Redstate

By Leon H Wolf Posted in User Blogs — Comments (12) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

This diary entry was originally a comment to John Cole's front page story. Below the fold:Okay, John, so far as I can tell, there are three basic areas in which your post is dead wrong. I'll do my best to dispatch them, in no particular order.

First, your breathless contention that Censure is some off-the-wall equivalent of a nuclear bomb landing in the Senate. If you're interested in the history of Censure in the Senate, I've provided one here. Nine senators have been censured in history - for reasons ranging from reading classified documents into the record, campaign finance flaps, abuse of power, and yes, even political reasons (See McCarthy, Joe). There have been far more Senators who have actually been expelled, or resigned under the threat of expulsion, most for siding with the confederacy during the time of the Civil War.

The point of this history and legal lesson is that what we're basically advocating here is that the Senate tells Durbin that he's been behaving badly. We're not advocating that Durbin be caned, or paraded through the public square in shackles, or heaven forbid left in a room where the A/C is cranked all the way up without his shoes on.

It's frankly absurd for you to charge those of us who advocate censure as "going overboard" in some bizarre partisan torture job. A Senate resolution for censure doesn't carry the legal force of a darn thing, except to say that the Senate itself is pretty well disgusted with what Senator X did, and they don't like it. If you don't think that's an appropriate response to Durbin's remarks, you're entitled to your opinion, but to imply that we're all behaving like a bunch of "kids" as opposed to you mature "adults" who have a more sophisticated view of the world, is just flat out ludicrous.

Which brings me to point number two. You'll notice that I've taken exception to being called a "kid" despite the fact that you never specifically used the word "kid" to describe me or anyone else calling for censure. However, I doubt that anyone else who read your post would come away understanding that you meant anything else when you included in the title of your post, "Thank goodness the adults are in charge."

The point is that implications matter, and it insults the intelligence of everyone who listens to you to come along later and pretend that they don't. Okay, so Durbin never said our soldiers/administration/whoever you blame for this incident are Nazis, or Stalinists, or Khmer Rouge. Fine. I never said he did. But in saying that their actions are more consistent with Nazis than with Americans, it is a valid and necessary implication of his statement that in his judgment, they were behaving like Nazis/Stalinists/The Khmer Rouge. If I tell you I'm going to the store to pick up 2 apples, and then 2 more, I can't come back later and say, "I never said I was going to get four apples from the store."

You don't need classes in semantics, logic or hermeneutics to understand this. People are plenty capable of connecting the dots themselves. When Al-Jazeera repeats the piece, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're distorting it. When a self-described liberal editorial cartoonist interprets Durbins comments thusly, you gotta say, it's a pretty clear message.

Trent Lott couldn't come along later and say that he was talking about Strom Thurmond's plan to lower the capital gains tax when he praised his Presidential run, and Durbin can't come along later and say he didn't mean what he clearly did mean, either. And yes, I've read the speech, the whole ridiculous thing, in its context. And yes, I've also read the FBI report as a standalone. That absolutely does not change the fact of what the man said - context can really only do so much. And it also doesn't change the fact that an elected official of this country, especially one of such prominence, should be a darn sight more careful in choosing his words, if he doesn't want to be "misunderstood" so fundamentally.

Which brings us to point three, upon which I have come to understand that there is a fundamental difference between myself and many people. I've visited prisons before and seen the conditions that people live in. I've read correspondence with some of my converted Christian brethren who are currently behind bars and read about the conditions that they currently live in, and by comparison, granting the absolute truthfulness of every story coming out of Gitmo, Gitmo is a cakewalk.

I don't advocate torture. I don't advocate that we attack electric nodes to their genitals and shock them until they talk, or burn parts of their bodies alive, or torture their children in front of them - you know, things the actual Nazis would do. But in my own narrowminded provincialism, I'm a lot more concerned about the way our own citizens are treated in prison than I am about the folks at Gitmo, and there you have it.

And further, Durbin's idiotic remarks indicate one of two things about him as a person. Either, he is unaware of the prevalent conditions in prisons in the United States, or he is aware, and doesn't care. In either circumstance, he finds it more worth his while to berate the administration over the comparatively mild treatment of the prisoners at Gitmo - which leads me to firmly believe that he doesn't really care, he's just trying to score political points. If you think he's genuinely concerned, you're entitled to your opinion, and I'm entitled to try and sell you some of my real estate interests in Arizona. And the fact that he would use this irresponsible and inciendary rhetoric not over an actual grievance, but rather to score political points is totally inexcusable, and worthy of official condemnation by the Senate.