I consider Kinsley one of the smartest and best political writers around. It is usually the case that I will get the end of a column by him a bit brighter and with a fresh enthusiasm for sentences as art and also with an admiration for a level of clear-headed honesty he manages where so many others of us cannot or do not.
But today’s column in the Washington Post isn’t typical Kinsley. The last half (or third or whatever) is missing.
Yes, as a civic entity, we ought to acknowledge how flippant and facile we were (and remain, very many of us) in accepting torture perpetrated by people we elected then elected again. But there is really only one remedy for this cultural or nationalist failing, and that is to shove the facts mercilessly into our own consciousnesses. He doesn’t provide this necessary ameliorative but he ought to have done so.
