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I was contending with the forces of the Anti-Christ over on a lousy Brit forum, where some weak-tea surrender-monkeys were whining about American Christians waterboarding captured terrorists. And what I read made me ill.
Now, you and I know that the Savior endured horrible torture at the hands of the Roman satanists. He suffered terribly, and died in agony. So the idea that some greasy heathen camel-kisser is too good to suffer much lesser torment than Jesus did is just an abomination. Arab dust-bunnies of all nationalities deserve horsewhipping and hot irons, not just a "torture" which involves getting their ugly faces a little wet. They deserve it!
Then I read the following. And it made me physically sick.
Christian America is not concerned with extending Christian rights to non-Christian pagans who eat goats and want only to destroy all that is good and holy.
We are threatened as a nation and as a civilization by Al Qaeda! The merciless terrorist hordes are millions strong! They have weapons...probably thousands of tanks, and missiles, and whole fleets of jet bombers, hidden away in their Tora Bora caves. They are more powerful and dangerous than the Soviet Union ever was! They are more dangerous than China, North Korea, and Hillary Clinton combined!
So America is duty-bound to torture the hell out of every terrorist we can get out hands on -- every teenaged boy turned over to us for a reward in some Afghan backwater, every old beggar pulled off the street in Tikrit, every loony Canadian doctor with a slightly Arab appearance who ends up in the wrong airport restroom at the wrong time. They all deserve torture.
Jesus was tortured worse than any of them, for the salvation of mankind.
And we must torture them for the salvation of Christian America.
The time is near! Soldiers of the Christ...armor up and move out!
~~ OEJ
Now, you and I know that the Savior endured horrible torture at the hands of the Roman satanists. He suffered terribly, and died in agony. So the idea that some greasy heathen camel-kisser is too good to suffer much lesser torment than Jesus did is just an abomination. Arab dust-bunnies of all nationalities deserve horsewhipping and hot irons, not just a "torture" which involves getting their ugly faces a little wet. They deserve it!
Then I read the following. And it made me physically sick.
At risk of being very boring indeed, I’d like to add some thoughts on moral governance and torture. There are crucial politico-philosophical requirements for accepting official, state-sanctioned torture. If in administering brutal physical and psychological punishment the state is to be judge, jury, and executioner, then one must accept that:
1. the good of the state is always the paramount consideration;
2. individual rights exist only inasmuch as they coincide with the interests of the state;
3. and the state alone decides what rights are accorded to individuals.
If point one were not true, then external considerations like justice, morality, and legality could intervene to prevent the state from using torture. If point two were not true, then individuals could have absolute rights which might prevent their being tortured by the state. And if point three were not true, then individuals could legitimately challenge the state’s decision to torture.
Of course the points listed are three of the essential characteristics cited by Mussolini in his 1932 essay defining fascism.
American neoconservatives like Cheney, Feith, Bolton, and Wolfowitz champion some of fascism’s tenets, but they are most assuredly not classical fascists. The founding documents of America, however, are PROFOUNDLY anti-fascist. Americans assert that a legitimate state exists ONLY WITH THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED. The American Declaration of Independence says that individuals have inalienable rights, and “…That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.”
Thus, in the American view, the state serves the rights of the individual, and not the reverse. The individual has the right, indeed the duty, to pass judgment on the state; individuals have the right to oppose the state and even abolish it. In the American conception, individual rights are paramount.
State-sanctioned torture — the bluntest, most brutal assertion that the state can usurp individual rights at will — is therefore profoundly anti-American. It denies our basic ideas concerning governments, justice, and man. Is America so weak, so pathetically frightened, that we are willing to abandon our foundational beliefs and let the state usurp the most basic individual right — the right to exist without pain? I would say no. I would say that America is strong, America will endure, and America must NOT destroy its own foundation.
I have spoken to American ideals, but all Western nations cite the principle of individual rights as a constitutional verity. France’s “Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du citoyen” is, if anything, more explicit on this point than the American Constitution. Sweden’s Constitution states, “All public power in Sweden proceeds from the people…Public power shall be exercised with respect for the equal worth of all and for the freedom and dignity of the individual.” The Swiss Bill of Rights states (in Article 7 of the Swiss Constitution) that “human dignity shall be respected and protected”; it goes on to prohibit torture, to mandate freedom from arbitrary laws, and demand “personal liberty, particularly to corporal and mental integrity, and to freedom of movement”.
In the Western world, then, the notion that the interests of the state trump individual rights has met nearly universal rejection. That tenet of fascism has been repudiated. It is curious to me that some westerners would now want to rescind the bedrock covenant of Western society in favor of a state empowered to violate individual rights at will. This does not seem courageous to me, nor brave, nor admirable. It seems remarkably craven.
Torture — the brutal punishment of an individual without criminal charge, legal trial, or conviction of a crime — runs counter to the principles of Western civilization. Torture is never justified.
1. the good of the state is always the paramount consideration;
2. individual rights exist only inasmuch as they coincide with the interests of the state;
3. and the state alone decides what rights are accorded to individuals.
If point one were not true, then external considerations like justice, morality, and legality could intervene to prevent the state from using torture. If point two were not true, then individuals could have absolute rights which might prevent their being tortured by the state. And if point three were not true, then individuals could legitimately challenge the state’s decision to torture.
Of course the points listed are three of the essential characteristics cited by Mussolini in his 1932 essay defining fascism.
American neoconservatives like Cheney, Feith, Bolton, and Wolfowitz champion some of fascism’s tenets, but they are most assuredly not classical fascists. The founding documents of America, however, are PROFOUNDLY anti-fascist. Americans assert that a legitimate state exists ONLY WITH THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED. The American Declaration of Independence says that individuals have inalienable rights, and “…That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.”
Thus, in the American view, the state serves the rights of the individual, and not the reverse. The individual has the right, indeed the duty, to pass judgment on the state; individuals have the right to oppose the state and even abolish it. In the American conception, individual rights are paramount.
State-sanctioned torture — the bluntest, most brutal assertion that the state can usurp individual rights at will — is therefore profoundly anti-American. It denies our basic ideas concerning governments, justice, and man. Is America so weak, so pathetically frightened, that we are willing to abandon our foundational beliefs and let the state usurp the most basic individual right — the right to exist without pain? I would say no. I would say that America is strong, America will endure, and America must NOT destroy its own foundation.
I have spoken to American ideals, but all Western nations cite the principle of individual rights as a constitutional verity. France’s “Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du citoyen” is, if anything, more explicit on this point than the American Constitution. Sweden’s Constitution states, “All public power in Sweden proceeds from the people…Public power shall be exercised with respect for the equal worth of all and for the freedom and dignity of the individual.” The Swiss Bill of Rights states (in Article 7 of the Swiss Constitution) that “human dignity shall be respected and protected”; it goes on to prohibit torture, to mandate freedom from arbitrary laws, and demand “personal liberty, particularly to corporal and mental integrity, and to freedom of movement”.
In the Western world, then, the notion that the interests of the state trump individual rights has met nearly universal rejection. That tenet of fascism has been repudiated. It is curious to me that some westerners would now want to rescind the bedrock covenant of Western society in favor of a state empowered to violate individual rights at will. This does not seem courageous to me, nor brave, nor admirable. It seems remarkably craven.
Torture — the brutal punishment of an individual without criminal charge, legal trial, or conviction of a crime — runs counter to the principles of Western civilization. Torture is never justified.
We are threatened as a nation and as a civilization by Al Qaeda! The merciless terrorist hordes are millions strong! They have weapons...probably thousands of tanks, and missiles, and whole fleets of jet bombers, hidden away in their Tora Bora caves. They are more powerful and dangerous than the Soviet Union ever was! They are more dangerous than China, North Korea, and Hillary Clinton combined!
So America is duty-bound to torture the hell out of every terrorist we can get out hands on -- every teenaged boy turned over to us for a reward in some Afghan backwater, every old beggar pulled off the street in Tikrit, every loony Canadian doctor with a slightly Arab appearance who ends up in the wrong airport restroom at the wrong time. They all deserve torture.
Jesus was tortured worse than any of them, for the salvation of mankind.
And we must torture them for the salvation of Christian America.
The time is near! Soldiers of the Christ...armor up and move out!
~~ OEJ
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