Just in case MM or Paul DuBois do comment on this thread further, I hope they correct the impression they left that all the panelists approve of torture in the ticking time-bomb scenario. That’s a pretty serious charge, and it’s not substantiated by the National Review article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/13/politics/campaign/14DTEXT-FULL.html?pagewanted=7&_r=1

Kerry: “Now I will not allow somebody to come in and change Roe v. Wade. The president has never said whether or not he would do that. But we know from the people he’s tried to appoint to the court he wants to. I will not. I will defend the right of Roe v. Wade.”

Bush: “What I’m saying is that as we promote life and promote a culture of life, surely there are ways we can work together to reduce the number of abortions. Continue to promote adoption laws – that’s a great alternative to abortion. Continue to fund and promote maternity group homes.”

Bush’s delivery on that promise left quite a bit to be desired. That doesn’t mean a 2004 Bush voter was just interested in torture

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/08/debate.transcript3/index.html

Kerry: And they’re either going to be destroyed or left frozen. And I believe if we have the option, which scientists tell us we do, of curing Parkinson’s, curing diabetes, curing, you know, some kind of a, you know, paraplegic or quadriplegic or, you know, a spinal cord injury, anything, that’s the nature of the human spirit.

I think it is respecting life to reach for that cure. I think it is respecting life to do it in an ethical way. And the president has chosen a policy that makes it impossible for our scientists to do that. I want the future, and I think we have to grab

As HK noted, Bush responds by bragging about his own funding of the limited research, which is indeed unfortunate. Still, it’s clear from this exchange that Kerry would have expanded it more than Bush had, and if that had happened, we might not have had the breakthroughs in other channels of research that have made this a less salient issue.

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I’m not saying that a 2004 Bush vote was the right thing to do. I wasn’t sure it was in 2004, and the ensuing four years did nothing to make me feel better.

I am saying that there are more charitable explanations for a 2004 Bush vote and excitement about his victory than love of torture. This isn’t Scott Brown we’re talking about.

Come to think of it, I don’t recall Kerry taking that strong a position against torture in 2004, either.

2. Learning from the past is one thing. Using the past for a guilt-by-association smear is another.

3. I am perfectly fine with there being deep flaws in the American right. I am quite confident that their support for torture is chief among them.

All I’m saying is we should let them off the mat. Better to have two parties that reject torture. And abortion.

Brugger uses the ticking time-bomb excuse. Wrong.

A person could follow Eberle’s position and not do anything immoral, but his idea about the distribution of harm just smells bad. An expert ethicist could pin down what he means by it, and I bet it isn’t good.

Lee’s definition of torture allows for any physical pain that isn’t mutilation. Wrong.

Loconte not only refers to the ticking time-bomb (which is enough for me to reject his stand), but he comes dangerously close to dehumanizing our current enemy.

By my count, that’s one passing grade, and four F’s. Sadly I don’t expect much better from professors at Catholic colleges. In their defense, though, a lot of them make a lot of good points. But in philosophy, one wrong statement invalidates the whole presentation.

How wrong does one have to be before we call into question their entire system of thought? We see it easily on the left, which so easily gets abortion wrong. Why do we not see the problems on the right?

Sorry, but the pro-toiture position IS associated with the political right. Look at where Republicans stand on this issue. Look across the noise machine from Fox News to talk radio to National Review and Weekly Standard to blogs..there is an overwhelming support for American-instituted torture.

Catholics oppose torture. Catholic moralists oppose torture. But yet again in the zeal to align themselves with the right, many Catholics support torture, including some Catholic moralists, which is highly depressing. This is the point of the post. If these people want to support their precious Republicans, it would be nice if they did so (like us on the other side) in spite, and not because of, their position on morally grave intrinsically evil acts.

And MM’s resistance to linking torture and abortion gives the game away. Why shouldn’t they be linked?

Didn’t you read what I wrote above? I explictly linked the reasoning behind support for abortion with support for torture – playing with definitions with a consequentialist twist. The problem is that Lee, with his partisan blinkers, fails to see this. Like so many others, he is using the unborn to defend the indefensible.

1). And Bush’s response to Kerry on ESCR? Bragging that he funds it and was the first president to make sure it is funded. That is his response. Thank you Bush!

2) “Six years ago” is a very short amount of time. It is indeed indicative of a problem of the modern age, to totally ignore the past as if meaningless. The past is not meaningless. The past is how we got where we are today, and the errors of the past which still affect us must still be dealt with and that includes recognizing them. We cannot just say “oh, that’s the past, get on with it.” That mentality means no action is important for reflection because when we would reflect on them, they are “in the past.”

3). Don’t misrepresent MM. He didn’t do as you said. He has not denied the association between torture and abortion. Indeed, I expect he would affirm they are united because of the dignity of the human person, and the desire not to instrumentalize the other, which both torture and abortion do. But in this case, one can say Lee is instrumentalizing the dead to help encourage abuse — so it is very relevant that his abuse of the life position is founded upon a continued abuse of the dead to use them for the sake of even more evil.

And I think most on the left celebrated Obama’s victory in spite of his pro-choice views and policies. If the left were to thankfully start to move away from this position, would it be good or bad for a 2016 Republican to cite the left’s support for Obama as proof that the left is pro-abortion?

2. It was six years ago. Might be time to get over it.

3. What do you think the point of this post was? From what I could tell, it was to associate a silly pro-torture position with the political right. There is no argument here. Just pointing and laughing.

So I thought it was worthwhile to mention that some on the political right are strongly rejecting torture. And this might be more salient information than a symposium from last year or voting patterns from six years ago.

If you’d rather just keep repeating that the right is pro-torture, I can’t stop you. But I’m not sure what good it does.

And MM’s resistance to linking torture and abortion gives the game away. Why shouldn’t they be linked? Isn’t it likely that the callousness toward human life that the abortion regime ushered in has paved the pay to torture? That these violations of human dignity feed off each other?

Yes, Lee seemed desperate to change the subject. But the conversation he was inviting us to is one we should all welcome.

I’m not surprised either. No offense to the very fine Franciscan grads that blog at VN and those few who are my colleagues at St Mike’s.

Might you consider posting commentary from conservatives. . . at the time these things were being decided by the Bush administration. . . demonstrating that waterboarding is unacceptable?

I take it that you mean to suggest that conservatives. . . “real” conservatives, I’m sure. . . strongly disapprove of torture in all its forms. And that waterboarding is incontrovertibly torture, from a conservative perspective.

But of course Bush’s well known position on torture in November of 2004 didn’t seem to cost him a single conservative vote. . . or even a single Catholic vote, given that he carried the Catholic vote by a healthy margin.

And perhaps I’m mis-remembering, but I seem to recall that at the time conservatives and Catholics were overjoyed that Bush won. . . torture and all.

Patrick Lee has done some fine work in bioethics, so his anemic response here is rather disappointing. For someone who has championed the dignity of the human person, Lee betrays a real confusion in his own thinking.

Not a single “expert” among this group is considered to be an expert in political theory, public policy, normative ethics, or applied ethics by even the tiniest majority of his/her peers in his/her respective field. This is not to say that the results would have been different had they consulted genuine experts, but it is to say that NR seems to cherry-pick its “ethical experts” in order to yield the product the editorial staff desires. This certainly coheres with NR’s wacky belief that it is an intellectually respectable medium.