Would you support torture in certain situations in prison

only to those who committed the following crimes......

-murder
-rape
-child molestation
-terrorism

not for theives or the non violent.

 

In short toss the very foundation for government in the United States as expressed in the Declaration of Independence under the bus.

 

I don't really agree with either of you. The government monopoly on law and order is illegitimate and evil.

If you want to torture murderers then fine, make that a punishment for such an act as a condition of entry to your property. Simple enough, everyone gets their own way and the criminal cannot complain since he consented to this by agreeing to the conditions of entry.

The problem is government. Public property and all that.

 

I was under the impression that Nathaniel Bumppo was the creation of James Fenimore Cooper. Do we owe that debt to Great Uncle Hugo?

 

You are utterly right. My Bad I was confusing him with another character in Dr Doolittle which was written by My Great Uncle.

 

Does saudi arabia see justification for imprisoning dissidents because we use imprisonment for thieves? I doubt it. And for that same reason torture for the reasons I view as sensible doesn't justify torture for say heresy. Anything we do can be justified to be used for bad reasons by that logic can't it? One can't ignore that one has to have the right reasons behind.

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I don't believe anarchism would work out very well in regards to respecting private propertry nor life, hence why I see a need for government. It's a necessary evil.

 

Rationalizations and boasts of exceptionalism abound, of course. Adhering to the morality of civilised nations and not surrendering to the the State apparatus the power to kill or torture people avoids having to resort to such cover stories.

Hopping into the sack with bedfellows China, Iran, North Korea,Yemen, and Pakistan in regard to the cold blooding killing of citizens takes more than such a righteous posture to sell the "holier than thou" line.

You are judged by the company you keep.

 

But we arent in their company because we dont have the same reasons behind. killing people isnt wrong per se it all depends on the reasons. Are we in the same league as hitler because he too had an army, yet he used it for aggression and we for defense? Of course not, but followij your logic yes

 

I support all cruelty and torture of murderers, its kind of like a thorn on a rose, you must try and steal or destroy the rose to get pricked.

hence, its the murderer who chooses to be tortured.

 

The only reason I could ever support torture would be to extract information from a terrorist or criminal in order to save other lives- for instance if a serial killer boasted that he had buried a victim alive who was slowly suffocating and he refused to say where or if a terrorist knew where a bomb was going off.

Torturing someone who is in Jail as a means of retribution is abhorrent. Kill them if you must,ideally with a bullet in the back of the head anything else serves no purpose at all.

 

No. Your desperate Hitlerian red herring evokes Goodwin's Law

Nations both civilised and otherwise maintain armies. China, Iran, North Korea,Yemen, the US, and Pakistan distinguish themselves from the community of advanced nations by their resorting to killing their citizens in cold blood, and killing more folks every year than others that still engage in the practice. 140 countries have abolished the death penalty, but nearly all, if not all, maintain armies.

If you wish to associate your nation with China, Iran, North Korea,Yemen, and Pakistan in the manner in which citizens are killed by the State, it requires a self-righteous assertion of exceptionalism - further allying the US with China, Iran, North Korea,Yemen, and Pakistan who would very likely offer the same rationale.

Most of the world's nation's have advanced in abandoning the killing of their citizens. The US lags behind - with the likes of China, Iran, North Korea,Yemen, and Pakistan.




.

 

Ignoring the reality that torture readily elicits misinformation as readily as accurate information (Bear in mind that your hypothetical terrorist's or criminal's boasting reveals a disposition to mock his jailers in a manner entirely consistent with feeding them misleading information), this is a hackneyed story line in a plethora of potboiler thrillers - and the plot of such fiction accommodates such drama. If such a rare situation were ever to arise in real life, the moral stricture against torture could be violated in that instance without its being routinely condoned, of course - and , even then, merely hand the dastard another chance to mislead.

 

I never said it was likley Natty, we are dealing in hypotheticals here.

 

Nothing wrong with considering hypotheticals, Seb.

Instituting real policies demands that that likelihoods, adverse consequences, and implications be considered.

 

truly it does, but I took hitler as an example because of his well known qualities of being evil and infamous.

You're ignoring my arguemtn now aren't you? There is no association because we do it for good reasons (say for murder) and they do it for bad (dissent, heresy). and there are other things they misuse that we also have, like prison, but I don't hear you complaining about how we justify imprisoning dissidents by imprisoning thieves.

 

I am in complete agreement with you here.

 

This is often called the "ticking time bomb" but the fact is that torture doesn't work in these situations.

Experts in interrogation uncategorically state that torture does not result in creditable intelligence as the person being tortured will say anything to stop the torture. We know from the torture committed by the Bush adminstration that not a single bit of creditable intelligence was gathered and no terrorist attacks were prevented by the use of torture. In fact we know that torture lead to so much false information that it actually took the Bush adminstration off the trail of Osama bin Ladin for several years.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2302-2005Jan11.html

Torture as well as capital punishment are nothing but acts of revenge. They don't accomplish anything and they are contrary to the very principles upon which America was founded as expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Our government was created to protect our inalienable Rights and no where in the Declaration of Independence does it even imply that our government should be engaged in either punishing or in extracting revenge upon anyone. We, as individuals, do not have the "Right" to punish or extract revenge regardless of what someone does. We do have a Right of Self-Defense to prevent acts of aggression against us. Incarceration of convicted criminals is an act of Self-Defense and is supported by the Declaration of Independence but torture and revenge are not acts of Self-Defense.