'If You're Against Torture, You're Not a Conservative'

clipped from matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com I saw this for sale at a conservative t-shirts website. I'm not necessarily one to say that torture is a subject about which we shouldn't joke. Torture-related satire and other forms of torture humor are, I think, a clear way of coming to grips with the horror of what our government have become. It's a difficult subject to contemplate, and express a view on, without resorting to humor on some level. But that of course isn't what's happening here. Instead we see conservatives deciding to embrace torture as constitutive of conservative identity. If you're a conservative, you like torture. If you're against torture, you're not a conservative.

The GOP has long been a party of followers in search of leaders, making it home to authoritarians and police-state types of all stripes -- frightened children in search of daddies, to be blunt. But it seems that under Bush, the Republican Party has moved beyond authoritarianism to unapologetic evil.

No wonder they're screwed.