Wednesday, December 10, 2014

On the US Torture Report


As Americans are hearing now from their government of the "enhanced interrogations" taking place in CIA held facilities. The US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its "Torture Report", and with it a flood of charges of inhumane treatments, murder, brutality and absolute detestable behavior from government employees and military service members. Of course there is no shortage of those who try and justify the treatment of detainees. Those that clamor for the reduction of the government, it's footprint into the lives and actions of people and claims of fiscal conservatism, have been using their loudest bullhorns to defend the actions of government officials and the military industrial complex, calling these actions "right for the public interest".

I am not sorry to say that any man who wishes these actions to continue or to propagate some idea of immunity for those involved are of the lowest respectable people of this earth to me. The idea that in order for "the good of the public" this evil must exist and be administered to other humans is completely asinine and reprehensible.

"No good can come from this evil,
 no justice can come from torture 
and no light from this darkness."

Torture is Torture no matter the reason or the results.
Torture is not acceptable when those you vote for say it is and those that follow them allow themselves to commit it. Shame not only for the politicians who contrive this action but all those in uniform or suit in the name of the government that facilitated or propagated torture of any other person. No act that is immoral for an individual to do unto others suddenly or miraculously becomes moral with the sanction of a State or central authority.

As Murray Rothbard states "In contrast to all other thinkers, left, right, or in-between, the libertarian refuses to give the State the moral sanction to commit actions that almost everyone agrees would be immoral, illegal, and criminal if committed by any person or group in society...if we look at the State naked, as it were, we see that it is universally allowed, and even encouraged, to commit all the acts which even non-libertarians concede are reprehensible crimes." (Ch. 2, "Property and Exchange")

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