WE ARE ALL NAZIS NOW….Matt Yglesias comments on conservative apologetics for the murderous thug Augusto Pinochet:
See here and here on [LGM] for the contemporary right’s continuing praise of Pinochet. I think this is the context in which you have to understand American conservatism’s generally blas? attitude toward the Bush administration’s more modest ventures into the fields of arbitrary detention, corruption, and torture. Years of apologizing for the deployment of such tactics by America’s proxies abroad naturally desensitizes the political culture to the re-importation of these methods to the center.
Meanwhile, a reader of the Toledo Blade comments on the success of nanny state liberals in passing anti-smoking laws:
But sadly, in a corrupt state run by a convicted governor, “Smoke Nazis” came to power once again, rallying against tobacco….My main concern as I get older and near retirement is people will live longer and as Social Security fails, what will be the Smoke Nazis’ final solution to that problem?
So that’s that, I guess. It turns out we all want police states of one kind or another, we just want them in pursuit of different goals. A sad state of affairs indeed. But the libertarians did try to warn us, didn’t they?
