There needs to be an award for this. Eugene Volokh is the most reasonable advocate for torture. Michelle Malkin is the most reaonable advocate for internment camps. Who is the most reasonable advocate for racial genocide?
I hope Eugene Volokh has just screwed any chance of a federal judgeship.
While I appreciate the thoughtfulness of both Volokh's reply and Burke's response, I'm not satisfied with either for a number of reasons. One is that neither directly addresses on the effect of the public nature of such cruel punishments on that public.
Whether or not you think we can properly measure out the appropriate level of pain for various acts, or think that such cruelty is, of itself, wrong, etc., there is something troubling and false about letting the public as a whole claim the same full measure of payment in vengence as the actual victims (inc. family) of the crime. It bothers me to see so many people take the very personal pain of the 9/11 families and claim it as their own. Those deaths must have been awful for those families in all sorts of ways I can't imagine and hope never to know. I'm willing to accept a vastly wider scope of reactions from those people than from people who didn't have any connection to the 9/11 dead. Pretending that their pain is our pain is simply false; I suspect we do it precisely because by making such a claim we are allowed a much wider field of horrible Things We Can Acceptably Do. I'm willing to believe it's OK for the families to get compensated in awful coin; they've paid an unimaginable cost. But the rest of us didn't, and pretending it's a fair trade makes cheap the price we're paying the families.
Burke is, as often, right. The description of the execution reminded me of nothing so much as the execution of the would be regicide Damien. Hanging him from a crane is not so much for the sake of slowly throttling him. It's because it's spectacular. He can be seen from a great distance flailing away. De Maistre's paian to the hangman comes to mind.
Volokh says "People, it seems to me, have a natural desire to inflict pain on moral monsters. I doubt that the legal system's actions will much exacerbate this desire"
I reckon that people have a natural desire to inflict pain on anyone that's handy. Ane the legal system doesn't get in the way enough.
Tim, I think you have a really good point (and I didn't read all of Volokh or Burke, because frankly the whole topic is, you know what? Gross. And I'm not even going to apologize for the fact that that sounds banal. I completely mean it). If the "justification" for torture is the extremity of the pain of the families of the victims (there's a shitty-ass sentence; I will apologize for that), then it's illogical to turn around and claim that those who are not themselves personally affected by whatever the crime was, share the pain. You can't have it both ways.
This is tangential but is related to the "letting off steam" argument. I read somewhere recently (and I can't find it right now, but I'll keep looking) about a study that looked at the parenting tactic of letting a child act out aggression by, e.g. telling her that it's okay to hit a pillow, but not her little brother. Or to scream really loud to "get it all out of his system".
Turns out that this tactic tended to lead to an increase in aggressive behavior and a lack of emotional control. Children whose parents didn't tolerate and showed disapproval of aggressive displays, even "harmless" ones against pillows and the ether, were better able to control their aggressive impulses and emotions.
It also mentioned studies done with adult therapies based on redirecting aggression toward punching bags or primal screams or things like that, and basically the results were similar, i.e. they led to less control and more aggression.
Not direct evidence to ogged's query, but suggestive nonetheless.
SomeCallMeTim's point is a very good one, and it further complicates some of the things I was trying to observe about history and progress on these issues. While many premodern societies appear to have practiced forms of cruelty that almost all of us blanch at and reject without necessarily understanding those practices as cruelty in the ways that we do, Volokh's ability to argue that he shares in the common human feeling of the victims--indeed, to talk of victims and their suffering--is completely impossible to imagine in that same premodern context. That's ultimately what makes his views here completely unsustainable and really pretty nasty: he's using the assertion of a common feeling of humanity with the victims to deny any possibility of a common humanity with the victimizer. That's like saying, "All good people are human, all bad people are something other than human; humans can do whatever they deem necessary to non-humans".
All good people are human, all bad people are something other than human; humans can do whatever they deem necessary to non-humans"
Well...that's a rather provocative way to phrase it, which doesn't quite properly acknowledge that Volokh knows there's no chance that this view will become policy, nor that he's proposing a punishment to be administered according to law, after due process has run its course. Which is to say, "bad people," slides much more easily into justifications for genocide than does "people lawfully convicted of heinous crimes."
But yeah, SCMT's point is a really good one, and I need to think about it more.
I haven't read completely 'round the internets on this discussion because, as everyone has noticed, just keeping current with Unfogged has become quite a time commitment. And there's that pesky real life to deal with too.
But, has anyone brought up the fact that back a while, when faced with questions as to his conspicuous silence on matters Abu Ghraib, if memory serves correctly Volokh's response was basically, first "I don't want to and you can't make me, and if you really want me to you should consider paying me", and then, and more to the point, "torture is a really uncomfortable and disgusting topic and I don't like to talk about it. "?
He doesn't seem uncomfortable talking about torture now.
Also, in order to really get into the spirit of my non-Millsness: you know how a particular type of much-picked-on little nerd, often very intelligent but usually not especially socially adept, convinces himself he's not a wimp by owning a gun and fantasizing about how "boy if any bad guys ever tried to come into my mom's basement and mess with me, I'd sure teach them a thing or two! Blam! BLAM!!"
Well, it occurs to me that perhaps another manifestation of this type of coping mechanism might be fancying yourself so tough that you can calmly contemplate torture, unlike all those namby-pamby bleeding hearts out there who whither at the first whiff of grape.
Well, it occurs to me that perhaps another manifestation of this type of coping mechanism might be fancying yourself so tough that you can calmly contemplate torture, unlike all those namby-pamby bleeding hearts out there who whither at the first whiff of grape.
This pops in my head constantly, believe me, but it's sort of poor form to dismiss someone's argument by claiming it's a symptom of psychological urges that may or may not be there.
I leave that kind of thing to The Rude Pundit, who does it better and funnier than I could.
The basic question is, as the Poor Man puts it, whether some behaviors are so reprehensible that the perpetrator forfeits the right to be treated in a manner deemed human. If we strip away all our argumentation, I think deep down we all have some boundary that, beyond which, the answer is yes. However, our boundaries lie at different places (and I know some Americans would deem such activities as homosexuality and drug use on the far side of their own boundary), and therefore, the only morally defensible decision is to say that everybody gets treated with basic human dignity and decency, no matter what.
While the extremity of the victims' familes' pain deserves consideration when considering how to punish a violent criminal, so too does the pain of the punished's family. In the Iran case, I suspect that was pretty awful as well, with the public torture of a loved one compounded by intense familial shame. They are just as much harmed innocents as the children's families.
I think we probably feel that at some point the perp forfeits the right to be treated as human. But I don't think I think that. Or: It's not about our obligations to the perp after a certain point, it's about our obligations to ourselves not to treat anyone this way.
I might post on this on my own blog, but here's the crux of Volokh's main argument: (1) Retribution is a good thing, and if someone commits an awful crime and does not suffer correspondingly that is a bad thing. (2) So we should, insofar as it's within our power and in accord with procedural justice, make people suffer correspondingly.
Well, let's accept (1) ad arguendo. Does (2) follow? No. Because even if it's a bad thing that evil not be matched by appropriate retribution, it's not necessarily a good thing for us to supply the retribution.
There's all the corrosive effects it has on society, the people who inflict the torture, etc., that make me think it's not a good thing for us to supply the retribution. But what really chills me about Volokh's argument is this: He's setting himself, and society, up as God. Even if we're going to worry about evil not being punished by appropriate evil in return, it's God's job to take care of it; not ours. ("Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.") Not just that only God could have enough certainty, and only God could really measure out the sins to see how much punishment is deserved. But it's not humanity's role to ensure that there's some sort of cosmic balance between harm given and harm taken. Cosmic balancing is a bad sport to engage in.
And when you start playing God, that's when you open yourself up to truly awful behavior. The people who think they're doing God's work, those are the people who won't have any compunction about bombing the fuck out of civilians in a righteous purpose. [Doing the work of History also helps--the worst atheistic horrors of the 20th century, I think, were all descended from Hegel one way or another. But I digress.] If you've decided that some people are so far beyond the pale that you can do whatever you feel like to them, and it's Godly--in fact it won't be enough--then it'll be awful hard to keep that under control. Once you've decided some humans aren't human, you can justify a lot of very bad things very quickly.
This pops in my head constantly, believe me, but it's sort of poor form to dismiss someone's argument by claiming it's a symptom of psychological urges that may or may not be there.
I agree it's poor form. That tactic is a specialty of Krauthammer and it drives me nuts. But I felt like saying it (more in sadness than in anger, of course) anyway, which is why I utilized the patented Volokh "Juan Non-Volokh" approach (which reminds me, on another site discussing this issue, I forget which one now, praktike said "I miss Juan Non-Volokh." That's hilarious.)
And that also reminds me to go check out Rudepundit's take.
There needs to be an award for this. Eugene Volokh is the most reasonable advocate for torture. Michelle Malkin is the most reaonable advocate for internment camps. Who is the most reasonable advocate for racial genocide?
I hope Eugene Volokh has just screwed any chance of a federal judgeship.
Posted by joe o | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 3:29 PM
While I appreciate the thoughtfulness of both Volokh's reply and Burke's response, I'm not satisfied with either for a number of reasons. One is that neither directly addresses on the effect of the public nature of such cruel punishments on that public.
Whether or not you think we can properly measure out the appropriate level of pain for various acts, or think that such cruelty is, of itself, wrong, etc., there is something troubling and false about letting the public as a whole claim the same full measure of payment in vengence as the actual victims (inc. family) of the crime. It bothers me to see so many people take the very personal pain of the 9/11 families and claim it as their own. Those deaths must have been awful for those families in all sorts of ways I can't imagine and hope never to know. I'm willing to accept a vastly wider scope of reactions from those people than from people who didn't have any connection to the 9/11 dead. Pretending that their pain is our pain is simply false; I suspect we do it precisely because by making such a claim we are allowed a much wider field of horrible Things We Can Acceptably Do. I'm willing to believe it's OK for the families to get compensated in awful coin; they've paid an unimaginable cost. But the rest of us didn't, and pretending it's a fair trade makes cheap the price we're paying the families.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 4:44 PM
Burke is, as often, right. The description of the execution reminded me of nothing so much as the execution of the would be regicide Damien. Hanging him from a crane is not so much for the sake of slowly throttling him. It's because it's spectacular. He can be seen from a great distance flailing away. De Maistre's paian to the hangman comes to mind.
Posted by jim | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 4:48 PM
Volokh says "People, it seems to me, have a natural desire to inflict pain on moral monsters. I doubt that the legal system's actions will much exacerbate this desire"
I reckon that people have a natural desire to inflict pain on anyone that's handy. Ane the legal system doesn't get in the way enough.
Posted by dave heasman | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 5:33 PM
Tim, I think you have a really good point (and I didn't read all of Volokh or Burke, because frankly the whole topic is, you know what? Gross. And I'm not even going to apologize for the fact that that sounds banal. I completely mean it). If the "justification" for torture is the extremity of the pain of the families of the victims (there's a shitty-ass sentence; I will apologize for that), then it's illogical to turn around and claim that those who are not themselves personally affected by whatever the crime was, share the pain. You can't have it both ways.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 5:46 PM
This is tangential but is related to the "letting off steam" argument. I read somewhere recently (and I can't find it right now, but I'll keep looking) about a study that looked at the parenting tactic of letting a child act out aggression by, e.g. telling her that it's okay to hit a pillow, but not her little brother. Or to scream really loud to "get it all out of his system".
Turns out that this tactic tended to lead to an increase in aggressive behavior and a lack of emotional control. Children whose parents didn't tolerate and showed disapproval of aggressive displays, even "harmless" ones against pillows and the ether, were better able to control their aggressive impulses and emotions.
It also mentioned studies done with adult therapies based on redirecting aggression toward punching bags or primal screams or things like that, and basically the results were similar, i.e. they led to less control and more aggression.
Not direct evidence to ogged's query, but suggestive nonetheless.
Posted by Mitch Mills | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 6:11 PM
"If the "justification" of torture is that it in some way recompenses the victim's family for the extreme pain they have endured..."
(I'm not much of a natural grammar or spelling nazi, but I love restructuring sentences)
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 6:18 PM
SomeCallMeTim's point is a very good one, and it further complicates some of the things I was trying to observe about history and progress on these issues. While many premodern societies appear to have practiced forms of cruelty that almost all of us blanch at and reject without necessarily understanding those practices as cruelty in the ways that we do, Volokh's ability to argue that he shares in the common human feeling of the victims--indeed, to talk of victims and their suffering--is completely impossible to imagine in that same premodern context. That's ultimately what makes his views here completely unsustainable and really pretty nasty: he's using the assertion of a common feeling of humanity with the victims to deny any possibility of a common humanity with the victimizer. That's like saying, "All good people are human, all bad people are something other than human; humans can do whatever they deem necessary to non-humans".
Posted by Timothy Burke | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 6:30 PM
Mitch,
The "letting off steam" metaphor points to a whole series of Freudian-based metaphors for the mind as http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0070366055/student_view0/chapter6/chapter_outline.html ">plumbing under pressure. These metaphors are wrong, or incomplete, but they still are popular.
Posted by joe o | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 6:41 PM
All good people are human, all bad people are something other than human; humans can do whatever they deem necessary to non-humans"
Well...that's a rather provocative way to phrase it, which doesn't quite properly acknowledge that Volokh knows there's no chance that this view will become policy, nor that he's proposing a punishment to be administered according to law, after due process has run its course. Which is to say, "bad people," slides much more easily into justifications for genocide than does "people lawfully convicted of heinous crimes."
But yeah, SCMT's point is a really good one, and I need to think about it more.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 10:53 PM
Volokh knows there's no chance that this view will become policy
I'm not sure that matters here; forget I said it.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-18-05 10:54 PM
I haven't read completely 'round the internets on this discussion because, as everyone has noticed, just keeping current with Unfogged has become quite a time commitment. And there's that pesky real life to deal with too.
But, has anyone brought up the fact that back a while, when faced with questions as to his conspicuous silence on matters Abu Ghraib, if memory serves correctly Volokh's response was basically, first "I don't want to and you can't make me, and if you really want me to you should consider paying me", and then, and more to the point, "torture is a really uncomfortable and disgusting topic and I don't like to talk about it. "?
He doesn't seem uncomfortable talking about torture now.
Also, in order to really get into the spirit of my non-Millsness: you know how a particular type of much-picked-on little nerd, often very intelligent but usually not especially socially adept, convinces himself he's not a wimp by owning a gun and fantasizing about how "boy if any bad guys ever tried to come into my mom's basement and mess with me, I'd sure teach them a thing or two! Blam! BLAM!!"
Well, it occurs to me that perhaps another manifestation of this type of coping mechanism might be fancying yourself so tough that you can calmly contemplate torture, unlike all those namby-pamby bleeding hearts out there who whither at the first whiff of grape.
Posted by Mitchos Non-Mills | Link to this comment | 03-19-05 5:37 AM
Um, "wither".
Or, I suppose "who run away (whither?) at . . ."
Fear of wolfson runs deep.
Posted by Mitch Mills | Link to this comment | 03-19-05 5:43 AM
Well, it occurs to me that perhaps another manifestation of this type of coping mechanism might be fancying yourself so tough that you can calmly contemplate torture, unlike all those namby-pamby bleeding hearts out there who whither at the first whiff of grape.
This pops in my head constantly, believe me, but it's sort of poor form to dismiss someone's argument by claiming it's a symptom of psychological urges that may or may not be there.
I leave that kind of thing to The Rude Pundit, who does it better and funnier than I could.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-19-05 7:09 AM
The basic question is, as the Poor Man puts it, whether some behaviors are so reprehensible that the perpetrator forfeits the right to be treated in a manner deemed human. If we strip away all our argumentation, I think deep down we all have some boundary that, beyond which, the answer is yes. However, our boundaries lie at different places (and I know some Americans would deem such activities as homosexuality and drug use on the far side of their own boundary), and therefore, the only morally defensible decision is to say that everybody gets treated with basic human dignity and decency, no matter what.
While the extremity of the victims' familes' pain deserves consideration when considering how to punish a violent criminal, so too does the pain of the punished's family. In the Iran case, I suspect that was pretty awful as well, with the public torture of a loved one compounded by intense familial shame. They are just as much harmed innocents as the children's families.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-19-05 8:06 AM
I think we probably feel that at some point the perp forfeits the right to be treated as human. But I don't think I think that. Or: It's not about our obligations to the perp after a certain point, it's about our obligations to ourselves not to treat anyone this way.
I might post on this on my own blog, but here's the crux of Volokh's main argument: (1) Retribution is a good thing, and if someone commits an awful crime and does not suffer correspondingly that is a bad thing. (2) So we should, insofar as it's within our power and in accord with procedural justice, make people suffer correspondingly.
Well, let's accept (1) ad arguendo. Does (2) follow? No. Because even if it's a bad thing that evil not be matched by appropriate retribution, it's not necessarily a good thing for us to supply the retribution.
There's all the corrosive effects it has on society, the people who inflict the torture, etc., that make me think it's not a good thing for us to supply the retribution. But what really chills me about Volokh's argument is this: He's setting himself, and society, up as God. Even if we're going to worry about evil not being punished by appropriate evil in return, it's God's job to take care of it; not ours. ("Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.") Not just that only God could have enough certainty, and only God could really measure out the sins to see how much punishment is deserved. But it's not humanity's role to ensure that there's some sort of cosmic balance between harm given and harm taken. Cosmic balancing is a bad sport to engage in.
And when you start playing God, that's when you open yourself up to truly awful behavior. The people who think they're doing God's work, those are the people who won't have any compunction about bombing the fuck out of civilians in a righteous purpose. [Doing the work of History also helps--the worst atheistic horrors of the 20th century, I think, were all descended from Hegel one way or another. But I digress.] If you've decided that some people are so far beyond the pale that you can do whatever you feel like to them, and it's Godly--in fact it won't be enough--then it'll be awful hard to keep that under control. Once you've decided some humans aren't human, you can justify a lot of very bad things very quickly.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-19-05 8:36 AM
This pops in my head constantly, believe me, but it's sort of poor form to dismiss someone's argument by claiming it's a symptom of psychological urges that may or may not be there.
I agree it's poor form. That tactic is a specialty of Krauthammer and it drives me nuts. But I felt like saying it (more in sadness than in anger, of course) anyway, which is why I utilized the patented Volokh "Juan Non-Volokh" approach (which reminds me, on another site discussing this issue, I forget which one now, praktike said "I miss Juan Non-Volokh." That's hilarious.)
And that also reminds me to go check out Rudepundit's take.
Posted by Mitch Mills | Link to this comment | 03-19-05 11:09 AM