Times Change, Argument Stays The Same

Coming as it did hard on the heels of my review of a new Booker T. Washington biography, BooMan's connection of the history of Jim Crow laws to the torture debate is a home run.

He astutely notes that the Bush sycophant talking point that we shouldn't be debating torture because it's a field day for terrorist recruiters sounds awfully similar to arguments by segregationists in the 1960s that debating black inequality gave comfort to the enemy -- the Soviet Union -- and its recruiters because it damaged the argument that America was a free, just and inclusive society.