Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Gotcha
Atrios on Hitchens, the caustic intellectual hack.
Hitchens then: "...many countries maintain secret police forces and inflict torture on those who disagree.... [R]elatively few states will take photographs or videos of the gang-rape and torture of a young woman in a cellar and then deposit this evidence on the family's doorstep. This eagerness to go the extra mile, as is manifested in Saddam Hussein's regime, probably requires an extra degree of condemnation. And if we are willing to say, as we are, that the devil is in the details, then it may not be an exaggeration to detect a tincture of evil in the excess. We could have a stab at making a clinical definition and define evil as the surplus value of the psychopathic -- an irrational delight in flouting every customary norm of civilization."
The moral relavist that Hitch is, I suppose he will claim he was speaking of a copuntry's leader who did that to his own people and not an Army doing that to an occupatied one. Thus, we are doing this to foriegners for very good reasons so it's ok.
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Hitchens then: "...many countries maintain secret police forces and inflict torture on those who disagree.... [R]elatively few states will take photographs or videos of the gang-rape and torture of a young woman in a cellar and then deposit this evidence on the family's doorstep. This eagerness to go the extra mile, as is manifested in Saddam Hussein's regime, probably requires an extra degree of condemnation. And if we are willing to say, as we are, that the devil is in the details, then it may not be an exaggeration to detect a tincture of evil in the excess. We could have a stab at making a clinical definition and define evil as the surplus value of the psychopathic -- an irrational delight in flouting every customary norm of civilization."
The moral relavist that Hitch is, I suppose he will claim he was speaking of a copuntry's leader who did that to his own people and not an Army doing that to an occupatied one. Thus, we are doing this to foriegners for very good reasons so it's ok.
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