The reality is that where torture is condoned, depraved sociopaths run wild.
It is should be no question that I am a staunch supporter and advocate for liberty, freedom, and civil rights. Why anyone would not desire a society where these fundamental pillars of a civilized existence are protected is baffling. However, after the Senate released its report on the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques, it started a short lived firestorm of controversy over torture. Disturbingly many of you thought the use of torture was justified. Irrespective of your personal views, the fact is that torture, including the full spectrum of enhance interrogation techniques, is entirely illegal under both US and international law. Both Presidents Bush and Obama have violated this law and those party to the decision to authorize the use of torture must be brought to justice. What I am here to tell you is irrespective of whether or not you believe it was necessary, useful, or just, the condoning of this activity establishes a legal precedent for torture to be used against you right here at home. If torture is allowed to become acceptable, you will soon find yourself on the wrong side of the religion of political correctness getting tortured until you amend your beliefs and sell out your friends and family.
Why this matters is because in the very near future exercising your cherished freedom of speech and expression could make you targets of a government increasingly obsessed with controlling thought by force if necessary. One should be very cautious of how loosely the terms like terrorism and terrorist have been used by senior officials because the charge conveys punishment up to and including a death sentence and triggers a host of war time powers that can be used even domestically. Further, a simply Google search of the term domestic terrorist will yield over three million hits and contain example after example of your current leaders from President Obama to Representative Nancy Pelosi calling Tea Party members and other citizens that spoke out against illegal government actions domestic terrorists. This wasn’t hyperbole as leaked Department of Homeland Security memos prove. The hundreds of senior leaders that have openly and repeatedly called law abiding, yet politically opposed, members of our country terrorists mean what they say.
Make no mistake, the government will move forward with these Orwellian thought crime laws. These laws will be aimed at silencing dissent and independent thought, but camouflaged for the social good. The government will enact this just as they have done in Europe by linking the laws to “social justice” issues under terms like hate crime laws allegedly designed to fight nebulous concepts such as “intolerance,” but the chilling effect on actual freedoms of speech and expression will be the same. Once those laws are in place, you will be deemed a subversive criminal or domestic terrorist if you try to remain independent and speak out or choose not to adhere to the government’s new religion of leftist political dogma. In fact, simply adhering to a 2,000 year old Christian code of morality that views homosexuality and abortion as sinful or trying to maintain private ownership of a firearm in the face of gun bans and confiscation will be enough to have you labeled as a potential domestic terrorist. Under the Patriot Act and National Defense Authorization Act, the President and his executive agencies would then have the power to use the police or military to arrest you without charge, deny you due process, hold you without bond or hearing indefinitely, and “interrogate” you using their “enhanced” techniques. The torture of you would be justified since you have been labeled a terrorist and could potentially have information about other “domestic terrorists.”
American citizens have already been subject to this kind of secret abduction and torture so this isn’t an imaginary construct. Torture is abhorrent, ineffective, and destroys and residual moral or ethical norms in a society. Enhanced interrogation techniques may not yet involve pulling fingernails, but soon would if allowed. For example, “respected scholars” such as Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, a longtime proponent for torture, argues that techniques such as sliding sterile needles under fingernails are justifiable. After all, once you buy into the straw man argument about the man knowing the location of a ticking bomb morally justifies some torture, how is more torture not also justifiable to achieve the same ends of preventing the bomb from killing innocents? This logic is sick. Further, I challenge the person that thinks the current enhanced interrogation techniques are not torture to undergo the same practices. I have been through SERE training and subject to every one of those techniques, but under highly controlled conditions. I can tell you first hand that no civilized nation can ever allow itself to condone the use of such tactics.
The next time someone brings up the need for torture, I ask you to use your brain. We have a functional and capable law enforcement system that has obtained convictions for over two hundred years without having to resort to torture. The notion that an Islamic extremist is some unique breed of human that is somehow immune to proven law enforcement techniques effectively used against hardened gang members, ideologically driven members of other terrorist organizations, serial killers, and spies is only possible if one suspends all logic and reason. The argument that current law enforcement techniques are not sufficient and only by granting the government permission to torture can our government fight terrorism is total, unrestrained, tyrannical deception and lies
In conclusion, make no mistake, once the government is given the power to torture, it won’t be long before one of your cherished beliefs are deemed politically incorrect and you will become an enemy of the state. As their political enemy, you will be deemed a terrorist and then be subjected to the most brutal and horrific levels of a depraved society. Name one country that openly condones and uses torture that is a beacon of freedom, liberty, and human rights. It doesn’t exist. If you allow this world to be created, be forewarned. You will empower the vilest of human beings, the type healthy societies call sociopaths, to surface and flourish as the enforcers of the ruling elite. Once you allow the creation of this brutal society, you can’t turn it off and you can’t go back and it will only be a matter of time before you are on the wrong side of it.
By Guiles Hendrik
January 9, 2015
