THOUGHT FOR THE DAY. Is torture OK if it works? If you concede that it is, then you will concede anything and everything. Heres a thought experiment, Suppose a prisoner under interrogation is confronted by guard with his three children. The guard threatens them if he doesnt talk. He remains silent, so one child is shot and the gun pointed at the next. Then he tells anything the guards want to hear. So it worked. OK by you? Heres another puzzle. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights has numerous prohibitions of torture. Yet the same upper crust had few problems with slavery and the inherent torture of the lash, or the death by starvation and exposure of the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears. Obama tell us that torture is not who we are. But in many ways, hes wrong. It is part of who we are in a deeply conflicted way, and only when we recognize it, can we begin to purge it from our national psyche.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 12:55:13 +0000
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