What the hell is wrong with the right wing? If you turn on Fox News or AM radio right now, you're likely to hear someone ardently defending the federal government's torture policies. This seems to fly in the face of their professed anxiety over federal power. How do they not see the hypocrisy? They bristle at the idea of the feds rounding up AK 47s, or implementing one-size-fits-all education standards, or restructuring the medical market, but are perfectly comfortable with the torturing, spying, and bombing that the U.S. undertakes on a daily basis.
What I find even more galling is that they are constantly invoking the Founding Fathers when they rally against Obamacare or gun control, but they part company with the likes of Jefferson when it comes to waging war and "enhanced interrogation tactics". Sean Hannity, in an effort to excuse the brutal actions of the CIA, asked what you would do if your child had been kidnapped and you were able to apprehend one of the miscreants responsible for this crime. Would you stop at anything to pull information from this scumbag? Or would you be a pussy and refrain from using torture while your offspring is left in the hands of the forces of evil? I think I'll pull a page out of Socrates' playbook and retort with a question of my own. What if your child was the one suspected of perpetrating a kidnapping, but was wholly innocent? What are you going to do if someone who mistakenly thinks your precious son has information decides to torture him until he talks?
You see, in America, people are supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty in order to protect the innocent! If Mr. Hannity had ever read the Federalist Papers or maybe the Constitution, he would note that his founding heroes spent a great deal of time trying to create a system that would protect any individual from the very monstrosity they were constructing, viz., the federal government of The United States of America. Somewhere along the the line, so-called conservatives traded in the ideals of Jefferson and Madison for the savagery of Joseph Stalin. George III was downright benevolent compared to the psychopathic rulers of contemporary America.
Torture has been the hallmark of every despotic "socialist republic" that has ever been established in the name of the very people whom it tyrannizes. Liberty and benefit of the doubt for those targeted for persecution by the State is the hallmark of a free people. It's time that Americans turned off their Fox News and picked up some books. Thinkers such as Thomas Paine, H.L. Mencken, and George Orwell have so much more to offer conservatives than Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.
But they have little "R"s by their name, so they clearly represent my interests. My morals. My values. Me. Right?
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