Liberty

Liberty

On Valentine's day, the Senate approved a prohibition on the use of waterboarding and other torture techniques. President Bush has vowed to veto the bill. The Senate voted 51-45, largely along partisan lines. (Apparently torture is a conservative value).

Presumptive Republican Presidential candidate John McCain, himself once a victim of torture and an outspoken critic of it, voted against the bill.

When asked about this during a CNN interview, McCain explained that he voted against the ban on torture by talking in great length about what a terrible thing torture is, and reiterating the reasons why it should never be used, sentiments I and many others happen to agree with...In other words, he explained why he should have voted for the bill banning torture...but he voted AGAINST it.

One of the problems with the straight talk express is that it's just talk.

Liberty no. 2

You would think voting in favor of torture as a means of pandering for votes while being an outspoken critic of torture would cause a moral and ethical dilemma, but one of the things we've learned about politics, especially on the right, is that there are no morals or ethics.

USA, Inc.

One would think that this would make a difference to people. It probably would if they cared to know it, but Americans have an unhealthy distrust of knowledge. We are, for reasons I cannot begin to understand, willfully stupid, ignorant by choice.

There's an article about that in Saturday's New York Times. It's titled Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?. I'm gonna excerpt from it here.

A popular video on YouTube shows Kellie Pickler, the adorable platinum blonde from “American Idol,” appearing on the Fox game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” during celebrity week. Selected from a third-grade geography curriculum, the $25,000 question asked: “Budapest is the capital of what European country?"

Ms. Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard perplexed. “I thought Europe was a country,” she said. Playing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the genuine fifth graders: Hungary. “Hungry?” she said, eyes widening in disbelief. “That’s a country? I’ve heard of Turkey. But Hungry? I’ve never heard of it.”...

Such, uh, lack of global awareness is the kind of thing that drives Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason,” up a wall. Ms. Jacoby is one of a number of writers with new books that bemoan the state of American culture...Ms. Jacoby, whose book came out on Tuesday, doesn’t zero in on a particular technology or emotion, but rather on what she feels is a generalized hostility to knowledge...

Now, Ms. Jacoby said, something different is happening: anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way.

Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.

The author of seven other books, [Ms. Jacoby] first got the idea for this book back in 2001, on 9/11.

Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits...

“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.

The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”

“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.

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Unbeatable Prices

A major part of John McCain's economic policy is to make permanent the Bush tax cuts he vehemently spoke out and voted against (and it is indicative of American ignorance and desire for instant gratification that we should opt for a $200 tax refund in exchange for lower wages and/or loss of jobs, foreclosure on our mortgages, a tripling of prices at the gas pump and the resultant increase in the cost of food and consumer goods, etc., even when the math clearly shows considerably less money in the bank account after the deal is done). McCain could explain away this contradiction as a function of time: he is human, after all, and humans change their minds and/or make mistakes, although you'll never hear a politician admit that. There is no way to explain voting for torture and then speaking out against torture in the same day, unless, of course, McCain were to confess to being a unethical hypocrite who will sell out his principles for a vote, (provided, of course, that he even has principles).

Hope

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No hope.