Here’s a juxtaposition for you. In today’s NYT Science section:

In 1956… Jack Brehm… asked people to rate the desirability of things like an electric sandwich press, a desk lamp, a stopwatch and a transistor radio.

Then they were given a choice between two items they considered equally attractive, and told they could take one home…. After making a choice… they were asked to rate all the items again.

Suddenly they had a new perspective. If they had chosen the electric sandwich press over the toaster, they raised its rating and downgraded the toaster. They convinced themselves they had made by far the right choice.

(…)

[I]n general, people deal with cognitive dissonance — the clashing of conflicting thoughts — by eliminating one of the thoughts. The notion that the toaster is desirable conflicts with the knowledge that you just passed it up, so you banish the notion. The cognitive dissonance is gone; you are smug.

Of course, when you see others engaging in this sort of rationalization, it can look silly or pathological, as if they have a desperate need to justify themselves or are cynically telling lies they couldn’t possibly believe themselves.

Chuck Schumer in today’s NYT Op-Ed section:

There is virtually universal agreement, even from those who oppose Judge Mukasey, that he would do a good job in turning the department around. My colleagues who oppose his confirmation have gone out of their way to praise his character and qualifications. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, for one, commended Judge Mukasey as “a brilliant lawyer, a distinguished jurist and by all accounts a good man.”

(…)

Judge Mukasey’s refusal to state that waterboarding is illegal was unsatisfactory to me and many other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. But Congress is now considering — and I hope we will soon pass — a law that would explicitly ban the use of waterboarding and other abusive interrogation techniques. And I am confident that Judge Mukasey would enforce that law.

On Friday, he personally made clear to me that if the law were in place, the president would have no legal authority to ignore it — not even under some theory of inherent authority granted by Article II of the Constitution…. Judge Mukasey also pledged to enforce such a law.

(…)

To defeat him would be to abandon the hope of instituting the many reforms called for by our investigation. No one questions that Judge Mukasey would do much to remove the stench of politics from the Justice Department. I believe we should give him that chance.

Of course, as Marty Lederman points out (by way of The All-Seeing Eye Of Froomkin):

[N]o such specifying law will ever be “in place,” because the President, devoted to torture and cruelty, would veto it.

What Senator Schumer ought to do, therefore, is simple — that is, if he truly cares about ending torture and cruel treatment: pledge to vote to confirm Judge Mukasey if and only if — and after — the President signs S.1943.

That sounds fair to me. And just how morally bankrupt has the United States become when two-thirds of Congress won’t vote against torture? Or when they even need to?

Related posts:

  1. Thinking About the Union Members I Have Known
  2. Chuck Schumer for Majority Leader
  3. Schumer Promises a Public Option… or Not? Whip Him into Shape!
  4. The Power Of Negative Thinking
  5. Which Senate Democrats Would Join a GOP Filibuster on a Public Option?