Rational Philosophy

Former CIA agent John Kiriakou demonstrates the difficulty of sifting through and applying conflicting principles. Kiriakou feels that waterboarding of suspected terrorists saved lives by eliciting information that wouldn’t have otherwise been forthcoming (and while his evidence for making this claim isn’t irrefutable, neither does it seem to be readily dismissed). And yet he finds himself repelled by the technique and feels that it’s no longer necessary. The Bush administration has found itself struggling to uphold severe interrogation techniques as useful and lawful, while wanting to claim that America does not torture.

Similarly, as the battle rages over male foreskins, one could say that parents face a similar dissonance when deciding whether to have a child circumcised. If one believes the claims for better adult health, but one feels that circumcision deprives the male child his natural dominion over his foreskin, how does one decide?

The philosophical problem at work in such matters seems to be the way that we separate out then synthesize the particular concepts and value hierarchies.

In the matter of torture, two fundamental concepts seem to be involved — The concept of eliciting information that may be critical to saving lives. And the concept of following a code of conduct that respects certain inviolable principles about human rights.

The difficulty arises because these concepts rest on very different frameworks. The first requires a straightforward cost benefit calculation. Is torture an effective way to get the information we want with acceptable practical consequences (such as retribution or backlash)? The second requires that we set aside practical implications, making them irrelevant, and commit to a course of humane conduct that would apply under any conditions.

Likewise a very similar dissonance exists for parents considering circumcision. Do they apply the abstract principle that the child has certain rights over his body, or do they make a decision based on the practical benefits or otherwise of circumcision?

Can we in fact synthesize the two sides of such dissonant questions? I believe we can.

First we need to raise the question up a level: In the case of torture, we would frame this higher question as follows: Do I believe that a set of principles grounded in human rights should supersede any practical implications of such principles? Or, in other words, do I consider human rights so important that I would uphold them even when other lives may be risked?

I realize that in one sense we’ve simply put the dissonance at arms length, but now we have a question that we can sink our teeth into. Principles reflect not the moment and circumstances at hand, but something perpetual and far reaching. If we choose to adhere to principles it is because we have concluded that these principles reflect something constant and worthy — such as human rights. It’s in the nature of a principle that it shouldn’t be deflected by the press of the current situation.

What this kind of analysis makes clear is that expedient or plastic principles are not principles at all but simply become part of the cost benefit calculation. When Bush redefines torture so that he can say he upholds the principles of human rights but supports severe interrogation, he is fooling himself. He has simply incorporated the cost benefit analysis of skirting the torture issue into his decision about whether to permit and condone torture. The matter becomes a sliding scale — what level of benefit justifies torture?

Saying that something is against one’s principles, but not in this case because the stakes are too high, is the same as having no principles on the matter whatsoever.

To satisfy the political machine in the name of their popularity, presidents are called upon to perform many functions, attend many events, make many speeches. President George Bush today recognized Hanukkah and evoked the memory of Daniel Pearl. Would Daniel Pearl have welcomed the honoring?

Bush quoted some of Pearl’s last words, “‘My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish, and I’m Jewish.”’ Then he said, ”These words have become a source of inspiration for Americans of all faiths. They show the courage of a man who refused to bow before terror — and the strength of a spirit that could not be broken.” Bush juxtaposes two ideas in order to connect them: The idea of faith and the idea of refusal to bow to terror. But given Pearl’s journalistic profession and his choice of pursuing it as he did in such dangerous places, would it perhaps not be more compelling to say that Pearl’s was less an inspiration of faith than of truth?

Mike Huckabee, an unexpected front-runner for the GOP candidacy, might be too easy a target, but his disarming lack of remorse in the face of his faults could win him supporters. Huckabee has refused to retract his idea, as it was voiced in 1992, that AIDS patients should be isolated. His justification for not retracting the statement? He believes it was an appropriate degree of caution at the time. He also continues to stand by his statements that homosexuality is aberrant, unnatural and sinful. Sinful because it “misses the mark.” (I doubt that a homosexual would agree!) And unnatural because it doesn’t meet the ideal of one man, one woman in a pro-life marriage under god. His justification for this being the ideal? The perpetuation of civilization.

Clearly not a man of science, Huckabee’s claim that homosexuality is aberrant or unnatural is easily refuted by well-documented studies showing that homosexuality appears in many species. And on the matter of his fear about the end of civilization, there’s ample evidence that civilization has done very nicely thank you over many millions of years, undeterred by Huckabees concept of a God insisting on one man, one woman, pro-life. But we’re still left with his position of authority as a former Baptist minister on the question of sin. As Huckabee says, we’ve all missed the mark, we’ve all sinned. In which case I expect we should wait for Huckabee’s future installments of what constitutes missing the mark so that nobody feels left out…

Back to Bush.

Also today, in the same NY Times piece, we read that, despite his record, Bush marked International Human Rights Day. I wonder whether he suspended torture of American detainees for the day, too, as a sign of his profound respect?

For some reason that I couldn’t quite put my finger on right away, I found Cafferty’s comment today (Judge makes a disgraceful decision) on a judge’s efforts to slow or halt a program that would require employers to fire workers with faulty social security status (illegal immigrants) distasteful. I think it was his sentiment rather than his logic that offended me, his presumption that enforcement of national law supercedes human decency and compassion, whatever the circumstance.

In another story — “Bush vetoes expansion of kids’ health insurance program” — Rep. Todd Akin, R-Missouri, supporting Bush’s veto, complains: “we’re going to provide health care to the children of illegal immigrants.”

In one section of LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do to Survive I examine the origin of the impulses that lead us toward a conservative or liberal way of thinking. It’s a spectrum of course, but the impulse toward conservative thinking seems to derive from a focus on the importance of the self (one’s right to govern one’s self, the live and let live mentality) versus the liberal impulse to value people generally and to not consider one’s own needs over and above the needs of others. I’m dramatically over-simplifying, but I hope you’ll see the point.

If we feel that national law should be put ahead of human decency, our perspective will tend toward a hard line on immigration. If we feel that the rights of human beings are more important than national concerns, then we’ll be concerned about the effects of a hard line approach on illegal immigrants. A conservative will tend to feel that we shouldn’t make exceptions when deportation of just some members of a family will break up that family. A liberal will wonder why the law must be so unfeeling.

Again, as I discuss in the book, once we have sought out the origin for these perspectives, we can consider whether either perspective is more right or better than the other. To cut to the chase, I conclude and show logically that the more liberal perspective is more enlightened and bodes better for the survival of the human species. I’m sure that a conservative would disagree, but I am also sure that he or she would be hard-pressed to defend such a position rationally and logically. Are we not all part of the human race, wherever we happen to be born?

 

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