Prosecuting Torture: How Poet WB Yeats is Helping Us! (Lane / HuffPo)

[struggle4progress]

Lea Lane
Author, Solo Traveler; editor, sololady.com
Posted April 25, 2009 | 05:37 PM (EST)

... William Butler Yeats' masterful poem "The Second Coming," published in 1920 in post-war Europe, is being quoted often because it presciently captures what is happening today ...

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity" ...

Listen to the arguments against prosecuting those responsible for the Bush administration's illegal, immoral torture policy. The words "full of passionate intensity" of Cheney, Rove, Gingrich, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Malkin, Buchanan, Scarborough, O'Reilly and their ilk.

Listen to the more measured, equivocal arguments about prosecuting from this administration, our Congress, our media, which often seem to "lack all conviction." The words of cable pundits on shows where, as Arianna has put it, producers are so concerned about right and left, they forget about right and wrong.

It wasn't always this way ...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lea-lane/torture-prosecution-convi_b_191395.html