New blog game: Give Mutiliation a Chance

Remember when ticking bomb scenarios were the hot blog game?

In a world where one suspect knows a dark secret and one cop has 10 minutes avert a cataclysm of Biblical proportions...

Good times. "Ticking bomb" scenarios aren't just for torture. You can mix and match, substituting theft, murder, or any depraved behavior that rings your intellectual cherries. It doesn't matter how likely it is that raping a nun is the only way to save a school bus full of small children. That causal connection is built into our thought experiment.

Your opponent might ask "How often does this situation come up, really?" (Poor sap, he'll never know what hit him.) "You intellectual lightweight!" you cry, "You underhanded cheat! You're not addressing my carefully honed thought experiment. Whazza matter? Aren't you man enough to stare nun rape in the face? Go back to your girlie-blog until you're ready to have an adult conversation." Should your opponent mutter something about how this is a stupid question, you can accuse him of being a typical knee jerk liberal who is out of touch with a post 9/11 era in which all thought experiments assume overweening importance.

I resolved to stop playing Ticking Bomb last year. I'm pretty sharp--set me up three or four times, and by the fifth time, I really think hard about jumping into the fray. Luckily, after a few more brisk rounds of Ticking Bomb, even the earnest and fair-minded liberals got bored with it. It looked like we were going to have to back to boring policy questions about extraordinary rendition and prisoner deaths.

Luckily, Eugene Volokh has taken the torture game to the next level: "You'd Enjoy Torturing Child Rapists To Death, Right? And If Not, What's Wrong With You?":

…I am especially pleased that the killing — and, yes, I am happy to call it a killing, a perfectly proper term for a perfectly proper act — was a slow throttling, and was preceded by a flogging…

…I like civilization, but some forms of savagery deserve to be met not just with cold, bloodless justice but with the deliberate infliction of pain, with cruel vengeance rather than with supposed humaneness or squeamishness.

It's an exciting development for the armchair torture contingent. We've segued from "Could torture ever be an acceptable means to an end?" to "Torture is a morally obligatory punishment that the state should inflict on its own citizens, even if we have to rewrite the Constitution to do it."

Comments

[David in NY]

I didn't know until a year or two ago that nuclear bombs actually ticked! Silly me!

[Brendan]

I fail to see what could morally obligate us to torture other human beings. Before arguing for torture, you have to morally justify revenge, which to me would seem to rest of dubious arguments, if any.
(1) Victims have a right: what about a crime gives someone the right to committ a crime? besides, what does a victim get out of it? it cannot undo the damage done.
(2) The Criminal Deserves it: you have to have some pretty strong opinions about human agency to think that people who committ horrible crimes are "monsters", or that it is "in his/her nature".
(3) It could deter future criminals: perhaps, but there are less controversial ways of doing it. You might think those ways will not work, but then, why do we hear about people being tortured? It obviously did not deter them.
(4) It would only be for psychos, serial killers, etc. These are the sorts of criminals which seem least sane and in control of their actions. Why punish people for things that are out of their control.

[rev.paperboy]

excellent entry!
It is hard to believe the torture debate has gone from "is it ever acceptable to torture someone under the most extreme of circumstances?" to "How far can we go?" to "Who's next? and should we televise it?"

[Charles Winder]

Volokh doesn't take his argument to the next logical step. The very best way to inflict cruel and unusual punishment upon a child-rapist is to rape HIS children (and his wife and livestock for good measure) in front of him. Get those rape-rooms rolling!

[doncoop]

According to the ACLU, torture has never produced information that has saved a life. Next time you hear the ticking bomb argument, point out that torture has been used for thousands of years, and challenge your opponent to cite one example of a life saved through torture.

[Bulworth]

Does the public execution and bloodlust lustfully advocated by Volokh remind you of any futuristic "novel" in particular?

Remember Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, where "abortionists" were impaled and left for public display, and the "salvagings" where women "unfaithful" to the Republic of Gilead's new rules for women and other political opponents were subjected to community execution?

But let's not worry. It Can't Happen Here.

[Steve M.]

Let's do a two-fer -- torture Michael Schiavo until he admits that Terri has profound conversations with him about the possibility of democratizing the Middle East, which he's spent years covering up!

[Brian C.B.]

You know, David's right. Bombs probably only tick in cartoons. And, when those cartoon bombs go off, they don't ever kill anybody. They just cover the victim with soot and mess up his hair. Why should we torture Road Runner just to save Wiley E. Coyote from a shower and a good brushing? He probably needs a flea dip, anyway. Let the bird live, dammit!

[Riesz Fischer]

It's in the Bahbo. Thass what you dang libruls don't unduhstand: It's OK to torture people. It says so raht in the dang Bahbo.

[r@d@r]

"…I like civilization, but some forms of savagery deserve to be met not just with cold, bloodless justice but with the deliberate infliction of pain, with cruel vengeance rather than with supposed humaneness or squeamishness."

hmmm...isn't this the much-belabored "moral relativism" that conservatives used to rail about back in the day?

mr. volokh, i'd like you to meet my friend freddie nietzsche...

[John McKay]

These types of bombs don't tick, they beep. The have a big red LED display, prominently placed on the outside that counts down and beeps. They can only be turned off in the last three seconds.

I wonder why our law enforcement community doesn't keep track of people who buy large backward-counting red LED displays. Those aren't covered by the Second Amendment are they?

[R. Mildred]

What Volokh doesn't realise is that the only way to stop a child rapist is with premptive child rape or the threat of imminent preemptive child rape.

Only through the application of Mutually Assured Child-Rape can this country be kept safe from the threat the soviets or islmaofacists or what ever, the specifics are unimportant, the point is to ensure that the maximum amount of child rape is performed every year so that another generation of suitable soldiers is produced for der fatherland

[Dazed]

Volokh is just taking the conservative "strict father" frame to a logical (and dumb) conclusion. If you've read Lakoff, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, in this case "strict father" frames society as a family. In a family, the strict father punishes family members who do something wrong, with the hope that they and others will learn, through suffering, from their error. In society, we punish criminals by sending them to prison. Not for "nurturing" rehabilitation, but as punishment. They *may* learn from their punishment and not commit other crimes in the future, but in any case they will serve as examples to others. This thinking can be easily extended to executions. Volokh then extends this kind of thinking all the way to torture, for crimes where a clean death, simply put, is too good for criminal.

[Basharov]

Next time you hear the ticking bomb argument, point out that torture has been used for thousands of years, and challenge your opponent to cite one example of a life saved through torture.

C'mon, it happens at least three times a season on "24". And just this morning I caught a few minutes of the movie "Man On Fire" on HBO, in which Denzel Washington, in his quest to rescue the cute little blonde girl he's failed to protect from being kidnapped by Evil-Swarthy-Mexicano-Sociopath, demonstrates the "torture gets results" principle by letting Evil-Swarthy-Mexicano-Sociopath listen on his cell phone while Denzell uses a sawed-off double-barrelled shotgun to blow off the hand of Evil-Swarthy-Mexicano-Sociopath's brother (the brother's eight-months' pregnant wife gets to watch) so that Evil-Swarthy-Mexicano-Sociopath (a somewhat flawed businessman, but one for whom "la familia es muy, muy importante") will be willing to make a swap -- cute little girl for mutilated brother. The adorable kid is saved, the mutilated brother returns to the bosom of his family, and Denzel -- well, suffice it to say that he's not going to be hired again by any more Mexican billionaires to be a bodyguard for their cute little moppets and stunningly beautiful blonde American wives, even with Christopher Walken as a character reference.

Oh, wait a minute, you probably were looking for an example that has actually happened.

Never mind.

[Lo Ping Huang]

An aversion to torture, even when it would seem to be the best tool, betrays a sense of human decency; humanity.

Neocons aren't big on humanity.

As a rule, Christian conservatives (and those who think like them) have no use for the humanist doctrine that man is inherently good. Whether it's original sin or our evolution out of primordial muck, man is flawed. He's a sinner to be redeemed, or an automoton with delusions of grandeur.

Either way, compassion, tolerance and empathy are useless because they are wasted on something that only deserves to be destroyed if it breaks the rules. The lake of fire or the rape room. Your choice.

[burritoboy]

"Oh, wait a minute, you probably were looking for an example that has actually happened."

That was very funny for a moment -..... and then I realized: somebody, possibly many somebodies, out there right now is indeed probably viewing that very movie as a strong near-factual example.

Don't underestimate how the stories in movies or fiction do, in fact, influence people's thinking. They may not literally believe that torture works because they saw Denzel do it, but the idea that "torture works" is gradually building up steam in them after many repeated exposures to fictional examples.

[Ghost of Joe Liebling's Dog]

Or, then again, they may well literally believe what they see in the movies. I used to know a screenwriter with many writing credits, who shared with me the letters people sent after seeing some of the movies.

They included things like, You shouldn't have let [some actor] star in your movie; he pretends to be a nice guy but he is not. I saw him murder [some actress] in [some other movie]. He is not the nice guy he pretends to be. Don't trust him!

As a rapper once commented in awe: And these people all vote, man.

[richard]

Of course people believe that torture works. They imagine themselves being tortured and they all (except perhaps some adolescent morons) realize quickly that they'll tell everything. They'll tell all about the disarm code for the dirty nuke in the stadium. They'll tell all about the kidnapped heiress.

What they don't think about is that they don't in fact know any disarm codes or any heiresses. And never will. And they'll not give a thought to the obvious point that the overwhelming majority of torture victims don't either. And that the genuinely nasty one-in-a-million malefactor, once captured, knows nothing of any value.

People are stupid.

[Thud]

It occurs to me that Volokh has proposed something silly, then he gets to sit back and tell other people _their_ arguments against him are silly, and he gets to sound all smart and dangerous and rebellious and stuff and he's never _once_ made a persuasive case for such behavior is desirable in the first place. It's kindergartener-behavior. "I will jump up and down on this bed and when you tell me stop I will tell you you are stupid. And when you explain why I should stop, I will tell you you are stupid again."

The only reason he wants to flog and hang people is he thinks it would be real keen.

[ken]

The 104th torture keyboarders echo the thinking of such infamous thinkers as Gonzales, Bybee, and Yoo who influence the "born again" tyrant Bush. Through their wrong legal opinions which has been a support for the tyrant's anti-Christ beliefs of an "eye for an eye" justice meted out through the U.S. military and intelligence organs.

This is purposefully against the Constitution, Bill of Rights, U.S. statuatory law, and international conventions and treaties (which, as ratified by the Senate, have the force of U.S. law as mandated by the Constitution).

What should we, as concerned citizens, do? I believe in both working the street (protests and civil disobedience for the mass media), corporate bottom lining (influencing companies through organized boycotting, actions to raise the awareness of individual and institutional shareholders in corporations via shareholder meetings and replacing obstructionist board members), and utilizing the new technologies of communication to build effective grassroots movements to change and/or remove politicians and political institutions which are antithetical to the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Simply put: Torture is against what we as Americans stand for.

[Basharov]

Simply put: Torture is against what we as Americans stand for.

That is so pre-9-11, the day Everything Changed. Torture is now -- in the words of H. Rap Brown -- "as American as cherry pie."

And that's even before Volokh and his good buddies Bybee and Yoo are appointed to the Supreme Court.

[David in NY]

I wish to thank Brian C.B. for his wonderful elaboration of my cryptic "didn't know nuclear bombs ticked" comment. Yes, the point is the ticking-bomb mongers are dealing in a fantasy, cartoon-like world, not the world of real dangers.

In the real world, torture is invariably used against those with no useful information -- just look at Abu Ghraib. Our law professors should not be spending their time encouraging pointless sadism.

[dadahead]

The ticking-bomb "thought experiments" are clearly red herrings. Yes, of course it would be justified to torture someone if by doing so you could save the whole world. Now what the fuck does that have to do with the nonsense at Abu Girhaib? The ticking-bomb scenario will simply NEVER EVER HAPPEN. So all this talk about it is just the Right's way of "softening up" opposition to torture.

HOWEVER, I don't see why more people aren't more sympathetic to the sentiment expressed by Volokh. Assuming that he's being sincere in limiting his approval of torture to the types of cases described (i.e., not Abu Girhaib-type prisoners, but bad, bad people who are actually guilty of the worst crimes), I can certainly see the temptation to allow some Iran-style retribution for the worst criminals.

The criminal here was a child rapist and murderer. The lowest possible thing there is. I find it impossible to have any sympathy for the suffering of such a being. I just don't care. I don't think that the torture of this type of criminal is intrinsically a bad thing.

Now, I'm not arguing we should actually adopt this policy; it is just not practical, for one thing, and the chances that it might end up happening to an innocent person make it completely out of bounds. But certainly you can understand the desire to see someone this evil suffer in the same way his victims did?

All the comments saying things like "Well, why don't we just rape his children too?" are completely ridiculous, freshman-type slippery slope arguments. There is obviously a clear line between taking revenge on the perpetrator of a crime by making him suffer and taking revenge by making his family/loved ones suffer. Supporting the former in no way commits one to the latter.

[Roddy McCorley]

The irony here is that this is from the same quarter that regularly excoriates the notion of "if it feels good, do it." For some reason, that's not an acceptable philosophy with regard to, say, consensual sex acts between adult. Yet here it's presented as an acceptable justification for torture and mutilation.

Go figure.

[TomK]

Has someone pointed out that maybe this child rapist and murderer was himself abused on a kid, and therefore a product of a society that lets kids get abused?

Has any psychologists weighed in on how harmful participating in vengence like Volokh wants actually would be to parents? Not how harmful do right wing nuts think it would be, but how bad it would actually be.

How about an academic uproar a la that Colorado guy about a big time law prof admiring Iran torture?