On that whole, "looking forward" thing

[pecunium]

I see a lot of apologists (mostly for torture, but some for things like wiretapping), saying we need to look foreward, not backwards.

One.. huh? Prosecutions have to look bacwards. A crime has to happen before it can be prosecuted.

That's the first oddity. The other one is that I saw, in the dim and distant past of 2008, a lot of people saying, "Well sometimes the law has to be broken. If a cop knows someone has info, and the only way to get it is to torture the guy, then he needs to do it. No jury will convict someone who saves a kid's life by beating up a perp."

This is often followed by a bravura follow-on: "I'd do it if I had to, and I'd turn myself in and face the music."

Ok, lets assume that's true.

Why aren't the people who authorised the tortures saying, "Yeah, I ordred peopel to do it. I had to, it was to save lives. So go ahead, charge me. I'll prove it was needed, and no jury will convict me?"

Comments

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Yeah, see, that is the essence of civil disobedience, to me: doing something that is against a law because one sees it as the right thing to do, accepting that the law will impose consequences, and facing those consequences squarely.

Whether he was right to threaten the perp pr not, how and why he went about it can't be faulted.

What bothers me about the other folks is that they won't stand up and defend their convictions publicly before the law and the people who elected them or those who appointed them, and face down the law for imposing a sentence for doing what must have been so clearly the right thing. It was the right thing, wasn't it? Wasn't it?

Next you'll tell me that there isn't a Santa Claus...