Conservatism is no Christ. And sometimes those who walk under the banner of conservative can be wrong. Dead wrong. For instance, torture. Torture is wrong. Always has been. It's what the bad guys do. From Reginald Front de Bowuf to Major Toht, one of the character traits meant to drive home their evilness was the use of torture. The Gestapo, the Vietcong, the KJB, the Spanish Inquisition, American Indians, you name it. Their use of torture was a black mark on their ledgers. Torture and evil, they go hand in hand.
And waterboarding? Torture. I'm no expert, but it doesn't take more than an ant's brains to figure if we found our terrorists were waterboarding our troops we'd be screaming from coast to coast. And rightly so. It is torture in the classic sense of the word. Before the world heard of waterboarding, variations of it were long understood as horrifying, cruel and evil.
And yet, for reasons that are beyond this brief post, modern conservatives have thrown their lot in with the torturers of the past, not just shamefully using the practice, but almost boasting of their willingness to do so. Here is Sarah Palin, whose star showed brightly for a brief time, and has since fallen to earth for most thinking people, pining for more torture via waterboarding. And and not just advocating it, but invoking religious imagery connected to Christian rites and sacraments, an act one thinks of when thinking of Jesus and John the Baptist, of babies sprinkled and families celebrating a milestone in one's faith walk. Sigh.
When Francis Ford Coppola fused the assassination of the heads of the Five Families with the baptism of Michael Corleon's nephew in the classic The Godfather, the juxtaposition is clear. The sacred versus the profane. What is good occurring alongside that which is evil. Birth and new life, death and murder. And here's Palin, mixing the two to whip up her followers and appeal to the base. An appeal that rests heavily on a growing trend in our post-modern age: that right and wrong don't apply to us, they only apply to them. The Right isn't the only ones to do this of course. But since the Right claims to stand on the best of the past, one would expect better. Especially since we've seen where that attitude - the attitude that rules don't apply to us, just them - tends to lead.
There's one consideration. Not speaking for Palin or anyone but...
ReplyDeleteThe Jews have a concept of "building a fence around the law" - more or less a slippery slope in a positive direction. IIRC one example correctly, there is the levitical law to not boil a calf in its mother's milk. So they take steps to avoid getting even close to doing that and another and another (he listed all the steps but I don't recall them) until it becomes a prohibition to even drink milk while eating meat (less the mingling of the food in your stomach breaks the law).
Thus, we have something like "don't torture". Fine, we all agree with that. The only catch is "what is torture" starts becoming a problem. Yes I know this is where Shea starts screaming "let's not see how close we get to the line - run in the opposite direction from evil" well fine... so should we even jail terrorists or evil people? Again, you put these people in jail, well that might be uncomfortable for them, making them uncomfortable is getting a little too close to torture, isn't it? Using the above principle (which Shea likes to so invoke often), if we really don't want to torture, well we wouldn't oppose these people at all. After all, if we resisted them, they might get hurt, that would be dangerously close to torture.
Too far fetched? Remember this is a country where our airport security can't interrogate anyone suspicious without being called out for profiling, insensitivity, etc. I can't say for sure but I would be that some conservative actions are a pushback reaction to this tendency of the left.
They could also just be fallen human beings. Aren't we all?
I can see the point. I just feel that there is a line we should never, ever cross lest we become like those we oppose. I'm not stupid enough to think we've never played hardball in the past against serious threats. Look at our basic strategy for defeating Germany and Japan. Nonetheless, when we happily stand on higher moral ground than others because 'they do those things and we don't', I can't see any scenario in which deciding to suddenly do those things won't lead to a lowering of the very moral standards that we once proudly - and rightly - championed.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, I agree with you that we should all be about figuring out what our constraining principles are and the lines of our choices.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course there is her using baptism, which would have offended anyone I knew in the Christian fold, not just Catholics. Altogether time for those who want conservatism to be taken seriously to get a couple tickets for Sarah and send her to a faraway land.
ReplyDeleteDave, it won't matter because as Hube pointed out in several blog posts there, the media and friends will just find somebody else that's "crazy enough" and then hang them around the movement's neck. Or they'll make it up! (you realize how few realize the political orientation of JFK's killer?) Meanwhile the left has no end of crazies (remember Alan Grayson?) parading themselves around every day and they still get "taken seriously".
ReplyDeleteQuite frankly I'm beginning to think it's time to forfeit with dignity and accept that our grandkids are going to grow up in a less free world (assuming economies don't collapse even worse and we see an actual backsliding of technology).
But hey, sure there may be gulags and worse there, but at least we won't have that nasty old America or those filthy libertarians around. Millions may die, but at least they won't have any bad thoughts.
Oh that is so true. There are people on the Left who listen to Joy Behar, and Bill Maher. Heck, CNN has allowed Bill Maher to be a regular commentator for crying out loud. Grayson is a great example of hatred and slanderous rage. Joe Biden, amiable enough, but a fool who makes Dan Quayle look brilliant by comparison. It's not fair, and in some ways there's little you can do against a dishonest press. But it's much easier when we can point to the cases and claim dishonesty, rather than seeing the press use someone for whom there is little, to no, defense.
ReplyDeleteWell that's how they get you. On the one hand, yes a movement wants to put the best of it forward and yeah, publicly disown those who stray from the ideals of the group. On the other hand, this then gives the opponents a fantastic weapon as all they have to do is something like... edit context of a statement to get potential allies kicked out. Thus like wolves they slowly separate us one at a time from the herd until eventually there's too few to oppose them. (thus the meaning of the "First they came for the Jews..." poem)
ReplyDeleteMany conservatives have realized this and there's a growing debate over how it should be dealt with. Some believe that we should strive ever for the high road. Others believe that we should remain loyal to any ally (or one who at least has an enemy in common) and accept all are sinners and have fallen. Let's be honest: there's no easy answer to the debate.
I will say this, as far as Catholics are concerned, the impression is growing that they are "no worse friend, no better enemy". Some are ready to just say "let them hang" and leave them to suffer their fates at the hand of the state monster they helped create. People like Shea certain encourage it.
Don McClarey weighs in. Now that I've seen the quote... it's an action movie 1-liner. After everything else... heck after things you can find insulting religion in just a simple internet search, it barely registers.
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