Well, where does the state get this right to imprison? The long answer requires the invocation of lots of dusty books, historical developments and weighty philosophical arguments. The short answer is it gets it from the same place it gets the right to execute murderers. Or, as the reader puts it, "the state just does." |Jonah Goldberg|
This is one of those places where the far left and the far right use the same words but may have different meanings in mind. Goldberg, as much as he sounds like a Marxist here, doesn't seem to have any doubts whatsoever about the legitimacy of state power.
Is it even worth noting that accepting this intellectually lazy picture of state power as self-justifying makes it impossible to coherently criticize torture? Or that Goldberg himself is about to (unironically) publish a book called Liberal Fascism?
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