Must Read
Michael Kinsley on torture. (Hat tip to Jim Henley.)
Also, see Kinsley on Roe Vs. Wade. On this topic, the "right to privacy" angle has always struck me as disingenuous. If you really believe in a right to privacy, Roe supporters, then tell me which is more private:
1) A person who grows a pot plant in their fenced-in backyard and then smokes it in their bedroom; or
2) A person who goes into a large hospital and has an operation involving numerous medical personnel, herself, a fetus, and, to an extent, whomever got her pregnant.
Pretty obviously, 1) is a lot more private. Yet we never see the Roe defenders trying to extend the principle to that scenario.
And one more: let's hear it for the Second Vermont Republic.
Also, see Kinsley on Roe Vs. Wade. On this topic, the "right to privacy" angle has always struck me as disingenuous. If you really believe in a right to privacy, Roe supporters, then tell me which is more private:
1) A person who grows a pot plant in their fenced-in backyard and then smokes it in their bedroom; or
2) A person who goes into a large hospital and has an operation involving numerous medical personnel, herself, a fetus, and, to an extent, whomever got her pregnant.
Pretty obviously, 1) is a lot more private. Yet we never see the Roe defenders trying to extend the principle to that scenario.
And one more: let's hear it for the Second Vermont Republic.
Torture. None of the discussions I
ReplyDeletehave read ever mention the fact
that if someone is hard core enough
to plant an A-bomb in New York City,
they certainly aren't going to
give it up because you're pulling out
his finger nails. Just another reason
to out law it entirely. Anyone
have any facts about how productive
torture is anyway?
If the end is to maintain power, it's conceivable that a torture program worked for Mao and Stalin. Pinochet and Castro may yet have peaceful deaths.
ReplyDeleteAs a white male with a physique that could be described as "soft dough," I find the prospect of any time in a state pen frightening enough to keep me within most laws. The gang rapists are essentially tools of the state.
Some conservatives have actually employed the prison rape threat in a way that implies they see it just as you say, as a tool of state policy.
ReplyDeleteWho are getting the abortions? Who might be freed by dope?
ReplyDeleteThe capitalist system has no problem with abortion, as most of those being aborted would, presumably, act as a drag on the economy, i.e., the unwanted progeny of the lumpenproletariat become the criminal element, the destroyers of private property, and ultimately become the wards of the state in the penal system.
If even a small percentage of the wage slaves get it into their noggins that a satisfactory life can be derived from just banging one’s wife, munching out and playing the bongos, then the national accounts are in big trouble. And we all know that the average head on the street can’t have a good time without an ever-rising GDP.