Yet another conservative figure scoffs at the notion that waterboarding is torture, decides to waterboard himself as a stunt, and is completely humbled by the experience.
I just want to say that though a lot of liberals make fun of this sort of thing, it is actually a very admirable commitment to empiricism, in my opinion. I mean, this is a guy who formed a belief, and then decided to test that belief to see if it was true. Well, not quite: surely the only reason he went through with it was because he was so certain that he was right in the first place. But the important thing is that he was honest about the results. I don't think you can ask for much more from a person than that.
Incidentally, I think an odd side effect of this sort of thing--where torture apologists volunteer to have themselves tortured to demonstrate their point--is that it has become routine for liberal bloggers like Matt Yglesias to call on various conservatives to torture themselves. It's kind of crazy.
PS: I think another interesting thing for someone who defends the various torture methods used by the US would be to undergo not just waterboarding, but the other methods as well--e.g., sleep deprivation. These are just as much torture methods as anything else, even though intuitively they may not sound so bad and don't seem to entail any simple physical harm. But if you've been kept up for days straight, sleep deprivation really is torture, and a person will say or do anything to be able to go to sleep.
(Photo by The Ardvaark)
1 comment:
I'm gonna do the sleep-deprivation thing in late November and I'll let you know how it goes.
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