The world of radicals

Sometimes I am given to wonder whether I have not embraced too many radical views; atheism, libertarianism (or economics more generally), and foreign policy realism.

And then I see pictures and video clips of American troops pissing on the corpses of their fallen enemies in a war that has clearly outlived its usefulness (going in country to capture or kill international criminals and their co-conspirators), rumblings of another useless war in Iran, the continued persecution of non-violent drug offenders, often accompanied with powerful armed home invasions by the authorities, the embrace of some significant portion of Christian conservatives (however briefly) of the views of Rick Santorum on the legality and morality of birth control , to say nothing of his views on homosexuals (or for that matter, the views of Rick Perry), the possible passage of SOPA and the passage of still more legal circumventions of civil rights protections in the form of indefinite detention regimes in the Defense bill.

And I think to myself. What a wonderful world.