171–180 of 182 posts
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The scenario I'm describing doesn't involve any sort of violence or torture, which again, makes me think you're missing my point or conflating my position with something else.
You mentioned a scenario where police beats a thief. How is that not violence? What's your position? I am really curious.
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You mentioned a scenario where police beats a thief. How is that not violence? What's your position? I am really curious.
If you are curious, I suggest you read my comments in this chain.
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If no one is to blame for letting it happen, who do we expect to step up and attempt to address it?
CIA director at that time.
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Real life is not an action movie. Your scenario is totally made up and has probably almost never happened.
I hope my scenario has never happened, but nothing about it is implausible. The point though is to illustrate that there are moments where pragmatism must trump laws and values. If you look, there are many times throughout history where such tradeoffs have been made. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/torture/ The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy lists a real life example along the lines of my hypothetical one. In…
(edit: now I notice it was written by an Australian)
That's real optimistic of the Guardian but somehow I doubt there's all that much grass roots support against rendition flights. We live in an age where "Muslim ban" sounds like appropriate policy to about half the population. In Democracy the people get the government they deserve. Guess we really don't deserve human rights and habeus corpus.
"Verily, God does not change the state/condition of a People until they change themselves." (Quran 13:11)
Which is worse: torture or killing? It seems that with all the attention that torture got, the Obama administration basically stopped trying to capture people alive to interrogate them and instead just sent drone based missiles to just kill anyone suspected of terrorism.
I'm not sure how to begin answering the moral question of what bad thing is worse. I do know that the answer is uninteresting to me. We just shouldn't be doing either of those things. I do not believe the Obama administration used more drones because of public backlash against torture. Correlation does not imply causation and all that. It could easily be explained that because torture doesn't work there's no reason t…
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If you are curious, I suggest you read my comments in this chain.
I did and I think you are advocating violence or torture in certain cases.
The purpose of my example was to create a situation where it should be obvious the right move is to go against idealism. The reason is, if your starting point is something like "We must never deny people their rights" I'd like to show you an extreme example where, actually, we must. If you can agree on the extreme example, then the discussion becomes a matter of degree - i.e. when is it okay to deny people their rights versus when it is not. This is actually the more nuanced and realistic discussion that has applicability to the real world.
That's real optimistic of the Guardian but somehow I doubt there's all that much grass roots support against rendition flights. We live in an age where "Muslim ban" sounds like appropriate policy to about half the population. In Democracy the people get the government they deserve. Guess we really don't deserve human rights and habeus corpus.
I dunno, if you look at specifically this kind of intelligence cooperation with "dirty" states' intelligence agencies (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, etc.), I've found people in "conservative" rural areas to be almost uniformly against it, even if you wouldn't be able to tell that from how their political representatives vote. I mean, to be fair, most people I've met in any location of any politics aren't really happ…
It’s no surprise to me that the pols I respect, R. Pauls, R. Wyden, and the like come from more rural states (Texas, Kentucky, Oregon) .
The cities are the problem, I fear
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I largely share your incredulity, but allow me to make a more optimistic counterpoint. I frequently change my mind, which is proof that one or more people out there are changing at least one person's mind. And here's the thing: in nearly all cases, the person or, more often, the people who change my mind never know it. I am often stubborn in the moment and unwilling to admit I've been swayed. More often, I don't real…
> I frequently change my mind, Don't take this as a personal comment, but the ability to change ones mind based on changing facts is one of the characteristics of liberals. Conservatives, on the other hand, by definition are known for not changing their minds.