The Difference Between Liberals and Conservatives: It's Not What You Think...

So, I've been playing with watching streaming video over the Internet on my TV, through my XBox, and found a program called PlayOn. Playon lets you set up a PC to receive video streams from a variety of sources, including Amazon Video-On-Demand, Netflix, and YouTube. It's pretty easy to install, costs $35, and mostly works well (there are a few glitches but the PlayOn folks release updates often and the software has improved even in the past month or so that I've been using it).

One of the YouTube channels I've subscribed to has been TEDtalksDirector, the video stream for the various TED presentations available. TED, which stands for 'Technology, Entertainment, Design' is a yearly conference series that brings together movers and shakers from a variety of different areas including high tech, education, politics, business, and entertainment. The conferences offer a multitude of presentations on a variety of subjects, from how the world began to the use of rock chords in progressive jazz... in other words, a very eclectic mix. Although some of the presentations are controversial, and others are just fluff, the occasional nugget of gold can be found.

I'm embedding a TED Talk entitled "The Real Difference Between Liberals and Conservatives" by Jonathan Haidt. I just watched this, and at the beginning I was thinking yet another biased presentation, yet by the end my opinion switched to thinking that this was perhaps the best TED Talk I've seen yet.

Here it is. Please watch it and then feel free to leave a comment on what you thought.



As for me, it made me think about the various discussions I've had with my liberal friends... and the political combat that seems to be growing even harsher with every passing year regardless of who wins the White House or Congress.

Grace Under Pressure

By now I'm sure everyone knows about US Air Flight 1549, the Airbus A320 that took off from New York City's LaGuardia Airport enroute to Charlotte, North Carolina but ended up floating in the Hudson River after encountering a flock of geese shortly after takeoff. The jet lost both engines due to ingesting geese, and was too low (3200' and 90 seconds into the flight) to make it back to LaGuardia. I've embedded a CBS report featuring a simulation of the flight, including radio transmissions plus some security camera footage showing the jet landing in the river.

Captain Sullenberger, the pilot-in-command, has been singularly recognized for his coolness in the face of emergency, and his presence of mind in rapidly exploring and then discarding all of the alternatives as unviable until only one remained... landing in the Hudson River. As he explained it to the NTSB during his deposition concerning the incident, he didn't want to crash catastrophically in the dense New York metropolitan area, couldn't make it to a runway, and so the only choice left was to land in the river.

I don't want to take anything away from Captain Sullenberger, who I think exemplifies Hemingway's definition of courage as 'grace under pressure.' However, the NTSB's full audio of all ATC transmissions does show Sullenberger's stress as reflected in his voice, and his anguish at realizing the impossibility of making a safe landing at Teterboro Airport (just to the west of the river). To his credit, once Teterboro is no longer possible, Sullenberger focuses on his only remaining choice, landing in the Hudson, and then works with his aircrew to put the plane down safely. Great credit goes to Captain Sullenberger, but also to his aircrew including copilot Jeffrey Skiles (who was busy trying to restart the engines and implementing other emergency procedures while Sullenberger flew the plane), and flight attendants Doreen Walsh, Sheila Dail and Donna Dent who prepared the passengers for the crash landing and then helped to evacuate the jet quickly and safely. All of them deserve every bit of praise for miraculously saving the lives of all 155 passengers onboard.

Another unrecognized actor in this drama is the air traffic controller handling the flight. I can't find his name, but he is trying everything he can to help the pilot... clearing traffic, suggesting alternatives... and then his voice is filled with resignation and despair as he loses the plane on his radar and knows that it has gone down. Another controller steps in to relieve him shortly thereafter, and understandably so. I would have given anything to have been a fly on the wall and have seen his reaction once he learned that everyone survived. Listening to the audio gives one a glimpse of how it must feel to be a first-hand witness to a tragedy. I know I had to sit and digest what I heard for a minute or so, even with the benefit of knowing how the story turned out.

Captain Sullenberger and his crew are heroes, ordinary people who rise above circumstances, who keep their heads in a crisis and calmly do the right thing. Yes, we admire grace under pressure in, say, a Super Bowl quarterback, but football isn't life or death where one wrong choice means the deaths of hundreds or maybe thousands... and you can always call a timeout and go to the sidelines for advice. Our true heroes are found in airline cockpits, and military cockpits, on the battlefield, or in ambulances and firetrucks, running towards danger rather than away from it. I think as a country we forget this too often, and it takes a 9/11 or a US Air Flight 1549 to remind us of what we should gratefully acknowledge on a daily basis.

Everyone who risks their life in the service of others is a hero. More important, every hero who gives his life for our country is bestowing a priceless gift to the rest of us. How often do we think of their sacrifice? How often do we honor it by giving of ourselves, by being better citizens and better people... by "earning this?"

On The Morality of Clubbing Baby Seals

Don't ask me how I wandered on to this, but I thought it was powerful enough to share.



I've never heard of Craig Ferguson before, but he seems like someone worth watching.

Tragedy Isn't Funny: An Open Letter to Rush Limbaugh

Hello Rush,

As a listener of yours since the late '80s, and a member for the past several years, I think you're going a little overboard on the astronaut.

I joined after the press was ganging up on you over your issue with painkillers. I didn't think it was fair, and I wanted to show my support.

Similarly, I think the story of Lisa Nowak and her actions this morning is really a tragedy. Captain Nowak is an Annapolis grad with a regular commission, three young children, and is at the pinnacle of her career as a test pilot and astronaut. Now, all of that is over. Regardless of the legal outcome, her career is ended and she will have to resign her commission because she can no longer be trusted behind the controls of a fighter aircraft much less in command of an aircraft carrier or in the Space Shuttle.

If she is acquitted of all charges, she will still be unemployable; no defense contractor or airline will have her for the same reason that the Navy and NASA no longer will. She will almost surely be court-martialed; if she is found guilty she will most likely lose her pension. Her marriage is most likely over as well. And, if she is convicted in a criminal court she will spend at least a decade in jail.

I don't know why Captain Lowak did what she did. I don't know what pushed her to act this irrationally. My point is, regardless of the reason this is a tragedy that has and will harm many innocent people, from the intended victim to the male astronaut to the Nowak children to Captain Lowak herself. The woman has lost everything. There's nothing funny about that.

Give the woman a break, okay?

Rights Versus Responsibilities: Revisiting Abortion

A blogger I respect wrote a very good article on the subject of abortion, which prompted this response.

I can see both sides of this issue.

When I was younger I was pro-abortion, but it was mainly an unconsidered opinion that rested chiefly on the perceived benefits to me. Thankfully I never had to make that decision, or be involved with someone who had to make it.

Now that I’m older, hopefully wiser, and have had a child, I realize what a remarkable gift a child is. And, as an aside, I do not understand people who do not want children.

When all is said and done, what else is more important than a child? What else really matters? In a century the world will forget how great of an artist, poet, or builder you were… but you live on in your children and in their children. They’re a tremendous pain in the ass. You’ll spend hours and hours doing the most disgusting, menial tasks. When your infant daughter throws up all over your sweater at the bank, and you can still hold her and kiss her head while you clean it up, when you spend all night at the hospital with your infant son hooked up to an IV, cleaning diarrhea off of his behind every ten minutes… and that child looks at you and smiles in appreciation through their misery… only then will you truly understand love. Love means you do these things not for money, but simply because they must be done and someone is depending on you to do it, and it is a privilege.

It really all comes down to responsibility. Taking responsibility for our choices, instead of taking the easy way out. Having a child at a young age is very hard. Aborting a child because you do not want to face the hardship of having it should also be a very hard decision to make. That it is not to many is, to me, very troublesome.

I agree with you, Chrissy… if people aren’t ready to face the responsibility of childhood then maybe they should strongly consider whether they’re ready to face the responsibility of being sexually active. But everyone wants the easy way out, the convenient way, and to avoid what it is we’re doing we use words like fetus, abortion, and termination instead of child, infant, and killing.

I understand the arguments behind keeping abortions legal. “Women will get them anyway, and many will die from back-alley abortions.” I’m not in favor of women dying, but let’s not forget that every abortion requires a death. The child pays for the mistakes of the mother.

I would like to see Roe v. Wade overturned. I’d like to see late-term abortions made illegal, and especially the heinous procedure of late-term partial birth abortions where viable infants are legally murdered just because they’re delivered in the breech position and killed when only their heads remain in the birth canal. For Pete’s sake, you should have made up your mind in the first trimester! I’d like for teenagers to get at least one parent’s consent before they can have an abortion, and then be accompanied by that parent. I’d like to keep the government from spending a cent on abortions or abortion clinics. And I’d like legal abortions to be so rare that the majority of abortion clinics go out of business because people grew up enough to either ensure they don’t get pregnant by whatever means, or accept the consequences if they did.

I wouldn’t make abortions illegal, but I would make those changes. I know they will not be popular with many, just as I would have found them onerous in my ill-considered youth. The right thing is never easy, and seldom popular.

I can live with that.

NB: More articles on the subject here, and tangentally here and here.

Life (in prison) or Death? Why I Support the Death Penalty

Albert Owens, one of Tookie Williams' victims, shot in the back with a twelve gauge shotgun as he lay on the floor of the convenience store that Williams robbed

Yet another convicted murderer is trying to obtain clemency on the grounds that he has changed himself, and therefore redeemed himself.

Stanley "Tookie" Williams, one of the co-founders of the notorious "Crips" street gang, has lost his final appeal and is scheduled to be executed on December 13 for the murders of four people during a series of armed robberies. There is no doubt of his guilt: one witness (Williams' brother!) remarked that Williams smoked PCP before one of the robberies and laughed at one of his dying victims who lay groaning in his own blood.

Stanley "Tookie" Williams, co-founder of the Crips street gang. Williams had a reputation as a fearless, and fearsome, fighter. I can believe it.
Contrary to the assertions of Williams' defenders, a jury comprised of blacks and whites convicted Williams even though the prosecutor was disallowed the use of Williams' history as a street gang leader. We are about as sure as we can be of William's guilt in the murders he was convicted of; we can be certain that Williams, in his role as the co-founder of perhaps the most infamous street gang in America, was involved in many more murders. We know that Williams threatened to "get each and every one of you motherfuckers [on the jury]" when he was convicted. We know that Williams got off on the thrill of killing from his conversations with prison counselors. We know that Williams planned to kill prison guards during his abortive escape attempt after his incarceration. And we have strong evidence that meets the 'probable cause' standard that Williams continued to play a leadership role in the Crips gang after his conviction and imprisonment including ordering 'hits' on individuals and managing factions of Crips prison gangs. In short, Stanley "Tookie" Williams is a reprehensible human being who has no respect for the rights of others or the rule of law and who poses a direct threat to others both in and out of prison despite his incarceration.

Others disagree. They want Williams to have a new trial, despite exhaustive appeals that have determined Williams' original trial and conviction was without procedural error, he was judged by a jury of his peers that included blacks, and that Williams' defense team was highly qualified. Williams' conviction was not due to some miscarriage of justice, but because he was guilty and numerous witnesses including family members, friends, and bystanders, testified to his guilt. These facts don't matter to Williams' defenders. Their strategy is two-fold: insist against all evidence that Williams didn't get a fair trial, and urge clemency based upon Williams' purported rehabilitation. Williams supposedly came to a realization that he was an evil dude and decided that the path to redemption was to write several books about his life, as well as some aimed at children, all preaching that gang life and criminal activity are signs of self-hatred. These efforts have drawn attention to Williams, to the extent that he has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by a Swiss legislator (who opposes the death penalty).(After preliminary research into how people are nominated for the 'prestigious' Nobel Prize, I am a lot less impressed with this award than I used to be... something I should have realized when folks like Jimmy Carter, Adolf Hitler, and Yassir Arafat are among the winners.)

I can agree with Williams' message as portrayed in his books, but that is besides the point. If everyone who claimed to be rehabilitated while serving time was let off the prisons would be empty. More to the point: prison sentences aren't dependent upon the redemption, whether actual or fraudulent, of the person being sentenced. Williams did the crime, reasonably should have known that the punishment for murder could include the death penalty, and thus them there's the breaks, Cuz.

In California, there effectively is no life sentence without possibility of parole. If Williams' sentence was commuted, he would be eligible for parole eventually. The choice here is between ensuring such a person is never going to be able to prey on society, or trusting his allegations that he is a changed man and eventually offering him a second chance. Hasn't his history shown that Williams cannot be trusted?

There was a case a decade or so in California, where a convicted rapist who was out on parole kidnapped a young woman, raped her repeatedly, then cut off both her hands with an axe and left her to bleed to death in a roadside ditch. She survived to testify against her attacker, and he was convicted of attempted murder... only to be freed a few years later. The criminal made the mistake of committing his next rape/murder in Florida, and we all know what happens to those convicted of capital murder in Florida; he was executed. As Ted Bundy so aptly illustrated, a convicted murderer who is put to death will never threaten the public again.

Putting someone to death is unpleasant, but sometimes it's necessary. I'll grant the possibility that Williams may have changed. He may finally have realized the error of his ways; staring death in the face is a powerful force for change. Unfortunately for him, it's about twenty years too late. We cannot afford to risk innocent lives if we're wrong and Williams hasn't changed. Williams crossed a line that can't be recrossed. Impose the sentence.

Note: more information on Williams, both pro and con.

Principle Over Politics or Vice Versa?

As you may know, a few years ago President Bush authorized, for the first time in the country's history, federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. However, the research funding bill limited funding limiting that funding to be used on a fixed number of stem cell lines (stem cells descended from specific embryos); I believe it was seventy-two. In other words, researchers couldn't go out and get new stem cells, by harvesting new embryos, if they wanted to remain eligible for federal research money.

This seemed, to me anyway, to be a Solomon-like approach to the issue of embryonic stem cell funding. The law recognized the reality that research was being done on these seventy-two lines anyway, so the moral dilemna of whether or not harvesting embryos was tantamount to murder was avoided because they were already being used. The only decision to be made was, are the benefits of experimentation on these already-sacrificed embryos worth the expenditure of federal funds?

In the past couple of years, researchers have been disappointed with the initial results on embryonic stem cells, and the most promising research has been done using adult stem cells (generic cells that all of us have, and that are readily available to researchers without the moral issues that invariably accompany embryonic stem cells).

On Friday, Senator Bill Frist (R-TN) announced he would support the easing of the current federal funding ban on embryonic stem cell research by loosening the restrictions and allowing for the harvesting/collecting/acquiring of new embryos from the pool of surplus embryos that were created by parents for in vitro fertilization but never used.

Those in favor of relaxed restrictions argue that the embryos are most likely going to be destroyed (or will die in storage) anyway, so why not use them for research? Also, researchers have discovered that embryonic stem cells (all stem cells, actually) become useless after a certain number of replications/divisions, and lose the nondifferentiated attributes that researchers depend upon to try and convert them into specific-purpose cells, i.e., heart muscle cells, liver cells, etc. In short, the view seems to be that since the stem cell lines we're currently working with are becoming useless, and we have all of these embryos sitting there in liquid nitrogen, why don't we make federal funding available to buy and use these embryos for further experimentation?

To me, this reasoning ignores the principle behind the funding limitations; human life is sacrosanct and should not be arbitrarily ended to further medical research. Let me explain further.

There is no doubt that thousands of lives could be saved each year if only we had a sufficient number of organ donors in good health whose deaths could be predicted or controlled to coincide with efficient organ harvesting. The Chinese solution is to typematch their prisoners and coordinate executions with organ harvests... or to harvest certain organs like kidneys involuntarily from prisoners who aren't facing execution. We could do the same thing here. We could easily establish a DNA database of all death row inmates and execute them by simply letting them die once a suitable recipient needed their organs and the harvest was complete. After all, why should an innocent little girl die, and a kidney or liver or heart be wasted? Of course, not very many people want to slide down the slippery slope resulting from the support of the harvesting of organs from prison inmates, or from the poor who might wish to sell an extra kidney to a stranger for the money. After all, in many places in the world people have been kidnapped and their organs have been stolen.

Now, some will argue that embryos aren't human and are not entitled to the protections we afford human life. Where do we draw the line? Can aborted fetuses be kept alive, and a new abortion procedure developed, so that stem cells and organs can be harvested? Since elective late-term partial-birth abortion is legal, do we allow a woman in her eighth month to terminate her pregnancy and provide the fetus' organs for harvest? Certainly there are billions of stem cells in the expelled umbilical cord; let's sell those to the researchers and give the money (derived from federal taxes) either to the mother or the abortion clinic. What about people like Terri Schiavo? Certainly she must have had a bunch of good stuff that might have saved several lives. Why didn't we harvest her organs, because she wasn't going to be needing them. Where do we draw the line?

The time is coming, and soon, when we're going to have to stop ducking the question: when does human life begin, and when does it end? In the near future we will develop the technology to "grow" a human from embryo to full-term infant without it ever having to be inside a woman's body. Maybe we'll develop a way to use another animal, like a cow or a sheep or a chimpanzee... or a brain-dead woman. Maybe we'll develop an artificial womb. Whatever... but then we won't be able to avoid the question of what a human life really is anymore, or when it begins. Not unless we want to see companies growing humans by the boatloads... maybe genetically engineered with full manual dexterity and the ability to learn simple repetitive tasks but with no higher brain capability. Will these be the new slaves, able and willing to do the most menial of tasks for nothing more than mere substenance? Or will humans make something more sinister, like the Clone Army from Star Wars but infinitely more menacing?

I'm not Catholic, and I have some problems with established dogma (and more problems with the way the hierarchy of the Church functions, as exemplified by the pederast priest problems that were knowingly covered up). I don't agree that preventative contraception, such as condoms, that blocks fertilization is immoral. However, I do agree with Catholic thought on this issue: human life begins at conception and we must treat that life with the same reverence, respect, and protection that we offer newborn infants. This position is the only principled way that prevents the horrors that will inevitably occur as our technology increases to the point where we can intimately control the most minor aspects of our biology.

So, is Frist's change of heart a matter of principle over politics? Or, is he trying to stake out a political position that differentiates him from other potential presidential candidates at the expense of principles? I can't claim to see inside someone else's heart, or head. But I don't understand how someone could be against such research on principle and then, a few years later, switch sides.

It's either a human life, or it isn't. If it is, and I believe it is, then no human life has the right to arbitrarily end another human life whether or not one benefits. After all, isn't arbitrarily ending another human's life the very definition of murder?

Photographic Art, or Exploitation? Ethics and Photography

Last month I was in San Diego for a week's vacation, and managed to swing by the Museum of Photographic Art for a quick look at the exhibits. The two featured artists, photographers Andrea Modica and Edward Burtynsky, cover opposite genres; the former specializes in aesthetic social photodocumentaries while Burtnysky is a landscape photographer emphasizing environmental damage and destruction. Click on the links to get a view of their work.

I found Burtynsky's work appealing, although I learned about it before on the Web in an article by photographer Michael Reichmann (the article makes for great reading). Straightforward, technically superb, and visually appealing, his "industrial landscapes" are both beautiful and disturbing; beautiful in the mix of colors and textures, disturbing in that these aren't paintings and the destruction pictured is a real, and unfortunately, inevitable byproduct of our industrial civilization. Then again, my taste runs to the realistic when it comes to photography.

Modica's exhibition, on the other hand, was very disturbing. Not in the choice of her subject, per se, although photos from the Fountain, Colorado project (covering a community of indigent and migrant workers where the primary employment seems to be an abbatoir) are graphic. I felt her photographs were unfairly exploitative.

Modica's main body of work, the Treadwell Project, concerned a young girl named Barbara, one of fourteen children in an indigent family in upstate New York. Modica spent fifteen years visiting and photographing this family, and her pictures illustrate the metamorphasis, or rather the dissolution, of this person into a grossly overweight yound adult who finally succumbs to obesity-related diabetes. Only in America can the poor die of obesity, but her preventable death really was the result of ignorance.

Does the photographer have a responsibility to intervene if she observes harmful behavior, to say "Stop!" to her subject (or her subject's parents)? Most art critics would say, "No, in this situation the artist is responsible only for documenting events, and while she should be empathetic and respectful to her subjects she owes them nothing." Modica tells us that she did not compensate Barbara or her family for allowing her the privilege of photographing them for more than a decade, nor did they receive any part of the proceeds from Modica's prints, books, or exhibition payments. Modica doesn't tell us if she tried to intervene, to get the family to modify their behavior so that it would be less self-destructive. My guess is that, given the philosophy that the photographer is merely artist-observer, responsible only for the procurement of images with artistic merit, any intervention would be seen as interference, an unwarranted influence on a living experiment that would fatally flaw the outcome.

To me, however, seeing the stages of this person's life documented was less about art and more about voyeuristically documenting a train wreck. Yes, the prints were well-done and attractive both technically and aesthetically, with detail and tonality. But I couldn't get past the idea of the photographer observing this preventable catastrophe upside-down on the ground glass of her view camera for such an extended period of time, being willing enough to communicate her ideas as to composition to the subject, but not willing to advise the subject to forego the junk food, practice decent hygiene, get exercise... or to contact the authorities about an unhealthy domicile and de facto child abuse. What is the philosophical difference between taking pictures of poor, uneducated, ignorant people who live in squalor in order to sell pictures, and taking pictures of poor, uneducated, ignorant people who take their clothes off in order to sell pictures? In either case, the subject's dignity is inevitably sacrificed despite the artists' protests to the contrary.

In the 1930s the US government funded a photographic effort to document the Great Depression and the effect it had on the lives of Americans. While many of the pictures documented people living in unbelievable poverty (to us, at least, some seventy years later), I don't feel they were exploitative because the photographers had a clear mission to document the adversity facing many Americans so something could be done about it, and they photographed what they encountered in a journalistic style that was beautiful in its simplicity. There was no artistic sentiment about "art" being more important than human lives, nor did the photographers have an underlying profit or self-aggrandizement motive. Yes, the photographers did get paid, however they worked on a straight salary and all of their images belonged to their employer—the federal government. More important, these photographers didn't spend a decade getting to know their subjects intimately, returning regularly to shanties to capture the disintegration of these families.

I find Modica's photographs as objectionable as those from an Iraqi AP stringer who, having spotted terrorists preparing an IED, sits and peers through his viewfinder as the US patrol approaches, ready to capture the ambush on film. Both parties would not intervene to protect their subjects, excusing their inaction as a calling to a higher god (be it Art or Journalism). Both are ethically deficient.

I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that my opinion is definitely a minority one in the art world. I also know which of the two artists' exhibits I will recommend to others, and I hope that more artists and journalists will realize that art and journalism are but means to an end, tools meant to inspire or inform rather than exploit or harm.

On Religion and Morality

This post is in response to a debate that I encountered on this website (ht: Christina).

I don't think that moral beliefs are religions beliefs, although I do believe that morality descended from religion. I also think that respect for the rights of others is the single greatest contribution to Western Civilization, and it came from our Judeo-Christian heritage.

In order to believe in morality, you have to believe in right and wrong. In a state of nature there is no morality, only self-interest, the rule of claw and fang. The big lions eat as much meat as they want from a kill and if there's not anything left for the cubs... oh, well. They'll even eat the cubs when hard times occur, not to mention when a new lion takes over the pride he eats the cubs so all of the lionesses will go into heat.

If there is no absolute right and wrong, then there effectively is no morality. This is the great "contribution" that Marxism and Nihilism has brought to our culture over the past 150 years. Was Hitler a monster, or was he just exercising the Will to Power and removing the weaker beings? Was Stalin a monster, or was he just following a scientifically-determined path to utopia? Relativists say, "You be the judge!" Or, worse yet, "Who are you to judge?" I say, "Phooey!" Everyone has the right to judge, and denying us that is denying us freedom of thought.

Our system of laws are derived from, and dependent on, morality which is a result of our Judeo-Christian heritage. The Founding Fathers would not have written our Constitution if they had been Muslims, or if they had been atheists raised in a culture of relativism. Our constitutional republic only works when the vast majority of its citizens are willing to restrain themselves because they believe in, and adhere to, a system of morals. And, I know this will upset some Europeans (and Europhiles) but in my opinion the US is the ultimate culmination of 2,500 years of Western Civilization, while Europe has been sidetracked onto a dead-end path. That's why I have a problem with the Blue State philosophy; these people want us to be more like Europe, and they don't understand that America was founded to escape the morass of Europe. I wish these people would ask themselves one simple question: if European political thought is so advanced, why has it led to two of the worst wars in world history and the imprisonment and slaughter of hundreds of millions of people? Should that be our future?

Now, in respect to pharmacists being required to dispense drugs with which they have a moral problem, I am in favor of letting them refuse to do so. If a pharmacist is against abortion then he has every right to not sell RU-485. Go to another pharmacy.

Similarly, I am in favor of letting non-governmental hospitals decide which procedures they will perform and which they won't. Catholic hospitals should not be forced to provide elective abortions, or any other procedures which violate their beliefs. Go to another hospital.

Note that in each of these cases, the medical treatment desired is elective. Forcing pharmacists, and hospitals, to act against their moral or religious beliefs, is tantamount to forcing them to follow your moral or religious beliefs. That is against the spirit and the letter of the Constitution regardless of what nine old fogies in black robes might decide on the matter. Secularism is a religion.

I would describe myself as a conservative libertarian. I believe in live and let live, but I also believe in not disregarding tradition for the sake of "progress" or modernity. There's a reason that human society has evolved the way it has... because what is tried and true works. There's a reason we condemn adultery; jealous spouses and lovers often commit acts of violence including murder. There's a reason we promote committed monogamous heterosexual relationships (marriage) over all others; this is the best way to ensure the future of our species and our culture, and the stability of our community. Don't believe me? Look at Europe, where falling marriage rates have led to a population implosion. Europeans will be an endangered species in 50 years. We don't even have to look at Europe, just at our own inner cities where the Great Society effectively discouraged people from forming strong families, and look at the results: continual poverty, and large numbers of children who grow up without parental oversite resulting in criminal behavior. The prisons aren't filled with people who grew up in stable two-parent households.

In short, what made Jesus' legacy truly great was that he finalized a philosophy of living (that started with the Jews) that allowed for humanity to peacefully thrive. He did the hard work. All that is required of us is to live the good life, to live by the tenets of Christianity even if we don't believe in God.

Would that be a bad thing?

Hypocrisy and Terri Schiavo

After nine days without food or water, Terri Schiavo's condition is rapidly worsening. Drudge links to a Reuters report that the end is near:

Schiavo, 41, passed her ninth day without nourishment and Gibbs [lawyer for the Shindler family-jgc] said she was declining rapidly. "They've begun to give her morphine drip for the pain. And at this point, we would say Terri has passed the point of no return," he told CBS' "Face the Nation."

What the... ???!!! I thought that the courts had determined to a medical certainty that Terri Schiavo was incapable of feeling pain! If Terri is in a Persistent Vegetative State as defined by Florida state law, then morphine should not be necessary.

Doesn't the fact that medical doctors have felt it necessary to prescribe morphine make it evident that Terri Schiavo can feel pain? And, therefore, isn't that very fact primae facie evidence that Terri is actually not in a Persistent Vegetative State? That her brain does indeed register pain? That she therefore does retain a minimal level of consciousness? Feeling pain is a higher-level activity, so the reports of her cerebral cortex being gone are clearly incorrect.

This is why Congress passed the Terri Schiavo Law: so that Judge Greer's decisions could be set aside and an objective look at Terri's condition could be taken. Judge Whittmoore, the federal judge who refused to look at the case, clearly misinterpreted the law in order to support his former colleagues on the Florida judiciary.

Why on Earth does a Florida state probate judge get to play God and decree that Terri Schiavo must be starved to death? Can someone tell me where in the Constitution does it give the government the authority not only to withdraw a feeding tube but to withhold all food and water by any and all means from someone who has not committed any crime or done anyone any harm on her husband-who-has-a-family-with-another-woman's say-so?

This whole thing sickens me. Michael Schiavo sickens me. His lawyer George Felos sickens me. Judge Greer's arrogance sickens me. And Judge Whittmoore sickens me with his moral cowardice. Maybe the only good thing that will come of this innocent woman's death is that we'll change our laws so this disgusting situation never happens again.

Michael Schiavo has shown the same disregard for people protesting his treatment of his wife when they showed up at his house:

A small group of protesters went to Michael Schiavo's home to lay symbolic dying
roses on his lawn. Someone inside turned on the lawn sprinklers, drenching the
demonstrators.

How ironic that a man who won't let anyone give his suffering wife a sip of water is all too willing to turn the tap on for anyone calling him what he is... a murderer.

Update: I'm not the only one asking why Terri needs pain relief when she can't feel pain and when the manner of her death is supposedly painless.

Why Should We Care About Terri Schiavo?

Update: On Tuesday, a federal judge refused to order the reinsertion of Terri's feeding tube.

Also, see this site for a fantastic summary of the legal wranglings that have resulted from the dispute between Michael Schiavo and the Schindlers (Terri's parents). (Hat tip: NakedVillany.) After reading the report of the guardian ad litem appointed by Jeb Bush, I have to say I see Michael Schiavo in a whole new (sympathetic) light, and I can better understand his motivations. But, dammit, there ought to be a better way than starving someone to death. And, visit this site for a synopsis of the Terri Schiavo case.

As most of you know, Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman who suffered severe brain damage back in the early 1990s due to interrupted blood flow to her brain, is currently in her fourth day of a state court-ordered deprival of food and water. The effect of the court order, which not only removed her feeding tube but also denies any attempt to provide Terri food and water by mouth is to sentence this woman to a painful death by dehydration and starvation in a week or two.

So, what's the big deal, some people say. The woman is brain-dead. The doctors have said so, and the court has determined so. Pull the plug and let her die so the whole ordeal will be over. That's fine... except that Terri isn't brain-dead, and there is no plug to pull. The only way available to the court to end her life is by denying her access to food and water... something that would kill anyone. If Terri were someone's grandmother living at home after a severe stroke, her guardian would be prosecuted for attempted murder if they were caught denying an invalid sustenance. Why would we treat a woman who has harmed no one, whose only 'crime' is that she has suffered a serious injury, with less regard for her individual rights and her personal comfort that we do monsters like Ted Bundy?

The reason Michael Schiavo gives for fighting to have his wife's life ended by denying her any sustenance is because she is so severely brain-damaged that she will never improve. Therefore any rehabilitation is a waste of money and it would be best for Terri if her life were ended, a position she allegedly agreed to in an off-the-cuff statement she made to her husband years before her injury. Are these valid reasons?

By any objective evaluation, Terri does not meet the criteria for being in a Persistant Vegetative State, according to Florida state law:

(12) "Persistent vegetative state" means a permanent and irreversible condition of unconsciousness in which there is:
(a) The absence of voluntary action or cognitive behavior of any kind.
(b) An inability to communicate or interact purposefully with the environment.

She is responsive to external stimuli, can track and follow objects, and does show signs of recognizing her family members. The true tragedy of Terri Schiavo's situation is that she is as much a victim of the legal system as she was of the disabling accident that caused her brain injury.

It is true that in the original court trial, the presiding judge, Judge George Greer, asserted that it was established as a "finding of fact" that Terri Schiavo was in a Persistent Vegetative State as defined by Florida law. But it is also true that in every single appeal where this "finding of fact" was challenged, the appeals courts have held that since the trial court established this "fact" it cannot be challenged on appeal. In other words, if Judge Greer made an error of fact during the original trial, that error cannot be overruled by an appeals court. Judge Greer has similarly been unwilling to revisit his decision despite being repeatedly urged by the Schindlers and after being presented with seventeen sworn affidavits by medical doctors who dispute his finding.

Michael Schiavo has argued that his wife once expressed to him that she would never want to live if she were in a vegetative state, and he has two members of his immediate family who back him up on this. Interestingly enough, however, he failed to provide this information during the medical malpractice suit he filed on his wife's behalf, instead promising to work with Terri for the rest of his life. He only remembered Terri's "wish to die" in 1998... five years after he filed the malpractice lawsuit and after he won over $1 million that he promised the civil jury would be used to provide for Terri's care and rehabilitation. That was the same jury that Michael Schiavo repeated his wedding vows for, and that he promised he would take care of his wife for the rest of his life. Evidently, winning the lawsuit changed Mr. Schiavo's opinion on his promises.

Michael Schiavo is Terri's husband in name only. Michael has moved on; he has been cohabitating with another woman, whom he characterizes as his 'fiance', since before the lawsuit was settled and they have two children together. As of this date, Mr. Schiavo has not spent a penny of that settlement on rehabilitation for Terri Schiavo as he promised under oath he would to the jury. To the contrary, he has denied her even ordinary medical and hygenic care, with one result being that after not having her teeth brushed for several years Terri had to have four teeth extracted due to extreme decay in 2004. He has denied her any routine medical treatment for infections, and has stated under oath that he hoped that infections Terri suffered would worsen into sepsis and result in her death. Michael Schiavo has had Terri categorized as an indigent and the cost of her care is borne by the state of Florida for the past several years. Do these examples sound like the efforts of a caring husband who would do anything to help his wife?

Where has the settlement money gone? Over $500,000 has been spent on legal fees to pay the attornies Michael has hired to accomplish his goal of cutting off all sustenance to his wife. More money has gone to 'administrative expenses'. Judge Greer has ordered the records of disbursements of Terri's money (the money received by her estate as a result of the malpractice suit filed by her husband) sealed so Terri's family and the public have no exact accounting.

Terri Schindler Schiavo comes from a family of practicing Catholics, and there is extensive evidence that she was a strong believer in the tenets of Catholicism, among them being the tenet of the sanctity of all human life. Her life is filled with anecdotes that fly in the face of her husband's assertion of her desire to die if somehow she was incapacitated. Isn't it suspect then, that only her estranged husband Michael Schiavo and his immediate family are witnesses to her so-called proclamation while Terri's family and close friends unanimously state that such a proclamation is opposed by everything she believed?

As evidenced by the assertions of dozens of otherwise-disinterested doctors, and as demonstrated by several videos on the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation website (videos that Michael Schiavo went to court to attempt to prevent their being seen by the general public), Terri is cognitive. One of Terri's lawyers, an officer of the court, has reported that on Friday, the day of the removal of the feeding tube, Terri tried to speak to object to having the tube removed. This lawyer has filed an affidavit, and her statement was made under penalty of perjury. If you believe that Michael Schiavo is right, that Terri is in a persistent vegetative state, then I ask you to look at the videos (here and here) on the foundation website, and judge for yourself whether Terri appears to be cognitive and responsive to external stimuli.

The real puzzler here is, why is Michael Schiavo still fighting his wife's family and attempting to effectively put Terri to death? My personal opinion is that the original reasons for his position have faded in importance, and the dispute between Michael Schiavo and the Shindler family has taken on a life of its own. Michael will not back down now for reasons that go beyond logic and into the realm of emotion. I'm not going to condemn Michael Schiavo for moving on, for finding someone else, and for building a new family and a new life with that person. However, I do condemn him for not doing the right thing: divorcing his current wife, Terri, sometime between the time he met his 'fiance', had two children with her, and the present. I would think that his 'fiance' ought to be just a little bit worried about whether Michael will take his marriage vows to her more seriously than he has with his current wife. I personally find Michael Schiavo to be repugnant.

I, for one, hope that the federal judge issues a temporary stay so Terri can have her feeding tube re-installed. I hope that both Michael and Terri Schiavo appear in front of a Congressional committee and that some truth is discovered. I hope that the federal judge authorizes new evaluations of Terri by independent medical experts so that the question of whether she is in a Persistent Vegetative State can be conclusively answered for the record. I hope that some light is shone on where Terri's money was spent, and if it was not spent towards Terri's rehabilitation then someone is held legally responsible for misfeasance or malfeasance. I hope that Michael Schiavo decides to truly move on with his life, divorces Terri, marries the mother of his children cum fiance, and gives Terri over to the people who truly love her -- the Schindlers -- together with whatever money is left from the judgement. I hope that the state of Florida would pass a law that would apply to any and every incapacitated person, so that they cannot be denied proper medical and hygenic care without an express written statement.

I am not a particularly religious person, but I have said a prayer for Terri and her family. I hope you will, too.

Note: More information on this issue can be found at Michelle Malkin, LaShawn Barber's website, Powerline, and Captain's Quarters (who covers the MSM's attempt to influence public opinion on Terri instead of reporting public opinion).

Hillary's Wrong: Why Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Are Mutually Exclusive

Andrew Sullivan has written approvingly in The New Republic (subscription required, read it on his website instead) and online concerning Hillary Clinton's recent speech about the politics and morality of abortion. However, in my opinion Sullivan completely misses the point; is abortion equivalent to infanticide or liposuction? The answer to this question is something I believe we can determine to a level of certainty that precludes revisiting the argument.

As the reader may know, Senator Clinton is a well-recognized defender of the right to an abortion. However, as part of an attempt to broaden her national appeal to cultural conservatives (in preparation for a 2008 presidential campaign, in my opinion), she has been repositioning herself to appeal to the traditional-values base of the Democratic Party that, more and more, votes Republican.

Here's some excerpts from her speech, thanks to the New York Times:

"There is an opportunity for people of good faith to find common ground in this debate - we should be able to agree that we want every child born in this country to be wanted, cherished and loved."

"We can all recognize that abortion in many ways represents a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women," Mrs. Clinton told the annual conference of the Family Planning Advocates of New York State. "The fact is that the best way to reduce the number of abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies in the first place."

Was she sincere in her statements? Far be it from me to judge, ahem... but the article goes on to give the views of those who support and oppose Hillary and her pro-abortion record:

Mrs. Clinton's remarks were generally well received, though the audience was
silent during most of her overtures to anti-abortion groups. Afterward, leaders
of those groups were skeptical, given Mrs. Clinton's outspoken support for
abortion rights over the years.

Let's look at the issue of abortion. Pro-abortion advocates believe abortion is merely a surgical procedure involving only one human being, the woman, and any restrictions on abortion infringe upon a woman's right to control what happens to her body. Anti-abortion advocates believe there are two humans involved, the mother and the child, and that killing the unborn child is murder.

What does Hillary believe? Andrew states:

Hers [Clinton's] is, in that respect, a broadly pro-life position. Not in an absolutist,
logically impeccable fashion. That would require abolishing all forms of legal
abortion immediately. But in a pragmatic, moral sense in a free society, where
the ability of a woman to control what happens to her own body will always and
should always be weighed in the balance against the right of an unborn child to
life itself.

How can this be? How can it ever be moral to allow one person to decide whether another lives for arbitrary reasons? Let's call a spade a spade. Hillary's position on abortion is a straddle, an attempt to have it both ways. Hillary wants to appeal to the pro-abortion crowd by defending the right to an abortion, while simultaneously appealing to the pro-life crowd by declaring abortion to be a moral tragedy. Her speech was a restatement of her husband's claim that abortion should be "safe, rare, and legal." Am I the only one to be jarred by the striking absurdity of this position?

If you believe, as Hillary says she does, that abortion is a woman's right, then unless you are the sort to condone murder you must also believe that the fetus is not human and therefore is not entitled to the protection of any human rights including the right to life. It follows, then, that abortion is not a moral tragedy but instead a surgical procedure that is no more immoral than having a wart removed. Why then, if abortion does not involve the murder of a child, should abortion be rare? Why, then, shouldn't we encourage women to have abortions as often as they see fit? And why is a wart removal by another name a moral tragedy?

Correspondingly, if you believe, as Hillary says she does, that abortion is a moral tragedy, then aren't you implicitly agreeing that abortion is murder? Why, then, if abortion is murder, should abortion be legal?

Andrew concludes with his own thoughts on the subject:

In some ways, this does not mean a change of principle. Democrats can still be
and almost certainly should be for the right to legal abortion. But instead of
beginning their conversation with that right, they might want to start it with
acknowledgment of a wrong. Abortion is always wrong. How can we keep it legal
while doing all we can to reduce its scope and damage? Call it a pro-life
pro-choice position. And argue for it with moral passion. If you want to win a
"values" debate, it helps to advance what Democrats value. And one of those
obvious values: the fewer abortions the better. Beyond the polarizing rhetoric,
a simple message: saving one precious life at a time.

Andrew, if "abortion is always wrong" then how can it be right to support it? Do you not see the glaring inconsistency, indeed the hypocrisy in this position? If reducing abortions is about "saving one precious life at a time" then the only possible logical conclusion is that eliminating abortion is the only moral answer.

This is why the Democrats are losing the argument on moral values (and losing elections); they fail to understand or agree that moral values are absolute. This nuanced, Kerry-esque (Clinton-esque?) tactic doesn't address the reason that pro-life folks will not vote Democratic. If one believes that abortion is murder, just as gassing Jews at Auschwitz was murder, then you won't appeal to them by agreeing to discourage abortion while keeping it legal just as reducing the number of Jews sent to Auschwitz while keeping the gas chambers and crematoria operating (at a reduced rate) wouldn't have made the Final Solution acceptable. Murder is wrong, whether it's one murder or one million murders.

Abortion is either murder, or it isn't. If it is then it is wrong and must be ended. If it isn't, then there is no moral tragedy. You can't have it both ways, and the Democrats just anger both sides by trying. My view: having been mindlessly pro-abortion when I was younger, I have since then expended considerable energy and though on the subject and am now decidedly pro-life.

The Case For Violence

I'm a big fan of violence. Not in the movies, mind you, but in real life and only when called for. I don't understand those who decry every use of violence with the tired old cliche of "Violence never solves anything." Do these people read history books? When it comes to deciding disagreements, violence solves everything.

Don't believe me? Ask the Carthagenians, the Moors, the Mongols, Native Americans, Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, etc. Violence may not solve things in the way the losers prefer (or the winners prefer, for that matter) but things definitely are solved. I think history argues that the problem with using violence to solve disagreements is not violence per se, but that too often half-measures are used. The losers aren't convinced they lost, problems crop back up, and the winners have to go and kill lots more people and break lots more things... which wouldn't have to be done if they'd only gone in right the first time.

I ran across this website while perusing information on PalmOS programming (don't ask me how I got there). The author seems to be a good fellow and he's a good writer, yet he gets it all wrong here... not just on why we went to war in Iraq but on the usefuless of war in general. He writes:

But all those excuses, boiled down, equal only this: Oil from the Middle East powers our free market economy, and Iraq sits on the world’s second-largest known supply. Saddam Hussein’s resistance of the western world threatened our financial security. His rumored weapons programs and ties to terrorist groups gave us all the evidence we needed to justify a pre-emptive strike.

Uhhh... that's fine except it all doesn't come down to this. We didn't invade Iraq because of oil. We invaded Iraq because after 9/11 (and before, really, but as a nation we were unwilling to face facts) we could not afford to let an amoral dictator with billions of petro-dollars, the resources of a nation-state, and the willingness to develop WMDs and pass them to terrorists have the freedom and ability to do just that.

If it was all about the oil, we'd have our troops securing the oilfields and pipelines while the rest of Iraq stewed in its juices. Or, we would have just reached an accomodation with Saddam: kill as many Iraqis, Kuwaitis, and Iranians as you want as long as the price of oil stays below $15 a barrel.

But violence can never defeat violence. And Christians who support the idea of a "just war" may not be serving the same God that Jesus called his Father.

Fortunately, violence can, and has, defeated violence. In fact, violence in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing. Violence is a tool, and like any other tool the morality of violence is determined by the purpose of its use. Was it immoral to use violence to defeat Adolf Hitler and the Nazis? Even the Bible states that there is a purpose for violence. In Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, the Bible notes that "To everything there is a season... a time to kill and a time to heal...." The Iraq War was a time to kill, just as our efforts to rebuild Iraq and establish a democracy despite attacks by terrorists are done during a time to heal.

The problem with condemning all violence is that you end up throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Yes, it is obviously right to condemn the violence of, say, a rapist, just as it is obviously wrong to condemn the violence of the police officer... or victim... who uses violence to defeat the rapist. To believe otherwise is to morally equate the status of rapist with that of victim, or policeman... the sinner is no worse than the one protecting from sin. In other words, equating the acts of a sinner with the acts of a non-sinner. And that obviously flies in the face of everything that Christians believe.

Bismark said that war is diplomacy by other means. It's obvious to any thinking person that when two nation-states disagree about something strongly enough to fight over it, the goal is not war, the goal is to force the enemy to submit to your will. In such a case, if war is warranted by the seriousness of the disagreement (it must be serious enough to represent an existential threat in order for war to be justified), then it well behooves the combatants to use force strongly and swiftly and sufficiently to quickly decide the issue. Further, it is both strategically unsound and immoral to use insufficient force when force is called for. Think of the Vietnam War here; 57,000 American dead, one million South Vietnamese dead, two million North Vietnamese dead, millions more wounded, the US failed to accomplish its strategic goal of keeping Southeast Asia out of totalitarian control resulting in several million more deaths in Vietnam and Cambodia after the war... and it all could have been prevented if LBJ had possessed the courage to invade North Vietnam and capture Hanoi. Or better yet, if Truman had had the courage to support Ho Chi Minh and tell the French Non! when they insisted on keeping Vietnam as a colony after WWII in an attempt to salvage French pride.

I'll end this with a question: what caused pacifism to become more important than confronting evil in mainstream European and American Christian belief? In my opinion, the short answer is the carnage of World War I. I'll elaborate on this in a future post.

Is Torture an Appropriate Interrogation Method?

This article is an answer to Andrew Sullivan's comment on his website today (16 Dec 04).

While I agree most Americans that torture is not something anyone can endorse as a routine interrogation method, I believe it has its times and places.

The reasons we don't torture enemy soldiers (recognized members of an enemy's military) are twofold: we don't want our POWs tortured (fat lot of good that does us, because American POWs have been tortured in every conflict this country has been in), and there is generally nothing to be gained from torture that can not be obtained by less ethically-repulsive means.

However, there are exceptions. In some instances torture can be (and has been) extremely effective. Take the case of the US light colonel who threatened to shoot an Iraqi terrorist a year or so ago in northern Iraq, and who then fired a shot from his pistol next to the terrorist's head. That terrorist quickly gave up valuable information that saved American lives and facilitated the capture of more terrorists. While firing a pistol next to someone's head is pretty benigh as far as torture goes (psychological rather than physical, if you discount ringing ears and a headache), it was effective. And, the colonel was forced to retire from the military shortly thereafter. I'm sure his regret wasn't for his actions, and my regret is that he was forced out rather than awarded a commendation.

On the other hand, much of the amateurish, brutal abuse of prisoners is pointless at best, and counterproductive in many cases. The North Vietnamese were psychopathic in their torture of American POWs, and they did get some information, but because they went overboard physically they were not as effective as they could have been. Many US POWs remarked upon their repatriation that if the North Vietnamese had been less interested in hurting them and more interested in getting information they would have gotten far more useful intelligence. Everyone has his breaking point, but brutal physical torture breaks its victims for the sole value of breaking them instead of learning something useful.

Would you rule out physical torture in all circumstances? Think of the "Dirty Harry" scene where Detective Callahan has the Scorpio Killer writhing on the 50 yard line, stomping on his shot-up leg until the location of the buried-alive teen girl is revealed. The girl is found (too late, she has already suffocated), but the killer is freed because torture is illegal, and Dirty Harry is in serious trouble. If my daughter were the one kidnapped, I'd be in line to do a little leg stomping.

Or how about another current-day scenario? Like, say, we intercept a message telling us that Al Qu'aida has planted a nuke somewhere in Manhattan, and that intercept leads us to capture an Al Qu'aida operative in Brooklyn who has just returned from planting that nuke, and arming it to detonate in 3 hours. We can't evacuate Manhattan in time and that bomb will kill millions when it goes off. If we can possibly extract the location of the bomb from the terrorist via torture, should we do it? Or do we sentence millions to death by refusing to torture?

It comes down to this: if one side breaks the rules to gain advantage, and one side refuses to break the rules and cedes the advantage, then the 'rule-following' side will lose. If our enemies are willing to fight a no-holds-barred conflict and we aren't, then we are (literally and figuratively) going to get our heads handed to us.

One of the tenets of game theory is "tit for tat." The only way to maintain parity in a contest is to accept no more limits on your strategy and tactics than your opponents do. When the Germans protested the use of shotguns by our troops in WWI (they outnumbered us in machineguns, so we went the low-tech route) and threatened to execute any US soldier captured with a shotgun, Woodrow Wilson let it be known that we would execute one German POW for every executed US POW. The Germans decided that perhaps, if mustard gas was legitimate, then shotguns were also. Similarly, chemical weapons weren't used in WWII by the Germans because the British and US informed Hitler that any tactical use of such weapons would be countered with a massive strategic chemical strike against German cities. Hitler took us at our word. And, in 1991, George Schultz took Tariq Aziz aside and informed him that the US would respond to any use of WMDs as if nukes were involved... and that we would burn Iraq off of the face of the earth. Saddam got the message.

Letting terrorist know that we will not use torture is telling them that there is no downside to keeping their mouths shut. I would submit that this is an advantage we cannot cede. And while I don't support brutal physical torture (because it is both morally wrong and as harmful to the torturers as to the recipients), I don't have a problem with humiliating terrorists by making them walk around naked and get barked at by German Shepards. Heck, that passes for fun in many US cities with the whips-and-leather crowd. Further, I think any form of psychological torture (lying to prisoners, telling them their family will be killed if they don't cooperate, or intimidation like threatening to kill them as the Army colonel did) is legitimate -- as opposed to actually carrying out the threats. If we fake killing one terrorist (complete with special effects like fake blood and brains on a wall) and the others talk, what's the problem? We should also be willing to use chemical means (sodium pentothal or other drugs) that enable us to extract information without actually physically torturing terrorists. And, in the extreme (as in the planted nuke scenario above), all bets are off.

I know these views aren't going to be popular with the "treat terrorists as criminals" law-enforcement-approach-favoring types, but then I think their approach is wrong, dangerous, ignorant, and naïve. The American public seems to agree: that's why they didn't trust John Kerry and the Democratic approach to the War on Terror.

Does that make us bad people? Nope. A society offers the mercy and compassion it can afford. Torturing someone because they haven't paid a parking ticket is way out of bounds. Torturing someone because they've planted a nuke in an American city (or because they've planted an IED by an Iraqi road) and we want to know where it is before it goes off) is appropriate, and the level of torture should reflect the threat to innocent human life.