Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

This Is Good News

I didn’t know Dave Barry has a blog! He does. And he is blogging about "24." Life is good.

Enjoy.

Discussions - 15 Comments

I would rather watch a John Wayne movie than the latest garbage that Hollywoods liberal elite are selling but I trust you know that Dave Barry chickened out of Vietnam by claming to be a "consciensous objecter’ Hes also an atheist. I do’nt like that kind of BS, so I will just keep reading my No Left Turns thanks Steve!

Thank you, Steven! Now that I have visited and bookmarked Dave Barry’s blog, I will lose both my family (due to NLT) and my job (due to Dave Barry).

Mack,
what kinds of guns do you make? Do you specialize in different period-style guns? Just wondering.

Mack Sandpaper, have you ever watched "24"? I guess not. John Wayne wouldn’t do half the things that Jack Bauer does. The show was created by Joel Surnow, a self-proclaimed "Right-Wing Nutjob". It routinely features the violent torture of suspects (as a positive, and rightly so) and once had its hero order the death of a terrorist’s child in order to get him to talk (later revealed as a hoax, but the terrorist didn’t know that). "24" is probably the most "Republican" show on television. And good for it.

Also, even though he’s a Democrat, my top four Presidents of all-time look like this:

1. Abraham Lincoln

2. George Washington

3. Ronald Reagan

4. David Palmer

Dave Barry is a funny guy thus according to Dr. Schramm he is a conservative(or at least not a liberal), because liberals can’t have a sense of humor.

Isn’t it just OK to like Dave Barry and/or "24" without making it into a big political debate?

Well...rmble..rslsmlmbublbleselsmdlebelldld.......f
free markets....rwefosfldf... television.

Ditto, Jack Bauer. Mack, you should really spend an hour watching the show before you attack it as "garbage that Hollywoods liberal elite are selling."

Up until Sunday, I had never seen an episode of 24. But have heard about it from so many. I thought it was good. I plan to see if I can find the first three (or is it 4) seasons on DVD to watch, so I can be up to speed on the whole thing...

Don’t bother responding to Mack. He’s some liberal’s fantasy of what a conservative is. Last year he told us he liked "Home Improvement."

Thanks for the reminder, Hal. It’s been a while, so I forgot what a troll Mack is.

Jack - ok maybe I did "jump the gun’ a bit on that show. As it turns out my brother in law is a big fan of the show and I know he is a firm Republican.

Phil - save your "Cant we all just get along’ talk for your bleeding heart buddies. Life is political so get used to it!

Hal - the way you seem to show up whenever I post a comment makes me think you might be a homosexual or something. Tell you what, why don’t you take your groundless accussations that I’m phony and shove them up your *ss? Snipers are useful on the battlefield but here they are worthless!

Reply to "Interested’ - I suspect that you might be Hal Holst also but since it is a harmless question, I mostly deal with Browning, Para-Ordnance, Thompson/Center, and Remington. Some Mausers. Like most gunsmiths I don’t really "make" guns.

What a strange thread this became! Anyway, getting back to "24," here’s an interesting analysis of the show and its "violent torture of suspects (as a positive, and rightly so)." I found these portions of the essay particularly insightful, especially the parallel he draws between the ennobling of torturers and the honoring of terrorists as martyrs, as well as the idea that those on our side who engage in torture should be pitied for the unenviable tasks which they must perform for the greater good.

"...It is here that we encounter the series’ ideological lie: in spite of the CTU’s ruthlessness, its agents, especially Bauer, are warm human beings - loving, caught in the emotional dilemmas of ordinary people...

The problem for those in power is how to get people [to] do the dirty work without turning them into monsters. This was Heinrich Himmler’s dilemma. When confronted with the task of killing the Jews of Europe, the SS chief adopted the attitude of "somebody has to do the dirty job". In Hannah Arendt’s book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, the philosopher describes how Nazi executioners endured the horrible acts they performed. Most were well aware that they were doing things that brought humiliation, suffering and death to their victims. The way out of this predicament was that, instead of saying "What horrible things I did to people!" they would say "What horrible things I had to watch in the pursuance of my duties, how heavily the task weighed upon my shoulders!" In this way, they were able to turn around the logic of resisting temptation: the temptation to be resisted was pity and sympathy in the presence of human suffering, the temptation not to murder, torture and humiliate.

There was a further "ethical problem" for Himmler: how to make sure that the executioners, while performing these terrible acts, remained human and dignified. His answer was Krishna’s message to Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita (Himmler always had in his pocket a leather-bound edition): act with inner distance; do not get fully involved.

Therein also resides the lie of 24: that it is not only possible to retain human dignity in performing acts of terror, but that if an honest person performs such an act as a grave duty, it confers on him a tragic-ethical grandeur. The parallel between the agents’ and the terrorists’ behaviour serves this lie."

The Guardian is basically a Commie rag, and that "analysis" of 24 by the ivory-tower academic is total rubbish. Actually, if the next attack is by plane, let’s hope that the tower they hit - because we didn’t torture the person with the information - is his ivory tower!

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