Carl Davidson – 12/12/14

This page was last updated on December 16, 2014.

Is torture OK if it works?; Carl Davidson; Beaver County Times; December 12, 2014. Dated 12/12/14 on the BCT website, this letter didn’t appear in the print edition until 12/14/14.

For some background info about Mr. Davidson, please go here; he is also a leader of Beaver County Reds. Previous letters from Mr. Davidson I critiqued are here, here, here, and here. Critiques of Davidson pieces on Beaver County Reds are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“Is torture OK if it ‘works’? If you concede that it is, then you will concede anything and everything.”

[RWC] Hogwash.

“Here’s a thought experiment. Suppose a prisoner under interrogation is confronted by a guard with his three children. The guard threatens them if he doesn’t talk. He remains silent, so one child is shot and the gun pointed at the next. Then he tells anything the guards want to hear. So it ‘worked.’ OK by you?”

[RWC] Mr. Davidson omits some things from his non-thought experiment. First, what kind of prisoner? Is he an enemy combatant who just planted a bomb that could injure or kill hundreds of Americans, or a shoplifting suspect? Second, what is at stake? Are lives at risk? Third, if lives are at risk, how much time do we have? I could go on, but you get the idea.

Every prisoner and situation is different. We don’t need to be interrogation experts to figure out techniques that work on Bob may not work on Jane or what works in one situation may not work in another. Contrary to what some like would like us to believe, torture works. Just as all other techniques, however, it doesn’t always work. I believe most Americans thoroughly dislike the idea of torturing anyone, even enemy combatants, and that’s a good thing. That said, claiming torture is wrong regardless of the situation is self-righteous. Killing someone is also very bad, but most of us accept there are situations in which it is justified. Why should torture be different? If he knew the only way to get the info required to save the lives of his entire family was to torture the person he knew to be responsible for the imminent loss of life, does anyone believe Mr. Davidson would condemn his family to death by refusing to torture the murderer-to-be?

“Here’s another puzzle. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights have numerous prohibitions of torture. Yet the same upper crust had few problems with slavery and the inherent torture of the lash, or the death by starvation and exposure of the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears.”

[RWC] “Our Constitution and Bill of Rights have numerous prohibitions of torture.” Wrong. The closest the Constitution (including its amendments) gets is the Eighth Amendment: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” Most of us acknowledge this applies to punishment of convicted criminals in our civilian criminal law system, not interrogation of enemy combatants. There are, however, federal statutes that prohibit torture of enemy combatants. Of course, the devil in the details is the definition of torture. Does torture include only those activities that cause physical harm/injury, or does it also cover something like solitary confinement? The Fifth Amendment states, “No person … shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” but that simply means a person’s coerced evidence can’t be used to convict him. It doesn’t mean coerced evidence can’t be used to save lives or avoid injuries.

“The same upper crust had few problems with slavery and the inherent torture of the lash.” Wrong. As taught – or used to be – in grade school, the Founders – both lower and “upper crust” – did have a “few problems with slavery.” One faction (predominantly the South) supported slavery, the other opposed it. In Article I, Section 2, the “three fifths of all other Persons” (“all other Persons” meaning slaves) portion of paragraph three reflects the difficult compromise struck. For representation purposes (seats in the House of Representatives), slaves counted as only three-fifths of a free person. The intent of the anti-slavery faction was to cut the representation – and thus political power – of slave states, not to assert slaves were inferior to free persons. As we know – and the Founders knew, our conflict with England was not really over and the U.S. would not have survived as two separate countries.

Today’s left likes to claim the Constitution supported slavery. The reason for this representation is to smear the Constitution, its authors, and the ratifying states as racist, thereby undermining the moral authority of the document. The debate over whether the Constitution was pro-slavery or anti-slavery has been with us since its ratification, however. Today, the debate is primarily along ideological lines. The left goes with the pro-slavery representation as a political tactic to curry favor with black Americans and undermine the Constitution’s standing. After all, if the Constitution supported slavery, why should the rest of the document receive respect? The right tends to view the Constitution as anti-slavery.

Consider the words of Frederick Douglass during an 1852 speech entitled “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”, 13 years before the 13th Amendment banned slavery. Throughout the speech Mr. Douglass rightly railed against the state of “the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and America religion.” Toward the end of that same speech, however, here’s what Mr. Douglass said about the Constitution and “its framers and adopters”: “Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it. What would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a track of land, in which no mention of land was made? … Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.” You should be aware some sites that purport to show the Douglass speech actually present only cherry-picked excerpts, usually omitting Mr. Douglass’ comments about the Constitution. Liberal use of ellipses (…) and anything less than about 20-8½”x11” pages are clues. PBS and The Freeman Institute are two examples.

Another point to be made is we frequently make the mistake of judging people in the past based on today’s standards. Slavery is one example. We also frequently beat ourselves up over the treatment of American Indians more than a century ago. That’s OK, as long as we acknowledge the world of the 1800s was not the same as today’s. We also need to admit rival Indian tribes treated each other no better than the U.S. government treated Indians. Recognizing these points does not mean approval; just that we need to acknowledge the world is a different place than it was 100 years ago, 200 years ago, and so on. One of the byproducts of judging people in the past based on today’s standards is some truly great achievements are diminished. While the idea of a country based on the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution is no big deal today, it was truly revolutionary (no pun intended) in 1776 and started the world on a path from being dominated by dictators and monarchies to a world where even small democracies flourish. Were mistakes made along the way? Of course, we’re humans and evolution is not a perfect process.

Mr. Davidson knows his statements are false because 1) he can read and 2) he presents a “Constitution class” on his “Marxist School” (his description) indoctrination site, Online University of the Left. Mr. Davidson also presents his class in person. I attended this eight-part class in 2011 when Mr. Davidson presented it at Community College of Beaver County (CCBC). Whether or not you choose to view Mr. Davidson’s presentation, I suggest you register for Hillsdale College’s “Constitution 101: The Meaning & History of the Constitution” online course. Note: The Davidson presentation was not a CCBC offering. Mr. Davidson or Beaver County Reds simply rented a classroom from CCBC. As far as I could tell, I was the only attendee who was not a BCR officer, member, or follower. Attendance ranged from eight to 13.

Here are some 13th Amendment factoids. New Jersey initially rejected the amendment and didn’t ratify it until five weeks after it had already been enacted. Texas ratified the amendment 31 years before Delaware (1901). Mississippi, the last of the 36 states at the time of the 13th Amendment to ratify it, didn’t do so until 1995, and through a clerical oversight didn’t notify the National Archives until 2013.

“Obama tell us that torture is ‘not who we are.’ But in many ways, he’s wrong. It is part of ‘who we are’ in a deeply conflicted way, and only when we recognize it, can we begin to purge it from our national psyche.”

[RWC] I thought it was racist to disagree with President Obama, especially “in many ways.” <g> The rest of this is “guilt-trip” poppycock.

The currently accepted number of Civil War fatalities is about 620,000 soldiers (~365,000 Union deaths), with a new estimate as high as 750,000. Even the accepted figure represents the largest number of American deaths in a war by far (WWII is second at ~407,000), and nearly one-half of the total (~1.3 million). The deaths (~51,000) at the Battle of Gettysburg (only three days long) alone nearly equals the American deaths during the entire Vietnam War (~58,000), and are nearly one-half the total of American WWI fatalities (~117,000). Factor in the population at the time of these wars, and the death rate of the Civil War (~2%) was about 6.5 times the rate of WWII (~0.3%).

Slavery – in particular, perceived decreasing political power of slave states – was central to the Civil War. The U.S. banned slavery (13th Amendment) after the Union’s victory. Given the number of lives lost to eliminating slavery, it should have been “purge[d] … from our national psyche” long, long ago.

It is possible Mr. Davidson himself feels some guilt, given his ideological/political ancestors and contemporaries (Democrats) supported slavery and continued to abuse blacks overtly through the 1960s and by stealth since. If so, Mr. Davidson needs to forgive himself and quit projecting his feelings of guilt on the rest of us.