My WTF: Conservatives, Taxes and Torture

[Chimera]

So how is is that the strong conservatives feel that;

Taxes are somehow "Tyranny".

but

Torture is OK.

I mean, the whole Cognitive Dissonance thing about 'Abortion = Murder' but 'Death Penalty = Good' and refusing to help people once they _are_ alive was bad enough, but this one is about to make my head explode.

But if we tax someone to provide necessary government infrastructure and services, this is somehow conflated as a form of tyranny, while at the same time there is nothing wrong with locking up people, often without charges, and torturing them???

One is not like the other, and I think these people have their heads on backwards. The only obvious answer is "I'm being taxed, I'm not being tortured, so I'm bothered by taxes (because they're happening to me) and not by torture (which is NOT happening to me, but rather to then damned foreigners and 'suspicious' types)".

To me, this should almost be a very basic test on the Application for Government Service. If the person feels that torturing people is good, and elsewhere on the test states that taxes are tyranny and/or something similar, we bounce their sorry ass out of any form of Government service.

[OtakuLoki]

I believe that you may be ascribing far too much thought to these conservatives by saying that they're not bothered by torture because it's not happening to them. I think that the support of torture should be ascribed to a more prominent source: There are being told by many people, including prominent liberal types like Alan Dershowitz, that torture is useful and even necessary for the safety of the general public.

And we must think of the children!

[Zuul]

How it is justified:

Abortion is inflicted on innocent unborn children. The death penalty is inflicted on convicted murderers.

Taxes are inflicted on honest citizens. Torture is inflicted on foreign terrorists.

If you view things that way, there is no cognitive dissonance whatsoever, but they are thinking about it. They simply have different values.

[chacoguy]

It's the same folks that are certain that they and theirs are going to heaven and aren't bothered a whit that some of their friends, neighbors, and coworkers are slated for eternal damnation.

[Vox Imperatoris]

How it is justified:

Abortion is inflicted on innocent unborn children. The death penalty is inflicted on convicted murderers.

Taxes are inflicted on honest citizens. Torture is inflicted on foreign terrorists.

If you view things that way, there is no cognitive dissonance whatsoever, but they are thinking about it. They simply have different values.

This. There is no cognitive dissonance at all; the punishment fits the crime, and the innocent should not be punished. Also, it's very disingenuous to talk as if all conservatives support torture.

My opinion is that true terrorists deserve to be tortured; I don't have any moral problem with that. As for whether they should be tortured, I say no, with the issues being not torturing innocent people, the fact that it lowers the prestige of the U.S. in the eyes of its allies and of the people who may be driven to become terrorists, and the fact that torture doesn't work to extract information reliably.

[AllWalker]

I'd say something, but I think Vox has it covered.