The Triumph of the Torture State (Will Grigg)

Will Grigg on the how the push by totalitarian "conservatives" to legalize the waterboarding (ie, torturing) of accused foreign terrorists will likely result in innocent Americans being subjected to the same treatment:

During a call-in radio program broadcast in Moscow in the mid-1980s, the host -- a Communist hack who displayed nearly Hannityesque servility toward his party masters -- got tangled in his talking points.

At one point in his peroration, the Party mouthpiece insisted that the decadent West "stands on the brink of collapse"; shortly thereafter, he pronounced the glad tidings that the Soviet Bloc "is about to overtake the West!"

A few minutes later, a listener called in to pose an earnest but puzzled question. "Comrade, you said that the West is on the brink of collapse, and you also said we're about to overtake them," the caller observed. "But doesn't that mean...?" The question trailed off into an awkward silence as the host suddenly understood that the term of his accidental syllogism would be that the Soviet Bloc would collapse before the decadent West.

Over the past two weeks, the leading voices of Republican conservatism have caught themselves in the coils of a similar snare.

Read the rest