Should toturing be allowed?

Ya, and look what happened to them.

Torture wasn't their downfall. Taxation was.

As a side note, you should probably get your position straight with regard to your support of tearing living human beings limb from limb, who are not suspected of anyting at all before you begin to voice too loud an opinion about torturing those who may well have information that could save hundreds, possibly thousands of lives.
 
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Torture wasn't their downfall. Taxation was.

As a side note, you should probably get your position straight with regard to your support of tearing living human beings limb from limb, who are not suspected of anyting at all before you begin to voice too loud an opinion about torturing those who may well have information that could save hundreds, possibly thousands of lives.

Different issue.
 
Torture wasn't their downfall. Taxation was.

As a side note, you should probably get your position straight with regard to your support of tearing living human beings limb from limb, who are not suspected of anyting at all before you begin to voice too loud an opinion about torturing those who may well have information that could save hundreds, possibly thousands of lives.

No, there downfall was actually a much more complicated affair then just taxation.
 
No, there downfall was actually a much more complicated affair then just taxation.

It boiled down to taxation. The excess taxation led to less land being titled and a general weakening of the lower classes who were, in reality, the ones who were the foundation of the empire. As they bent under rome's taxes, they became less concerned with the empire's ultimate success and supported local men who offered them more hope than rome.
 
It boiled down to taxation. The excess taxation led to less land being titled and a general weakening of the lower classes who were, in reality, the ones who were the foundation of the empire. As they bent under rome's taxes, they became less concerned with the empire's ultimate success and supported local men who offered them more hope than rome.

Not according to what I've found. It would appear that there is not much consensus on any one overiding reason for Rome's fall though taxes - in the form of a highly corrupt and ineffective government did play a part.

From: http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/1320Hist&Civ/chapters/08ROMFAL.htm



Population. First of all, there's strong evidence of a steady decline in population across the entire Empire from the second century on. For example, peaking at around a million or so in the Classical Age, the population of the city of Rome gradually dropped over the course of the next few centuries, reaching a low point of a mere six thousand by the sixth century. The reasons for this drastic if incremental reduction in human resources are not clear, though many Romans' luxurious lifestyle and their concomitant disinterest in producing and raising children must have played some part. So did plagues, no doubt, as well as constant warfare on the frontiers and perhaps even lead-poisoning, evidenced in human skeletal remains recovered from Pompeii which show that the Romans there were indeed exposed to high concentrations of the lethal element. Nevertheless, it's unclear how widespread this problem was.

Economics. Second, economic data point to other factors which doubtlessly contributed to the situation. Well-documented among the travails of third-century Rome—over two centuries prior to its notorious "fall"—is a particularly long period of financial crisis which inaugurated the slow collapse of the economy in the West. This economic depression was due in large part to the failure of the Romans' system of conquest and enslavement. When the flow of cheap slaves began to dry up, estates throughout the Empire could no longer sustain the abuse of human resources on which they had formerly depended. So without any real industry or much agricultural machinery to work the land—Roman land-owners did know about water wheels and windmills but archaeologists have found evidence of very few being used in this period—the aristocrats of late Rome apparently watched the collapse of their economy and disdained practical matters such as retooling their farms to ensure their viability.

Politics. Finally, political affairs contributed to the difficulties plaguing late Rome. The general incompetence of emperors and the failure of traditional politics in the West led to a wretchedly corrupt political structure, characterized by an oppressive burden of taxation levied to support the growing army of soldier-barbari who were bribed—"employed" is too sophisticated a term for this practice—to fend off Rome's foes. This, in turn, led to inflation and debasing of Roman coinage, which bred a lethal mix of apathy and angst that inspired many Romans to flee politics and later the poleis ("city-states") of the Empire, the urban foundation on which rested most of ancient life. With that, actual power in Rome fell into the hands of local lords, and the concept of shared Roman civilization itself came under siege.

But states have survived disasters far worse than any or all of these. In sum, none of the theories or factors mentioned above explains why there's no simple answer to the simple question, "Why did Rome fall?" So, perhaps, it's not the answers that are flawed but the question itself. To a scholar, that demands an all-out Aristotelian response, a syllogism or analysis of the question in terms of its three principal elements: why, Rome, fell.​
 
Of course one can know with adequate certainty. To suggest otherwise is just silly. And the inquisition has nothing at all to do with today. By the way, no where near as many were killed during the inquisition as most people believe. Not even close.
In my opinion, that is ego talking, no one in the Inquisition had adequate certainty and they all felt exactly like you do. I object to the overweening sense of rightness that would allow you to tear another human being into bloody shreds--that takes the same god-complex mindset as capital punishment. The number of people tortured to death is irrelevant (I did not address the number) because NO ONE should have been tortured then and NO ONE should be tortured now.

Your position on Jesus is nothing more than an emotional appeal that has as much validity as if I appealed to the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy.
So you are NOT a Christian? I try to write to people within the context of their philosophical paradigm and I recall you writing in such a way as to suggest a Christian perspective--gay bashing. But if such is not the case and Jesus is just another Easter Bunny then fine and dandy.

And to suggest that because a thing happens to you is a valid reason to prevent it happening to anyone else is as silly as your first assumption.
Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. If something awful happens to me, why would I NOT want to prevent that from happening to others? Trying to reduce the unnecessary suffering in the world is "silly"?

And while I would support raising the bar with regard to evidence for capital punishment, I still believe the death penalty is appropriate punishment for some crimes as I believe torture is warranted under certain conditions.
Well, you are supremely confident and apparently mean as Hell, a sterotypical frightened human being struggling with a world that none of us understand. Compassion takes great courage, few people are capable of it, and therein lies the Alpha and Omega of Jesus' message. His compassion was what made His message magical and also what made it almost impossible for anyone to emulate.
 
Torture wasn't their downfall. Taxation was.

As a side note, you should probably get your position straight with regard to your support of tearing living human beings limb from limb, who are not suspected of anyting at all before you begin to voice too loud an opinion about torturing those who may well have information that could save hundreds, possibly thousands of lives.

Please note all the qualifiers in this bolded section, Mr. Rider is admitting that there is no way to KNOW, the best we can do is guess and torture to find out. Never should a people stoop that low a level. George Washington was right when he said that it isn't about what those people do, it's about what WE do, what we do sets up apart from those people. He absolutely forbade the torture of any British soldiers.

But Mr. Rider and his ilk are more frightened than George Washington was, so they are more willing to compromise their humanity in a futile attempt to save their lives.
 
Please note all the qualifiers in this bolded section, Mr. Rider is admitting that there is no way to KNOW, the best we can do is guess and torture to find out. Never should a people stoop that low a level. George Washington was right when he said that it isn't about what those people do, it's about what WE do, what we do sets up apart from those people. He absolutely forbade the torture of any British soldiers.

But Mr. Rider and his ilk are more frightened than George Washington was, so they are more willing to compromise their humanity in a futile attempt to save their lives.

So if you know that a nuclear or biological device has been planted and set to detonate, and you have a couple of suspects who test positive for handling the material that your source has informed you that the device is made of and your suspects say that they know nothing, you are prepared to just stand by and wait for it to go off and when it does, let them go because they said that they didn't know anything about it?

By the way. Read your history. George Washington personally ordered at least 3 traitors hung who were caught before they were able to carry out their missions. Good old George was clearly more worried about protecting his people than the civil rights of traitors and murderers.
 
So if you know that a nuclear or biological device has been planted and set to detonate, and you have a couple of suspects who test positive for handling the material that your source has informed you that the device is made of and your suspects say that they know nothing, you are prepared to just stand by and wait for it to go off and when it does, let them go because they said that they didn't know anything about it?

By the way. Read your history. George Washington personally ordered at least 3 traitors hung who were caught before they were able to carry out their missions. Good old George was clearly more worried about protecting his people than the civil rights of traitors and murderers.

We were discussing torture, so whether George hung people for crimes or not in a war situation is beyond the scope of the discussion. He refused to torture anyone.

Your hypothetical situation is just that: hypothetical. We can hypothesize any kind of situation in order to justify the things we wish to do. Why don't you make it a little more dire, say that these people have already confessed to killing 56 million small children, this would make torturing them even more acceptable. You miss the point, I don't know how to explain it to you.

Torture is not about what OTHER people do, it's about what WE do. Is there anything--ANYTHING?--that you would not do on the basis of your own sense of moral rightness? If not, then there is nothing to discuss. If there is, then we can proceed from that point. The ball is in your court.
 
We were discussing torture, so whether George hung people for crimes or not in a war situation is beyond the scope of the discussion. He refused to torture anyone.

Actually, no he didn't. Read some history. Torture was not only an acceptable method of obtaining information from the enemy during war time, methods were taught in military academies.

Your hypothetical situation is just that: hypothetical. We can hypothesize any kind of situation in order to justify the things we wish to do. Why don't you make it a little more dire, say that these people have already confessed to killing 56 million small children, this would make torturing them even more acceptable. You miss the point, I don't know how to explain it to you.

So you would just stand by?
 
Actually, no he didn't. Read some history. Torture was not only an acceptable method of obtaining information from the enemy during war time, methods were taught in military academies.
I used to have a speech made by George on the subject of torture and his opinion of it, which included his prohibition against using it as well as his reasons for it. I'll try to dig it up for you.

Your sentence bolded above may very well be true but still have no relevance to George Washington and his opinions on the subject. Yes, military people have been using it since... forever. Doesn't mean that George Washington did, nor does it mean that he thought it was a good idea.

So you would just stand by?
Once again you have provided a false choice, you have presented a hypothetical situation that YOU made up so that there would only be YOUR chioce or the "stand by" choice. In a debate this is called "framing the discussion" and it's used in an attempt to back an opponent into a no-win corner. Another example of this technique would be to ask, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?"

The first thing to do is to make a firm committment to never using torture and then organizing your life in such a fashion that you don't need to. Then an intelligent person or group of people would work to prevent the dire situation from developing in the first place, so that they didn't get backed into a corner where they had no good options. What is called for is "forethought".
 
Your sentence bolded above may very well be true but still have no relevance to George Washington and his opinions on the subject. Yes, military people have been using it since... forever. Doesn't mean that George Washington did, nor does it mean that he thought it was a good idea.

I have read the Washington speech and he was telling his soldiers that they couldn't simply beat captured enemy soldiers to death with sticks because they were captured and happen to be the enemy. Misinterpreting history doesn't change the fact of history. He said nothing about using torture to extract valuable information in order to save a large number of lives. Spies, traitors and all covert operators were not then, and are not now given the courtesy that soldiers were expected to give each other after the battle was over.

Linclon, who wrote of his admiration and respect for George Washington, and who is himself considered to be the very father of civil rights suspended Habeus corpus and with the help of a secret police bureaucracy operated by William Seward, imprisoned tens of thousands of Northern political opponents. They were thrown into gulags such as Fort Lafayette in New York harbor where they were never charged, had no idea how long they would be held, and their families often had no idea of their whereabouts until such time as they were released or their bodies were sent home.

The Lincoln administration, which saw enemies everywhere, labeled virtually anyone who disagreed with its policies as spies and traitors who were therefore subject to military arrest and indefinite imprisonment without due process.

The Lincoln administration also tortured Northern prisoners, as documented by Mark Neely, Jr. in his book, The Fate of Liberty. In a chapter titled "The Dark Side of the Civil War" Neely includes a lengthy section called "Torture", and describes some of the techniques used by the Lincoln administration. He describes torture as a means of extracting confessions" not of Southerners but of Northerners suspected of deserting from the United States Army into which many of them had been drafted. (p. 109). Handcuffs and hanging by the wrists were rare, he says, but the army had developed a water torture that came to be used routinely. When this practice became public knowledge, there was no outcry to correct the abuse, no one in the administration saw it as an abuse. It had become a usual and customary way of handling certain kinds of prisoners.

Lincoln essentially declared himself dictator and proceeded to launch a war without the consent of Congress, he suspend habeas corpus, shut down over 300 opposition newspapers, imprisoned tens of thousands of Northern political opponents, including numerous newspaper editors and owners, deported an outspoken Democratic congressman, Clement Vallandigham of Ohio, censored the telegraph, confiscated private property, confiscated firearms in the border states, imprisoned duly elected members of the Maryland legislature, the mayor of Baltimore, and Congressman Henry May of Baltimore, instructed soldiers to rig Northern elections, and generally ignoreed all constitutional restrictions on executive powers.

Lincoln understood that the very nation was at stake and did what was necessary to win.





The first thing to do is to make a firm committment to never using torture and then organizing your life in such a fashion that you don't need to. Then an intelligent person or group of people would work to prevent the dire situation from developing in the first place, so that they didn't get backed into a corner where they had no good options. What is called for is "forethought".

Fine plot for a series of movies, or books, but we are human beings and can't possibly stop everyone every time.

I understand. You would stand by and see a million die before you would torture one or two who have tested positive for handling the material that you are looking for and bask in your own self righteousness in the aftermath, and to hell with those who died and those they left behind.
 
Fine plot for a series of movies, or books, but we are human beings and can't possibly stop everyone every time.

I understand. You would stand by and see a million die before you would torture one or two who have tested positive for handling the material that you are looking for and bask in your own self righteousness in the aftermath, and to hell with those who died and those they left behind.

One could not stop everyone everytime with any method, it's an imperfect world. So basically you are stating that there is no level beyond which you would not go, and I am saying that there are things that I would not do. Not much room for discussion in that is there? I do appreciate your hysterical examples though, it's so black and white for you: Millions die if I don't torture 2, life must be very simple for you.
 
One could not stop everyone everytime with any method, it's an imperfect world. So basically you are stating that there is no level beyond which you would not go, and I am saying that there are things that I would not do. Not much room for discussion in that is there? I do appreciate your hysterical examples though, it's so black and white for you: Millions die if I don't torture 2, life must be very simple for you.

Life is very simple if one is honest. Complication is an unfortunate side effect of dishonesty.

If I were reasonably sure that a suspect knew information that could possibly save a great many lives, I would use any means to get that information and live with myself afterwards. You would stand by and watch a great many die and bask in your self righteousness and feel no guilt because you stood by and let a lot of people die. Life is simple.
 
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I think the question of torture comes down to essentially the same question as the death penalty.

Are the rights of the individual more important than the greater good?

Is it ok to torture any number of (possibly) innocent people (because you really can never be 100% sure you have the right person) in the hopes of getting information to prevent a larger number of people from being harmed?

Is it ok to excecute condemned people, knowing that the possibility exists that some may be innocent in the name of greater good?

Is "reasonably sure" good enough?

Ironically...this may come back to bite me in the butt on abortion....:D
 
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