Tuesday, March 04, 2003

Janeane Garofalo is a smart anti-war entertainer; needless to say, this makes Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online nuts. Here's Goldberg trying to debunk one of Garofalo's arguments:

So let us put aside the question of the messenger and take a look at Garofalo's message. On a recent edition of Fox News Sunday, Tony Snow asked her about Saddam Hussein: "Has he been a mass murderer? She responded, "Yes, there's been a lot of people who have been mass murderers. And I think Turkey also, who we've been negotiating with, has one of the worst human-rights records in the world. Also, the sanctions, you could say, have been responsible for mass murder."

He asked, "Do you think he is eager to obtain weapons of mass destruction?" She responded, "Yes, I think lots of people are eager to obtain weapons of mass destruction."

Sigh. This is the "Everybody does it" argument. According to this logic, we shouldn't stop any one serial killer if we aren't willing to stop all of them.


I'm a bit confused. What's Goldberg saying here? Is he saying we don't try to stop all serial killers? Is he saying we are (to use his word) not willing to do so, as a matter of policy? Is he saying we practice police realpolitik and try to stop only the serial killers whose incarceration serves our criminologico-strategic ends, while sensibly letting others go on killing?

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