Here's a good commentary from Jonah Goldberg at NationalReviewOnline.com:
[url]http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg101201.shtml[/url]
[size=4]The World According to Me[/size=4]
[b]Why torture is sometimes good, and democracy is bad.[/b]
Imagine we had someone in our custody on September 10 who we knew could tell us how to prevent the murder and destruction of the next day. Now, I think it would be unpleasant, but hardly morally impermissible, to take a cheese grater to his face or make him watch Caddyshack II until he gave up the information we needed.
This seems like a no-brainer to me. But it doesn't to a lot of readers who chastised me for condoning torture. So I thought I would use this opportunity to offer my grand theory of democracy and explain why I don't think guilty people should have rights.
First, let me clarify. Guilty people do have rights in our system, and that is necessary and good. But it isn't necessary and good for the reasons most people think. Guilty people (by which I mean murderers, rapists, practitioners of mopery) have rights only because we aren't sure they're guilty. If we were sure, they would have no rights.
[b]The Case For Torture[/b]
Take this torture thing. Now, I am not "pro-torture." I agree with numerous readers when they say torture is morally corrupting.
* * *
But let's keep in mind that there are all sorts of things which are similarly demeaning. Cops have to do things everyday, including kill people, which they find personally degrading. Nobody wants to wake up a homeless veteran and tell him that he can't sleep on a grate. But sometimes cops have to do that. Occasionally, prison guards are forced to treat grown men with families like animals. But we still need prison guards. And soldiers are sometimes ordered to do horrific things which cause them trauma for years, even decades — but sometimes those horrific things are necessary (and sometimes they're not). Torture isn't all that different.
Torture is against the law in Israel (we can't say the same about most, if not all, of her neighbors). But Israel's Supreme Court grants an exception, the so-called "ticking bomb" excuse. If Israeli authorities are positive there's a bomb about to go off somewhere which will kill untold numbers of innocents, they can use "physical pressure" — or some other sanitized euphemism for torture — on someone in their custody, if he has information about how to prevent it.
Imagine if the FBI announced that we were in a similar position on September 10, but we declined to whack the guy around "because torture is always wrong." Six thousand people die; the country loses billions of dollars which could have been spent more productively. Hundreds of thousands of people lose their jobs, and hundreds of millions live in fear. Do you think the guy who made the decision not to fill a pillow case with a bunch of oranges and make like Barry Bonds would come out a national hero? Do you think the gang at an NYPD funeral would say, "Hey there goes the conscience of the nation!"?
The rest of his article is just as good, go read it! I'm for capital punishment and am cynical enough to believe that sometimes there will be an innocent man put to death. It will be rare, but it will happen.
That doesn't keep me from supporting the death penalty, however!
Eric The(I'mAllForA'TickingBomb'Exception,AsWell)Hun[>]:)]