I think you’re missing the key distinction: Torture is being done by the government, abortions are not. Having a state permit what you see as a sin is different from having the state commit one. Democracy makes you complicit in judicial torture; we’re all paying the torturer’s salary; the waterboarding was done by our agents in our name.

There’s at least some merit to that distinction, though it quickly gets muddied. Torture is being done by individuals in at least the most immediate sense: the government has no actual hands. And some of the abuse/torture that I’m talking about has come about due to lack of supervision and the choices of people in bad circumstances.

Similarly, much of the abortion controversy is about things the state explicitly does. As soon as a Democratic President takes office, the U.S. Peace Corps will once again pay for the abortions of Volunteers who get pregnant while overseas. As it is, it will pay for Volunteers to fly home and back so that they can get abortions if they wish. There are many ways in which the state ends up becoming quite complicit in the process of aborting.

Many pro-choice advocates with whom I’ve spoken are quite concerned, after all, about only rich women having the “luxury” of abortion; mustn’t the state help the disadvantaged get their abortions?

Anyway, I grant that your distinction is an important one, and the fundamentally institutional aspect of most torture is something I ought to have touched upon.

Nate,

allow me to play the Devil’s advocate as someone who is neither a Republican nor a Democrat but firmly anti-evil.

is it possible for a torturer to hold similar beliefs[that he is acting from compassion]?

Well, of course it is. Not, perhaps, out of compassion for the tortured subject, but out of pressing concern for others nonetheless. Just as the test case for abortion is the incestually-raped woman carrying a baby with genetic abnormalities, so the test case for torture is the terrorist having information about the atomic bomb about to destroy a city. Just as the “pro-choice” people say that it’s absurd in their test case not to let the woman abort a baby who she didn’t choose, was begotten in violence, and will (in all probability) not be able to live a choiceworthy life, so the advocate for “harsh interrogation techniques” will say that it’s absurd not allow causing one (wicked) individual even a high degree of pain (without even endangering his life) in order to prevent the deaths and/or vast amounts of pain of thousands or millions of innocent individuals. The government claims that they resort to these “techniques” extremely rarely and only in the most pressing situations (whether this is true is irrelevant to the argument). One must admit the possibility that the torturer hates his job but thinks the prevention of harm to so many innocents vastly outweighs the pain inflicted on a single guilty person.

I think we need to pay greater attention to obliterating all instances of torture than to obliterating instances of abortion.

Let’s assume the government’s claims about the rarity of torture are accurate. If you believe that abortion is murder, how is this statement reasonable? Are (say) a few dozen cases of torture a year really worse for our country than the murder of more than a million innocents in that same year? This seems very odd to me, even if one were to grant that torture is a much greater moral evil than murder.

Your focus on what torture does to the “villain” also strikes me as odd. For one thing, laws seem generally not to be directed at the virtue or vice of the individual but at the good of the community. One is generally allowed to destroy one’s own soul as much as one pleases so long as one does not harm others. Also, the issue here is not randomly shooting someone versus randomly abducting someone and torturing them in one’s basement: we’re talking about wartime or at least police activities. It’s well-recognized that warlike activities carry with them the grave danger of psychological and spiritual erosion. Hurting and killing people takes its toll on good people, even if it must be done to defend oneself and one’s country. Nobody is being forced to torture terrorists for the government. Here more than anywhere one is allowed to be a conscientious objector. If someone is willing to take the risk of compromising his humanity in order to save many innocents by torturing someone, how is this so different really from the cost of performing other grisly wartime activities? In any case, it occurs to me that the evil of torture (in terms of its legality should be evaluated in terms of its impact on the common good rather than its effects on an individual performing it.

Again, you speak as though torture is more soul-destroying than abortion. A rigorous pro-life response might be that someone who can destroy an innocent life without qualms of conscience, even in the belief that she is acting compassionately, is in fact more soul-dead than a soldier who tortures reluctantly but compelled, he thinks, by the utmost necessity. The response may claim that a society which could tolerate an argument such as yours has already lost its grip on the value of life, the ground of all other human values, and is so morally corrupt as a whole that even if an individual girl may not subjectively feel her guilt she and her society are objectively as monstrous as the Carthaginians sacrificing their infants to Moloch.

too many of us are deeply convinced that causing pain to other human beings is the only moral wrong.

While I agree that this notion is likely behind many people’s refusal to see abortion as a heinous crime, it surprises me that you don’t see that it’s also behind your apparent view that torture is the worst of all moral wrongs. One could easily make the argument that torture—meaning the infliction of pain and fear, setting aside mutilation or other more permanent physical harm for another category—is actually not too near the top of moral evils. Pain, fear and distress, after all, can be recovered from. Everyone suffers them in life whether intentionally inflicted or not. It could be argued that many crimes that don’t cause any pain at all are worse than torture. Pain is a present evil, but it doesn’t remove all possibility of future goods, it doesn’t permanently remove the possibility of a good life. Murder does, of course, rob one of all the possible goods of life, but I can see the argument being made that even some types of economic crimes are worse than torture to the extent that they can more thoroughly destroy a person’s life. Is the callous executive who robs thousands of their years of labor and investment less evil than a soldier torturing a terrorist? Or think of a certain doctor/lawyer some of us here know who was, as far as I can tell, persecuted by the government for crimes he didn’t commit, on shaky pretexts, and has been robbed of his liberty, his fortune, and his livelihood. It would not astonish me if many people would prefer a few hours or days of physical agony to that.

I hope I don’t need to stress that I’m not arguing for torture. I’m just not sure about your priorities, or your stated reasons for them. My own impulse in evaluating the good and bad done by the government or the law is to weigh things in terms of justice, not in terms of inner psychological or moral states. When it comes to the public sphere I couldn’t care less whether someone is subjectively innocent, if he believes he’s acting with compassion or under good ideals or so forth, or not. Those are important issues for him, and in assigning praise or blame, but they’re not important for evaluating the worth of his actions. What matters to me is whether what he’s doing is right or not, whether he is doing good or harm. It would be foolish if we were to try harder to prevent crimes or terrorist attacks or whatnot because we thought the perpetrator knew it was wrong, to try less hard if the villain believed himself to be in the right. Those sorts of things are taken into account in the apportionment of punishments and rewards, not in our judgments whether the thing done is right or wrong.

Michael, I am already over-stretching my time to reply even briefly. I just wanted to thank you for your response; I look forward to treating it with greater attention this evening. This partially chewed bite of personal and civic morality is (for me) a daunting mix of a number of different issues: take my attempt to work them out as an essentially humble desire to better understand where all the threads lead, not an authoritative thesis.

Also: “While I agree that this notion is likely behind many people’s refusal to see abortion as a heinous crime, it surprises me that you don’t see that it’s also behind your apparent view that torture is the worst of all moral wrongs.”

I tried to explicitly acknowledge that in my entry, though I acknowledge that my post due to a) being written in haste, and b) being written by me is undeniably confusing and circumlocutory: “This latter perspective, of course, immediately leads to justification for euthanasia and all other sorts of uses of death for convenience.”

take my attempt to work them out as an essentially humble desire to better understand where all the threads lead, not an authoritative thesis.

Me too! I’m approaching this debate as a complete non-partisan. There’s a lot (everything?) about these issues that aren’t worked out in my own mind. Of course, my own reasons for not voting Democrat (or Republican) run much deeper than torture vs. abortion. So I really have no stake at all in whether your reasons for switching parties are adequate or prudent. I’m certainly not trying to change your vote.

I was intending to make some very similar arguments, but Michael beat me to it.

However, I would say that the possibility of a worst-case scenario (e.g., an as-yet-undetonated dirty bomb) does seem to make an absolute prohibition on torture a potential moral hazard.

Also, I am not a political partisan (contrary to what some folks might suspect), but I would observe that candidates and parties are not the same thing, and that the political calculus of GOP President John McCain and a Dem-dominated House and Senate would make anti-torture legislation wholly possible, if not a likelihood. I’m not sure there’s a “pro-torture” vote in this race.

My own stance on this is a little bit different. The issue for me is not so much torture vs. abortion, but empire vs. freedom. As an avid student of Greek and Roman history, and knowing how much the Founding Fathers had - specifically - the Roman Republic in mind when framing the Constitution, I know that what was probably the fundamental cause of Rome’s plunge in tyranny was its expansion by military conquest. The Founding Fathers reiterated again and again that such expansion abroad always leads to tyranny at home, increased poverty for both the victor and the vanquished, and that strong standing armies are inherently inimical to individual liberty, as they themselves knew from bitter experience with the British colonial forces. I see abortion as a great evil that ought to be opposed, but by the same token, I am far more concerned about the kind of country we may become if we continue down this path of unprovoked conquest and paranoia toward a part of the world that poses no military threat to us. Is there a terrorism threat? Of course, but how is that any different from what we’ve faced for the past fifty years? My point is that you wouldn’t call the police to your house to swat a fly, and for us to use our incredible military power to kill a handful of people who want to attack us because we’re illegally occupying their homeland is overkill on top of just being wrong (and really bad foreign policy), IMHO, and it reverses the causal relationship: we’re not invading and occupying Islamic countries because we have a terrorism threat, we have a terrorism threat because we’re invading and occupying Islamic countries. This is an issue that should be left to our intelligence agencies, not our military. And if our intelligence agencies had been allowed to operate like they were designed to during the Clinton years, it seems unlikely to me that 9/11 would have happened at all. In saying that, I’m not trying to blame Clinton personally…in fact, my estimation of him improves each and every day that Bush is in office. But one can’t overlook the fact that the Clinton administration screwed a lot of things up from a foreign policy perspective (Bosnia, anyone?) that paved the way for Bush and his even bigger screw-ups in Afghanistan and Iraq. What good did it do to be pro-life (on the abortion issue) when the government we elected in 2000 and 2004 is indirectly responsible for nearly a million civilian deaths in Iraq? Equally unfathomable to me is the “Supreme Court” argument, i.e., that a Republican president is more likely to appoint pro-life justices so that Roe v. Wade can be overturned. First of all, we hear that story ever election cycle (i.e., that a Republican president is more likely to appoint pro-life judges) and it hasn’t happened yet, at least not the way “conservatives” say it should happen. The other problem I have with this scenario emanates from the fact that I’m basically a libertarian: In my view, the federal government should have never gotten involved in the abortion question in the first place. So doesn’t the idea of using conservative justices to overturn Roe v. Wade like a lot like the judicial activism that conservatives often deplore in the actions of their liberal opponents? It just seems like there’s a cognitive disconnect here, and I see it again and again in conservative Christian (mostly Roman Catholic) voters who will vote for practically anybody so long as they’re at least nominally pro-life. Will it be worth it to still be pro-life if the government that bans abortion also institutes dictatorship? Lest anyone misunderstand, I’m trying to come at this from a non-partisan perspective. I’m not particularly enthusiastic about any of the candidates this election cycle, and what I’ve tried to do here is just raise questions, and not point fingers at individuals. I hope that has been clear. Anyway, that’s all I have to say at the moment.

Peace!
Drew

Drew,

without engaging the bulk of your post, which would extend beyond the scope of my evening, I’ll just notice this:

The issue for me is not so much torture vs. abortion, but empire vs. freedom.

It seems clear that you think that Republicans=empire, but do you really think that Democrats=freedom? Does anyone seriously think that personal freedom will flourish under a Democratic government more than under a Republican one? If you want to make the Roman comparison, aren’t the Democrats the party of bread and circuses?

I don’t know about Drew, but I think in answer to Michael’s question that there is a useful calculus that makes Democrats more likely to preserve more freedoms than their counterparts. While I’m mindful of the bread and circuses question (Democrats are quite proud of having made the middle class, something about which I can’t help but be ambivalent), they’re pretty good about protecting civil liberties—that is, the explicit guarantees that, for good or ill, have been set up as part of America’s contract with itself. In fact, they’re criticized for protecting a couple more freedoms than are indisputably present in the Constitution. And, yes, I’m less worried about threats to liberty posed by the mistakes of judges—which can be corrected by laws and amendments—than those posed by a unitary executive, who sets himself above the law. Signing statements? That’s some bald power-grabbing right there. Claiming the president doesn’t have to follow FISA? Set aside the issue of wiretapping and any actual invasions of privacy—when the president says he doesn’t have to abide by the explicit dictates of the law, even one that allows him to keep his activities secret, that’s pretty bad.

Yeah, McCain says he doesn’t like signing statements. I’ll believe him when I see him work with a Democratic Congress.

As to the meat of this thread: I’m interested but have been unable to respond usefully thus far. Good setup, though, guys.

Hi Michael,
That’s not quite the parallel I was trying to draw, but perhaps I worded my comment poorly. In fact, I stated that I wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about either party for precisely the reason that, as far as I can see, neither party has a very clear case of having “trumped” the other as far as civil liberties go. Each party values some civil liberties that the other party does not. But that’s another story altogether, and I really don’t want to get into that. I also stated that the Bush Empire wouldn’t have been possible without some of the massive screw-ups the previous administration made throughout the nineties. Whether we have troops in Iraq under a Republican president or in Kosovo and Darfur under a Democratic one makes little difference to me: they’re both instances of operating within an interventionist mindset that needlessly places U.S. soldiers in harm’s way without a clear imperative to ensure our national security, which is, after all, what the military is there for in the first place. In that vein, both parties, in some sense, are the “Empire.” The question for me is, do I vote for the one candidate who opposes keeping our troops in Iraq (Obama) and who also happens to be a Democrat (which I am not, being an Independent), or do I vote third-party? The freedom vs. empire dialectic over against the abortion vs. torture one, I think, provides a clear reason for not voting for the Republicans, but not with the result of determining a positive choice for the President. What I was proposing was a schema, not a platform for a particular candidate. I hope that makes sense…

HB, what exactly are our essential “civil liberties”? Neither party is really a “party of freedom,” as far as I can tell. The GOP has insufficient reverence for aspects of personal autonomy and some civil liberties, and the Dems have insufficient regard for some property rights, rights of free association in certain siutations, and probably some other ones too.

As for the desire of many liberals/progressives to invent rights (I’ll put it more strongly than you did, since I think that is pretty indisputably what happened in, for example, 1973): Rights of all kinds are meaningless without government power to guarantee that they are not infringed upon; and many positive, “progressive”-style rights are effectively meaningless without agencies and bureaucrats to enforce their proper distribution; and agencies and bureaucrats are paid for by taking people’s property.

Now, this is the libertarian line, and I’m no libertarian—I’m not allergic to state power. But I give libertarians and (some) conservatives a gold star for the theoretical insight: they are right to warn of the connection between autonomy/license-furthering, rights-based politics and a simultaneous erosion of other freedoms. Growing the state infringes on freedom—more or less, of course; more on some than on others, depending on the situation; and it may be worth it much of the time;—but it does.

hb,

anonymous makes points similar to those I was going to make in response. Each party claims to be the party of freedom—what else could an American party do? But each is concerned with very different sorts of liberties. To (perhaps) overgeneralize, it seems to me that liberals are by and large concerned with the freedom for certain things—including much that in other times would simply be called license—while conservatives are concerned with freedom from certain things. The kinds of liberties liberals prize, as anonymous points out, often involve or require remaking social structures or constructing vast public institutions to make sure that everybody gets what’s coming to them. But the very act of implementing these structures impinges on the kinds of liberties conservatives prize, freedom from having someone take your money or limiting your ability to decide how you want to live or associate.

The examples you give, hb, are interesting in this regard. Wiretapping and signing statements honestly do not bother me as much as they seem to bother you compared to the loss of other liberties. I don’t want the government spying on me, certainly; it can lead to much greater enormities; on the other hand by itself it will hurt me very little if they do. The more pressing threat for myself is that the government can confiscate any of my property—even my children—more or less at will if it deems fit. I don’t know anyone who’s been hauled away to a secret prison indefinitely. It happens, of course, but rarely and only for reasons very unlikely to affect most people. I do personally know people who have had property, livelihoods, children, actually taken from them or had their ability to use these things severely restricted by the government. This is not particularly rare. (The day a smug clipboard-wielding bureaucrat showed up on my doorstep uninvited and unannounced to inform me that the small pile of cinderblocks standing on the edge of my yard, against my fence, gardening materials which had been there when I bought the house, violated some code or statute and that I had to get rid of them or be fined, I was about ready to find a militia to join.)

All this being said, I must give the caveat that I am not convinced that liberty is the most important of our values, even public, civil ones, certainly not without careful definition and qualification. Like anonymous, I am not convinced of the libertarian line. I recognize that state interference, that severe restriction of some kinds of freedoms, is, if not necessary, at least inevitable and likely to increase the more complicated, technology-based, and interdependent our civilization becomes, and that freedom to act must be balanced by freedom from suffering the actions of others. But I think it’s important to recognize that a vote for the Dems is not in itself a vote for freedom. It may be a vote against certain violations of freedom, but it is certainly a vote for other restrictions of personal liberty. Isn’t the whole liberal/conservative debate really about which kinds of freedom matter more?

Drew,

I think I’m clearer on what you meant by the empire vs freedom remarks. At the risk of perhaps making myself very unpopular among Monadologists, however, I will say this: while it seems likely enough that a vote for Obama may very well reduce American imperialism abroad and the dangers that come along with it, it is far less clear to me that it will avoid the dangers of tyranny at home. If Greek and Roman history, if Plato and Aristotle, have taught us anything, it’s that tyranny comes close on the heels of the most unbridled democracy, and that tyrants are born less from kings than from demagogues. Not that I’m accusing Obama himself of having tyrannic aspirations. But the phenomenon surrounding him disturbs me.

hb,

I should earlier have taken more notice of your remarks on the relative dangers of executive vs judicial abuses. I agree that “legislation from the bench” is a problem which can and ought to be corrected by the actual legislature; what concerns me more with the judiciary is their power to remove liberty in individual cases: their power over this this person’s property or family, given to them by the legislature. What is more of a concern to me than either a too-powerful executive or judicial branch is the legislature itself. Aren’t they the ones who actually remove liberty in most cases? The danger of George Bush becoming an actual tyrant seems very, very small. But Congress can go and institute an income tax or prohibition whenever it wants.

Michael and anonymous,

Let’s see. This is pretty disjointed. I agree with many of the concerns you raise. But I feel as though I’ve been misread a little, since most of your arguments fall wide of the narrow claims I was making above, even as I can recognize their power.

Anon: My defense of the Democrats above had two elements: first they’re more likely to protect “civil liberties—that is, the explicit guarantees that, for good or ill, have been set up as part of America’s contract with itself.” In other words, they’re better about protecting the explicit freedoms in the Constitution and, more generally, those “freedoms inherent in the concept of ordered liberty” to employ a murky Constitutional law phrase. Sure, they’re fond of those other rights invented or discovered or newly recognized recently; I’m suspicious of those, but can see the arguments for them. And, yes, they value notions of the collective good and fairness above property rights; I can see that there are reasonable arguments to make the other way, of course. But it’s most important to me that Dems, generally, not always, support those found in the Constitution. Are these the greatest freedoms? Are they essential? Maybe. I’m not sure which civil liberties I’d choose as essential—certainly those listed in the Constitution would be on there, but I’m sure there are more we can reasonably add to such a list. But I choose to value these freedoms over others in the calculus of a party to vote for because America has an essential need to keep the contract it has with itself. It’s related to my second defense, about which I say more below.

Michael: Sure, I’m wary of the Democrats for their “big government” tendencies. And I do value certain political freedoms over certain economic ones, largely because I think infringements on the latter are less grievous to what’s essentially human than, say, establishment of a state religion. Perhaps I wasn’t entirely clear, but I meant those examples I mentioned to illustrate attacks on the rule of law, not to highlight the particular harms they might effect. This president has explicitly contradicted the clear meanings of laws in a manner so blatant as to defy intellectual honesty. He’s said he doesn’t have to follow the law. That action is explicitly without the bounds of the Constitution, and it opens the door for tyranny very clearly. Similarly, with signing statements, he’s said, “I’m not going to enforce the law as it’s written, but subject to my unreviewable interpretation of my inherent powers.” The undermining of the rule of law is the issue, not whether he applies benchmarks to Iraq funding correctly. The Democrats at very least support the application of what the laws actually say, although it’s sad that this becomes a difference between the parties. But it’s one I think that is crucial to maintaining what freedoms we currently have, so the Dems come out on top on this.

what concerns me more with the judiciary is their power to remove liberty in individual cases: their power over this this person’s property or family, given to them by the legislature.

Sure, but that’s going to be a concern in any judiciary. We’ve got a system set up to try to correct for it; it doesn’t always work, but it’s there. Juries, appeals, guarantees of counsel—thank the Constitution, and hope the President decides it applies to you!

I do personally know people who have had property, livelihoods, children, actually taken from them or had their ability to use these things severely restricted by the government.

And if all of us knew more black people, I guarantee we’d know more such families, a fact that is troubling for still another reason. The drug war is a huge and dangerous folly, just to take one example; both parties are complicit in it. The Constitution guards against the harms you list as best it can, and all three branches have allowed its protections to be eroded (arguably). Despite their complicity, Democrats are much more likely to correct such abuses than the Republicans, if only because they listen to the concerns of those most directly harmed by its abuse.

What is more of a concern to me than either a too-powerful executive or judicial branch is the legislature itself. Aren’t they the ones who actually remove liberty in most cases?

In American history? Yep. But that’s because they’re the most powerful branch, by design, so that’s where encroachments are going to come from. Over world history? I think they’re better at preserving liberty. In fact, most of the encroachments that have happened over the last 60 years have resulted from the legislature conceding huge amounts of power to the executive branch. The root certainly lies with a legislature that’s potentially not guarding its people’s freedoms. But, in theory at least, we’ve got a recourse to correct the legislature’s mistakes that’s meaningfully different from the other branches. That’s the way it tends to work, also: you’re more likely to get the legislature to listen to your policy arguments than the President.

Incidentally, I think the failures of the Congress over that 60-year period have had to do more with their overly-democratic tendencies than with overt attempts to grab power. The best criticism of the New Deal was that the Congress over-reacted to its constituents suffering (and I am conflating Roosevelt with the Congress deliberately). The Senate would be better guardians of liberty, I think, if they weren’t directly elected and thus subject to the vagaries of campaigning, including arguments as idiotic as that one should vote for a United States Senator based on his view of gay marriage.

The phrase party of freedom is noxiously unmeaningful, so let’s dispense with such an impossible notion—I don’t know where it came from. Michael’s analysis seems a useful starting point in comparing the types of freedoms each party says it protects (although the reality is much more complicated; the Republicans have acceded to many encroachments on economic “freedoms from” and has added many more of the social and political variety).

I must give the caveat that I am not convinced that liberty is the most important of our values, even public, civil ones I wholeheartedly agree with this. I don’t think there’s a lot to be done in this election about other public morals; to the extent that these can be touched affected, I think the balance tilts in Obama’s favor, considering the McCain doesn’t recognize or give a shit about such issues.

If Greek and Roman history, if Plato and Aristotle, have taught us anything, it’s that tyranny comes close on the heels of the most unbridled democracy, and that tyrants are born less from kings than from demagogues. Yep. But this applies equally to Bush and Obama, since we don’t have kings. As to which is more likely to usher in tyranny: I don’t think Bush is likely to refuse to leave office, but his actions thus far have seriously opened up the space for a tyrannic response to perceived national security threats. I’d be curious if you think the supporters of Obama are more insidious than those of Bush in 2000 and 2004, and if so, why.

And imagine if he did decide not to leave office. I’ll open this up to all here: what would you do?

I like to imagine that I’d walk immediately to the White House and protest, which seems like the only reasonable and courageous response. But I’m not sure that I’d have the guts to do it, nor am I sure that people would be called from their office buildings as they ought to be. Our republic isn’t great; we can argue about whether it’s worth defending. But I think that such an action on any leader’s part would be an act of personal violence to us as individuals.

HB, I am anonymous from above. I’m so sorry for my “noxiously unmeaningful” phrase.

There are a lot of things to take issue with, but for now:

“Despite their complicity, Democrats are much more likely to correct such abuses than the Republicans, if only because they listen to the concerns of those most directly harmed by its abuse.”

You’re skipping over a lot of political complexity there, dude. I don’t know as much as I’d like about prison guard unions’ lobbying, but it’s not a solid GOP bloc, I’ll tell you that. And, the passage of the “truth in sentencing” laws…and “one-strike” laws…and the addition of 100,000 cops…and a serious spike in imprisonment rates took place under…Bill Clinton.

Jess,

Good to know. I didn’t like even the whiff of having defended one party as the party of freedom, hence my distaste for the term. You weren’t doing anything of the sort either—it just sounds like something either party could call itself entirely inaccurately.

You’re skipping over a lot of political complexity there, dude.

Absolutely.

I don’t know as much as I’d like about prison guard unions’ lobbying, but it’s not a solid GOP bloc, I’ll tell you that. And, the passage of the “truth in sentencing” laws…and “one-strike” laws…and the addition of 100,000 cops…and a serious spike in imprisonment rates took place under…Bill Clinton.

Also entirely true. But is there a realistic chance that anyone within the GOP will propose, let alone actually address, any of these problems? Maybe in 2004 when Lincoln Chafee was still in office and Ken Mehlman was making an effort at reaching out to blacks. But not today and not for a while. True, they de-funded the 100k cops, but I think that having those many cops wasn’t in itself bad, it was the use they were put to (cheap, easy stats, etc., see The Wire). Like I said, the Dems are complicit. But at least there’s space within their party to effect change. I don’t see an EPA or visit to China on this in a McCain administration. First-time offender diversion? That’s code for rich white kids. Maybe Cindy’s experience would allow him some room; I could see it making him equally wary of the subject. In any case, his focus isn’t on domestic issues, and if anything were to happen it would be a concession to the Democratic Congress.

I see your point re: the “party of freedom” thing. I almost put it in quotes, and should have in retrospect.

I just don’t see a major push by either party for retreat on the Drug War (or other serious criminal justice reform) as anything like a political likelihood under either party. Under McCain, perhaps it would be a “concession to a Democratic Congress” if it came up—but it wouldn’t in the first place, I don’t think. If Obama elected to pursue it, it would probably be a stunning failure—he would attempt to push such reforms through a Congress dominated by his own party members. However, they would be extremely wary of “cutting and running” and going “soft on drugs” in the same term and tank the latter initiative. (I am here disregarding the possibility of Obaman leadership radically transforming the American politico-cultural situation.)

The PR on the crime issue is just too treacherous; the Dems have not forgotten Willie Horton. Think of the radically imbalanced upside/downside-potential here. Why would they expose themselves so much on an issue that would net them so little? What do they stand to lose letting the issue stagnate—the black vote? Fat chance. And they know that. It’s just not a good set of issues to be hopeful about, unfortunately.

I’m overdue here. I agree that a major push isn’t likely. I just think any change is more likely to come from within the Democratic party, although of course your arguments are powerful ones about the party’s interests. I think there are ways to make important changes without being exposed to the Willie Horton-type attach, especially if you emphasize non-violent offenses. The real rub, though, is money: our country hasn’t got much to spare, and treatment and diversion and new approaches cost rather a bit. Neither party’s likely to cut prison or police budgets, as you mention. Which is more likely actually to pony up from other places? Again, I think that’s the Dems.

That said, some people we know of have taken a radically different position: jury nullification.

Thank you all for the enlightening, and encouraging, conversation on such a grim topic — one I’ve had in my own mind for a while. A note of caution: The torture and abortion debates seem to have gotten hijacked in our country by what I think of as the “1-percent error.” That is, to argue that some egregious behavior (abortion, torture) should be condoned, defended and in fact legally upheld because it would be necessary or useful under some unusual scenario. So, we get the ticking nuclear bomb idea as justification for torture, for example. It’s a curious reversal of our basic liberties — that we can exercise them except for unusual or hurt circumstances, such as libel limiting our free speech.

At any rate, I’d think that for egregious liberties (torture, abortion), we should leave room for the 1 percent of extreme circumstances. In effect, yes, let torture be legal — IF there is a ticking nuclear device. That doesn’t make torture right; anymore than allowing abortion in the cases of rape or incest right. There’s still a huge moral question—but by allowing a grain of utility to leaven opposition to these egregious practices, we as a free people could greatly reduce their instances.

I’d not be happy with the notion that rape victims turn around and victimize their own nascent child — but, I recognize the utility in it, or more accurately, in the argument, and a bit of uncomfortable moderation might radically reduce the egregious acts in the first place. There’d probably have been no government-sanctioned torture, for one thing.

At rate, thanks again, all. Dan

How do you feel about birth control? About sex outside of marriage? About group or casual sex? I remember how the priests who taught me thought about it, and I don’t agree with them anymore, in general. Now, I freely recognize that these are difficult moral issues, and of course, many come to a different conclusion. But when I see “Democrat” in the moral and religious soup, I say, “Uh-oh.” And here’s the meat of the political matter to me. Let’s just say that a pro-abortion — not pro-choice, but militantly pro-abortion faction were to take charge of the Congress and Senate, and that group would pass a law that said that anyone under 18 MUST abort their child or face prison. Repulsive, coercive, and I don’t take that position. But for the sake of argument. That’s obviously happened in China, and before you decry the “one child” policy, reflect on a population of 2 billion, and what that will mean in 50 years. Yet, I’m against that position. I think that limiting population growth is best accomplished by the emancipation of women, so they can control their reproduction. Freedom of conscience for women means fewer babies. And that’s a good thing.

Is it wrong to force one group to do something they find deeply wrong, stupid, and counter-productive? Yes, it is. When you’re wondering about your life, and God, and morality, that’s good. Everyone has freedom of conscience. But imposing your will on others, not Democratic.

Isn’t all this hand wringing moot, as the republican nominee is both pro-life and anti-torture.

The only way to make any political party turn from pro-choice to pro-life is to convince it that being pro-life will help them win the next election. To get the Democatic Party to change their ideology, conscientious people should vote for a prolife candidate.

While both are grave evils, torture is the lesser of the two for the straightforward and simple reason that, unlike a repentant abortionist, a repentant torturer can go to their victims and beg forgiveness.

Until recently I would have agreed with Richard RE: McCain. But his recent vote clouds his torture position.

Or: what Andrew Sullivan said.

I do have issues with the use of torture. I also strongly suspect that it’s been used by every nation, including our own, in most wars in human history — including “good” wars, like WWI and WWII.

As such, I think it has to be weighed on the merits, and, yes, there are merits. If I know someone knows about a nuclear weapon that is set to go off and kill a hundred thousand people, then the potential suffering of that 100k people far outweighs the suffering of one person — particularly one who is at the heart of that suffering.

This is tricky — at what point does one “know” someone knows something? What happens if they are wrong, and the person doesn’t know anything? What if that person is either an innocent (unaware of anything of interest), or someone guilty in general (i.e., they are responsible for harm and potential harm to many others) but not specifically of knowing anything of this issue?

I think that if torture is used, the person choosing to apply it should be willing to risk their career, if not incarceration, on the wrongness of the presumption — and it should certainly involve substantial loss of life with regard to the information to be obtained. It should not be applied to soldiers in uniform or rationally innocent civilians — only to spies.

And that leads to a further consideration — the rule has ALWAYS been that spies are fair game — there is a difference between a soldier doing his “duty” and someone who is infiltrating and acting against an opposing state while not in uniform. Terrorist are, by historical definition, subject to the same rules as spies, i.e., “no rules” — the Geneva conventions do not apply, and nver have been, as they are not “enemy combatants”, and I’d also suggest that the Army’s specs on handling captured soldiers are not rationally applicable, either — those are specifically to deal with enemy combatants.

The “pure” notion that “torture is inherently always wrong” is fraught with issues such as the above. Like any other idea, concept, more, or other notion of which humanity can conceive, it’s a finite attempt to define proper behavior for an infinite number of potential circumstances, and thus, cannot be completely true. There are no such ideas which are absolute with regards to HUMANS. Go ahead, identify ONE thing which you believe is ALWAYS right. Any action which is ALWAYS wrong. It doesn’t exist. No idea is so all-fired good that someone, somewhere, can’t take it and run straight off the end of the earth with it — Not Love, Honor, Duty, Decency, Kindness, Consideration. Nothing. I can produce a possible (regardless of how unlikely) situation in which the action is the wrong thing to do. Likewise for things which are wrong — nothing is wrong for all possible circumstances. Name an action, and I will define for you a scenario (again, possibly preposterously unlikely) which it is at the least “the lesser evil” — no matter how evil you imagine the act to be in itself.

Only He knows absolutes. We get to experience the grey areas, and nothing else.

Beware of absolutes, they are not yours to experience.

Never treat another human being as a means rather than an end.

I also fully and strongly deny that it is justifiable to torture a single person to save a hundred thousand lives. Socrates said over two thousand years ago that it was impossible to be harmed if one refused to commit injustice, and I find it difficult to see what, in the time intervening, has changed the rightness of his statement.

However, granted that I am unlikely to convince you or anyone else about the applicability of personal morality to government, let us be content to say that the situation you describe is used—as Dan pointed out earlier—as an imaginary 1-percent scenario to justify regular practices that are frequently stupid and ineffective, serving no other function but to tip our hand about how readily we prefer our own safety over even the slightest specter of a threat to it.

If we are to grant your 1-percent scenario—and the majority of Americans would agree with it, even if I don’t—then I agree that the authorizers should be willing to have to justify an illegal act. Just break the law. If their reasons are all that damn good, then we can grant forgiveness after the fact. The prior authorizing of moral lapses is more than just setting up a slippery slope—it’s building a slide all the way down it.

come join myspace just created for prolife democrats

> I also fully and strongly deny that it is justifiable to torture a single person to save a hundred thousand lives. Socrates said over two thousand years ago that it was impossible to be harmed if one refused to commit injustice, and I find it difficult to see what, in the time intervening, has changed the rightness of his statement.

Correct. It’s still idealistic and wrong, just as it always was.

Not only is the statement not realistic, it’s positively utopian.

You might as well claim a speeding bus won’t hit you if you refuse to believe it’s there. If you imagine this, then do me a favor — have a friend film you while you step in front of one, and have your friend mail me a copy of the vid.

Were the small children whose lives were devastated by the Indian Ocean Tsunami “guilty of injustice”? Or were they just “not harmed”, in your view?

Did Manny Taboada deserve to be killed by Danny Rolling — solely because he was a roommate of Tracy Paules?

This world is full of harm done to innocents (unless you are going with the extreme Xtian worldview that no one is truly innocent as a result of Original Sin).

(On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague):
This isn’t right. This isn’t even wrong.
- Wolfgang Pauli -

> I also fully and strongly deny that it is justifiable to torture a single person to save a hundred thousand lives.

Sorry, I don’t subscribe to that calculus. The sufferings of the many do outweigh the sufferings of the one — esp. if the one in question is or would be the cause of the sufferings of the many.

This does not mean I advocate “the one” should be tortured solely as punishment. But if it’s a choice of him or the mass, I’m siding with the mass every time, especially when “the one” is at the heart of the whole issue.

To me, the chief danger of so-called torture is the potential for harm to innocents, not the suffering of the guilty.

> Just break the law. If their reasons are all that damn good, then we can grant forgiveness after the fact. The prior authorizing of moral lapses is more than just setting up a slippery slope—it’s building a slide all the way down it.

And what you advocate is an even slipperier slope. It’s a lot easier to control and limit such actions when the rules are clear and well defined than when there is no rule, and one has to “bet” which way things will fall for them. It also encourages cover-up and creates scandal when it occurs. Breaking The Law is a last resort measure in the face of a need for expedience. Needing to break The Law in an act of desperation suggests a lack of vision on the part of those who wrote The Law — esp. when the notion has come to light and is ripe for debate.

I also point out that you neatly and completely side-stepped the fact that terrorists are spies and saboteurs, and as such, and their treatment has never been restricted/codified in any Law I’m aware of.

So if you’re going to claim “it’s wrong” then I think you need to come up with a set of workable rules on “what’s right”… and saying they should be treated the same as anyone else is unacceptable to the vast majority. The terrorists take advantage of the very decency of a society itself, and represent a much greater threat to society than the average criminal. It is rational and just that there should be rules specifically for dealing with them.

OBloody Hell,

the most general form of the moral principle Nate seems to be espousing is “One must never do evil so that good may follow.” Your line of thinking seems purely utilitarian: there’s no principle I can act on which will guarantee that I always get the results I want, therefore there’s no principle I must always follow.

Nate’s not claiming that a refusal to do evil will prevent all evil from happening. That would indeed be foolish. But we have to remember that none of us are responsible for the evil that others do, only for the evil that we do. To prevent evil done by others at the cost of doing and becoming evil ourselves is poor moral economics. What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul?

I disagree with Nate and others around here about a lot of things, political, religious, and otherwise, but not about this.

“Terrorist are, by historical definition, subject to the same rules as spies, i.e., “no rules” — the Geneva conventions do not apply, and nver have been, as they are not “enemy combatants”, and I’d also suggest that the Army’s specs on handling captured soldiers are not rationally applicable, either — those are specifically to deal with enemy combatants.”

OBloody Hell-
This is just flat wrong legally speaking. From Article 3 of the 3rd Geneva Convention, a.k.a. “Common Article 3”:

Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including … those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely … To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
(b) taking of hostages;
(c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;
(d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.
———————————————
This means that spies and even terrorists may NEVER be subjected to torture or cruel, humiliating or degrading treatment.

It is true that such persons are not entitled to other protections of the Geneva conventions, but Article 3 does apply to them.

Furthermore, terrorists are enemy combatants. They may be unlawful enemy combatants, and therefore not entitled to some of the protections of the Geneva Conventions, but they are enemy combatants nonetheless.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly: You casually throw out the term “terrorist” in a manner that conflates it with “terrorism suspect.” I think we should keep this distinction in mind, because a given prisoner is a terrorism suspect until it can be credibly proven that such an individual actually engaged in terrorism. One of the many problems with the Bush administration’s policies of indefinite detention and torture is that they have so wildly missed the mark in terms of capturing real terrorists. This has been so widely documented that no serious observer disputes it. Yet here you are, seemingly taking at face value Bush’s stance that anyone the U.S. captures and calls a terrorist is in fact a terrorist. I hope for the sake of the United States and humanity that you don’t vote.