Sunday, October 15, 2006

Mr Lefty is worried

Whenever I venture to the top of a Slippery Slope, I get a little anxious. Mr Lefty does too:

The most powerful "democracy" in the world - is abandoning at least 700 years of legal principle and curtailing for certain non-citizens the fundamental writ of habeas corpus.

In other words, they don't have to bring you before a court now. They can just throw you in prison indefinitely without your ever being tried for any crime whatsoever. Hurrah!

And what will be the end result of this?

…western civilization degenerates into despotism...

In his next post he attempts to justify his Moral Equivalence:

Predictable condemnation in the comments to the last post at my daring to "morally equivalate" North Korea testing nukes and the US abandoning habeas corpus.

Well, here's why they're similar:

North Korea testing nukes is essentially an authoritarian despotist state taking some serious steps on the road to becoming a nuclear power. An authoritarian despotist state with nuclear weapons.

That's an accurate description of North Korea. Now, how to make the USA look the same? Build his own version out of straw:

The US abandoning habeas corpus is essentially a nuclear power taking some serious steps on the road to becoming an authoritarian despotist state. An authoritarian despotist state with nuclear weapons.

Ah, okay? What an illuminating analogy. But wait, there's more - he sure does love his Slippery Slope:

Obviously the US isn't an authoritarian despotist state right now. Sure, they're locking people up without charge, but only small numbers of them, and only foreigners who seem to have been involved in Bad Things. And they still have elections - not very democratic ones, given that the system devised effectively prevents any third party from ever having a chance to develop, but still, there's a choice, of sorts. So this chipping away at habeas corpus is only a step - a serious step, but they're not going to degenerate into Oceania so quickly that people would actually be spurred to rise up and stop them.
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