The Edge of the Abyss

Mark Shea fears how far Americans may go in their defense of home and culture.

He should be. We all should be.

First, he takes a poll. The subject? What is the position of his blog's silent majority on torture:

One of the things I find it difficult to gauge is how much my comboxes reflect The Wisdom of the Voter vs. how much they reflect whatever a vocal minority happens to be passionate about.

I've been intrigued by the amount of passionate opposition the torture threads have engendered and it's made me curious as to whether I'm hearing the General Will in my comboxes or just a noisy minority I irritate. I honestly can't tell.

Given that I have 6,000 to 7,000 pageviews a day on this blog, my assumption is that there are a lot more people reading here than commenting.

So my request is this: If your name is *not* Victor, Sydney, Pavo, Donald, JMK or the couple of others who escape me at the moment and, in particular, if you don't normally comment, I'd appreciate your input on the whole torture conversation. You don't have to leave your name and email, just your opinion.

He follows that up with this reflection:

A large amount of effort is expended in my comboxes trying to figure out how exactly we can parse the difference between torture and legitimate coercive techniques. I agree there is a need to do this since "put your hands over your head" and "squat for 12 hours are both vaguely called "stress positions". One is legitimate, the other ain't.

My beef is not with that conversation. It is with apologists for torture (like the Wall Street Journal) attempting to re-define torture out of existence while simultaneously attempting to tar their critics as namby-pamby moralizers. The sleight-of-hand is achieved by pretending to face squarely The Real World[TM] while tarring opponents of torture as aging hippies who believe that an earnest chorus of Kumbaya will soften the hardest terrorist's heart and create a sunshiny world where we are all Free to Be You and Me.

In fact, however, it is the Torture Apologist who guiding the reader into an Action Adventure fantasy. The Action Adventure Fantasy places us in a little room with Bruce Willis and his rubber hose. Strapped to a chair is the snarling subhuman Muslim who knows the exact location of The Bomb. So do we, the audience. It's directly beneath the Stage where Adorable Orphans are singing "God Bless America" to raise money for the less fortunate. If we don't say Yes to Bruce's desire to do the following, we are dooming, not just those little orphans, but all of New York to a mushroom cloud

(snip)

See, now here's the thing: The Real World is not like the Bruce Willis scenario. In the real world, torture is not a hypothetical thing. It's the real thing. The unreal thing is the Ticking Bomb scenario. It virtually never happens. What *has* happened is that we are already water-boarding prisoners. And because we are already doing it, the Wall Street Journal has to find a way to re-define it as "not torture". Meanwhile, readers on this blog ask if we can "whack 'em with rulers" and call people who have moral difficulties with this "Torture Pharisees".

And, if all else fails, I'm told that since the information comes by way of Sullivan, it therefore does not count.

So, I repeat: I would rather people be asking how we can avoid torture rather than asking how close we can tiptoe up to the line and not step over into torture. Why? Because a truly Realistic assessment of the moral danger we face is not predicated on the mythical ticking bomb scenario. It's predicated on the documented fact that we have *already* fallen into torture all too easily..

The fact that so many of us can even entertain the possibility of employing torture, or it's current euphemisms, demonstrates how far from Grace our culture has become. As if, in a nation that murders 4 million unborn children a year, we needed any new reminders of this!

Torture is intrinsically evil. That puts it in the same catagory as rape, murder, abortion, euthanasia and the like. There's no room for prudential considerations; double-effect does not apply. We can't torture others and remain in a state of Grace. Period.

Machiavelli sounds great when we're angry and afraid. The ends justify the means when we examine the GWOT through the pop-culture prism of Hollywood action-adventure. But what good would it be for all Americans to gain our country and our freedom at the cost of our souls?

We know in our bones that torture is wrong. We know that we dishonor ourselves, our ancestors and our God when we chose to engage in, or support, torture. Let's not try to convince ourselves that somehow it's all alright if we stop a terrorist attack. It ain't.

While fighting the willing and unwitting agents of the enemy, we must not become those agents ourselves. Otherwise, we participate in the worship of Nothing. And, as Thomas Merton wisely observed, "The worship of Nothing is Hell."