When it comes to abortion, I am beginning to think that Carly Fiorina has the zeal of a convert:
Despite the blizzard warning, thousands of pro-life activists gathered at the March for Life in Washington on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, the only presidential candidate to attend the event, pledged to continue speaking out against abortion in the face of opposition from pro-choice activists.
“The establishment media and political class don’t want us to talk about what the abortion industry is doing. You saw what happened when I talked about the horrific truth of the Planned Parenthood videos during a Republican debate,” she said at the march. “Unlike the media, you’ve watched the videos. You’ve seen an aborted baby, it’s legs kicking, it’s heart beating while the technician describes how they would keep these babies alive to harvest their organs.”
In response to the videos, a Planned Parenthood representative said a woman might choose to donate tissue for scientific purposes.
“In healthcare, patients sometimes want to donate tissue to scientific research that can help lead to medical breakthroughs, such as treatments and cures for serious diseases,” said Eric Ferrero, vice president of communications at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “Women at Planned Parenthood who have abortions are no different.”
Fiorina had a message for those who protest her pro-life stance at her campaign events.
“You can scream and throw condoms at me all day long. You won’t silence me. You don’t scare me,” she said at the march. “I have battled breast cancer. I have buried a child. I have read the Bible. I know the value of life.”
Fiorina pointed out that President Obama’s successor will have the “awesome responsibility” to pick up to three Supreme Court justices who will weigh in on religious liberty issues. She added that the next president is going to decide if a life is a life only after it leaves the hospital.
“That is the Democratic platform – that a life is not a life until it is born, and they call us extreme. It is the Democrats and the pro-abortion industry that are extreme,” she said.
Fiorina told the audience Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and “the left” use women as a “political weapon” to win elections.
“I know, having started out as a secretary, being empowered means having a voice, but ideological feminism now shuts down conversation on colleges campuses and in the media,” she said.
She vowed to defeat Clinton and defund Planned Parenthood as president.
“You can count on what I will do as president,” she said. “Together we will restore the character of our nation.”
Go here to read the rest. Fiorina will not be the Presidential nominee, but she would not be a bad Veep nominee.
It is a pity that Carly Fiorina’s chances of winning the primary elections are so abysmally low. Feminist supporters of Livia Caesar would have an epileptic fit.
Agree, Luke. Fiorina would be a terrific president. She is a leader, not a poll-reader. Only wish she would come out against torture. Cruz is not my favorite candidate but he at least has that issue right.
She passes “my must have” values filter, unfortunately she won’t get to fight from the White House for life.
How do you come out against something you really can’t define?
Greg, it is not that unusual for the boundaries of various ethical definitions to be less than perfectly clear-cut, but we have GOP candidates who actually don’t even bother with the boundaries — taking the position that torture, however defined, is ok if necessary to save the lives of our troops. Me, I have a simple starting point: If I would consider it unacceptable for our enemy to do it to our troops, then we shouldn’t do it to their’s. McCain applied that test to water-boarding, and he was absolutely spot-on right.
It’s not just that it’s not “clear cut,” it’s that the definition is commonly used to mean everything from “no danger, some discomfort or annoyance” to “putting people on the rack.”
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It’s rather like some people are trying to re-define “pro life” to mean things as far out as “supports a cradle-to-grave government support program and no borders.”
What you say is true, Foxfier, but unless you are cool with the waterboarding of our troops. I don’t see how you can define torture to not include it.
So where do you stand? Are you cool with the waterboarding of our troops or not?
I have always been against physical abuse Mike, but any foreseeable enemies that we fight will torture our troops, and worse, no matter what we do to theirs. In regard to our troops, they often are water-boarded to give them a taste of the least they can expect if they fall into the hands of adversaries.
Don, I agree that it is likely that foreseeable enemies will torture our troops, but I don’t see how that morally justifies our torture of their’s. Yes, we do water-board a small number of our combatants as part of training. I just don’t see how that logically changes anything. My point stands — the physical abuse of prisoners is wrong. While there can be honest disagreement as to what constitutes such abuse, we can only claim water-boarding is acceptable if we believe it is acceptable for the enemy to water-board US POWs. I do not see a logical away around this. Our response to Japanese inhumane treatment of our POWs was to try them for war crimes, not emulate them.
The point I was responding to Mike was that you seemed to me to be saying that if we water-board our enemies our troops will be water-boarded. I was pointing out that our behavior really does not impact what our current foes do. In regard to the Japanese, our troops did not take prisoners until rather late in the War. Few Japanese troops of course attempted to surrender but those who did tended to be killed out of hand by our troops, a product of hatred born out of Japanese atrocities and the habit of feigned surrender by the Japanese. Late in the War our troops were under strict orders to take prisoners and they, very reluctantly, complied. It is difficult to enforce moral treatment of enemy troops in War, when one side views such a concept as laughable.
Yes, Don, you misunderstood me. My practical moral litmus test was to test the morality of the treatment, not compare and copy. The inhumane treatment of our prisoners by the enemy does not justify the inhumane treatment of their prisoners by us. Whether the treatment crosses the line to inhumane can be revealed by our reaction to such treatment if applied to our prisoners. I think the water-boarding of our POWs is morally wrong and a war crime, and our use of water-boarding was a blemish on our great country. Yes, it was confined to a limited number of prisoners for sure, and those prisoners were presumably especially odious. And yes those facts certainly mitigate the gravity of this moral lapse, but a lapse it was nonetheless.
“My practical moral litmus test was to test the morality of the treatment, not compare and copy.”
My response to that Mike is that there is always a practical component to morality as applied in war time. An example of this is Nazi Germany in World War II. Most German troops who surrendered were treated quite properly because our troops knew that the Germans in regard to British and American POWs followed the Geneva Convention. (As opposed to the treatment that the Germans and Soviets meted out to prisoners taken from each other.) An exception was made by our troops however in regard to the Waffen SS due to their well known penchant for murdering prisoners. Somehow they found it extremely difficult to surrender to our troops. One can decry this, but when it comes to moral treatment of prisoners in a War it has to be a two way street, or ordinary troops simply will not abide by rules that the enemy does not follow.
In regard to John McCain his political positions tend to depend on whether he is running for office. For example in February 2008 he voted against a bill which would have banned waterboarding by the CIA. I am sure that his being engaged in a tough battle for the Republican nomination for President overrode his torture in Vietnam on that occasion. This was on a par with his brief metamorphosis to an anti-illegal immigrant hawk in 2010, facing a tough Republican primary for the Senate nomination, when he screeched: Build the dang fence!
Don, I realize that the behavior of our troops is necessarily informed by the behavior of their enemy. But that does not justify mistreatment as a matter of policy, even if it explains mistreatment by individual soldiers. Torturing prisoners in order to secure tactical military advantages is wrong, even if it can be understandable or even forgivable. While I have no interest in making villains of individual soldiers who commit moral errors in the heat of difficult moments, such lapses are not comparable to intentional policy decisions made in Washington. The hardest morality is always that which involves good ends being used to justify evil means. I don’t doubt the noble intentions of the Bush Administration for a moment, but nor do I doubt the immorality of torturing prisoners.
“But that does not justify mistreatment as a matter of policy,”
Agreed. Humane treatment of prisoners of war was a long time developing in the Christian West, and was only imperfectly applied in the best of times. With Christianity being effectively driven from the public square in most of the West, I fear that we may look back upon the occasional waterboarding of a major terrorist as a virtual golden age of humanity.
The use of water boarding on captured terrorists to secure their compliance in providing lifesaving intelligence is not prisoner abuse nor does it cross any moral lines.
My mind keeps wondering why waterboarding is unacceptable to do to an enemy, but a bullet to his head is okay.
During the wars between Christianity (the Church) and the Barbary Moslems, slavery (like torture?) was a goal of the Moslems. Pope Nickolas V wrote that it was licit to keep Moslem slaves permanently.
Donald, have you noticed that Marco Rubio,is taking a page right out of McCain’s playbook with regards to immigration?
Greg,
You are free to think so of course, which I assume must mean that you believe that it is morally acceptable for our servicemen to be water-boarded by their captors.
DonL,
To my knowledge no one is suggesting that it is morally acceptable to assassinate POWs, but certainly that was the position of the Waffen SS — a position with which the Allies took extreme exception and rightly so.
And I find it amusing that a commentator on the same blog that regularly (and correctly) reminds us that not every papal utterance from our current Holy Father is binding or correct now invokes Nickolas V in support of slavery. The Church formally teaches that slavery and torture are grave evils, and the Church is correct on both counts.
Better question Don, is why is waterboarding unnacceptable but assassination from 20,000 ft (with the attendant collateral damage) isn’t.
Ernst,
First, there is a critical difference between engaging in combat and assassinating combatants who are disarmed and in your custody. Second, the morality of bombing turns largely on whether the damage to which you refer (presumably the death of innocents) is the object of the bombing or collateral to that object, which is a key question of fact.
“Donald, have you noticed that Marco Rubio,is taking a page right out of McCain’s playbook with regards to immigration?”
One of several reasons why I am supporting Cruz.
If our servicemen were terrorists who had knowledge of the inner workings of their terrorist network and that information was necessary to protect innocent lives and water boarding was the only way to secure their compliance in divulging that information, then yes. But since that is not the case, Mr. Petrik, your moral equivalence argument is a non-sequitur. I am actually surprised you made such an argument. I would expect better from you.
Greg, you seem to be under a misimpression. The intelligence we were seeking was directed to the end of preventing and mimimizing the deaths of allied combatants, not innocent non-combatants. In any case your argument is just classic consequentialism — a justification of evil means by reference to good ends. I took your earlier post to be a different argument, which is that the means were not evil because water-boarding is not torture. That is a more serious argument than your consequentialist one, but in order for it to be sincere its application must be reciprocal — and you retreated from that. You ought to examine your logic more carefully before criticizing mine.
No, Mr Petrik, the intelligence we gained from the compliance of KSM, Zubaydah, etc. prevented terrorist attacks on non-combatants here in the U.S. and Eurpoe. This has been well documented. Read Thessien’s book Courting Disaster and Jose Rodriguez’s Hard Measures for starters. I’m sorry, but the whole notion of water boarding being intrinsically evil is a false one. Torture itself is not intrinsically evil for sole reason that it cannot b objectively defined. Intrinsic evil is evil by its very object and if you cannot objectively define it, it cannot be intrinsically evil. Before you throw around the term “consequentialism”, take the time to,learn what it actually means.
“Are you cool with the waterboarding of our troops or not?”
Actually we do in SERE training. The same techniques that were applied in training were applied in interrogation.
Now the problem begins…
Greg,
Consequentialism is a method of moral reasoning that determines the morality of an act by examining its objective or end. It is useful unless the act is intrinsically evil. While I’m not aware of a comprehensive list of intrinsically evil acts, we can borrow a list from Pope John Paul II. Quoting Gaudium et Spes, he says that intrinsically evil acts are “any kind of homicide, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and voluntary suicide; whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit; whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution and trafficking in women and children; degrading conditions of work which treat laborers as mere instruments of profit, and not as free responsible persons: all these and the like are a disgrace … and they are a negation of the honor due to the Creator” (Veritatis Splendor, 80). John Paul II was an accomplished moral theologian and he plainly did not regard your idiosyncratic definitional requirements as especially relevant, and nor do I.
A link to what I was referring to:
http://humanevents.com/2007/11/05/waterboarding-a-sereing-experience-for-tens-of-thousands-of-us-military-personnel/
I don’t necessarily agree with the conclusions. But part of the justification by the DOJ for waterboarding terrorists was that it was done in training.
Philip, please answer the question I was asking. Are you cool with Islamo-fascists water-boarding our troops or not?
Phillip, yes I am aware of the report and its conclusions. I know personally some of the report’s contributors and count them as friends. But the DOJ justification was widely regarded by objective parties as legally quite weak. But in any event its merits, if it had any at all, rested in legal analysis, not moral analysis. Not all evil things are illegal.
Mike,
I will answer your question if you answer this. Was waterboarding in SERE training torture?
Phillip,
Yes, this is old and irrelevant news. Consent matters. Rape is intrinsically evil even if sexual intercourse is not.
Your turn.
Not old and irrelevant news. Just because one consents doesn’t make it moral. One may have consented to what was done in SERE, but its still not moral if all physical interrogation is torture.
Mike Petrik on Sunday, January 24, A.D. 2016 at 9:51pm (Edit)
What you say is true, Foxfier, but unless you are cool with the waterboarding of our troops. I don’t see how you can define torture to not include it.
Roughly half of my uncles have been waterboarded. By the US military.
Secondly, “torture” does not mean “things I don’t want to happen to our soldiers.”
I don’t want our guys to get shot, either, but that isn’t torture– that’s part of war.
Gee, Mike, why am I not surprised that you would bring up VS #80.? It doesn’t take a high level moral theologian to see that JPII doesn’t mean what you and people like Mark Shea think it means. It just takes common moral sense. To wit, listed alongside things like torture are deportation (so,we can’t deport any illegal aliens. The 20+ million here in the U.S. will be happy to hear that!) and substandard living conditions. Substandard living conditions doesn’t even constitute a human act. It may or may not be CAUSED by a human act, but it is not a human act in and of itself. It also begs the relevant question I brought up before, how do you even objectively define what substandard living conditions are? It is obviously subjective. If your interpretation of VS#80 is correct moral theology is meaningless.
Greg,
You can leave Shea and his moral preening out of this. I agree that VS#80 cannot be interpreted literally but requires fair-minded exegesis. But no such exegesis can convince me that the torture of the defenseless is any more licit than the murder of the defenseless.
Phillip, fairly understood the term torture, like battery for instance, presupposes a lack of consent.
Foxfier, so I infer from your response that you think that the water-boarding by our troops by the enemy would be morally licit because such water-boarding, while unpleasant, is not torture. If so I congratulate you on your consistency even if not for your clarity.
Edited for readability:
Greg,
You can leave Shea and his moral preening out of this. I agree that VS#80 cannot be interpreted literally but requires fair-minded exegesis. But no such exegesis can convince me that the torture of the defenseless is any more licit than the murder of the defenseless.
Phillip,
Fairly understood the term torture, like battery for instance, presupposes a lack of consent.
Foxfier,
So I infer from your response that you think that the water-boarding of our troops by the enemy would be morally licit because such water-boarding, while unpleasant, is not torture. If so I congratulate you on your consistency even if not for your clarity.
Mike,
Perhaps you mean in a legal sense. But in a moral sense one cannot consent to an intrinsic evil.
Or perhaps you are working towards a definition of torture.
I hate to say it Mike, but your moral reasoning I this thread was really no different than that of Mark Shea, sans the snark. You tossed the world “consequentialism” around the same way he does.
“All is fair in love and war. What a contemptible lie.” Robert Anson Heinlein
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People like Mark Shea who have not defended their country do not merit an opinion on war, torture or anything related thereto. And for all their whining about torture, let them see what happens to pre-born babies every day at Planned Parenthood. Let them fill up on the full measure of what torture really is.
Torture also does not mean “things it is not morally licit for the bad guys to do to our soldiers.” Choosing to fight for ISIS isn’t morally licit, either, so it’s got to go back further in the foundation of the argument.
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Stop trying to tell me what I think and figure out a definition of torture that you will support. Then the way that you are including a bunch of assumptions into your conclusion will actually make sense, because the assumptions and the conclusion are yours.
MP I hardly recall “regularly” pointing out that not every papal utterance is binding, nor was I pushing (one pope) Nicholas V position on slavery as either correct or not–merely adding info to the question of the issue of never doing an evil, when in fact that papal bull said slavery in certain cases was licit.
I also have pointed out that Pope Pius XI has called violations of the principle of subsidiarity a grave wrong. That’s not my mere opinion, but a pope speaking on morality.
Quoting two popes seems to have riled your sensitivities a wee bit.
Phillip,
It is true that one cannot consent to an intrinsic evil, but the presence of consent can be relevant to the definition of that intrinsic evil. See rape for instance. In my a lack of consent is embedded in a proper understanding of torture, just like rape.
Greg, I do try to avoid snark, insults too. I think I have a pretty good grasp of consequentialism, but am quite open to fraternal correction. But I don’t think that our disagreement is over the definition of consequentialism (you apparently just get all hot and bothered by the word). Our disagreement is very simple: I believe that torture is an intrinsic evil and you don’t. Accordingly I believe that one cannot justify torture by evaluating its ends (i.e., consequentialism), whereas you believe that this moral prohibition is inapplicable. I differ from Shea in two areas (aside from the snark). First, I think that defining the boundaries of torture is important and a perfectly fair discussion. I don’t pretend to offer an ontologically certain definition. I only apply the Golden Rule. Since I would regard such abuse of our soldiers to be torture, I would not similarly abuse their combatants. Mark regards the very entertainment of the definitional boundaries as somehow evidence of evil intent, which I regard as absurd. Mark also insisted on asserting that torture was and is ineffective as an interrogation tool, even though (i) this is irrelevant to his own moral claim that torture is intrinsically evil and (ii) he has zero competency to know such matters.
Luke,
I don’t like Shea either. He is an obnoxious blowhard, at least when hiding behind the Internet. But he has always been at least as vocal about the evils of abortion as he has been about torture.
Foxfier,
Your request is granted. I have no idea what you are saying so will no longer try to make sense out of it.
Phillip,
So consent may be part of the definition. But per the link I gave, the individual did not consent to be waterboarded- at least not the last time it was done. He thought he had escaped and would be rewarded. So he was tortured?
DonL, I apologize for not writing more clearly. My papal utterance claim was in reference to this blog, not you. I am mystified as to your diagnosis of my sensitivities.
The other thing to state is that the act of waterboarding in and of itself is not intrinsically evil if one can consent to such a thing and it still be moral. So what other circumstances can it be licit?
Philip,
I disagree that the linked article shows a lack of informed consent.
Second, I agree that waterboarding in and of itself is not intrinsically evil if one can morally consent to it. That does not logically mean that it is not intrinsically evil if one does not consent to it. Sexual intercourse is not intrinsically evil, but is if proper consent is lacking. The fact that we have a word for that second evil act (rape is intercourse without consent) and not for the first (waterboarding without consent) is of no logical moment.
Mike-
where’s your definition?
Twice I answered you, even when it appeared you were making false and irrational accusations against me, personally; was that actually calumny to avoid having to defend your own views on their virtues?
Mike,
There is where we will have problems. Per my link, clearly the individual did not know what his training, let alone waterboarding, involved. No clear idea, no clear consent.
But he was clearly deceived the second time he was waterboarded. he thought he had escaped and that his trainers were acknowledging this. There was no consent to that incident.
Greg Mockeridge wrote, “Torture itself is not intrinsically evil for sole reason that it cannot b objectively defined.”
That shows a deep misunderstanding of the nature of language.
Take Wittgenstein’s example of the word, “game.” It is impossible to devise some definition of “game” that includes everything that we call games, but excludes everything that we do not. However, we are all familiar (i.e. socially) with enough things that are games and enough things that are not games that we can categorize new activities as either games or not.
As Wittgenstein argued in the Philosophical Investigations, there is no reason to look, as we have done traditionally—and dogmatically—for one, essential core in which the meaning of a word is located and which is, therefore, common to all uses of that word. We should, instead, travel with the word’s uses through “a complicated network of similarities, overlapping and criss-crossing”
He argues that definitions emerge from what he termed “forms of life” roughly the culture and society in which they are used. He stresses the social aspects of cognition; to see how language works, we have to see how it functions in a specific social situation. It is this emphasis on becoming attentive to the social backdrop against which language is rendered intelligible that explains Wittgenstein’s elliptical comment that “If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.”