How to be Catholic and pro-torture. Step one: make logic your bitch
Crooks and Liars has a recurring bit called Mike’s Blog Roundup, with quick links to various blogs in which Mike was interested, presumably. That itself has an occasionally recurring bit called HOLY CRAP, an even quicker list of links to various things about religion or by religious people, generally with the point of showing how fucked up they are. I am always fascinated by this and usually wind up with 20+ tabs in my browser when it’s over, following the long and winding branches of the astonishing human ability to happily hold entirely opposite views in its head and passionately defend each of them, in the same sentence if necessary.
It was through today’s Holy Crap that I came to read Beware of copying the Left by Bruce W. Green, founding dean of the Liberty University School of Law. In style, it reads like it’s written by a pastor. In content, it reads like it’s written by a drunk bully on a corner yelling at “the fags”, but with a better proofreader. Shorter Green: We can’t torture, because torturing would only play into the hands of liberals. So torture is evil and wrong — but torture anyway.
That burnt hair smell you’re getting is because of the sparks my brain is throwing off trying to understand that summary enough to make my point. Seriously, I can feel the mental resistance in typing it. Due to some internal hangups I have about looking foolish in public, I constantly re-evaluate any logic statements I make for correctness, lest someone point out some obvious flaw in my argument. Part of my brain refuses to sign off on my summary of his article, as it simply seems impossible to me that someone can put that forth as a logical argument. But it’s really what he’s saying.
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