[img]1|left|||no_popup[/img]A main distinction between liberals and conservatives is that the Left, congenitally in a fuming frame of mind, is exclusively committed to the Big Picture. To Leftists, a person or an object is the best or worst in the history of the world. It would be filthily devious to regard him or it as a blend of the decent and the indecent. People should be hanged or idolized.
Conversely, the Right, identified in all national surveys as cheerful and upbeat — almost to the point of annoyance — concentrates exclusively on gradations.
For Leftists, sitting down and figuring out gradations requires too much time. Worse, it deflects attention from the only task of the day:
Demonizing or worshipping.
You will recall that the Left said Mr. Bush was the worst President in our history. By the darnedest irony, he was followed by the best President in our history, Mr. Obama. His blackness has nothing to do with their childish fawning over his every breath, but his blackness is the only reason, they assert, that any person on the Right, being inherently racist, would dare to criticize him.
Since Mr. Obama’s character and policies uniformly are unassailable, ergo, the only reason the unenlightened on the Right would create an artificial fault is because he is black.
Left-wingers employ the identical thinking as every registered Democrat of drinking age shops for a liberal successor to retiring Justice David Souter, the oddest, most ill-fitting man named to the Supreme Court in the past 100 years.
Being bean-counters, liberals won’t be happy until they get a three-legged, Gaza-born lesbian daughter of a Mexican father and Muslim mother, who is suffering from Aids because she allegedly was infected by a Jewish girlfriend named to the Supreme Court.
Either/or. Don’t Burden Me with Details
The Left, simplistically, lives in a black or a white world, which seems to justify the monopoly they hold on human anger.
They hate gray. It feels soft, un-masculine, anti-feminine.
Gray is the shade of the enemy.
The Left has no rivals or opponents, only enemies whom it despises.
Gray is interpreted as shilly-shallying. To agree that one is not the worst or best or all time feels intellectually dishonest.
In their spacious minds, such a stance is tantamount to emulating Custer and galloping off in full retreat.
Leftists were educated to believe that only cowards compromises or give any ground.
You are right or wrong, good or bad.
Even a minor concession, to bring about a semblance of serenity, carries the odious stench of compromise, which feels too much like an abrogation of responsibility, which feels like surrendering, which means they have bargained away one or both pillar principles of their belief system.
Finally, Relief Comes to Torture Debate
These notions were rumbling through my mind the other morning when I was reading the luminous reasoning of Dr. Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post on the subject of torture.
Like Pavlov’s nutty puppies, Leftists have been trained to explode when certain subjects are raised rather than doing the sensible thing and reasoning their way through the thicket.
Didn’t your teachers educate you in the intrinsic value of exceptions to nearly all rules?
Consider the following 220 words of sensitively measured thought by Dr. Krauthammer:
“Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent's life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy. Even John McCain, the most admirable and estimable torture opponent, says openly that in such circumstances, “You do what you have to do.” And then take the responsibility…
“The second exception to the no-torture rule is the extraction of information from a high-value enemy in possession of high-value information likely to save lives. This case lacks the black-and-white clarity of the ticking time bomb scenario. We know less about the length of the fuse or the nature of the next attack. But we do know the danger is great. (One of the “torture memos” noted that the CIA had warned that terrorist “chatter” had reached pre-9/11 levels.) We know we must act but have no idea where or how — and we can't know that until we have information. Catch-22.
“Under those circumstances, you do what you have to do. And that includes waterboarding. (To call some of the other “enhanced interrogation” techniques — face slap, sleep interruption, a caterpillar in a small space — torture is to empty the word of any meaning.)”
Further discussion seems unnecessary. Judiciously applied, enhanced interrogation has been proven useful.
But this reasoning will not be accepted on the Left until they become convinced that there are terrorists who mean to destroy us. Presently, Mr. Obama and his henchmen believe that Muslim radicals roaming the earth are simply misunderstood.
