I wonder what Dick Cheney would think about torture if instead of getting five deferments from the Vietnam draft he had spent five years getting tortured in a Hanoi prison. The experience seems to have convinced John McCain that torture isn’t a good or useful thing. And John McCain isn’t exactly that quick on the uptake. Maybe Cheney would have come out of the experience determined to torture as many people as possible just for revenge. It’s hard to understand the mind of a sociopath. It definitely seems to be a trend with conservatives that they can’t muster much compassion until something happens to them directly.
There used to a line people threw out about how “a liberal is just a conservative who hasn’t been mugged yet.” You can reverse that with “a conservative is just a liberal who hasn’t been denied medical care on a technicality yet.” Or, “a conservative is just a liberal who hasn’t had his balls hooked up to electrodes, yet.” Or, “a conservative is just a liberal whose unwed daughter hasn’t been knocked up, yet.”
You could have fun with it.