Do you really believe that if we tortured terrorists, we would be as bad as the terrorists?

Let’s take a look at the justice factor.  Some of us might think that it is just as evil to torture a terrorist as it is to saw off the head of an innocent reporter.  Let’s just pretend for a minute that this is possible and let’s try to compare the levels of right and wrong of these two actions.  First we might be drawn to a conclusion that both are wrong so what difference does it make which is more wrong and since we don't care about the difference we assume that there is no difference. Please do not assume that since we don't care if there is a difference therefore there must not be one.  There is a vast difference between the two stated actions.  Clearly the world leaders would agree that terrorism has no justifiable right to exist in the world.

From the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (Counter –Terrorism)
"We strongly condemn terrorism in all its forms and manifestations,
committed by whomever, wherever and for whatever purposes,
as it constitutes one of the most serious threats
to international peace and security."

Since Terrorism is unjustifiable all acts of terror are unjust.  The sawing off at the head while still alive is a clear message about how much hatred they have for justice.  As well as how completely inhuman these guys are.  Can we say the same thing about torture? I ’m sure most of us believe torture has no justifiable right to exist in the world.  I believe it is possible to make this judgment when you look at the act of torturing for torture sake or torturing for the sake of satisfying some sadistic desires.  However, can you make a case to prove your belief that there is no such thing as justifiable torture?  Let’s examine a couple hypothetical scenarios.

1) Say you are John McClane and you have been fighting some bad guy on the edge of a building and you knock the bad guy’s gun out of his hand and it falls off the edge of the building getting caught on some, you can hardly believe, convenient protrusion.  As the guy goes to grab for it you have the opportunity to push him off the building.  Of course he is able to grab hold of the protrusion to save him self from falling and now he grabs the gun with one hand while holding himself from falling to his death with a mighty one handed grip on the protrusion with the other.  Since you have nowhere to run and hide from the aim of the bad guy you have only two options left to you if you are going to keep from getting shot.  a) Peal the guys fingers away from the protrusion hoping to loose his grip before he gets the gun pointed at you.  Rationally you reason that will likely take too much time.  So you take option b) you step on his hand hoping to break enough of his fingers so the pain will torture him and cause him to loose his grip so he will fall to his death.

2) Now let’s say you come Running drawn by the sound of screams, you find a bad guy who is trying to have his way with a young woman.  He is a big guy but not that big from your perspective and you don’t see any weapon so you confront him.  However, when coming up from behind him, you give a shout hoping to scare him away he just looks over his shoulder at you and tells you to mind your own business.  You are fairly far out into the park and you expect it might be a while for the cops to come.  Now you have 2 options, a) walk away minding your own business as commanded by the evil doer.  But you rationally reason that this would not be even remotely humane.  So you choose option b) you attempt to subdue this scum bag.  Having found only a small stick nearby and no visible rocks you attempt to kick him unconscious with a foot to the head.  However the PCP or whatever he is on seems to render that tactic useless and he continues his attack on the woman.  Her screams for your help create even more urgency.  Now you figure the only thing to do is to tackle him getting your arm around his neck and choke off this guys air supply.  You run and jump side long into the guy hoping to knock him off or roll him over.  But you have less effect then you thought you would have and the woman remains pinned under him.  Now reaching your arm around his neck you hold tight and start to squeeze.  You figure you will get him to comply with your commands to desist when he starts to believe he will be killed or maybe he will just pass out.  He is rather intent on his victim at first but then he starts felling weekend by the lack of oxygen and he starts to gasp.  He wants to put up a fight but now he lacks the energy to do so.  You’re not sure if he will be dissuaded from his victim, if you were to let him go, so you hang on and squeeze a little tighter. Now he starts to struggle fearing for his life.  You know he must be close to passing out so you hold on tight giving him your final does of torture as he flails till he finally passes out.

I contend that not only are these examples of righteous torture, these are examples of necessary torture.  It would be wrong for you not to torture these bad guys because they would likely continue to do harm to others.  So since torture in itself is not unjustifiable we must look back at our original premise something like: if we torture terrorists we are just as bad as they are.  If torture in itself is not unjustified and you still believe the original premise then you must believe that it is our motives that are unjust.  Since our stated motives are to fight against terrorism and part of that fighting involves the questioning of the captured terrorists.  Then maybe it is the fight against terrorism that is the problem as you see it.  Let’s reword the original premise for you so we can understand what you’re saying.  Torturing the captured terrorists for the purpose of capturing more terrorists is an act of terrorism.  Well then why didn’t you just say so in the first place?  Let me state it for you so we can all follow along.  You would have to say. “There is nothing wrong with terrorism.” Or, “one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter.”  No? Did I over state your premise?

Justifiable torture should be applied daily to the known terrorists in captivity.  Every piece of information gathered from these guys is another piece of a puzzle that will help save innocent lives not only in the USA but all over the world.  I contend that if we do not torture these guys we are the inhumane ones just walking away letting them, or their buddies, kill other humans as they see fit, and we would be wrong since we did nothing to stop it when we could. 

Timothy, 6:10
    For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

This scripture has been misinterpreted by many people for different reasons but most often it is used to fuel disdain towards Capitalism. The problem is that this scripture only references the evils related to causing one to stray from a true relationship with God. As backed up by the old Eye of a needle Proverb reported to be from the mouth of Christ himself.

Mark 10:25
    "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom of God."

Granted the eye of a needle proverb was given by Jesus to his disciples who were Jews and were taught from birth that they were expecting an earthly king a savior that would rule the whole of the earth and bring peace and prosperity (Great wealth to the feet of the Jews themselves). So you could imagine their shock when they were told that rich people would be left out of this kingdom. They were probably trying to figure out where the prosperity would come from when all the rich people had to give their wealth away.  Like so many of Jesus teachings the same point carries many lessons.  Another meaning of this Proverb is to show that if you desire money then you certainly can’t desire God with your whole heart and money becomes your god.

So now that we have looked at a couple obvious problems that come from the desire for wealth, can we truly say that the Bible says all evil is generated by wealth? Clearly wealth should be seen as a terrible stumbling block to Christians and an area of the lives of wealthy Christians to spend a large portion of prayer and meditation.

I’m afraid the topic of "The Evils of Wealth" has been distracting us from an area of an even greater source of evil.

Control

Control: the actual source of all evil stems from the desire to be God; The desire for a human or a group of humans to be in control of other humans. This control can be coerced by means of financial compensation but only as far as the employee is willing to sacrifice their walk with God to gain wealth. Most often this evil control can be found in subjugation due to status given or condoned by a governing body. Take the Jews for example their evil desires have convinced them that Jesus is not the Messiah because he did not bring the kind of kingdom that gave them some form of control or authority that they were expecting. After all if you were a people chosen by God don’t you think logic would suggest you were to receive some leadership position from God? The thing that should be most obvious to Jews is that, that sort of leadership position is the very control over others that takes away their free will.  I can't imagine any reason for God to relenquish his desire for the will of the people to any group of humans even the Jews.  

I am not an anarchist but I find all governments to be too controlling. I’m also not a Libertarian. Libertarians are just Republicans without a spine. I believe we should work together to build a society that encourages us all to strive for the best possible walk with God. Eg: Drugs, most libertarians think it does not affect them if other people use drugs. However, it does affect society.  We should not sit back and do nothing to try to stop people from behaviors that are as harmful as drug use, especially when the drugs have been allowed to take over control of their lives like a drug addiction.  Another example is Homosexuality: Homosexuality is proven by everything we know spiritually mentally and physically to be wrong.  We should not attempt to control people’s behaviors or control whom they sleep with.  It is wrong to try to stop a person from a homosexual act.  However since Homosexuality is wrong we should not condone Homosexuality by allowing homosexual marriage or making up any other special rights based on sexual behavior, because that would be contrary to encouraging the best possible walk with God.  The topic of rights vs special privilege has been covered in great detail by other bloggers on TownHall the focus of my column is Control so bear with me.

The type of control that hides from too many people is the control of how much of your own money you give to the poor.  When we tax the rich for the benefit of the poor we are really saying we don’t trust you to give to the poor on your own so we will take control over your paycheck and ripe out as much as we want.  Yes we’ll excuse our evil doing by giving a meager portion of that money to social programs as long as they are the ones we want.  Do you really thing God has crowns waiting for those who were taxed the heaviest when that taxation was out of their control?  Do you think God has a crown waiting for you because you voted to raise taxes on the rich to pay for a healthcare program or any other social program?

You Democrats are trying to coerse control over the people of this country.  You are not doing Gods will.  God wants the rich to give to the poor of their own free will.  Why do you suppose he gave us free will in the first place?  Then to top it off you take that money stolen from the rich and use it to gain control of the voting rights of the poor, you say Vote for us or you’ll lose the meager pittance we allow to trickle through to you.  The amount of money wasted in the administration of these programs is staggering.  All the while you wonder why you can’t seem to get a grip on the Christian vote.  The word "Duh" should come to mind.  The problem is: you think the ends justify the means. There is no justification for taking the control of the rich peoples money away from them, or attempting to control one group of people with the intention of using their money to control another group, political power and great control, yes of course but that control is evil not just.

It is my contention that, by trying to control people, we take away their will thereby making that will unavailable to God.  It is truly Evil to try to control the will of other humans when they must be allowed to freely give their will to the one true God.

 
Since character doesn't matter, what does?

Listening to the latest conservative talk rants.  I hear more and more people confused about what is important to liberals.  I admit it does seem to boggle the mind.  Why is it no big deal for Michael Moore while sober to blast Jews and such an unforgivable attrocity when Mel Gibson did it while drunk?  Hillary Clinton can be disrespectful to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld showing the whole world what kind of harpy she really is and no one even suggests that she was being (over the top) rude.  When the President of Iran, Icantadomyjob, has more respect for the elected President of the United States than almost all of the liberal leadership of the Democrat party, we have to ask ourselves.  How far does a liberal have to go before other liberals distribute even a tiny morsel of reproach?

I think the only thing a Democrat can do to get critisism from other liberals is to side with this country in the war inflicted upon us by terrorism.  What has happened to the Democrats?

I say we need to think back to, ("Character doesn't matter"), Bill.  Why would so many women support such a womanizing pig.  I remember thinking at the time when women would proclaim how his bad boy attitude was sexy, why would you even let this guy drive your daughter to school let alone drive this country including our defenses into the ground?

I realized then and am re-affirmed today that it is not what you say or do as long as you're politically aligned with the liberal ideals of the Democrat party.  Therefore I really don't believe it is illogical for us to conclude that since character doesn't matter at all to liberals then only politics does and in a liberals mind, it doesn't matter where you stand, it only matters what you stand for. 

In closing a cautionary word to all.  First conservatives don't allow yourselves to be confused by "seeming" contradictions made by the Socialist liberals, and liberals, is your political aggenda that important?  Do you really believe that if you accomplish your objective of Socialism it will have been worth the moral price it costs?  Remember from my previous post the inverse of a moral civil society is an uncivilized immoral chaos.

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Civility

In this high tech world of computers, genomes and flexible fuel vehicles we have grown accustomed to getting, what we want, when we want it! (W3W3I!), a luxury that, unfortunately a growing number of us have forgotten, comes at a price. W3W3I! used to be a privilege that was afforded to only the very wealthy. Not because money is power but the power it takes to get W3W3I! costs. This cost is measured in the time and energy it takes to generate W3W3I!. Whether we are willing to compensate our fellow man for that cost or not leads us to an invaluable reflection of our own civility.

We make the claim that we are attempting to become a more enlightened society but without civility there is no society, enlightened or not, there is simply chaos.

Always in a hurry we rarely stop to think about the needs of others (TNOO). A civilized person cares about the needs of people he comes in contact with every day. So often we are afraid to take the time to be concerned about TNOO because we feel that no one is willing to take the time to be concerned about us, so why should we. Our own selfishness perpetuates the cycle into a self fulfilling prophecy. A measurement of our own level of civility is to check our attitude towards others.

Civility is remembering TNOO. Wondering about whether someone is spending time caring about our needs leads to chaos.

With each new generation we lose track of more and more of our history. The obvious cause of this problem is education. Please don’t misunderstand me! My belief that it is impossible for any government entity to do anything effectively is not what I’m discussing. I’m referring to consistently teaching the truth. When we allow political agenda to lead our decisions on course curriculum we loose a tremendous amount of ability to educate. Education occurs when the truth is taught. Just because we think something is true does not make it truth and should not be taught as if it were truth. How did we, as a so called civilized society, come to the point that we’re not allowed to disclaim the truth about evolution being a theory.

A civil society would first be concerned about teaching the truth, including our nation’s history, and then after the truth has been covered we might allow for classes on discussing theories. Teaching theory as if it were truth is not education it is chaos.

I heard once not long ago that the death penalty is not meant as a punishment but is intended to be protection for those who are not yet victims of the convicted killer. In a civilized society we make a distinction between guilt and innocence for the purpose of measuring whose needs are more important. Respect for the life of the innocent is the poster child of civility. We gain only the self delusion of enlightenment when we are too concerned for the needs of the guilty. An agreement like the Geneva Convention (TGC) is a two edged sword on one edge combatants are protected if taken prisoner. On the other edge is the requirement for being afforded these rights. This edge is meant as a deterrent to combatants who might go to war un-uniformed and not representing a specified country. The supreme court of these U.S. has taken a grinder and removed all edge from this aspect of TGC.

A civil society would be more concerned for the safety and well being of other societies that might come up against such combatants than it is for the rights of those combatants. Giving GC rights to a combatant who has not met the requirements of TGC is not justice. It simply removes any protection that TGC might have held up for the innocent victims of the future and leads all humanity down the road of chaos.

Most animals will protect their young from harm but as humans we have a responsibility to protect not just our young but one another from harm. There is nothing more civilized than to give of yourself for the needs and protection of your fellow man.

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 What exists outside of time?  Without motion, matter or random occurance the only logical possibility left is that some ethereal entity that is not bounded within a realm of time created time by sheer thought.  All we are left with is to ponder:  “for what purpose”.

 

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