From the WaPo today, the always-prescient Dan Froomkin focuses on the Mukasey hearings to succinctly distill, bottle and label the toxic brew of Bushian conservatism as accurately as anyone has done to date:
By refusing to acknowledge at his confirmation hearing that waterboarding is torture, Mukasey appeared to throw his lot in with those who embrace an authoritarian strain of moral relativism, one that excuses abhorrent and illegal policies as long as the president declares they're in the national interest.
Moral relativism? Hmmmm, where have we heard that descriptive before?
Oh, here . . . and here. And here. And a thousand other places where the denizens of the Whackosphere look to score ideological match points against people who don't subscribe to their particular worldviews. And yet, one need only examine their own totemic belief systems to see some rather odd, er, contradictions in logic. Or, one might say more snarkily, complete and utter lapses in logic.
To wit: The murder of unborn babies is unconscionable, but the torturing of persons not charged with any wrongdoing is not. Adultery by liberals is a stain on our moral fabric, yet adultery by conservatives . . . well, nothing to look at here, folks. The redistribution of wealth by government is evil, unless the money's being redistributed to Republican contractors and campaign contributors. The freedom of worship is one of our most cherished American ideals, but we should proclaim ourselves a Christian nation only. Importation of cheap labor from Mexico undermines our economy, but the exportation of cheap labor to India keeps our economy robust. Preemptively invading another country that poses no threat to you is imperative for your national security, unless somebody else is doing the preempting---say, Iraq invading Kuwait. And torture is only torture if we actually say it is torture. Combine all of these tangled and tortured (pun intended) policy positions, shake vigorously, and what do you get?
Of course . . . it's called moral clarity. And how many times have you heard that one?
---Vitelius