I'm against torture
The last time I was at the Catholic church on-campus, there was a woman who was asking the congregation to sign an anti-torture petition that would be sent to congressmen and other officials. She approached me and asked if I would like to sign the petition, and I said that anti-torture a good thing to petition against. But first, could she please tell me what the petition actually says?It says that you're against torture in all its forms, and that the United States must stop torturing people.
Well, sure. Does it go on to specifically denounce any particular forms of torture, or give a definition of what the signers believe torture to be?No, but...torture is torture.
On that note I informed her that I would not be signing the petition, which she took to mean that I wanted her to convince me that the petition wasn't a waste of my time and ink.
The problem here is that "torture" is being fundamentally redefined in the American legal system. If the position of the petition is merely Torture is wrong in all its forms,
then all the men in power have to do is redefine the legal definition of torture (which is in fact what has already been done). Since no definition of torture was provided in the petition, it is bankrupt of meaning and power.
5 comments:
http://www.davewoods.org/Kurtfail.jpg
I had some former hippies going door-to-door come to my apartment one night around 9pm and had the exact same experience. They wanted the government to ban "war in all forms." I asked how, disregarding the latent improbability that they would gather enough signatures to get even a low-level county bureaucrat to consider it, they planned on the government implementing a rather nebulous concept. As you can imagine, they felt their proposal was completely black & white and absolute (oddly enough, the type of thinking for which the president is normally mocked by such people). My doubting the effectiveness or even usefulness of their petition was somehow offensive to them. Politics stinks.
@David - Nice. I think that qualifies as the first lolkrut image. I'm not sure I want that to become a major meme, though...
@Dan - There have been people outside of Whole Foods who've been harassing people about the Republican party; they've got a table set up with derogatory MAD magazine-styled caricatures of Bush, and they ask passerby "Would you like to impeach Cheney?". No, thanks. "It's going to happen!" Yes, yes, that's whatever it was you were talking about for you.
Yeah, politics stinks. Luckily, I read that Lawrence Lessig (a big hero to me regarding copyright law) has entered the corrupt political climate with the hope of changing it. He's devoted the next 10 years of his life to tackle the problem.
Politics are a vital and necessary part of social existence. America is the only place I've been where so many people will freely state that they have little or no interest in politics. The issue isn't that politics themselves are bad, but that the major issues have been so polarized (and Americans are so polite) that nobody wants to consider the options on the table for fear of alienating others or being labeled a radical.
The sad part, for me, is that it's the radicals that effect change in this world and the status quo is never eager to welcome them.
I think I see where you're going with that, and let me be the first to say that I, too, disagree with giving women the Vote. (It's so nice to finally be able to talk like this!)
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