This is what a generation of conservative rule and conservative values has wrought:
[N]ow, during a time of two overseas wars, Americans’ opinions on torture seem to have fractured, and largely on generational lines. A new study by the American Red Cross ... found that a surprising majority—almost 60 percent—of American teenagers thought things like water-boarding or sleep deprivation are sometimes acceptable. More than half also approved of killing captured enemies in cases where the enemy had killed Americans. When asked about the reverse, 41 percent thought it was permissible for American troops to be tortured overseas. In all cases, young people showed themselves to be significantly more in favor of torture than older adults.
This is a generation that's been desensitized to torture through graphic (and sympathetic) media presentation of it by fictional "heroes" like Jack Bauer, and by a government that practiced it without being sanctioned or held accountable. They've been exposed to the conflicts, but not to the rules that are supposed to restrict it, and not to the values that argue against it. Only one in five is familiar with the Geneva Conventions that forbid mistreatment of prisoners of war.
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But most of all, like many other current issues in which conservatives have promoted their values with too little push-back from influential voices in the media or politics, it speaks to a lack of empathy, and a population increasingly unable to see the value in the social compact. To do so requires being able to put oneself in another's shoes.
If you can no longer do that, you can accept seeing your own neighbors fall into desperation and poverty, go without healthcare, do without proper education or real opportunities in life. Like so much of the culture wars, from abortion to LGBT rights to preserving the social safety net, it comes down to whether you have, or want to have, or are capable of having, empathy for others.
[T]he generational tip-toe back from humanitarian legal norms may say more about a nation increasingly removed from the costs of war. “For young people,” says Harvard’s [Lawrence] Tribe, “to put themselves in place of a soldier is a level of empathy that most people simply don’t have anymore.”
Well done, conservative culture warriors. A generation to whom empathy is an alien concept. This is the future you've won.