Thursday, May 14, 2009

No, we SHOULDN'T execute all of the Blogging Tories. That would be wrong.


Apparently, the new right-wing talking point down south is that torture is defensible because, well, it works:

After refusing to release even unclassified materials as Vice President, former Vice President Dick Cheney is now calling for the release of all interrogation reports to show that torture works.

Ignore for the moment that all of the evidence shows that it doesn't work (in the sense that it doesn't reliably produce accurate or useful information). Put that niggling detail aside and let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that it does work. Let's go with that position and see where it takes us.

That argument would seem to suggest that, even if torture is illegal, unconstitutional, a war crime or what have you, it's acceptable because it works. It's acceptable because it produces the result you're after. It's acceptable because you end up in a better place than when you started, with more potentially valuable information. In short, even if it's legally, ethically and morally reprehensible, in the end, you shouldn't object to it since, well, quite simply, the ends justify the means because the end result is an undeniably good thing. Except that, if you buy that argument, ugly things start to happen.

If you accept that logic, then you similarly have to accept that it would be equally defensible to torture a suspect's family to get information. Maybe a suspect is a tough nut to crack. So you drag in his family, and torture his wife and children in front of him. Is that acceptable? Using the above logic, it would have to be, which puts the torture apologist in an increasingly awkward position. So let's push this "logic" one step further.

Personally, I would like to see a "smarter" Canada. And by "smarter," I mean that I think it would be a good thing if Canadians were more educated, more logical, more intellectual. I've always felt that knowledge is a good thing; that the better educated we are as a populace, the better society we're capable of creating. Can anyone seriously deny that? So how can we get a smarter Canada? Simple: Execute all the Blogging Tories. No, wait, hear me out.

I don't think anyone can possibly deny that, as a group, Stephen Taylor's Blogging Tories are the most uneducated, cement-headed collection of racist, intolerant yahoos and painful scientific illiterates this side of the 49th parallel. Seriously, there's no way you can even begin to deny the jaw-dropping idiocy of folks like Dr. Roy, Hunter, the dingbats at The Politic, Raphael Alexander, Paul E. Marek, Neo Conservative ... the list just goes on and on, doesn't it? Which suggests, quite simply, that to improve the intellectual level of this country, all we need to do is take them all out, line them up against the wall, and have them shot.

Sure, that would be ethically and morally repugnant. In fact, I'm pretty sure it would be illegal in some provinces. But (and here's the kicker) if you put aside the horrific human rights violations involved, I think we can all agree that, in the end, we'd end up with a smarter country. Really, I think that would be a foregone conclusion. The means might be a bit tacky and classless but the end result would be a good thing, nationally speaking.

So why don't we do that? Because it would be wrong. Simply put, it doesn't matter if the end result is a good thing. That doesn't justify the behaviour. It doesn't matter if the Blogging Tories are embarrassing retards, wretched racists and vile neo-Nazis and white supremacists whose collective execution would make this a better country in an instant. None of that matters.

Killing them outright would be wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong! The fact that it would be good for Canada is not even remotely relevant. The end does not justify the means. It doesn't justify executing Blogging Tories, and it doesn't justify torture. And anyone who wants to defend torture because it "works" might want to take a minute to really think about what lies at the end of that road.

16 comments:

thwap said...

Your example of torturing a suspect's children in front of him or her is remarkably similar to that offered by the Philadelphia Inquirer's new columnist, John Yoo, who said that there were no international laws preventing the prezident of the USA from smashing the testicles of a suspect's child in order to gain information.

M@ said...

Well, of course. John Yoo, a "lawyer", feels there are absolutely no limits on presidential power; the president's actions are by definition lawful.

Constitution, schmonstitution. We got us some brown people to intimidate.

Sparky said...

I'll take bets on how long it'll take Neo to take this post out of context and say "CC wants us dead..."
There'll be selective quotes and the usual lack of any discernment whatsoever.
The second best bet is Patrick Ross and what he'll do with this post
Actually, I don't want to know...

Gene Rayburn said...

maybe Patrick Ross will sit on it and flatten it like a pizza with his leviathan ass.

Unknown said...

Bravo, sir.

Anonymous said...

Canublican Special:

flattened leviathan ass pizza with pineapple.


hot!

Mike said...

It is a modest proposal, one which the BT will of course, miss.

Sparky is right... its only a matter of time before the faux outrage erupts.

I expect KKKate to lead the charge, since we all know that she would never call for someones death...

Bismark said...

Rather than killing the BTs outright, I was going to suggest that they all be lobotomized, but I guess that would be a tad redundant, wouldn’t it?

JJ said...

I agree, execution is a little harsh... the SPCA has a good spay and neuter program, though.

Ti-Guy said...

How's about we just execute a few of them? Just some important ones, so the rest get the message. After all, it was that icon of the Right, Ann Coulter, who first suggested something similar:

"When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors."

liberal supporter said...

A few won't do the trick.

Why not burn them all in effigy? That's not considered a threat to life or limb, simply an expression of disgust with the burnees.

Bismark said...

Ti-Guy — How dare you invoke the blatantly eliminationist rhetoric of inflammatory harridans like Ann Coulter (beloved icon of "dr. roy" and other fine, upstanding, morally righteous so-called "conservatives"). Don't you know that she was just JOKING? I mean, she is nothing but a comedian, after all.

LS — Surely you cannot be serious. But if so, you might want to consider the malevolent antics of the KKK when considering the threatening nature of such gestures.

KEvron said...

oh, for fuckssake. can we put an end to this line of rhetoric already? i understand you're being didactic, cc, but the thread has predictably degenerated into a petty gripe seesion, uglier than it is funny.

KEvron

Ti-Guy said...

oh, for fuckssake. can we put an end to this line of rhetoric already>?

Go tell that to your wingnut countrymen and the media agencies who so gleefully provide venue after venue to host just this kind of rhetoric. At least in this country, we don't let people like Ann Coulter, Michael Savage or Rush Limbaugh on our public airwaves.

Maybe if American liberals had stopped being terrified of their rednecks long ago (I mean, what else are movies like Deliverance about except an expression of abject fear of the primitives Americans are forced to co-exist with), things would never have gotten to this point.

KEvron said...

shorter ti-guy: "he started it!"

KEvron

Ti-Guy said...

shorter ti-guy: "he started it!"More like we can all do it if that's the what the eliminationists want.

I'm not going to be intimated the way you lot have been by your primitives (because I'm not). Round 'em up and put 'em in camps. Or deport them all to Alabama; they'd be happier there anyway.