background that he came from, that made him think this way. I was actually friends with him, and thought of him as a nice guy, just more right-wing than most people I knew at the time. Regardless of how deeply he had thought about these matters, this was his gut feeling about how things needed to be. As is the case with lots of people--right and left.
My point is that I realized then and there that there is a segment of the population that, for whatever reasons, are inclined to support militarism, regardless of the various reasons offered against it both moral and practical. Call it inherent chickenhawkism (or, for people who at least have the courage to walk the walk and join the military, actually hawkism) or something else, but some people are either hard or soft-wired to look at things this way. The soft-wired types might still be open to reason and "conversion", but likely only after a Vietnam or Iraq-like fiasco that clearly proves to them how wrong they were. But the hard-wired types will likely never be swayed by even the most solid of reasons and damning of evidence. They like war, period, and will likely always like it. Of course, even this group can be divided into two subgroups, between the chickenhawks like Goldberg and Leeden who talk the talk but don't walk the walk, and the actual hawks like Ollie North and those Gathering of Eagles nuts who've actually served, seen war, and yet astoundingly still like and approve of it.
I suggest that the chickenhawks are dangerous in their own ways, but the actual hawks are the most dangerous, because the former are at bottom manipulative and dishonest cowards who can only succeed when their opponents are weak, stupid, disorganized and unawares, but will back down, I believe, at the sign of real opposition. Plus everyone knows that they're lying hypocrites because they've not walked the walk. But the latter are the real thing, and present a far more formidable opponent for us. The present neocon front may well collapse of its own stupidity and overreach. But behind it are, I think, far more determined, radical and tenacious elements who would just love to pick up the pieces and take things to the next level, one that the current neocons were unable to due to their own personal limitations. Remember, the folks who took over Germany in the 30's weren't just far-right writers and thinkers, but hardened veterans who worshipped and did not fear war, and were willing to do literally anything to achieve their goals. And they did. So I worry less about folks like Goldberg and Leeden, than about the people standing in line right behind them, for whom they have cleared a path.
Sorry if this is rambling. My point is that we're in this battle with the neocons for the long haul, and that they're not all as easy to debunk as idiots like Goldberg and Leeden. There are some far more formidable people standing behind them, who are just using them as fronts, to advance a cause, for as long as they're useful. THEY are the ones to genuinely fear.