The New Millennium Devil's Dictionary - Due Process and Shame

DUE PROCESS, phr. Bunker buster bombs.

Mr. Bush, do you know where I am? - Ayman Al-Zawahri

Where are the Pakistani villagers of yesteryear? - Yossarian III

SHAME, n. Tangible evidence for the existence of a conscience.

In many cultures, shame is a debilitating, even fatal, condition (see HARA-KIRI, VIETNAM). Mark Twain, at the end of the 19th century, wrote of his efforts to cure himself of shame by destroying the conscience. Latest twentieth-century Americans thought they had succeeded at this too, through such agencies as the smileyface, the self-esteem movement, the saturation marketing of filth as entertainment, and the invasion of small Caribbean islands. But they were wrong; shame was not dead but hiding in Iraqi prisons, awaiting its rediscovery by American soldiers.

  - O Ceallaigh

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