Quote: Pseudo-moral means you posture with outrage imposing your intolerant liberal beliefs of morality. While you spurn and reject true morality, as it is defined by Judao-Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and various other cultures throughout all of human history.
For any morality or mode of ethics to be true (in an absolute sense), it must be accepted by everyone, and much more than a simple majority. Every Western religion and ethnicity you've cited has experienced lapses throughout their respective histories. This is generally due to differences in interpretation of holy text, where a secular code of ethics can be relied upon for a more consistent rendering of a given societies' ethics. For example, those priests who claim to be gay and use scriptural interpretation to prove its allowance present a schism in church dogma.
If the disapproval in the above quote lies in the tenets of liberalism, you must be able to show that your position lacks these qualities. But the Religious Right in America--if you side with them or not, I don't know--has shown a sustained history of hatred, intolerance and bigotry. As mentioned before, Western religions have a long history of the same regretable practices. Intolerance is a common human trait and not limited to liberalism.
Additionally: Sammitch said:
Quote: And once again, the alleged 'victims' of alleged 'torture' are not citizens of the U.S. or of its close allies, thus I am still mystified as to why we should care.
I thought this was an interesting assertion by Sammitch. Because the terrorists are neither citizens of a country we can punish or influence, that they shouldn't have rights. Should democracy be another weapon we wield against the world? If we intend to continue exporting democracy, other countries will continue to note the difference. You can't tell someone not to do something you yourself do, even if it isn't very often. We tell countries not to support terrorism, yet terrorism often lies in the eye of the beholder.
Sammitch's comment seemed to apply to different definitions/methods of torture. If that's the case, how far can we (as the government represents the people) push someone with non-lethal methods of extracting information before it crosses the line of the ideals of democracy? Can we torture whomever we want at any frequency and still be the leaders of the free world? r3x's comment of " how do we get to claim to be a bastion of freedom and then torture people?" is something that deserves serious consideration.
