That phrase "moral clarity" -- conservatives use it a lot. And it always sounds absurd to progressive ears, coming as it does from members of an administration that shredded the Constitution, deprived people of due process, committed horrific acts of torture and lied the country into the worst military debacle in its history.

It's always bewildering to listen to such people lecture the rest of us on "moral clarity." What in the hell are they talking about?

They keep using those words. It turns out that they don't mean what we think they mean.

This was brought home to me over the holidays, when I devoured J. Peter Scoblic's U.S. Vs. Them as part of my vacation reading. Scoblic's book looks at the way the conservative penchant for "othering" (a word I coined to describe their perpetual need for someone to project their own demons onto, and then hate on) has shaped U.S. foreign policy from the beginning of the Cold War through the Bush administration.