Category: Miscellaneous

Many Americans are unaware that there is a legal distinction between cruelty and torture, cruelty being the less severe level of abuse. This has tended to obscure important elements of the interrogation debate from the public’s attention. For example, the public may be largely unaware that the government could evasively if truthfully claim (and did claim) that it was not “torturing” even as it was simultaneously interrogating detainees cruelly. Yet there is little or no moral distinction between cruelty and torture, for cruelty can be as effective as torture in savaging human flesh and spirit and in violating human dignity. Our efforts should be focused not merely on banning torture, but on banning cruelty.

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.