Would Jeb Bush Kill Baby Hitler In His Crib? "Hell Yeah, I Would"
Alan: Many "conservative" litmuses are attempts to determine who deserves to die, who deserves to live and who deserves to be tortured.
"Christian Conservatism: "The Saved," "The Damned," "The Rich," "The Poor"
Americans, Especially Catholics, Approve Of Inquisitorial Torture
At the bottom of such nonsense is the belief that certitude is always within reach.
Conservatives are in such headlong rush to spill blood and induce pain that the most rudimentary epistemological questions don't even get asked.
"The Death Of Epistemolgy"
How in God's name -- or any name!?! -- can human beings know know if a baby will grow up to be Hitler?
If -- as Republicans say -- free will is a reality, then nothing is known about anyone's future actions, much less an infant's.
Which cuts to the quick...
Conservatives don't believe in freedom.
Instead, they believe in their own self-righteous, judgmental omniscience and thus, having presumed for themselves one of the qualities traditionally reserved to Deity, they proceed to usurp God's power over life and death.
"Move over God! I think you're sitting on my throne."
"Move over God! I think you're sitting on my throne."
While discussing epistemology -- the discipline that studies "how we know what we think we know?" -- I will mention that very few ancient Israelites identified Jesus as the messiah during his mission 2000 years ago and I suspect the contemporary heirs of those who dismissed him as another "pretender to the throne" now assume he will return in Overwhelming Majesty -- surrounded by polyphonic serafim -- to provide themselves undeniable "salvation assurance."
To forfend any possibility of eternal perdition, these heirs have adopted credal constructs that provide them with fail-safe mechanisms for identifying Yeshua when he "comes again."
To forfend any possibility of eternal perdition, these heirs have adopted credal constructs that provide them with fail-safe mechanisms for identifying Yeshua when he "comes again."
"It may have been to difficult to identify him last time," they reason, "coming as he did in the guise of an itinerant preacher; delighting in the companionship of whores; wine bibblers and traitorous tax collectors; working on the Sabbath and ignoring purificatory rites like washing his hands before meals... but Next time we will be sure to recognize him because The Lord will seek out the company of "good people (like us!) and He will obey all rules and regulations and perhaps most importantly he will be squeaky clean.
"Who Were The Tax Collectors And Shepherds In Jesus' Time"
Here is the nub: healthy people just don't think about killing infants although George W. Bush's legal counsellor John Yu said the president of the United States can crush a child's testicles to extract information -- whether or not it can be pre-proven that the child has such information -- and Bush vice-president Dick Cheney "would torture people again in a heartbeat."
"Are Republicans Insane?" Best Pax Posts
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