More or Less

ROPER Arrest him! ALICE Yes! MORE For what? ALICE He's dangerous! ROPER For libel; he's a spy. MARGARET Father, that man's bad. MORE There's no law against that. ROPER There is! God's law! MORE Then God can arrest him. ROPER Sophistication upon sophistication! MORE No, sheer simplicity. The law, Roper, the law. I know what's legal not what's right. And I'll stick to what's legal. ROPER Then you set man's law above God's! MORE No, far below; but let me draw your attention to a fact--I'm not God. The currents and eddies of right and wrong, which you find such plain sailing, I can't navigate. I'm no voyager. But in the thickets of the law, oh, there I'm a forester. I doubt if there's a man alive who could follow me there, thank God... ALICE While you talk, he's gone! MORE And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law! ROPER So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law! MORE Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? ROPER I'd cut down every law in England to do that! MORE Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you--where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast--man's laws, not God's--and if you cut them down--and you're just the man to do it--d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake. --"A Man For All Seasons", by Robert Bolt Wake up and smell the vitriol. Darth Cheney, the Sith Lord of the White House, spoke at West Point the other day. Yes, it's hard to believe, but a man who took five deferments to avoid serving in Vietnam, had the chutzpah to stand before the 978 new graduates of the US Military Academy and pontificate about serving admirably in combat. Shameless. Anyway, here's the money quote: As Army officers on duty in the war on terror, you will now face enemies who oppose and despise everything you know to be right, every notion of upright conduct and character, and every belief you consider worth fighting for and living for. Capture one of these killers, and he'll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away. In short: All's fair in Love 'n' War, and I love war! Fuck the Geneva Convention, and fuck the Constitution of the United States. Oh yeah, and fuck all of you stupid jarheads, too. If you dumb white trash assholes get captured in Iran--er, Iraq, don't come crying to us when those sand niggers put a drill through your eye. Huh, I wonder if 24 is on tonight? I hope it's not a repeat.