The curious affinity <\/a>between the nutty consequentialism of the abortion license and the Coalition for Fog that continues to speak from deep inside deepest darkest Bubbledom.<\/p>\n And, as the Bubble contracts, we hear such spectacular Orwellianisms as:<\/p>\n Waterboarding is something of which every American should be proud. \u2013 Deroy Murdock<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Or this utterly creepy description by a Bush shill of what happens when torture breaks a victim:<\/p>\n The job of the interrogator is to safely help the terrorist do his duty to Allah, so he then feels liberated to speak freely.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Or this quasi-blasphemous attempt by Peg Noonan to take the language normally reserved for the Trinity or Transubstantiation and deploy it to justify the will to just shut your eyes to evil and cover it all up:<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard for me to look at a great nation issuing these documents and sending them out to the world and thinking, \u2018Oh, much good will come of that.\u2019 Sometimes in life you want to keep walking\u2026 Some of life has to be mysterious.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n While this tried-and-true strategy for confronting evil certainly has precedent among our bishops, I can\u2019t really endorse it as a sound prudential judgement, given the results they achieved. Morever, as Sullivan notes<\/a>, while the most diehard defender of our bishop\u2019s incredible neglect and corruption could, as a last gasp, point to the fact that abusing people is not actual Church policy, the Bushies don\u2019t even have *that* fig leaf. Torture and prisoner abuse *were* the policy. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Rubber Hose Right continues keeping up the lie with the latest round of \u201cIt\u2019s not torture and besides, it works.\u201d The \u201cit\u2019s not torture\u201d thing no longer passes the laugh test what with 183 waterboardings in a month and over 100 people in our custody meeting violent deaths (plus the Red Cross torture report), so the \u201cbeside\u2019s it works\u201d thing has to be emphasized. Marc Thiessen was busy banging this drum with the lie that torture saved LA<\/a>. No. it didn\u2019t. But it did send us on wild goose chases for non-existent terror plots, which doesn\u2019t get mentioned much by the war criminals who are now fighting a rear guard action to cover their rears.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the thing about engaging in grave and intrinsic evil. When people find out what you\u2019ve done, there\u2019s. no. excuse. for. it. That\u2019s why it\u2019s called \u201cgrave and intrinsic evil\u201d.<\/p>\n So what is Caesar going to do about this grave breech of the good by the civil authority entrusted with protectig the common good? A reader sums things up:<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever gotten around to thanking you for setting out the issue of torture before and wanted to make sure I did that. I\u2019ve been in agreement with you on it, though I haven\u2019t ever articulated the position with the same level of passion that you have.<\/p>\n With that in mind, I\u2019ve found it interesting to see the contortions the Obama administration has gone through with respect to torture; first, we were going to see prosecutions of those responsible. Then, that was amended to \u201cwe\u2019ll look at prosecuting the authors of the memos, but not the CIA agents who did the actual, you know, torturing\u201d (an inversion of the answer to Abu Ghraib), and now, we\u2019re getting the \u201clook! We gained valuable information using illegal and immoral techniques, so it\u2019s all cool!\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Torture was pretty much the *only* issue that I was able to agree with Obama on, and he\u2019s set that aside. Not that I would have expected anything different, but it is noteworthy. Frankly I\u2019m confused; at some point I saw that CIA and other non-military entities were going to be bound by the Army Field Manual guidelines for interrogations. Is that true now, or not?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As I understand it, Obama has said he means to bind the CIA to Army regs\u2013which is a good thing if he actually does it. However, as I also understand it, there are loopholes and caveats which the Administration can exploit if it feels like it.<\/p>\n Bottom line: watch what they do, not what they say. Bush *said*, \u201cWe do not torture\u201d. He lied. The net result of all Obama has done so far is to fix (perfectly just) opprobrium on the war criminals of the previous administration (\u201cLet\u2019s all have a 15 minute hate against Bush! Bad Bush! Why can\u2019t you be like Obama?\u201d)\u2013while holding fast to the legal reasoning that undergirded much of the catastrophe that was the Bush Administration.<\/p>\n The consequentialist of the Left and Right have certain minor disagreements about which intrinsic evils they will fight for. But at the end of the day, they are consequentialists and brothers under the skin.<\/p>\n And they are slowly working to achieve a synthesis and unity as they pursue their common quest for secular messianic bliss.<\/p>\n