Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Torture and the Truth

Andrew Sullivan at the Atlantic makes an interesting connection between the Western Enlightenment's devotion to finding the truth and the prohibition on torture.
The Western anathema on torture began as a way to ensure the survival of truth. And that is the root of the West's entire legal and constitutional system. Remove a secure way to discover the truth - or create a system that can manufacture it or render it indistinguishable from lies - and the entire system unravels. That's why in the West suspects are innocent before being found guilty; and that's why in the West even those captured in wartime have long been accorded protection from forced confessions. Because it creates a world where truth is always the last priority and power is always the first.

Read his post here.

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