Lott=/Durbin
ArchPundit
The most odious of comparisons out there is comparing the situation from Trent Lott’s comments to Strom Thurmond to Durbin’s comments. I wrote the following over at Rich’s as well.
===Sen. Trent Lott had the decency to resign HIS party leadership position after he put his foot in his mouth. No matter how many times he apologized, Dem critics were relentless in demanding his scalp. He did the right thing for his party in giving up his leadership job. I doubt Durbin will have the class to do likewise. Of course the media won’t hold Durbin to the same standard as Lott.
Well, let’s examine what they both said:
“I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”
So then, brutal segregation was a good thing. Notice the difference here–Lott wasn’t comparing segregation to a nasty practice in another country, he was saying things would have been better underneath it.
What did Dick Durbin say:
“”If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings,” Durbin said Tuesday.”
So, he’s not saying brutality and inhumane treatment are good things as the South was under segregationists like Thurmond, he was saying America is better than brutal dictators.
I think it’s always a bad idea to compare torture to genocidal practices so I think Durbin should have been more circumspect. However, comparing the two types to statesments is nothing more than a craven attempt to compare two statements based on entirely different moral systems. One that believes some classes of humans are inferior and should be exploited, and one that believes the United States’ special role in the world is to defend the dignity of man and in doing so should set an example.
If you still want to compare the two statements I’d suggest you find a moral compass.
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It’s absolutely stunning that someone can compare a call for the country to strive for justice and a higher standard to that of a man who suggested a vile system of repression would have been better than modern America.