A recent comment in KSM Was Waterboarded 183 Times in One Month diary states:
Stop making effectiveness arguments!
This is the ultimate trap we get ourselves in. It's irrelevant whether it's effective. It's a matter of following our own laws. Torture is illegal. End of discussion.
While this is a compelling argument, and I agree, I must bring up a practical consideration.
Which is: it's simply not enough.
I think we should embrace both the practical and the emotional in order to get things done.
More on the flip...
Just as we have two halves of our brain, we have people who allow themselves to be moved by different arguments.
Why not use every argument at our disposal?
Because moral considerations have practical considerations, too. It's not that rare for high moral standards to have real world good outcomes.
Why not go with it?
It's a candy mint AND a breath mint!
While many on this site, including myself, find moral arguments to be the weightiest, there are actually people who do not.
And they vote, too.
One reason is that our society pays only lip service to high moral dedication. We admire these people... occasionally. But most people are pressured into slicing and dicing their high ideals for what they consider more practical considerations.
This is a continuing bone of contention in the arguments about moral purity, for instance. There are people who claim one shouldn't use their art to make "potboilers" to keep oneself alive; it is supposedly better to work on the docks or be a dishwasher. Likewise, I have read here that people should not be paid for working for a cause; it should come from a higher source.
The problem is that this reduces both our art and the number of willing workers for good causes. There's nothing intrinsically uplifting about going hungry or homeless, is there?
It's idealism taken to a ridiculous extreme.
For instance, we can talk until we are out of oxygen about the "moral imperative" to provide all our citizens with health care. I see President Obama is taking a different tack; he is talking about the economic unsustainability of not having universal health care, as well as our moral obligation.
Why restrict ourselves to one punch, when two punches hit harder?
Why not muster both moral and practical arguments against torture?
Torture is wrong.
AND
Torture doesn't work.
Because when we ask people to muster their indignation, we have a barrier. It's tough to ask some people to have their emotions roused; a lot of people just aren't used to it. We're asking for energy.
I don't mind where that energy comes from.
Because this horrible moral travesty did not come from a vacuum. It had a goal. I've even seen some commenters in that diary claim they don't care; the victim was a "bad guy" who had murdered people, so they don't care what happens to him.
This is because practicality is so prized, many people apply it everywhere.
So turn it on its head and use it!
Torture is not only wrong, it is counterproductive. It made us less safe. It makes our soldiers and citizens less safe. It creates the very thing it claims it is fixing.
This is powerful stuff for many people. They find isolated moral considerations too abstract, too unrelated to their lives, too ephemeral to get exercised over.
They only give themselves permission to care about practical matters.
Practical arguments are harder for conservatives to refute; one of their mainstays is to deride lofty-headed liberals for their high ideals that are impractical.
Of course, they are not.
But apparently some people need that justification.
Let's give it to them.