GOP Talking Point of the Day

It didn't take long listening to talk radio today to determine that the GOP talking points of the day (regarding the torture memos released last week) were about "criminalizing policy differences" and the US becoming a "banana republic" if the Bush administration's torture policy is investigated. The radio talking heads were definitely on message. I heard four radio talk show hosts parroting the same line during my limited drive time listening.

But what if the policy itself (i.e., torture) is criminal?

Never mind that the U.S ratified the UN Convention Against Torture in 1988 under President Reagan (btw - I think that we should quit the UN and kick 'em out of New York). Never mind that our State Department prepares 'Annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices' that condemn many of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" described in the memos when practiced in other countries. According to the talking heads on my radio, I must either be a leftist or an Islamist terrorist sympathizer to even ask the question.

Update: Glenn Greenwald (my favorite liberal pundit) on the America as a 'banana republic' fallacy: "People like John McCain argue that only "banana republics" prosecute former political leaders, but the reality is exactly the opposite. As the Western world has spent decades pointing out, the hallmark of an under-developed, tyrannical society is the very same premise we have embraced: that political elites are free to break the law with impunity and never suffer the consequences that ordinary citizens do."

Socialism vs. Fascism

Is the Obama administration socialist (as Republicans are so fond of parroting) or fascist? You decide.

Socialism versus fascism, according to the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, "Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”—that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace."

Republicans + Democrats = National Socialism

Quote of the Day:

"For five decades, Americans resisted Godless Communism. If they come to realize they did so to save Godless Capitalism, or Godless Socialism, what happens to loyalty and love of country?

To love one’s country, said Edmund Burke, one’s country ought to be lovely. If this is not God’s country anymore, whose country is it?"

Pat Buchanan, Rendering Unto Caesar

Why I Dismiss the Tea Party Movement

The reason that I dismiss the Tea Party movement is because the same people that attended the tea parties on April 15 seemingly didn't give a damn about out-of-control government spending or civil liberties prior to January 20, 2009.

There is no doubt that Obama is rushing headlong to fascism through the door that Bush opened (see here the Bush deficit vs. the projected Obama deficit), but the mess that we find ourselves in did not happen overnight, and both factions (R and D) of the Government Party share plenty of blame.

To put the tea parties in perspective, estimates of nationwide tea party turnout are between 550,000 and 1 million people at 858 events. By comparison, Major League Baseball had ~358,000 people in attendance in 14 cities. That is hardly what I would describe as awakening "a sleeping giant."

The American Gulag?

I've recently been reading The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's account of life in the Soviet prison and labor camps . Early in the book, Solzhenitsyn lists interrogation techniques employed by the NKVD (the Soviet secret police). The techniques described by Solzhenitsyn are remarkably similar to those described in the International Committee of the Red Cross's recently released report titled "ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen "High Value Detainees" in CIA Custody" (see the report here). Mark Danner of the New York Review of Books has written a couple of excellent articles on the topic (here and here) and provides a disturbing summary of the report. This quote from Danner summarizes the ICRC findings, "the CIA seems to have arrived at a method that is codified by the International Committee of the Red Cross experts into twelve basic techniques, as follows:

• Suffocation by water poured over a cloth placed over the nose and mouth...
• Prolonged stress standing position, naked, held with the arms extended and chained above the head...
• Beatings by use of a collar held around the detainees' neck and used to forcefully bang the head and body against the wall...
• Beating and kicking, including slapping, punching, kicking to the body and face...
• Confinement in a box to severely restrict movement...
• Prolonged nudity...this enforced nudity lasted for periods ranging from several weeks to several months...
• Sleep deprivation...through use of forced stress positions (standing or sitting), cold water and use of repetitive loud noises or music...
• Exposure to cold temperature...especially via cold cells and interrogation rooms, and...use of cold water poured over the body or...held around the body by means of a plastic sheet to create an immersion bath with just the head out of water.
• Prolonged shackling of hands and/or feet...
• Threats of ill-treatment, to the detainee and/or his family...
• Forced shaving of the head and beard...
• Deprivation/restricted provision of solid food from 3 days to 1 month after arrest..."

I'll bet that most Americans did not hesitate to describe the techniques detailed by Solzhenitsyn as torture when his account was published in 1973. And most Americans at the time probably thought that torture was only used by our enemies. Growing up during the Cold War, I thought that torture was a abhorrent thing only used by the Vietnamese on our POWs or by the secret police of Eastern Bloc countries to squash dissent. I never would have imagined that the same techniques would be used by my own government (I was just a naive youngster).

As a Christian, I am appalled that my government would utilize torture. But I find it even more disturbing (and perplexing) that so many of my fellow Christians are not appalled.