DOING THE MORAL LIMBO by Paul Waldman

"If this truly is a clash of civilizations, the conservatives have chosen to engage it by getting in touch with their inner barbarian...

"This is hardly the first time that the American political right (whichever party it inhabited at the time) has argued for casting off such inconvenient notions as justice, freedom, democracy or the rule of law because they quavered with fear at external threats. Nor will it be the last. But every time history has judged them wrong, and this time will be no different."


www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/09/20/doing_the_moral_limbo.ph​p
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Doing The Moral Limbo

Paul Waldman


September 20, 2006

SNIP

Paul Waldman is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America and the author of the new book, Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Can Learn From Conservative Success, just released by John Wiley & Sons. The views expressed here are his own.


Before we hail Colin Powell, John McCain, Lindsay Graham and their Republican colleagues as some kind of heroes of liberty for standing up to President Bush’s proposals for interrogating terrorist suspects, let’s recall what their brave position on this issue is: The United States of America shouldn’t torture people. It is a testament to how ethically diseased today’s GOP—those guardians of “moral values,” remember—has become that this is a minority position within their party.

Bush’s September 15 soliloquy on “flawed logic”—a topic he knows something about—was prompted by the willingness of the former secretary of state and the two prominent Republican senators (as well as at least six other Republican senators and another former secretary of state) to oppose him on a matter of national security. “If there's any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it's flawed logic. I simply can't accept that,” Bush said. “It's unacceptable to think that there's any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective.”

In other words, if you object to kangaroo courts and the use of “alternative interrogation methods,” you must think we’re no better than terrorists, a logical double-twisting back flip worthy of Greg Louganis.




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Last Edited by Account Deleted by User on 09/10/2011 12:20 AM