Gerecht on the Virtue of Torturing
Because Reuel Marc Gerecht adheres to an appalling and cruel ethical system and the people who decide what runs on major newspaper op-ed pages have no ethics whatsoever, yesterday’s New York Times published a Gerecht piece making the case for “extraordinary rendition” whereby terrorism suspects are kidnapped and tortured abroad with no due process. In the course of doing so, he offered the opinion that Barack Obama’s administration would join Bush, Cheney, and himself in the moral cesspool and that this would be a good thing:
If Mr. Obama’s Democrats get blown back into the ugly world that we live in, and resume rendition (and, of course, fib about it), then President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who have been vilified for besmirching America’s honor, may at least take some consolation in knowing that hypocrisy is always the homage vice pays to virtue.
Reader A.L. observes to me that Gerecht is completely mangling La Rouchfoucauld’s maxim here. His point was that even though human frailty often leads people into immoral behavior, the fact that people feel compelled to hypocritically condemn sins that they themselves may commit emphasizes the soundness of the underlying moral principle. For example, any normal parent is going to be a human being who sometimes acts in a greedy and selfish manner. But any decent parent is still going to teach his or her children that greed and selfishness are wrong and that those impulses ought to be resisted. This will, yet, make the parents somewhat hypocritical. But that’s the homage vice pays to virtue — the point being that we really should teach people to eschew greed and selfishness.
Gerecht is trying to make the reverse case, trying to claim that our inevitable tendency to fall short of our ethical aspirations indicates that the aspirations themselves are misguided. Thus, the principles undergirding humane liberal societies ought to be tossed overboard out of fear of terrorism. But if we’re too weak and cowardly to actually toss our principles overboard, we ought to at least wink and nod at those who violate them. Because for Gerecht cruelty and torture are the real virtues, and humanity and due process the vices.
40 Responses to “Gerecht on the Virtue of Torturing”
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December 15th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Indeed, um…darkness at noon.
Cynicism is the homage that being deeply, irreversibly invested in evil pays to virtue, or something like that.
December 15th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Thank you, Matthew. Bill Kristol makes the same idiotic error. (By the way, I understand that La Rouchfoucauld’s own life was exemplary.)
December 15th, 2008 at 9:41 am
But isn’t there an argument on Gerecht’s side as well? Say if you always and consistently break the rules? What does that mean? Isn’t here some argument to be had in this case for adjusting the rules and not viewing the ethical rules that always and predictably get broken as well founded?
Gerecht — which means ‘just’ — is still a funny name in this context.
December 15th, 2008 at 9:41 am
i don’t know if gerecht was personally tutored by the straussians, but certainly many other neo-cons are knee-deep in the straussian cesspool.
and this was pretty much the core of the great master’s teaching: a kind of ersatz nietzschean immoralism crossed with crypto-fascism. an adolescent fascination with pretending to be bad-ass and beyond morality, combined with a lily-livered fear of what people will do to you if they find out.
so they tell each other that they are really above the law–that indeed there is no law–while also pretending to be staunch supporters of traditional morality. it’s why they worship executive tyranny and despise the rule of law, but at the same time pay lip-service to democratic values.
pathetic losers, actually. that they got into power in our country is a great tragedy; that they are still allowed prestigious platforms is a shame on the nyt.
December 15th, 2008 at 9:46 am
With a bit of a rewrite this post by MY could be a defense of free market libertarianism. So what if free market libertarian philosophy always gets run over in political reality — what we ought to learn from this is that it should be our ethical load star.
This sort of observation doesn’t helps us much. It could come out both ways, after further considerations, but this sort of back and forth fall short.
December 15th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Stefan, make that a pant load star, dude….
December 15th, 2008 at 10:21 am
stefan: don’t be a fool. the point is that Reuel Marc Gerecht also has an ethical ideal, just like most normal people, except that normal people prefer peace and humane behavior over torture and endless war.
if you want to side with Gerecht’s position that torture is, in fact, the highest expression of “America’s honor,” then be my guest. we will know what to do with the rest of your posts.
December 15th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Gerecht is ex-CIA and he cites the bogus “ticking bomb” scenario as justification? What a schmuck.
December 15th, 2008 at 10:44 am
How about extraordinary rendition for war crimes? Can some democratically elected leftist government — say Bolivia — come here, kidnap Cheney, and try him in Bolivia for war crimes?
December 15th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Can some democratically elected leftist government — say Bolivia — come here, kidnap Cheney, and try him in Bolivia for war crimes?
No–that would violate international law.
The obvious thing to do (consistent with GWB-era US practice) is for Bolivia to kidnap Cheney, refuse to admit they did it, and torture him secretly, without trying him.
December 15th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Our lucky stars! Thank god Bush and Cheney saved us from all those ticking time bombs!!!!!! What is the total number of people tortured to death under this “administration”, I forget?
Guys like this Gerecht fellow are the reason the CIA is a joke to rest of the world’s intelligence communities. Stuck in their little American bubble, they can play soldier and pretend the world outside is evil and they are god’s little soldiers facing the “hard truth” that our protected little minds can’t handle. The triteness of his “ideas” display the stupidity behind fascistic thought in general, and esp the American variety. This guy probably masturbates to Jerry Bruckheimer movies.
December 15th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Since Gerecht, as ex-CIA, obviously knew about the coup d’etat attempt in Venezuela, I would expect the Venezuelan government to render Mr. Gerecht to Cuba, where he could be encouraged to help root out any remaining US assets in the Venezuelan military.
December 15th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Yay. Been trying to say this for years, but am too inept.
December 15th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
M ea culpas are rare these days. In a debate with John Kerry in 2004, President George W. Bush famously could not name a single mistake he had made in his first term. So it is both noteworthy and commendable that Alan Greenspan, the
December 16th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
stefan Says:
“But isn’t there an argument on Gerecht’s side as well? Say if you always and consistently break the rules? What does that mean? Isn’t here some argument to be had in this case for adjusting the rules and not viewing the ethical rules that always and predictably get broken as well founded? ”
Well, for one example, there’s a whole shi*tload of corrupt politicians, who lie and take bribes^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H do things for people who do things back.
By your standards, that pretty much negates any rules or laws against bribe-taking or other such misfeasance.
Sex: IIRC, 50% or more of married men cheat on their wives. Kiss that principle good-bye.
December 16th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
“any decent parent…”
That fact that you refer to the above as a truism is interesting, when of course that’s not how economics is taught. In economics realism is reason, and any argument for idealism even as counterbalance is dismissed. Any argument for the existence of divided consciousness is considered a defense of irrationalism.
December 17th, 2008 at 6:04 am
@17, thus do economists, fascists and Bolsheviks – who of course shared exactly the principles enunciated as “cruelty and torture are the real virtues, and humanity and due process the vices”, as long as it weas in the service of the Revolution – join each other in the same circle of Hell. If only Hell existed.
December 17th, 2008 at 10:52 am
I think he’s also saying that Democrats don’t really believe in in the virtue, that they the objection to torture wasn’t to the principle but to the fact that it wasn’t them doing it, which just goes to show that no one believes in the principle. And he’s probably right. Sort of like Republican presidents and deficit spending.
He’s still a schmuck for all that.
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