[quote]orion wrote:
Torture simply has no place in a free society, it attacks the very core values of a free society. [/quote]
That’s not what Murray Rothbard said:
"In chapter twelve of Ethics, Rothbard turns his attention to suspects arrested by the police. He argues that police should be able to torture certain types of criminal suspects, including accused murderers, for information related to their alleged crime. "
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]Bismark wrote:
Is the torture of terrorism suspects an effective practice in the United States counter-terrorism efforts, or is it a myopic tool which ultimately hinders American national security?
If you believe that torture is a legitimate and necessary practice for the United States to collect invaluable intelligence to prevent future attacks on American soil, how do you reconcile this belief with the ethos of American democracy?[/quote]
I do think torture can be an effective tool for gaining intelligence. As for it being a legitimate and necessary practice I don’t think it can reconciled that way.
As for liking it, I don’t personally. I don’t want to torture anybody or cause anybody extreme pain. But then who are we talking about?
This is a contradiction that in someway, I think we have to live with.
The ethics are vastly complicated. You have to take into account what is at stake, gamble on who has the information you need, discern how much time you have, what are the consequences of inaction and the person you are dealing with and how evil they are or are not.
I mean do I have a problem with torturing people. Yes.
Do I have a problem with torturing a person like Callixte Mbarushimana, who committed unspeakable crimes against humanity? I cannot say it would bother me as much. In the end, I guess it just depends.[/quote]
No, it’s much simpler than that.
Does this person have information, or access to it, that I need, and if so, is torturing him the quickest and most effective way to get it?
According to most people who actually have this responsibility, torture apparently is not an effective means to this end.[/quote]
“According to most people who actually have this responsibility, torture apparently is not an effective means to this end.”
So says thinkprogress.org. If torture was not an effective method for getting information out of people who don’t want to give it to you, it wouldn’t be done as a means to get information. It does yield results and that is why it is done to get information.
Other methods may works as well, but it really depends on how fast you need the info and what’s at stake.
If you have time, there is no need to torture. If the clock is ticking, you do what you have to.
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
Torture simply has no place in a free society, it attacks the very core values of a free society. [/quote]
That’s not what Murray Rothbard said:
"In chapter twelve of Ethics, Rothbard turns his attention to suspects arrested by the police. He argues that police should be able to torture certain types of criminal suspects, including accused murderers, for information related to their alleged crime. "[/quote]
BTW, how is the situation with your legs? Are you improving?
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
That’s not what Murray Rothbard said:
"In chapter twelve of Ethics, Rothbard turns his attention to suspects arrested by the police. He argues that police should be able to torture certain types of criminal suspects, including accused murderers, for information related to their alleged crime. "[/quote]
I’m not sure who you’re quoting there, but this is what was actually written by Rothbard:
Take, for example, the police practice of beating and torturing suspects-or, at least, of tapping their wires. People who object to these practices are invariably accused by conservatives of “coddling criminals.” But the whole point is that we don’t know if these are criminals or not, and until convicted, they must be presumed not to be criminals and to enjoy all the rights of the innocent: in the words of the famous phrase, “they are innocent until proven guilty.” (The only exception would be a victim exerting self-defense on the spot against an aggressor, for he knows that the criminal is invading his home.) “Coddling criminals” then becomes, in actuality, making sure that police do not criminally invade the rights of self-ownership of presumptive innocents whom they suspect of crime. In that case, the “coddler,” and the restrainer of the police, proves to be far more of a genuine defender of property rights than is the conservative.
We may qualify this discussion in one important sense: police may use such coercive methods provided that the suspect turns out to be guilty, and provided that the police are treated as themselves criminal if the suspect is not proven guilty. For, in that case, the rule of no force against non-criminals would still apply. Suppose, for example, that police beat and torture a suspected murderer to find information (not to wring a confession, since obviously a coerced confession could never be considered valid). If the suspect turns out to be guilty, then the police should be exonerated, for then they have only ladled out to the murderer a parcel of what he deserves in return; his rights had already been forfeited by more than that extent. But if the suspect is not convicted, then that means that the police have beaten and tortured an innocent man, and that they in turn must be put into the dock for criminal assault. In short, in all cases, police must be treated in precisely the same way as anyone else; in a libertarian world, every man has equal liberty, equal rights under the libertarian law. There can be no special immunities, special licenses to commit crime. That means that police, in a libertarian society, must take their chances like anyone else; if they commit an act of invasion against someone, that someone had better turn out to deserve it, otherwise they are the criminals.
As a corollary, police can never be allowed to commit an invasion that is worse than, or that is more than proportionate to, the crime under investigation. Thus, the police can never be allowed to beat and torture someone charged with petty theft, since the beating is far more proportionate a violation of a man's rights than the theft, even if the man is indeed the thief.
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
Torture simply has no place in a free society, it attacks the very core values of a free society. [/quote]
That’s not what Murray Rothbard said:
"In chapter twelve of Ethics, Rothbard turns his attention to suspects arrested by the police. He argues that police should be able to torture certain types of criminal suspects, including accused murderers, for information related to their alleged crime. "[/quote]
BTW, how is the situation with your legs? Are you improving?[/quote]
My legs are fine now thanks pat. Although I’ve got a fair bit of back pain. I’m going to see how it goes over the next few months and might look into surgical options if it doesn’t get better.
[quote]NickViar wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
That’s not what Murray Rothbard said:
"In chapter twelve of Ethics, Rothbard turns his attention to suspects arrested by the police. He argues that police should be able to torture certain types of criminal suspects, including accused murderers, for information related to their alleged crime. "[/quote]
I’m not sure who you’re quoting there, but this is what was actually written by Rothbard:
Take, for example, the police practice of beating and torturing suspects-or, at least, of tapping their wires. People who object to these practices are invariably accused by conservatives of “coddling criminals.” But the whole point is that we don’t know if these are criminals or not, and until convicted, they must be presumed not to be criminals and to enjoy all the rights of the innocent: in the words of the famous phrase, “they are innocent until proven guilty.” (The only exception would be a victim exerting self-defense on the spot against an aggressor, for he knows that the criminal is invading his home.) “Coddling criminals” then becomes, in actuality, making sure that police do not criminally invade the rights of self-ownership of presumptive innocents whom they suspect of crime. In that case, the “coddler,” and the restrainer of the police, proves to be far more of a genuine defender of property rights than is the conservative.
We may qualify this discussion in one important sense: police may use such coercive methods provided that the suspect turns out to be guilty, and provided that the police are treated as themselves criminal if the suspect is not proven guilty. For, in that case, the rule of no force against non-criminals would still apply. Suppose, for example, that police beat and torture a suspected murderer to find information (not to wring a confession, since obviously a coerced confession could never be considered valid). If the suspect turns out to be guilty, then the police should be exonerated, for then they have only ladled out to the murderer a parcel of what he deserves in return; his rights had already been forfeited by more than that extent. But if the suspect is not convicted, then that means that the police have beaten and tortured an innocent man, and that they in turn must be put into the dock for criminal assault. In short, in all cases, police must be treated in precisely the same way as anyone else; in a libertarian world, every man has equal liberty, equal rights under the libertarian law. There can be no special immunities, special licenses to commit crime. That means that police, in a libertarian society, must take their chances like anyone else; if they commit an act of invasion against someone, that someone had better turn out to deserve it, otherwise they are the criminals.
As a corollary, police can never be allowed to commit an invasion that is worse than, or that is more than proportionate to, the crime under investigation. Thus, the police can never be allowed to beat and torture someone charged with petty theft, since the beating is far more proportionate a violation of a man's rights than the theft, even if the man is indeed the thief.
[/quote]
So the police should be able to torture people so long as they’re guilty. Got it.
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]NickViar wrote:
I’m not sure who you’re quoting there, but this is what was actually written by Rothbard:
Take, for example, the police practice of beating and torturing suspects-or, at least, of tapping their wires. People who object to these practices are invariably accused by conservatives of “coddling criminals.” But the whole point is that we don’t know if these are criminals or not, and until convicted, they must be presumed not to be criminals and to enjoy all the rights of the innocent: in the words of the famous phrase, “they are innocent until proven guilty.” (The only exception would be a victim exerting self-defense on the spot against an aggressor, for he knows that the criminal is invading his home.) “Coddling criminals” then becomes, in actuality, making sure that police do not criminally invade the rights of self-ownership of presumptive innocents whom they suspect of crime. In that case, the “coddler,” and the restrainer of the police, proves to be far more of a genuine defender of property rights than is the conservative.
We may qualify this discussion in one important sense: police may use such coercive methods provided that the suspect turns out to be guilty, and provided that the police are treated as themselves criminal if the suspect is not proven guilty. For, in that case, the rule of no force against non-criminals would still apply. Suppose, for example, that police beat and torture a suspected murderer to find information (not to wring a confession, since obviously a coerced confession could never be considered valid). If the suspect turns out to be guilty, then the police should be exonerated, for then they have only ladled out to the murderer a parcel of what he deserves in return; his rights had already been forfeited by more than that extent. But if the suspect is not convicted, then that means that the police have beaten and tortured an innocent man, and that they in turn must be put into the dock for criminal assault. In short, in all cases, police must be treated in precisely the same way as anyone else; in a libertarian world, every man has equal liberty, equal rights under the libertarian law. There can be no special immunities, special licenses to commit crime. That means that police, in a libertarian society, must take their chances like anyone else; if they commit an act of invasion against someone, that someone had better turn out to deserve it, otherwise they are the criminals.
As a corollary, police can never be allowed to commit an invasion that is worse than, or that is more than proportionate to, the crime under investigation. Thus, the police can never be allowed to beat and torture someone charged with petty theft, since the beating is far more proportionate a violation of a man's rights than the theft, even if the man is indeed the thief.
[/quote]
So the police should be able to torture people so long as they’re guilty. Got it.[/quote]
Do you disagree? I’m fairly certain(can’t say that I’m 100% certain) that I have seen you argue in favor of capital punishment, so why should torturing a man guilty of a crime worse than the torture be a problem?
What was said is that torture is fine, as long as the tortured party ends up being found guilty. He also said torture should only be used to gain information and can not be used to gain a confession, since, “obviously a coerced confession could never be considered valid.” A third point was that if a tortured suspect is found not guilty, the torturer should be held accountable for his act. Fourth, torture can never be used on someone suspected of a lesser crime than that torture.
The point is, Rothbard seems to be arguing against immunity and special privilege more so than he is arguing in favor of torture.
[quote]NickViar wrote:
Do you disagree?
[/quote]
Yes, I disagree.
I support capital punishment for premeditated murder after a fair trial and right of appeal etc. I don’t support police having a “right” to torture a suspect.
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
I don’t support police having a “right” to torture a suspect.
[/quote]
I don’t see how you can read that into what was written. Rothbard seems, to me, to have only been arguing that police(military, etc.) have no special privileges or immunity. He was only saying that one has a right to defend himself, he can choose to allow another to defend him, that defense can be carried out against the offender after the victim’s death, and if a tortured suspect is found not guilty, then anyone involved in his torture should be held accountable. He was definitely not arguing that police have special rights.
Personally, I don’t care for either torture or capital punishment. I’m not sure when Rothbard wrote that, but it may have been while he was trying to gain acceptance for libertarians in the Republican party, hence the appeals to things Republicans tend to accept.
[quote]NickViar wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
I don’t support police having a “right” to torture a suspect.
[/quote]
I don’t see how you can read that into what was written. Rothbard seems, to me, to have only been arguing that police(military, etc.) have no special privileges or immunity. He was only saying that one has a right to defend himself, he can choose to allow another to defend him, that defense can be carried out against the offender after the victim’s death, and if a tortured suspect is found not guilty, then anyone involved in his torture should be held accountable. He was definitely not arguing that police have special rights.
Personally, I don’t care for either torture or capital punishment. I’m not sure when Rothbard wrote that, but it may have been while he was trying to gain acceptance for libertarians in the Republican party, hence the appeals to things Republicans tend to accept. [/quote]
Lol. Murray was a crackpot like his ideological love child Ron Paul.
Rothbard…urged the (state) police to crackdown on “street criminals”, writing that “cops must be unleashed” and “and allowed to administer instant punishment…”
He also advocated that the police “clear the streets of bums and vagrants”, and quipped “Who cares?” in response to the question of where these people would go after being removed from public property…
Rothbard endorsed Barnes’s revisionism on World War II, favorably citing his view that “the murder of Germans and Japanese was the overriding aim of World War II”.
Rothbard’s endorsing of World War II revisionism and his association with Barnes and other Holocaust deniers have drawn criticism from within the political right. Kevin D. Williamson wrote an opinion piece published by National Review which condemned Rothbard for “making common cause with the ‘revisionist’ historians of the Third Reich”, a term he used to describe American Holocaust deniers associated with Rothbard, such as James J. Martin of the Institute for Historical Review. The piece also characterized “Rothbard and his faction” as being “culpably indulgent” of Holocaust denial, the view which “specifically denies that the Holocaust actually happened or holds that it was in some way exaggerated”.
In the Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard explores issues regarding children’s rights in terms of self-ownership and contract.[106] These include support for a woman’s right to abortion, condemnation of parents showing aggression towards children, and opposition to the state forcing parents to care for children. He also holds children have the right to run away from parents and seek new guardians as soon as they are able to choose to do so. He asserted that parents have the right to put a child out for adoption or sell the rights to the child in a voluntary contract in what Rothbard suggests will be a “flourishing free market in children”
In Rothbard’s view of parenthood, “the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights.” Thus, Rothbard stated that parents should have the legal right to let any infant die by starvation.
Wikipedia
[quote]
So the police should be able to torture people so long as they’re guilty. Got it. [/quote]
Actually, if you follow the author’s charming argument, everyone should be able to torture everyone else so long as the tortured party is guilty.
After all, if “every man has equal liberty, equal rights under the libertarian law” everyone should be able to do what the police can do.
[quote]kamui wrote:
He didn’t really mean it. He was just trying to appeal to Republicans. Because, as everyone knows, the surest way to endear oneself to Republicans is to advocate legalising torture.
[quote]Chushin wrote:
This may be a laughable question, but why don’t we have the pharmacological technology to force people to tell the truth with little or no pain?[/quote]
They just haven’t found a reliable and effective truth serum yet.
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
Torture simply has no place in a free society, it attacks the very core values of a free society. [/quote]
That’s not what Murray Rothbard said:
"In chapter twelve of Ethics, Rothbard turns his attention to suspects arrested by the police. He argues that police should be able to torture certain types of criminal suspects, including accused murderers, for information related to their alleged crime. "[/quote]
BTW, how is the situation with your legs? Are you improving?[/quote]
My legs are fine now thanks pat. Although I’ve got a fair bit of back pain. I’m going to see how it goes over the next few months and might look into surgical options if it doesn’t get better.
[/quote]
Ug, man I am sorry. I just had my 2nd back surgery and currently recovering from it. To say it was painful is the understatement of the year. It hurt like hell, no amount of drugs made it better. So make your decision wisely. I don’t know what kind of surgery you are looking at, but if we’re talking fusion get multiple opinions and get a really good surgeon. If the nurses refer to the surgeon as ‘The Butcher’, find someone else. Also, find out what kind of hardware they intend to use specifically and research the hardware. It makes a difference, who makes it, what the shapes are and what kind of presence you will have in your body, what’s in it besides titanium, etc. Learn from my experience. If you need detailed information I’d be happy to discuss it with you offline.
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
Torture simply has no place in a free society, it attacks the very core values of a free society. [/quote]
That’s not what Murray Rothbard said:
"In chapter twelve of Ethics, Rothbard turns his attention to suspects arrested by the police. He argues that police should be able to torture certain types of criminal suspects, including accused murderers, for information related to their alleged crime. "[/quote]
You know, in some ways he was a genius, in others, not so much.
[quote]kamui wrote:
Actually, if you follow the author’s charming argument, everyone should be able to torture everyone else so long as the tortured party is guilty, AND THE TORTURE IS NO MORE SEVERE THAN THE CRIME OF WHICH THE TORTURED PARTY IS ACCUSED.
After all, if “every man has equal liberty, equal rights under the libertarian law” everyone should be able to do what the police can do.
[/quote]
Like I’ve said, I don’t agree with torture or non-defensive killing(the death penalty/capital punishment); however, if one agrees with those things, the only problem he can have with Rothbard here is that Rothbard opposes an entity having a monopoly on the power to do those things.
Rothbard, an economist, definitely frequently stepped out of his field of expertise.
I think he was trying to say that if A can defend himself from B, and can hire C to defend him from B, then either A or C can also use the force that would’ve been justifiable in defense to punish B for his actions after the fact. A and C would also be subject to punishment if an innocent party was punished for B’s deed.
The only way this really differs from our system is that an innocent man can currently be put to death and those responsible will not be held accountable. How often would the death penalty be used if jurors would be put to death if evidence later surfaced proving the convicted man was innocent? Torture?
The Ethics of Liberty | Mises Institute -a link to the chapter being discussed
Under this argument, the Inquisition had every right to torture the witches.
The crime was extremely severe.
The confessions proved the accused were actually guilty.
Ergo the torture was perfectly justified.
[quote]
The only way this really differs from our system is that an innocent man can currently be put to death and those responsible will not be held accountable. How often would the death penalty be used if jurors would be put to death if evidence later surfaced proving the convicted man was innocent? Torture?[/quote]
Under this argument, a crime without intent deserve the same punishment than the same crime with intent. Which is perfectly stupid.
That’s what happen when one try to reduce the whole judicial power into a few simplistic pseudo-equations.
[quote]kamui wrote:
Under this argument, the Inquisition had every right to torture the witches.
The crime was extremely severe.
The confessions proved the accused were actually guilty.
Ergo the torture was perfectly justified.[/quote]
-I believe he pointed out that torture could not be used to obtain a confession. Being a witch is not a true crime; it is only a crime against the state.
If the torturer believes the tortured to be guilty, then he has the same intent as the jurors giving a man the death penalty.
If torture can’t be used to obtain a confession, what (the fuck) is the point of torture ?
Witchcraft was typically a crime commited against the fecundity of your neighbor’s wife or the fertility of his crops.
In both cases and in libertarian terms : a crime against private property.
Granted, it was an imaginary one.
But without the emergence of modern state and the development of its legal system, we would probably still ignore that.
[quote]
If the torturer believes the tortured to be guilty, then he has the same intent as the jurors giving a man the death penalty.[/quote]
That’s not my point.
The jurors (or the torturers) may be wrong. They are not intentionally criminals. They don’t deserve the same punishment as a murderer (or a sadistic psycho).
While i’m here, my take on this topic :
Torture should never be legalized.
But it could and should be depenalized under extreme circumstances and in wartime.
(If and only if “extreme circumstances” and “wartime” are not distorted to mean “everytime” and “everywhere”…)