Felonies and Misdemeanors

Victor David Hansen says (the emphasis is mine):

...Few mention there really are monsters and mass killers living among us -- the North Koreans who have starved 1 million of their own, Saddam's reign of terror that may have killed as many, and, of course, the Islamicist murderers who behead, blow up and torture. "Mein Kampf" still sells well in some Arab capitals, not in Washington or New York.

    So cowards ... prefer to showboat the purported misdemeanors of people who are civilized and will listen to them, rather than to condemn the horrendous felonies of those who are barbaric and will pay them no heed.

Via Little Green Footballs and Newsbeat 1.

Comments

[John Top]

Is this a way of saying, "Don't criticize the US government since we are so far removed from barbism that our government wouldn't think of doing bad things"? I don't think that's your point, but that's the message I get when I hear people talk like the italics. Absolutely North Korea, Iraq, Cambodia, Cuba are/were horrible places with evil rulers, but that doesn't excuse conducted conducted by my goverment in my name. I don't want my government committing even misdemeanors, if by misdemeanors you mean holding people (including American citizens) without due process, sending suspects to be tortured by foreign intelligence services, or state sponsored murder (the death penalty). And, being a pacifist, I would call going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq much more than a misdemeanor.

[Dave Tufte]

I want perspective. The picture of Lyndie England is way to ingrained in people's minds. What needs to be ingrained there is mass graves full of bones.

To put an economic perspective on it, the media is reducing the marginal cost to news consumers of finding out information about (say) Abu Ghraib, without reducing the cost of finding out about (say) Srebenica. This is what a manager does when they want to sell one product rather than another. Why do news managers have Abu Ghraib news on sale?

[John Top]

Why do news managers have Abu Ghraib news on sale?

Home market bias?

[Dave Tufte]

Not sure what you mean here?