Jonah Goldberg's Hypocrisy Mad Lib!

I found it useful to highlight some rather bald hypocrisy by Jonah Goldberg. In doing so, I used his "Polanksi Controversy Shouldn't Be Controversial" post on National Review Online with changes in facts, but no change in reasoning:

I am delighted by the Bush Administration torture controversy. Don’t get me wrong: I am horrified and disgusted by what the administration did — and admitted to — but there is an upside.

Just to recap, the Bush administration authorized, in bad faith, a system of torture to eke confessions and information out of foreign nationals. They brought these foreigners from their home countries to secret bases or bases with dubious international scrutiny around the world and performed acts previously described as torture. They tried to torture the people into confessing to links between Iraq and al Qaeda. The foreigners said no initially, but eventually cracked. The interrogators raped and tortured them anyway. Cheney argued he did authorize these techniques, allegedly for fear that millions of Americans would die in a "ticking time bomb" scenario. He spent the next several months living the life of a revered statesman in America.

So what do I like about the controversy? Well, for starters, that there is one at all. I think it is fascinating beyond words that this is open to “debate.”

If Dick Cheney were the name of the world’s greatest plumber or accountant, or even the director of Weekend at Bernie’s II, there would be no argument. Indeed, Dick Cheney would have already been convicted and imprisoned by now. No serious person can dispute this.

Now of course, reasonable people can disagree about all sorts of stuff. What sort of punishment does Dick Cheney deserve? Should the 68-year-old spend the rest of his life in jail? Does the fact that he was ostensibly "protecting American lives" mitigate issues? How should we score allegations of bad-faith legal reasoning or the fact that he's no longer in office? All of these things are open to good-faith disagreement.

But there are also a few things, by my lights, no reasonable person can dispute. The first is that torture is a very bad thing and no amount of blame-shifting to the foreign nationals can absolve Cheney of his culpability.

Capturing and torturing enemy combatants in secret bases around the world is a crime. How on earth can waterboarding an innocent man, putting him in stress positions, and ultimately killing him be seen as less heinous?

A second point beyond dispute is that whatever your crime, be it tax fraud or tearing the tags off your mattress, our system of government cannot tolerate anyone arguing "state secrets" or "national security" to escape punishment. Even if Cheney were wholly innocent of the charges, it would be necessary for us to seek a truth commission.

That brings us to the even more refreshing aspect of this controversy: It is not a Left-Right issue. I’m not normally one to celebrate bipartisan unity, but it’s nice to know there are some things political or ideological opponents can agree on. Some of the most ardent and clear voices on the Bush Administration torture issue have been on the Right.

Go into a bar or union hall and ask whether presidents and vice presidents should get special treatment when they torture and kill people and you’ll discover that on this issue, the differences between “blue America” and “red America” are vanishingly small.

And yet, there is a controversy. Many of the international community’s leading lights are rallying to the Enhanced Interrogations movement. A meme is circulating with such talking heads as Charles Krauthammer, Rush Limbaugh, and G. Gordon Liddy arguing against investigations. (No surprise that Liddy’s on board, given that he served time for political wrondoing.) The arguments in Cheney’s defense range from lawyerly red herrings to intellectual piffle to horrendous affronts to human decency. Jonah Goldberg dismissed the allegations because he was sure whatever Cheney authorized, it didn’t amount to "torture.”

It all boils down to the fact that Cheney is famous and powerful and a bullshit artist, living above the world of mortals. Indeed, if he didn’t authorize torture — and he did — Cheney would still be considered a pig in most normal communities. This is the man who, after all, advocated using military force in domestic law enforcement, and lied his way into American involvement in Iraq.

His defenders don’t care. They are above and beyond bourgeois notions of morality, even legality.

And that’s the main reason I am grateful for this controversy. It is a dye marker, “lighting up” a whole archipelago of morally wretched people. With their time, their money, and their craft, these very people routinely lecture America about what is right and wrong. It’s good to know that at the most fundamental level, they have no idea what they’re talking about.

Yeah yeah, I know. It's a Left-Right issue. But it shouldn't be. Once you get out of "is this torture?" and into "assuming heinous torture (give an example), should the vice president be able to authorize this?" I think the political winds might shift to the same direction.

Burn.

Publius, via Anonymous Liberal.

I just started a new job. I shouldn't talk about it here. I have a feeling I'm the most liberal person there, by a large factor. Which is fine, since I don't believe in talking politics at work, anyway. But it's brought home how much of an outlier I am here in KS. (And I'm not even all that liberal, compared to a lot of my friends, like Jon Schnooten.) Although even here there are others. My Thai restaurateur told me that around 10% of his customers are vegetarian. And you know, Hitler was a vegetarian.

Rule of law

Glenn Greenwald posted a thoughtful, passionate rebuke of national media journalism today that states many of my growing qualms with establishment wisdom and the status quo. This essay was in response to Michael Massing's analysis of the changing face of journalism in the relationship between print or television media and the blogosphere.

While both are worth reading in full, the main gist of Greenwald's essay is that Washington politics and Washington media have a rather insidious belief that all questions in politics constitute policymaking, and should be subject to "practicalities." However, as he puts it there are fundamental differences:

Garden-variety political questions -- what should be the highest tax rate? what kind of health care policy should the government adopt? to what extent should the government regulate private industry? -- are ones intended to be driven by "the practical considerations policymakers must contend with." But questions about our basic liberties and core premises of our government -- presidential adherence to the law, providing due process before sticking people in cages, spying on Americans only with probable cause search warrants, treating all citizens including high political officials equally under the law -- are supposed to be immune from such "practical" and ephemeral influences. Those principles, by definition, prevail in undiluted form regardless of public opinion and regardless of the "practical" needs of political officials. That should not be controversial; that is the central republican premise for how our political system was designed.

I do not believe it is as simple as Greenwald puts it. He contends from a sort of originalist view what the Framers intended, and such arguments have been used to support slavery (3/5ths rule) or any number of past constitutional abuses. He does not constrain his commentary to the Bill of Rights, but extends it to the "rule of law" arguing it is not amorphous or ephemeral. Meanwhile, his supporters in the comments argue about which of the amendments are open to interpretation, differing on the Second Amendment, which left-leaning civil libertarians so often forget.

The rule of law is a principle, as is due process, and what those principles mean are going to be left at times to policymaking, be it from a politician or a judge. That said, he is right that without adherence to the rule of law, and the provision of due process, we are not the country the Framers intended, nor are we the country we believe we are. At the very least, though rule of law in some ways open to interpretation, fundamental questions regarding the rule of law should be given much more depth of analysis than the press often provides. The consequences of its abdication are far more grave to all Americans than differences on diplomacy or healthcare.

Three cheers for Charles Pierce!

Charles Pierce, author of Idiot America, a book I have not read, was recently interviewed by David Shuster on MSNBC:


In this interview, Pierce does two things of note. First, he calls the Internet "the internets," and I find that to be endearing and awesome. Second, and more importantly, he ignores Shuster's questions, which advance the birthers' non-story and instead opts to highlight again and again the fact that this is a non-story and that the "mainstream media" is just playing patsy to "rightwing leaders" who are controlling the conversation. It does not matter why Liz Cheney gives credibility to birther claims, for that matter so does Lou Dobbs. What matters is that the media is giving her a soapbox on which to make these claims.

Pierce calls it the "decline of expertise" and I agree with him. However, I would take it another step further. It is not only that fringe voices are given soap boxes in the media alongside rational, independent-minded experts to generate controversy and ratings, but it is also, as Glenn Greenwald has regularly commented, the increasing proliferation of anonymity in sources, which has caused such a decline. Liz Cheney picks favorable stages: Larry King Live, and Morning Joe where she can spout her nonsense without much debate. She is not held to answer by her direct questioners for her fringe beliefs. In much the same way, anonymous commenters are allowed to spout invective, irrationality, and outright lies without consequence to themselves, but sometimes grave damage to serious discourse.

Shuster does not wish to engage him in a discussion about such a decline; however, it is something I'd like to see taken more seriously.

Intro

I guess this means that my resurgent desire to return to blogging has been realized. I haven't been active since last year's election, but I appreciate the ability to provide sourced commentary in a location separate from instant messaging clients and in longer form than Twitter allows.

My intention is to use this space as a depository for the insoluble -- mostly political -- sediment of my stream of consciousness. We'll see how that pans out.

I read, and will probably most often post links and excerpts from, specific blogs:

• Glenn Greenwald
• Kevin Drum
• Wonkette
• Matt Yglesias
• Think Progress
• Andrew Sullivan
• Balloon Juice
• Talking Points Memo

I would read more, but I have to find a happy medium between working and reading. I also skew toward blogs that have RSS feeds, to save myself from having to remember so many URLs.

Anyway, the insoluble topics that are of the most interest to me right now involve the politicization of U.S. torture and the resulting impunity for the criminals who authorized and perpetrated it, and exposing what I (and others) believe to be the failures of the establishment press and the falsity of the "liberal media" meme.

Eventually, I may allow or solicit friends to join me in this, though we have other such outlets. Hopefully, future posts will be a bit more interesting.