Better Late Than Never

Charles Krauthammer, who did such a bang-up job cheering for the erection of a torture state and who has expressed his thrill at the thought of the Patriot Act and all manner of Big Government Chickenhawkery and Police Statism is, mirabile dictu, suddenly Very Very Upset that our Police State is using drones on American citizens on our own soil.

For those of us who have been warning that throwing away our liberties for a neocon security state was a bad idea, Krauthammer’s sudden Damascus Road Moment, while certainly welcome, does rather remind us of this little anecdote about Robert Conquest, the author of the seminal history of Communism called The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties, which fashionable dunces had long pooh-poohed in their idiotic romance with Commies:

After the opening up of the Soviet archives in 1991, detailed information was released that Conquest argued supported his conclusions. When Conquest’s publisher asked him to expand and revise The Great Terror, Conquest is famously said to have suggested the new version of the book be titled I Told You So, You F*cking Fools. In fact, the mock title was jokingly proposed by Conquest’s old friend, Kingsley Amis. The new version was published in 1990 as The Great Terror: A Reassessment (ISBN 0-19-507132-8).

Krauthammer, having spent the past decade arguing for a lawless security state with reckless and unaccountable powers to commit war crimes on swarthy foreigners, is suddenly and belatedly awakening to the fact that when Caesar grants himself the power to lawlessly torture and kill foreigners to “keep us safe” it soon occurs to him that citizens can likewise be stripped of their human rights, spied on, and killed on a Caesar’s whim for exactly the same rationale. Glad he’s finally gotten a clue. I hope other neocon revolutionaries in the Vanguard of History likewise start to figure out what they did so much to help bring about. A little shame would be nice too, but as long as he’s on board, that’s the main thing.