Quote of the Day
Posted by Brad at 3:44pm Sunday, January 11, 2009
A provocative point worth pondering from Jim Henley:
The United States government has always engaged in war crimes and human rights violations. What’s different this decade is that, under the leadership of a terrible president, our elites have become vociferous advocates of the goodness and rightness of war crimes and human rights violations. After the period from Grant and Sherman’s Indian policies to the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, America’s powerful learned to at least talk a good game. This led to real improvement in people’s lives when proles and poobahs from Portugal to Poland to the Philippines took our rhetoric seriously. Now our rulers and their auxiliaries view their highest calling as insisting on torture, panopticon and aggressive war as the highest ideals. Esthetically, this may represent a gain in frankness. Practically, I don’t expect it to better the world.
