A hero in a cage. Bradley Manning. My line that regular readers know: like with principled deserters, servicepeople who refuse to deploy again, part of the heroism is taking the punishment (which doesn’t excuse torture). I’m not anti-military; it has to keep its order and when you join, you sign part of your life away (eight years per enlistment), voluntarily (I’m anti-conscription) giving up some of your rights (and arguably basic training is a kind of brainwashing) to defend others’. USMC = you signed the motherf*cking contract.
Christopher Manion: At CPAC, Ron Paul dares go where no other “conservative” dares to go. Why? Spooked by Huckabee’s 2008 win in Iowa, all the one-dimensional GOP “presidentials” are afraid to upset the bigoted Pastor Hagee because his “Christians for Israel,” who desire Armageddon now so they can rule with Christ on earth for a thousand years, will be influential in many of the early primaries next year. (Yes, new heresies pop up all the time, and Hagee’s is a typical mix of ancient gnosticism and the ideological apocalyptic first “discovered” by Joachim of Fiore). Yes, they’re all avoiding Egypt, perhaps with a quick slogan (Support Israel! Oppose Iran!), but the “Christian Right” has never been deep on foreign policy (for which we could forgive them if they would only stop advocating worldwide war). It takes a stalwart heart (Right on, Ron!!!) to oppose them with fact, constitutional principle, and moral truths. As a result, most of them are so shallow on the facts that they just bow to the accepted mantras and hope to escape a Q&A. Question for my many Christian friends in the pro-life, pro-family movement: have you ever noticed that abortion is legal in Israel, but illegal in most of the member countries of the Islamic conference? Hey, Mitt! Hey, Huck! Hey, Sarah! If the Right to Life is your prime mandate, shouldn’t you be supporting those pro-life Islamic countries? Watch them change the subject.
Some jottings about the news
