As opposed to "enhanced interrogation techniques"?
One thing the West certainly does better than the East is marketing.
Why might a government torturing its own citizens be morally equivalent to a government torturing the citizens of other countries?
It intuitively feels, to me, "more bad" for a country to torture its own citizens than for a country to torture citizens of its enemies (although both are still bad). Thus, I'd want to hear a justification that "actually, no, both are the same degree of bad."
I don't necessarily agree that the onus is on me (you were the one to initially bring it up here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17717319 and I also gave my justification, which is that it feels intuitively different), but I can throw out some ideas as to why. I said it was interesting for a reason...
1) Perhaps it's a moral foundations (Haidt) difference: a state torturing its own citizens violates a moral "loyalty" principle as well as a moral "care" (harm avoidance) principle. Thus, it feels worse IF you ascribe to loyalty as a valid moral foundation. Haidt suggests modern liberals heavily elevate the "care" and "fairness" principles over the others, suggesting we might have a deep value difference causing our different opinions.
2) A more political perspective: the US constitution contains certain rights which all citizens are granted (note that US citizenship is defined as a "right to have rights"). See the passage (emphasis mine): "we hold these truths to be self-evident... that [all men] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".
One could argue that for the US government to torture its citizens would be additionally unjust, on the grounds that it violates these constitutional rights, specifically (I'd argue) that of Liberty. It's a violation of a social contract as well as a violation of an ethical principle, making it a worse injustice. Note that the authority here is granted to "[the] Creator", intensifying the ethical severity of violating this social contract.
3) Could also make some lower-Kohlberg-level arguments about this, but they're less fun and interesting.
I disagree, I think it is very easy to justify that breaking my arm is "more good", in that it is preferable. If one is -100 and the other is -50, then it is "more good" (i.e. the difference is positive). By "more good" I don't mean that it is good, mind you, just that it is better/preferable.
> Haidt suggests modern liberals heavily elevate the "care" and "fairness" principles over the others
I think this is our difference. I wouldn't want my country torturing anyone, enemy or not. Your second argument conflates legality with morality, so I don't really consider it especially valid. Unless you mean that the government has made a promise to the citizens to not torture them, and it would be additionally breaking that promise. Still, though, I consider the "torturing people" part much, much worse than the "you broke the promise" part, so much so that the latter seems like a rounding error to me, to use a somewhat utilitarian phrase.
Neither are preferable over "don't break any of my limbs", but I understand your point. I only nitpick because "having no bad things" is not equivalent to "having good things," in my mind. This is something I dealt with on a personal level relatively recently.
> Your second argument conflates legality with morality, so I don't really consider it especially valid.
The constitution speaks in terms of "god-given rights" and not "laws". The founding fathers were speaking the language of moral imperatives and not of legal imperatives. This is intentional.
The conflation occurs when people consider the laws themselves as opposed to their motivating intentions to be moral imperatives. But my claim is that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are (some of) the motivating moral intentions that justify the laws, thus there is no conflation in my argument.
> I consider the "torturing people" part much, much worse than the "you broke the promise" part, so much so that the latter seems like a rounding error to me, to use a somewhat utilitarian phrase.
Ironically, I argue a utilitarian would disagree: it is likely that a government breaking their promises is harmful and perhaps terrifying to a much larger group of individuals than those who are directly harmed via torture. I figure there's a strong utilitarian argument that (a small harm * 150 million people) > (a large harm * 200 people), but then again, this is part of the horror embodied by stories like "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas".
I am no utilitarian myself, but I am also no orthodox Humanist either...
I agree with you. The citizen scenario includes extra immoral elements like in-group betrayal and abuse of friends in addition to whatever immoral elements come from the torture itself. The enemy scenario feels like the immoral elements may even be a bit muted by that fact that you're probably already willing to kill the enemy, which feels like a more extreme action.
Tell me, would you rather be tortured in Gitmo for a decade and live with the scars for the rest of your life or just take a bullet to your head and be done with it?
Torture is immoral, full stop. No human being should ever be tortured.
At the moment, so is the US. There is some measure of hope in some corners that this is an aberration that will be brief at least at the federal level, and that the reversal of it at the federal level will eventually negate any adverse trends at other levels, but that's hope, not established fact.
I didn't say that the US did anything comparable to that, I said that the argument that the big-picture difference between the two was that China was institutionalizing systemic racism while the US was addressing it was, whatever the past or hoped-for future of the US might be, currently inaccurate on the US side.
> I'm reading so many people defending China, I have to think it's because they haven't done any research, and assume China's not that bad.
Maybe somewhere, but the post you are responding to said not one word about China (other than a quote for context from the post it was responding to), either in defense or otherwise.
The article is about tariffs on China, this is thread is all about China, you responded to a post about human rights violations in China.
I'm not saying the US is perfect, but compared to China right now the US is .
Redlining, racial-profiling, school-prison pipeline, pay discrimination, voter id laws that discriminate against minorities... I can go on and on.
> I'm not saying the US is perfect, but compared to China right now the US is
No its not. They are not comparable and shouldn't be. You think the US is great because I'm assuming you belong to socio-economic classes that have granted you a great quality of life and freedoms which are theoretically promised to all US citizens. But in practise, they are not and the situation is much more nuanced.
> No its not. They are not comparable and shouldn't be.
Why can you not compare two countries' human rights?
> But in practise, they are not and the situation is much more nuanced.
It is more nuanced as you suggest, the difference is that the government of China is busy locking up muslims, and the US is busy passing anti discrimination laws.
It doesn't matter and I frankly don't care what you want. Slavery was technically illegal after the Civil War and yet you still had Jim Crow; similarly racism is technically illegal but there continues to be systemic racism in the US, whether or not promoted by Government policy. To the millions of African-Americans incarcerated for possession of Marijuana, it doesn't matter whether there are protections for minorities, because the laws are not enforced. The War on Drugs was a euphemism for a war on minority communities.
> It is more nuanced as you suggest, the difference is that the government of China is busy locking up muslims, and the US is busy passing anti discrimination laws.
No, its not that simple either. The US is busy locking up immigrants... what do you say to that? Or about locking up minorities for minor infractions, while whites go scot-free? What about that?
Its not simple, which is why it must not be compared. You are allowed to criticize China for its human rights record, but they are equally free to criticize you for yours. What is not OK is to spread the lie that the US is some sort of utopia of human rights when its clearly not, and has not been ever since its inception.
I suppose you could say there are more minorities in jail, but minorities tend to be more on the poverty line which is an easy explanation, I would be interested in a study on the treatment of only those in poverty.
Illegal immigrants should be deported, legal immigrants should not be.
The US is not a utopia, but my point was china is looking more and more like Big Brother in 1984.
China is not allowed to do what it wants to its citizens, that is the load of crap.
Read the wikipedia article and then tell me how ignorant I am: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China
Or this one if you need more: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34592336