Torture, As Abhorrent As It Is, Should Be Legalised In Western Countries.
I wanted to add in the abhorrent bit because I think torture is disgusting and I oppose it as a concept. I believe it to be inhumane and a contradiction to civil society. But it would be logical to legalise it because despite it being illegal in Western countries it happens. And it happens completely unregulated and there are no controls in place to keep it in check. The only line a torturer cannot cross is killing someone, this is unacceptable, it needs to be brought under control and watched by legal institutions not left to run amock.
If it achieved something I don't think I'd be as opposed to it as I am. But I've never seen or heard of cases where lives have been saved because of the use of torture. I don't see it yielding any benefit to society or aiding us towards a safer future. But like I said, I would prefer it to have a framework and boundaries rather than it being simply allowed to run out of control.
Torture does not need to be regulated or kept in check. It needs to be run as underground as it can
get and if people get caught doing it or allowing it, they should face the consequences.
Torture should be done only in extreme cases and nobody should know about it other than Jack Bauer
and the torturee.
Gren made most of the points I was interested in except one. Torture has been shown repeatedly to be
a) an ineffective method of garnering reliable intelligence b) a very effective way to turn a
population against you.
Morally it is laudable to sacrifice your life for freedom it is completely against the point of
freedom to sacrifice our freedoms for freedom.
1) It's flawed logic. Basically then any activity that continues illegally despite our efforts
should be legalized with the hope we can better control it? So, we should legalize hate crimes,
pedophilia, cannibalism, etc? 2) We witness again and again how the government and it's regulatory
agencies fail to actually regulate. 3) Make it legal and the rich and powerful will find a way to
exploit it legitimately for their own means. Don't you think someone well connected could buy a
license to torture if they knew the right people? 4) The current military trend is to outsource to
contractors, so you're probably looking at Blackwater and other private security firms with black
marks against their names actually getting contracts to carry out torture. And then you can watch
them bill it back through Halliburton at outrageous markeup. All legit in your plan? 5)
And oh yeah, a free Western society with civil rights has zero business legalizing torture.
I did want to come up with an argument to use against you but you do use a sound logic. I was only refering to torture because the governments of the world despite it being illegal are using it on a constant basis and people are dying because of a lack of control over it. You don't see Western governments sponsouring secret pedophilia or cannibalism like they do with torture and I would never suggest they put in a framework to sponsor those.
But I haven't really got anything to say against your argument because you pretty much covered all the basis, good job.
25 Nov 2009 09:20
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