you admit it happems w/o rlues, yet seemto believe that allowing it w/rules would reduceit’s occurance ? I see no rational basis for that belief.
Yes, since one must presume a professional would have a professional’s attitude towards it, rather than the kind of excesses to which an enthusiastic amateur might be prone.
Yes. My dad was in LE throughout my yoot. If I hadn’t any problem living with a person trusted to use pain compliance and lethal force, why would it bother me to live with someone entrusted to use just pain?
Yes, but it would depend heavily on whether the salary, benefit package, and pension were superior to that of my present job.
Scumpup I think your analogy is hopelessly flawed, LEO’s are paid to serve, protect. they must at times use force, even at times kill.But that isa very long way away from intentional inflection of agonzing pain.MHO
I think the difference is that most people feel very differently about actions of comission vs. actions of omission. As far as I know, at no point did any architect of the US prison system, or any particular US prison, say “hey, let’s do X or Y or Z because that will result in lots more prisoners raping each other!!!”. While there might be an argument that, by continuing to condone that system, we are guilty of all of its results, that argument certainly doesn’t FEEL very strong or real.
This is where the “politics” I mentioned would come in. In fast-breaking news stories, like Amber Alert cases, you’d have organizations lobbying judges to allow the torture of a suspect. You’d probably have talking heads on television (a big fuck you to Nancy Grace) egging them on. If the situation persisted for a few days, you’d have lots of pressure on the judges, perhaps politicians getting involved and threatening to impeach the judge if he didn’t “give the police a chance to find this poor little girl” or what have you. So the judge is left trying to balance the evidence with threats against his career. Judges with a history of rejecting torture warrants would probably be smeared as “obstructionist,” and it’d become another litmus test issue for federal nominees, making it politically poisonous to nominate someone opposed to torture warrants. Invariably, even if my guesses here are wrong, I think there would be public pressure to use torture more often on the grounds that you’d be denying police and anti-terrorism agents the chance to do their jobs.
Self-defense isn’t the same as torture. Ta da. There’s also no element of doubt in the situation you present - which in real life, unlike the torture scenarios posted here, would always exist - and I don’t see the legal and Constitutional implications of ending an armed holdup.
As a child, I shot a bird with a pellet gun for sport. The bird died and I cried myself to sleep that night. I learned something about myself. I learned that I am not the kind of person that takes life, any life, with a cavalier attitude. Having to shoot a dog that is very ill and needs to be put out of its misery would be difficult for me. I know I could do it, but the better part of me would carry the moment with me for a little while. I’m the type of person that could get into a fight having not thrown the first punch and feel guilt for the black eye I gave.
I know 99% of all mothers out there would tell the torturer waiting to deliver unspeakable horrors unto the individual who has her child hidden and hungry to do whatever had to be done to get the information needed to locate her child. I know most fathers would as well. Any of you here that would sit by and allow your own child to starve to death as you effectively tie the hands of those willing to extract the information from this criminal is at least as broken and confused as the person who committed the crime, IMHO.
The only difference between that and what we have here is that it isn’t your child. This child was not raised in your household, learning to walk, to talk, to mimic you at the dinner table or at the sink with your electric shaver. This child did not make you a tragedy of a cake with misspelled words penned in thick icing and deliver it to you in bed on the morning of your birthday. This child did not spend an entire Saturday coloring pictures for you to take to work and hang in your office so that you could remember him while you were away from home.
Me, the world weary man that the little boy who cried himself to sleep became, I could do it. I have some ideas. I want to say that I would perform atrocities that would make Tarantino’s stomach turn and my heart rate would never get above 80 beats per second the whole time, but I’d probably vomit four or five times during the process and break down in tears somewhere in the middle and have to take a break or two. But I’d do it. It would probably ruin me someplace deep inside when it was over and I’d never be the same again, but I could do it.
I have some ideas.
Inside of all of us is a dormant version of the animal that we evolved from, the animal that we still are. We recall this animal in traffic, at the movie theater, just about everywhere. Sometimes the animal comes voluntarily, sometimes involuntarily. Sometimes the animal just comes close enough to the front that we flip someone off in traffic, other times the animal comes closer and we visualize bashing the face in of the asshole that broke in and stole our stereo and DVDs. This animal is there for a reason. After all, in the caveman days when the neighbor’s raptor got off its leash and shit in your yard, then ate your caveson, you certainly needed a big stick and an attitude. You couldn’t call on Johnnie Rockran to get your results.
What makes us better than those that commit these vile acts is not that they deliver pain and suffering for fun and we don’t. It’s that we know the difference between right and wrong and we base our actions within the confines of what that represents. I would never torture someone for sport, but I would damned sure call upno my inner animal in order to possibly save a child. I feel strongly that it is a worse thing to allow a child to suffer and die while I rest on my sanctimonious and smug assertion that I am better than that person because I will not fall to his level if there is a way, any way to stop it.
If that makes me as vile as he, then so be it. If that makes me as deserving as he for getting down to his level, fine. I admit that I am no better than him. And if it means that bringing me to his level means that I have failed as a human and he and his kind is victorious as a result, I accept that, but it’s nice to know that one of them will not be making it to the celebration party.
uh, that’s 80 beats per minute. The reality would probably be 80 beats per second.
:smack: