Mirko places the blame on the wrong people. Say Mr Evil locks up 100 people, and takes you aside and says "Give me your life, and i'll free the 100 people, if you don't I'll kill them". Say you choose to keep your own life, and the 100 people subsequently get murdered, THIS IS NOT YOUR FAULT. (whether or not you should have given up your life is irrelevant). The blame here falls upon Mr Evil for murder, not you. Mirko's flawed moral compass would appear to place the blame on the person who chose not to give up their life, which is idiotic. The fact that society chooses NOT to commit immoral acts to prevent other immoral acts is not itself an act of "permitting murder of innocent people".

Torture is not justified, in the same way that murder is never justified except in self-defense. Torture is not the sort of thing where you could reasonably KNOW that it is self-defense, and whether he knows it or not, he is opening a whole new can of worms as far as government involvement with violence is concerned. There is no way to 'check' what the government is doing when its all 'top secret', there is no way to restrain the government when you don't even know what what they are doing!

Also, his analogy does not work. Organ and bone marrow donors VOLUNTARILY choose to do this. Nobody voluntarily permits torture against their own person.

My message is clear: Do not give this idea acceptance, this idea should be rejected by any rational person because it is so obviously immoral, flawed and dangerous.

www.democracysucks.wordpress.com

i just love getting these lessons in morality from Torture Man.

Am I still in the 21at century? This has to be the sickest, most barbaric, medieval article I have ever read.
Apart from that most basic law "innocent until proven guilty" there is the simple question of who is going to commit this act.
People who torture others are CRIMINALS. It is an illegal act of violence. Asking someone else to commit an illegal act on your behalf is also illegal.
If you believe in any form of equality, you must accept that you cannot ask other people to commit acts on your behalf and maintain a clear conscience.
Are you personally prepared to torture another human being, Mr Bargaric? If you are, I strongly suggest you have yourself committed.
You are a dangerously sick individual.
grim@thecomensality.com

I have hypothesized for a number of years now that a large segment of the population i.e. the secular progressives, have had their survival instincts bred out of them. They smugly live out their lives as products of a secure, plasticized, urbanized, sloganized, digitized, pop-cultural worshiping utopia.

Rhian has now provided some proof that I may be correct, when stating -- Ethics means that there are some things you do not do even though it would advantage you (or the whole society) to do them.” Torture is definitely one of those things.

When I studied ethics, Situational Ethics was centre stage. The Rhians of the world seem to want to blend and stir Traditional Ethics of pure right and wrong with their normally favoured Situational Ethics.

Unlike totalitarian regimes throughout the world; coercions (no permanent damage) are NOT sanctioned in police stations throughout our democratic world.

The fact that useful information (saved lives) has been derived from mass murdering xenophobes is proof that Rhian's ethical position is flawed, at least from a secular progressive point of view or perhaps even her own philosophical paradigm.

Additionally, I fail to see how the ethics of the interrogator is so easily deemed to be objectionable. Every OLO writer has not been required to exercise their ethical position on this matter. The interrogators have and I think we should be more magnanimous in recognizing the legitimacy of their action as opposed to our theoretical positions. I will trust those who have the responsibility to ensure our safety to decide. I wouldn't want the Rhian's of the world guarding anything of value, after all they may be required to actually do something instead of theorizing.

Well said, Cowboy Joe!

Those damn secular progressives, with their "democracy" and "due process" and "habeus corpus". Why can't they just realise that it will be a better world for everyone if we just submit to fear - justified or not - and do exactly what we are told by paternalistic, religious politicians.

Oh, that's right: because it would turn the west into a clone of the middle east.

How does France and Londonistan fit into your vision of the future?