--- Nancy Bauer/Dennis Perrin <bauerperrin at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> Well, I can't speak for the brave citizens of the
> UK, but here in the States
> there are more and more "conservatives"
> (self-described) who are speaking
> out against capital punishment, the Drug War, roving
> wiretaps, domestic
> spying, etc. I've made the point several times on
> this list that the All
> Evil Justice Scalia is perhaps the sturdiest
> defender of Fourth Amendment
> rights now sitting on the bench. The Dems [...],
Hang onaminute .... yer not comparing like with like here, surely. We've got "the right" and "the left", "conservatives" and "liberals" and "the Republicans" and "the Democrats" being used as if they were interchangeable ordered pairs. That's gotta be wrong, and Hitchens' point can't just be resting on a confusion of it.
> I'm sorry
> to say, are for the
> most part in favor of police state measures,
But this is surely only relevant to a critique of the Democratic Party, and would only support the "conservatives are saying more sensible things ...." if the Republican Party was against the use of police state measures in the War on Drugs. Which, so far as I'm aware, they aren't. You've got to compare equivalent points on the spectrum. If your (or Hitchens' -- I'm not sure if you're channelling him here) point of reference for "a conservative" is the libertarian party, then you should take Chomsky or Doug as the equivalent on the left for comparative statements. If you're taking Scalia as a token of conservative thought, then you shouldn't be comparing him to someone standing for election.
dd
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