Of Torture and Tax Cuts

Two big issues that are appearing on my radar this morning: repeated accusations in the blogosphere and elsewhere that Michael Ignatieff supports torture, and Harper's proposal to reduce the GST to 6% immediately after being elected and then to 5% by the end of his first term.

On Ignatieff:
Where exactly are all of you getting this idea that Ignatieff endorses torture? Because it certainly doesn't come from The Lesser Evil. Allow me to quote extensively from p. 142-43:
"As a practical matter, therefore, once a state begins to torture, it soons fins itself required to murder, in order to eliminate the problem of releasing hardened and embittered enemies into the general population. Once torture becomes a state practice, it entrains further consequences that can poison the moral reputation and political legitimacy of a state. . .
Any liberal democratic citizen who supports the physical torture of terrorist suspects in ticking bomb cases is required to accept responsibility for the psychological damage done, not only to a foreign victim, but to a fellow citizen, the interrogator. Torture exposes agents of a democratic state to ultimate moral hazard. The most plausible case for an absolute ban on physical torture (as opposed to coercion) in every circumstance is related precisely to this issue of moral hazard. No one should have to decide when torture is or is not justified, and no one should be ordered to carry it out. An absolute prohibition is legitimate because in practice such a prohibition relieves a state's public servants from the burden of making intolerable choices, ones that inflict irremediable harm both on our enemies and on themselves, on those charged with our defense. . .
This idea helps us to see why torture should remain anathema to a liberal democracy and should never be regulated, countenanced, or covertly accepted in a war on terror. For torture, when committed by a state, expresses the state's ultimate view that human beings are expendable. This view is antithetical to the spirit of any constitutional democracy whose raison d'etre is the control of violence and coercion in the name of human dignity and freedom."
Emphasis added for those of you who have obviously not read Ignatieff's work and have the misguided impression that he supports torture. It's as asinine as the Tories last year alledging that Martin supports child pornography.

On the GST reduction:
I like the proposal for the following reason: it gives this campaign its first real, salient issue, and there is now going to be an actual debate on differences in policy in an election campaign. The "most important election in Canadian history" last year was devoid of any major policy discussion, and centred largely around "hidden agendas" and the early furor over the sponsorship scandal. As someone who loves policy, it was a bore for me. If I'm really lucky, I'll even get a foreign policy debate.I'm not 100% sold on the notion of the GST cut, nor am I 100% sold on the personal income tax cuts.
I'm definitely looking forward to the (hopefully) intelligent discussion that is sure to follow this rather innovative announcement (in the sense that nobody's actually ran on cutting the GST as a legitimate campaign issue since 1993, and obviously that wasn't a wholehearted issue for the Liberals then, hence why we're talking about it today) and seeing whether Harper's economist credentials are able to help him mount an effective offensive in this issue.