What it Means to Be Republican Now

Here is GOP Congresscritter Aaron Shock, dropping entirely the bullshit euphemism “enhanced interrogation” and the bullshit faux confusion about definitions that Catholic pro-torture zealots have used to fog the issue for years. Instead, he simply states, in a straightforward way, what the GOP has been arguing for ever since Bush/Cheney decided to piss away American honor and trample on both obvious Catholic teaching and traditional Just War doctrine:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

“I don’t believe that we should limit waterboarding – or, quite frankly, any other alternative torture technique – if it means saving Americans’ lives.” – Rep. Aaron Schock

Think about that. “Any alternative torture technique”. Flaying alive. Bolt cutters to the fingers. Slowly drilling out the eyes. Any torture technique should be, in the view of this Face of the New Conservatism, used if you think you might be saving an American life.

To which the obvious reply is “Since it’s now open season on torture (at least in this guy’s head) and ‘saving American lives’ means all moral laws are abrogated and all forms of torture are legit, then let’s start rounding up the wives and children of anybody we suspect might know something that will save American lives (and that includes our own homegrown suspected criminals since there’s no rational reason to limit life-saving to victims of terrorism). Let’s open the torture chambers in American prisons, not just for damned furriners, but for anybody who might in any way possibly have knowledge of any capital crime. People will talk double quick if it’s their little girl that’s doing the screaming.

What’s that, you say? Wives and children are innocent? Hey, so have been many of our victims. Indeed (and this may be a difficult concept for fascist wannabes like Rep. Stock to grasp) in our legal tradition *everybody* is innocent till proven guilty. We have this thing called due process which says that punishment happens, not during the evidence-gathering phase, but after the trial and sentencing phase.

Still and all, that didn’t stop torture apologists from making excuses for torture before. They simply ignored the fact that this is the bleedin’ point about torture: you do it to find out if the person you are torturing might know something. Sometimes you find out they knew nothing and you go to hell knowing you tortured an innocent man (if your conscience isn’t totally seared).

But hey! Who knows? Since Rep. Schock and those like him are such cowards that they are willing to sacrifice some innocent lives and order some flunkey to inflict *any* torture to save his miserable skin, then why not? Maybe the wife and kiddies do know something. You don’t think every family is utterly ignorant of what Dad does in his spare time, do you? So by the logic of torture apologists like Schock or Krauthammer, if we have “the slightest belief” the torture will yield information that will save just one American life, we have a moral obligation to torture. So hang those women and children relations by their thumbs! After all, isn’t there at least a *chance* that they know something? And if they don’t, their screams will certainly loosen the suspect’s tongue.

That’s the Pandora’s Box this disgrace to our nation is laboring to pry open. And it is, by the way, the Pandora’s Box that Catholic torture defenders have, for five years, been laboring to pry open as well–in percentages greater than the national average. At least Schock does not make himself a stench in the nostrils of God by using euphemisms.

May God have mercy on his soul and on us for being a people who would ever elect a dangerous moral cretin like that to high office.

UPDATE: Guess what? He’s endorsed by Illinois Right to Life!