Nil desperandum, conservative defenders of the Torture State. (Posted for purposes of illustration only; not intended as an advertisement.) From Locke to Schlock: The t-shirt on the left, a juvenile celebration of the Khmer Rouge’s favorite torture tactic, is a suitable illustration of what contemporary conservatism is all about. The institutions of the Imperial Executive remain intact. And although the Soviet- and Nazi-inspired “enhanced interrogation techniques” (“verscharfte verernehmung,” in the original German) have been put on the shelf, there is every reason to expect that they will quietly be pulled back down when the Anointed One, the Last Son of … Continue reading The Torture State