Why I Can't Call Myself A Bleeding Heart Liberal

I am, in many ways, a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. Free speech, universal healthcare, tolerance of all race, sexual orientation, religion (OK, I get a little squidgy around religion, but I wouldn't *ban* it or anything), a helpful welfare/unemployment system, etc.

I've even come around on capital punishment. I used to be for it, for the most part, and I still believe that some crimes are punishable by death, but our system is so flawed in execution that it's not able to provide such punishments in anything close to a just manner, and too many intelligent people I respect are diehard against capital punishment, and so I find myself having to ignore my own instincts in this one area and decide that yeah, capital punishment is probably a bad idea.

But I've still got just a touch of right-wing, eye for an eye type thing in me. Because when I see something like this:

Death Sentence in Afghanistan for disseminating a report criticizing Islam

And I see that the response from Reporters Without Borders is a statement, and others are organizing a petition to plead with the barbaric, ignorant pig-fuckers that passed the sentence in the first place, all I can think is: "Uh, why don't we take up a collection and hire some mercenaries to bust this kid out and bring him to America? Wouldn't that be better than writing a letter?"

Of course, that also begs the question of why the enormous numbers of troops we have over there aren't doing exactly that. Because if they're not, then it looks like the U.S. Government supports this sentence. And I don't care what kind of diplomatic fuss it might cause, if we're allowing this kind of shit to go on, we might as well not be there.

Thus ends Randy's "thoroughly uninformed and simplistic views on foreign policy."