Glenn Reynolds, 2005:
I’ve been against torture since Alan Dershowitz was pushing it back in the fall of 2001. (Okay, actually I was against torture even before Dershowitz was pushing it). But I think the effort to turn this into an anti-Bush political issue is a serious mistake, and the most likely outcome will be, in essence, the ratification of torture (with today’s hype becoming tomorrow’s reality) and a political defeat for the Democrats.
Tyler Cowen, today:
At many blogs (Sullivan, Yglesias, DeLong, among others) you will find ongoing arguments for prosecuting the torturers who ran our government for a while. I am in agreement with the moral stance of these critics but I don’t agree with their practical conclusions. I believe that a full investigation would lead the U.S. public to, ultimately, side with torture, side with the torturers, and side against the prosecutors.
A couple of things:
1. Democracy is government of the people, by the people, for the people you have; not of, by and for the people you wish you had. If the American people want to openly ratify torture, in violation of centuries of Western tradition, then that is what we will do, openly. We have already indirectly ratified it at least once (2004) based on fragmentary, heavily-redacted evidence, and – not to put to fine a point on it – the torture already happened. There’s nothing we can lose which we haven’t lost already.
2. I don’t think that’s what would happen at all. I don’t think so – and neither, apparently, did the torturers, which is why they did it in secret, and why they lied about it for so long, why they still can’t bring themselves to call it what it is, and why they still refuse to whip out the awesome secret evidence they have right here in their back pocket that will totally bust everybody. Now, I’m not a credentialled horseshitologist or anything like that, but I have been exposed to a fair amount of horseshit in my day, and, in my experience, horseshit generally smells a lot like this horseshit right here. Let the sunshine in.
April 28, 2009 at 11:11 pm
For a guy who is supposed to be, you know, really smart, Tyler Cowen doesn’t really impress. His positions, as I can recall them (it’s been awhile since I bothered to read him) were just a more measured version of libertarian entitlement that McMegan does so much more embarrassingly. He really thinks Mr and Mrs America are going to find common cause with the waterboarders? Parents of troops in the field are going to be OK with “enhanced interrogation techniques” being used against POWs? The cocktail parties these people go to must be scary, if this is the kind of reasoning they can carry in their heads.
April 28, 2009 at 11:32 pm
Editors, any thoughts on the subject of K-Lo and Doughy Pantload (apparently) schtupping?
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/20474.html
The thought of them doing the love act brings to mind a jiggling 600 pound glob of conservative, half baked white bread.
Maybe their offspring will be conservative, fat and stupid, too?
If you don’t have anything to say, a picture of a cat doing something cute or an animated gif of some sort would be great!
TYIA!
April 29, 2009 at 2:23 am
The mind recoils. As do other bits.
April 29, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Recoil! Reload! Relapse! (I’ll fuck anything so long as it don’t burn my pecker.)
April 29, 2009 at 12:04 am
Tenured government employee who blogs all day 2009 (AKA today):
April 29, 2009 at 6:16 am
Well, perhaps the country would have been better off.
Since the likely result of the 2008 election with Cheney on the ticket would be an even more complete electoral meltdown for the GOP than what actually occurred.
IOW, the only repugnotards elected would be those running totally unopposed, without even token 3rd party whackaloon candidates against them.
It sure would be a windfall for the Libertarians. And the Raving Monster Looney Party.
As for the GOP, it would save them from the standard post-debacle purge…since the voters would already have done it for them.
WIN-WIN.
April 29, 2009 at 7:11 am
Don’t go hatin’ on the Official Monster Raving Loony Party.
April 29, 2009 at 12:32 pm
The further down in the same article:
“As a candidate, Cheney would have doubtless been as disciplined and ideologically consistent as McCain was feckless. In debates with Barack Obama, he would have been as cuttingly effective as he was in his encounters with Joe Lieberman and John Edwards in 2000 and 2004 respectively. And when he went down to a landslide loss, the conservative movement might – might! – have been jolted into the kind of rethinking that’s necessary if it hopes to regain power.”
April 29, 2009 at 6:06 am
I think we can figure out a way to get you those horseshitology credentials. You may not have done the course work, but you certainly have tons of practical experience.
April 29, 2009 at 10:29 am
a full investigation would lead the U.S. public to, ultimately, side with torture
This very serious argument is supported by the evidence that “24″ is a popular teevee show. QE-to-the-cap-in-your-leg-D.
May 3, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Heaven knows, the full investigation of Clinton certainly led the US public to, ultimately, side with blowjobs.
April 29, 2009 at 10:38 am
The parallel that comes to mind is police complicity in lynchings, and that it went on for so long because in polite company the issue was spoken of in euphemisms and victim-blaming propaganda.
Putting the details of torture out in the open might very likely make it harder for reactionary blowhards to defend waterboarding in public settings.
And an investigation might at least lead to the disbarment of the Torture 6. Indictment for war crimes is very unlikely, so pearl-clutchers like Cowen should rest easy there.
April 29, 2009 at 10:56 am
Everyone leaning toward favoring torture should pull a Hitchens and have themselves waterboarded. The numbers of supporters would shrink faster than an ice cube in August.
April 29, 2009 at 4:13 pm
There’s a reason I almost never read ‘real news columnists’ but almost always read the riminations upon (think of a puppy shitting on a rug), deconstructions of (think of firecrackers in the deacon’s favorite toilet), and deliriously entertaining variations upon their themes (think of Wayne Shorter doing a mode-over-tonal scale bebop improvisation on a rage composed of those places in the 12-tone scale that correspond toe the name Camile {ascending mode) Paglia {descending mode}:
Them fuckers don’t know shytinski, tovarisch. Closest thing to a ‘real news columnist’ I read is TPM: him/them rock.
But Theeds rule and curv3ball drools (think of Alien salivating into Cheney Gonzales’ Rumsfeld’s forehead).
How you Americans say? Word? Is right word?
We see already the horrific effects of an unchecked swineflu pandemic. First it mutates in the doughy pantaloonacies of Jonah Goldberg, then it wipes out entire brain strata of half the so-called cognoscenti.
I think it was Jim Gordon who played drums on that 5th Dimension tune. He went psycho and stabbed his mother to death with a knife.
April 29, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Ha! I fix! That’s ‘raga’ not “rage”.
April 29, 2009 at 4:14 pm
(Homer S voice): Heh. I wrote riminations, not ruminations.
My bad. But it’s permanent now, thanx to sucky blog zovtware.
May 1, 2009 at 6:49 am
When the democratically elected Congress ratifies an international treaty it’s the will of the people and the law of the land. What Americans are not only apathetic about the enforcement of accountability over torture, (an undemocratic principle, democracy isn’t about mob rule or totally about popularity, see Plato), as they are selective about which laws they want enforced and which one’s they don’t mind if we look the other way, but the fact remains that they perceive torture not as intelligence gathering but as punishment. That’s America. We like to hurt others, but mostly ourselves with guns, booze, fucking strangers when we’re married, (Women are more likely to cheat in a marriage then men, fascinating), lying, cheatn’ and a cussn’.
From the state of our prisons, our health and mental system that rewards economic winners and attacks economic losers, this society loves punishment and torture. Part of our Puritanical roots. Good ol’ predestination. Capitalism is the only virtue that is upheld, the only heroes have black AMEX cards.
The Stanford Prison Experiment and our prison system, (schizophrenic patients strapped down for days naked on steel tables, see Frontlines “The Released”, this week at pbs.org. A large segment of the society loves torture and punishment for anyone but themselves. We have become divorced from what makes us not sociopaths, empathy.
No mental gymnastic makes torture rationale, or ignoring a violation of law and principle OK. Slavery and Segregation, Child Labour this things were all popular. Truth and reconciliation is the best way forward. If Obama’s administration doesn’t investigate this issue, that’s a violation of the International Convention on Torture and Geneva. A ratified treaty is the same as any other law under the Constitution. If we don’t follow our own laws and agreements on agreements how can we be expected to be experienced as a rationale actor on the world stage, we can’t. It’s politically unpopular, so it’s probably intelligent, morale, ethical, and it would underline that we are a nation of laws and not men and not political whimsy. Otherwise we are just as frivolous about the rights and protections you do savour, (your own.)
Most Americans don’t know what they should know, or know to care. It’s a selfish society with shallow values we built. “Want/desire is the source of all human unhappiness”, as they say under the bohdi tree. Wanting to lift a finger to help anyone else is not a cultural value. Humans are social animals. That’s why people are unhappy. You can’t fill that void of non-connection to community with tangible assets.
The good news is that as with all progress, it’s only a matter of time until the people catch up with their rationale, better selves, if we supply a better educational and health infrastructure that is reality based, taking that which works elsewhere, no matter where, and leaving that which doesn’t work aside in the creation and implementation of systems that show we are a nation of solid values.
Can I have my Playstation 3 Now?