If you care about this issue please read this relatively short and to-the-point article. America has tortured throughout its history. And every time it has, some Americans have justified the brutality as necessary to protect the country from a savage enemy. Others have called it counterproductive and immoral. At different moments, the balance of power between these two groups shifts. But neither side in these debates speaks for the “real America.” The real America includes them both. Morally, we contain multitudes. Why does this matter? Because when you claim that the United States is intrinsically moral, and torture therefore represents an aberration, you undermine the fight against such practices. There is no innate moral sense that pushes America’s leaders to respect human rights. To the contrary, the U.S. political system is based on the recognition that since Americans, like all other human beings, are sinful creatures, and will abuse power, the best way to limit that abuse is to ensure that power is divided and balanced. In the 20th century, when American presidents helped establish first the League of Nations and then the United Nations, they recognized that—to a far more limited degree—the United States should submit to international laws and institutions that checked its power overseas. This stemmed in part from the belief that only by binding itself in systems of domestic and international law could the United States act differently from the totalitarian empires it opposed. The most dangerous aspect of totalitarianism, wrote Arthur Schlesinger in The Vital Center, was its attempt “to liquidate the tragic sense which gave man a sense of his limitations.”
Posted on: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 03:38:20 +0000
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