You know, it's been a while since I saw Jon Stewart interview with Cliff May, but there's something about it that has been bothering me for a long time. And that thing is this: though I ultimately agree with Jon Stewart on torture, I feel like he made a terrible argument against it and thereby, in my eyes at least, lost the debate. While Cliff May was being very specific in his arguments, Jon Stewart kept coming back at him with this notion of "America, the shining beacon of morality."
I quote: "I understand bloodlust, I understand revenge, I understand all those feelings. I also understand that this country is better than me, and always will be..."
Which is all nice and shiny from a rhetorical perspective, I suppose, and it did certainly earn Stewart a decent amount of applause whenever he mentioned it. But I've been mulling this over for the past two months or so, and have come to the conclusion that this, and really any moral argument for anything in a public forum, is utterly useless.
Keep in mind, of course, that I say this as someone who deeply opposes torture. I also say this as someone who gets a little nauseous when I hear reports of casualties in a battle field; I am, for the most part, a vegetarian; I am also a teacher and take tremendous pains to ensure to be the best possible role model for my students I can be. In my own life, I strive to be as moral as I can--but this doesn't change what I believe to be true about a moral argument in a public forum.
As I see it, the flaw in any moral argument is the fact that morals differ wildly depending on the cultural context of the moralist. While this may seem like a totally obvious point, I still think it bears repeating. Whenever we make any kind of argument about right or wrong, an immediate question should always be: exactly whose morals are you referring to?
To bring things to their most extreme, let's take a look at the First Commandment, "Thou Shalt Not Murder." Typically translated in the King James Bible as "Thou Shalt Not Kill" (considerably more poetic, I think), this statement begs a definition of "murder." How do we determine whether an act of killing is murder or not?
In the olden times, "murder" was all about who you were killing and under what circumstances. If you were killing an infidel in a time of war--fine. If you kill a fellow tribesman and citizen--not fine. While I do think that most of us have some sort of sense that it's not okay to kill people willy-nilly, where we draw the line of acceptable killing is radically different from person to person or from group to group. Quakers and committed pacifists (such as yours truly) might make an argument that no killing is okay, even if you are a soldier in an army. Neo-conservatives might make the argument that killing is okay, but only if the person you're killing is "evil" and plans to harm a lot more other people.
This is why it irks me whenever I hear someone use a moral argument against torture. Cliff May actually stated this position perfectly well: "You draw your line here, I draw my line elsewhere." If you make a moral argument, then it really becomes about whose morals you're using.
To me, the only strong argument against torture emerges from the following question: What do I want my government to be able to do to people it has in its custody? If I'm going to feel happy and free living under a government with enormous coercive resources at its disposal--both economic and military--I need to know that the people in charge of that government have some limits on their authority. We all know from Hannah Arendt and others what a horror it is to live under a government that can imprison you on the slightest suspicion and has no limits to the things it can do to you while you are imprisoned. So why would we ever, under any circumstances, want to allow our own government to do those things to anybody, even "enemy combatants?"
The truth is, that like all things, torture should be regarded based on its impact on the real world. Fundamentally, it is a step in the direction of fascism--of us all living in a society in which we cannot trust the rule of law. As such, it is something that anyone who wishes to live in a state of freedom should fight against.