Clean Torture and Dirty Executions
The good news here is that liberal democratic leaders actually care enough about legitimacy that they fear clear outrages will cause people, the voters, to do something about it. If they didn’t, scarring tortures would still be common. So when we watch them, they get sneaky. Could things get worse? Sure. Locke believed that history was committed to liberalism’s triumph, but the question today is whether history will even tolerate liberalism surviving into the twenty second century. Everywhere, blind nationalism seems to threaten liberalism. Documenting clean torture in this respect is like the canary in the coal mine. As long as torture remains clean-and so far it has-it means that government leaders know that people are watching, and I find that hopeful.
An epic discussion of torture, by one of America's leading scholars of it, Darius Rejali. Check it out, asap. Or else!
There is, as sad as it goes to say, something to be said for "clean" pain; analogous to this is the practice of executions which follow the regulations of "cruel and unusual punishment". Something which I've heard more and more often, from regressive quarters, (including Justice Scalia) is the notion that "Who cares if executions are cruel and unusual? They end in death!" The substance of this point is that executions are "preventative". They keep other people from murdering. Ignoring this debatably spurious point, the real reason why we keep this in line is because it was originally presumed that there were crimes where the only appropriate punishment was death; the very notion that someone's death could involuntarily serve a social end would have been abhorrent to the original philosophes and liberals - that's why they opposed their respective judicial regimes in the first place. The notion of preventative punishment really, if one investigates it enough, is foolish philosophically, and practically useless. But again, that aside, we kill because, it follows from the root law of Western culture, that what one does, should come back to them. Now, this is, last sentence aside, not a Western notion - after all, it was Gautama who said the negative version "Do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you". And as experimental philosophers/economists are showing, humans are hard-wired to seek equality of outcome/reward, ceteris paribus. We kill killers because they kill. But we do with the highest allowable mercy in the process. But it is incumbent on us to do what you did with the mercy you did not allow your victim; that's the logic of "cruel and unusual punishment". Deterrence has nothing to do with it. "Clean" pain may be something the enlightened wish to leave behind - I certainly would. But it cannot, and should never be mistaken as being morally equivalent for "dirty" pain. There is a tremendous difference between waterboarding someone and branding them and releasing them without the means of supporting themselves. This is not to justify waterboarding, but to keep in mind that morality, if ever, is rarely black-and-white, and so long as we demand that things like FISA, executive "enhance" interrogation measures, and videotaping of criminal procedures, even while those tapes show the police making false statements (which are legal, currently) exist, we may not live up to the greatest moral standards imaginable - and which we should work towards - they are not equivalent with the practices of the worst criminals of world history.
With that said, other opinions are certainly welcomed. And part of the process.
That Is All For Now.
An epic discussion of torture, by one of America's leading scholars of it, Darius Rejali. Check it out, asap. Or else!
There is, as sad as it goes to say, something to be said for "clean" pain; analogous to this is the practice of executions which follow the regulations of "cruel and unusual punishment". Something which I've heard more and more often, from regressive quarters, (including Justice Scalia) is the notion that "Who cares if executions are cruel and unusual? They end in death!" The substance of this point is that executions are "preventative". They keep other people from murdering. Ignoring this debatably spurious point, the real reason why we keep this in line is because it was originally presumed that there were crimes where the only appropriate punishment was death; the very notion that someone's death could involuntarily serve a social end would have been abhorrent to the original philosophes and liberals - that's why they opposed their respective judicial regimes in the first place. The notion of preventative punishment really, if one investigates it enough, is foolish philosophically, and practically useless. But again, that aside, we kill because, it follows from the root law of Western culture, that what one does, should come back to them. Now, this is, last sentence aside, not a Western notion - after all, it was Gautama who said the negative version "Do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you". And as experimental philosophers/economists are showing, humans are hard-wired to seek equality of outcome/reward, ceteris paribus. We kill killers because they kill. But we do with the highest allowable mercy in the process. But it is incumbent on us to do what you did with the mercy you did not allow your victim; that's the logic of "cruel and unusual punishment". Deterrence has nothing to do with it. "Clean" pain may be something the enlightened wish to leave behind - I certainly would. But it cannot, and should never be mistaken as being morally equivalent for "dirty" pain. There is a tremendous difference between waterboarding someone and branding them and releasing them without the means of supporting themselves. This is not to justify waterboarding, but to keep in mind that morality, if ever, is rarely black-and-white, and so long as we demand that things like FISA, executive "enhance" interrogation measures, and videotaping of criminal procedures, even while those tapes show the police making false statements (which are legal, currently) exist, we may not live up to the greatest moral standards imaginable - and which we should work towards - they are not equivalent with the practices of the worst criminals of world history.
With that said, other opinions are certainly welcomed. And part of the process.
That Is All For Now.