"Toughness"

Excellent post from Balloon Juice's DougJ:

You see, torture is a “tough decision.” The fact that it offends some moral sensibilities only makes the decision to torture that much “tougher” and more “courageous”. Choosing not to torture is just too easy. Privatizing Social Security is also a tough decision, whereas modifying it so that middle class Americans can continue to have a little dignity in old age, well, that’s just too easy. Similarly, raising taxes on those who can afford it while keeping them the same on the middle-class is an easy decision, while raising them a bit on the middle-class as well is a smart, tough one, even though it makes very little economic sense. Asking middle-class Americans to sacrifice more is always tough and courageous. Asking the wealthy to pay a little more is not.

“Tough decisions” have to come at least a little bit from the gut. They can’t be reasoned out with facts and figures. And they certainly can’t be the product of the “Hamlet-like” indecision that often plagued Bill Clinton. Most importantly, making tough decisions can’t bother the decision-maker too much, else they are more Carter-like than tough.

Bush’s decision to torture is regarded as tough, both by himself and by most of the Village. So there’s no need for anyone to lose any sleep over it.

I can't add much to that; I just wanted to quote it for truth. It goes without saying that real courage is pretty much exactly the opposite of this, but it's probably worth pointing out--and you know I say this as a purely secular individual--that, in a genuinely Biblical, non-Left-Behind-nonsense way, this attitude is very much that of an antichrist.