Keeping up with the Joneses

[pecunium]

A bunch of the Glenn Reynolds types are all up in arms, because people who oppose the U.S. using torture aren't all up in arms that Al Qaeda in Iraq endorses it.

Well, that's not news. Al Qaeda (in Iraq, and everywhere else) is a bunch of terrorists.

I don't think we should be measuring ourselves against them; as if they were the benchmark of civilisation.

Then again, maybe the pearl clutchers of the world did learn everything they needed to know in kindergarten, "but Jimmy hit me too," can be be heard in defense on any playground, anywhere.

The grown-ups, however, tend to dismiss it.

Comments

Re: I think some ideas are being conflated here...

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

It doesn't seem to me that "why can't" is involved in any substantial sense. Terry knows perfectly well that we (our Government Officials) _can_ torture anyone one we wish to torture (just as we can bomb Tehran to rubble with nuclear missiles, or gas the entire population of Iraq and turn those oil fields over to U.S. Corporations, or re-arrange the U.S. Government so that one person has dictatorial powers). The question is "Should we do this -- would it be to our ultimate benefit?" Terry, and others (elsewhere) have produced persuasive -- and, to me, convincing -- indications that the use of torture produces useful information so rarely that its use does not balance the downside factors.

I hadn't noticed Terry's heading, especially, but it does seem to be apt. Except for a few people with serious psychological problems, ostentatiously emulating ones neighbors is simply a matter of choice -- there's no _need_ to do it, any more than there is a _need_ to torture people, or to imprison them indefinitely on whim. We got along very well indeed for more than two hundred years without doing those things, and I see no good reason why we should or need to change now.

For most of my life, I've been pleased (even, irrationally, proud) that my country was One of The Good Guys. During the nearly-seventy years I've been observing such things we've certainly done a good many embarrassingly sleazy things, but our general framework has been that of The Good Guys. In the less-than-a-decade past, however, we've (mostly overtly) adopted what I consider the hall-marks of The Bad Guys. I don't think I'm going to be persuaded to accept this.

As you say, some -- perhaps many -- of the "things the other kids do" are perfectly fine & even admirable. What we're talking about here, however, is things that I (& other liberals and moderates) see as things done by other kids who are (in any decent society) done by the kids who are going to spend most of their lives in prison. For me, the desire not to have my country take that path quite overwhelms any desire I might have to gain Points in rhetorical debate.