Some of my conservative neighbors like to slap the word tyranny on whatever new policy or program they don't like. When I think tyranny, I generally think of drastic, oppressive, violent actions by tyrants, things like torture and killing.
LK reminds me that among the Republican presidential candidates, two of the more ignored candidates, Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul, are the most willing to challenge our government's use of torture and assassination. The last Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, agrees with them on torture, as does the man who beat him in 2008.
LK and Conor Friedersdorf highlight this Ron Paul quote on assassinating terrorist leaders:
...this whole idea that now we can be assassinated by somebody we don't even like to run our medical care, they're giving this power to the president to be the prosecutor, the executor, the judge and the jury [Ron Paul, GOP presidential primary debate, 2011.11.12].
Meanwhile, the two candidates who excite the Tea Party most, Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann, think that torture and assassination are just fine. Cain and Bachmann apparently believe that we can't trust government to do anything but beat and kill people.
This is part of why the Tea Party won't see one of its own in the White House. Their crying about "tyranny!" is an empty slogan when their leaders won't stand against actions that nearly every human being would recognize instinctively as marks of tyranny.
Cory,
The man who beat McCain in 2008 seems to be highly involved with "assassination" lately.
Yes, Sibby, it's a discomforting thought to have our Commander in Chief so empowered as to be able to pinpoint a single, individual enemy and zap him out of existence from above. They used to have to do that kind of thing with nukes and/or air strikes & ground troops and take out the whole city. I'm just sayin'.
Sibby,
I think the power Presidents Bush and Obama have taken to order assassinations is reprehensible. There is nothing in the excuses they use to justify such actions that will prevent them from ordering the assassination of an American citizen on American soil.
Both parties exhibit a lack of principle in this area that frightens me.
LK, not to justify anything, but this is not a new occurrence.
It's just become more out in the open.
I heard a thing on NPR last weekend about a practice the Government had during prohibition whereby they required the industrial alcohol producers to make sure their product was deadly poison by adding more wood alcohol, cyanide and other lethal chemistry to the recipe, knowing full well that citizens who couldn't get alcohol legally were drinking it.
Horrifying.
No need to waterboard when you can kill them by a drone.
Who would have thought Obama would have killed more Muslims in combat than Bush?