Eugene Volokh hits the Eject Button

“All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.”

Their silence is rather deafening.

I don’t know precisely when the torture memo became public, but I was under the impression that it was about a week ago. If that is indeed the case, it is more than a tad disingenuous of Kieran to imply that Instapundit’s response to the torture memo comprised the three posts linked, since none of them are dated after May 21.

I assume this is another rhetorical question, Chun. In any event, he is an evil mentat, addicted to his sapho juice. As to why people pay attention to him, there’s a rather good explanation here.

There are some things a clever wit and nasty repartee won’t get rid of. . .

Can anyone guess the Homer Simpson joke I would make if I were the typically hormonal and immature member of the blogosphere right now? Hint: It’d be in reference to hal’s post of 4:07 am.

“Do I know what rhetorical means?”

Tib, I believe Diogenes already did an exaustive search for honest men and came up lacking. Perhaps the same can be said for good men on the right/pro-war side. I cannot bring myself to believe they all have completely lost their moral compass – to accept that is rather depressing, to say the least.

Don’t you think it would be interesting to hear what Lynndie England thinks of torture. (I wonder if she reads this blog!)

I believe Lynndie is pregnant. I wonder how she’ll explain the photos to her children…
-“Well, I was in a foreign country and they all looked like dirty animals to me!”…?
-“Mu-um, What’s the difference between a person and a dirty animal?”

Yea, one would think that the FBI profilers would start to see a pattern here. . .

Out of curiousity, what blogs comprise the reasonable right? Who would you expect to address the terror memo in some fashion other than “Terror, terror, evil Iraqis”? I would think the reasonable right includes Volokh, Drezner, Kling (exclusively economics), Marginal Revolutions (mostly economics), Jane Galt, and Postrel (though most of her stuff seems to be of the “now it comes in yellow!” variety). I can’t think of anyone else – is there anyone else? Have any of them addressed the terror memo? (Actual question, not snark).

I think Phil Carter counts as a war supporter, and right of center, and he’s addressed it. As I understand it, Jim Henley is to the right, but he’s always been against the war, etc.

It would be quite remarkable to find that there was actually something that the Administration could do that could shock them into silence.

Drezner was recently called out on the blogosphere floor by Matt Stoller for this silence and Drezner’s response was rather limp and flacid. Given Tacitus’ response to that whole affair, I think the predicted opinion is to shoot the messenger because of the way they say it, rather than reply to the substance.

Is torture in defense of free-markets or especially nanotechnology a vice?

The owlish, deep Virginia Postrel posted something the other day about how she was worried that a “non-lethal” mechanism the military is developing that can very rapidly heat water in the body (signaling the nerves that they’re on fire) could be used as a torture device (it’s designed to not damage as long as you move out the way quickly–so it could be applied briefly and repeatedly–causing agony without any physical signs of damage). I’m not sure if she was waiting for it to come out in yellow.

So that’s about the extent of the worries on this issue from the radical statist* reactionary “libertarians,” which shouldn’t surprise anyone overly. As I alluded to earlier, torture has become routinized and thoroughly libidinized, and if Fox were to air a reality-tv show in which contestants have to come up with ways to torture information out of a suspected “Islamofascist,” it’d be much more popular than American Idol.

*Simply means the hierarchical concentration of power and its worship–“corporatist” just confuses the issue.

zizka – “Volokh’s shame over his squeamishness (i.e., decency) is rather sickeningly characteristic of our times.”

I got the very same feeling. It’s also like saying, ‘what do I know about this, I’m not dealing with suspected terrorists first-hand, so I cannot judge’.

And hey, what do I know about this myself, I’m not a lawyer, so I cannot judge a lawyer’s opinion! I didn’t write the constitution or Geneva convention, so, how can I have an opinion on that. I’m not even a politician, so I cannot judge the policy of any government. I’m not a CIA agent, so how can I possibly say they’d be wrong to use torture?

My objections to it would be purely visceral, emotional, not crystal-clear logic.

Laws? well, yeah, laws are not really visceral or emotional stuff, but they’re a matter of interpretation, like the memo says. Especially in these trying times of new challenges to our totally non-fascist freedom by the evil Islamofascists.

All I know is that sometimes you need to do horrible things to avoid even more horrible things. Terrorism is worse than torture. We have to choose the lesser evil when necessary. I won’t go into when it might be necessary and why, not because I’m defending that concept, mind you! just because it’s too sick for me to contemplate. Honest.

Oh, come on, everybody. What part of “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” do you object to?

(“You’re from the Sixties”, he said, wielding a flit gun.)

… and “unlawful”.

It appears that Eugene Volokh feels obligated to do exactly what the administration did. Find out all the legal aspects of the issue. And that’s exactly what the legal team provided. I would imagine that when you are asked to provide a detailed, precise legal opinion for the president, that’s exactly what you do. Mr. Volokh can now read the same information the president has, isn’t this a great country, and act upon it in an informed manner. I know I trust our current brave, but wise administration to use this information with a great moral sense. And Mr. Volokh is free to do the same.

Actually abb1, ‘ol pal. I don’t think I’ve read anywhere where torture as been considered or administered anywhere. Except maybe in California or Pennsylvania. And isn’t it ironic that the only agency taking any real heat for failure is the CIA, because they were unable to do the “spook” thing well enough. Ain’t we something!

q: eh, ok, I get your point, but you know, I’m not depriving anyone of their right to be a fascist by just commenting on it ;)

And no I don’t literally think it’s a fascist thing. Just hypocrite, yeah. And revolting.

Your view appears to be that torture is wrong in all cases. But as your view is the “nice view”

To the “squeamish”, yes, I guess they’d see it like that, but, it’s not, it’s just the literal legal view, according to the Conventions, no matter how they get butchered by Rumsfeld or the memo lawyer posse. I don’t care if there were thousands of American lawyers arguing for the “nasty” view, it’d still remain illegal. And even if their view was publicly announced and inscribed in capitals in a new Patriot Act signed by the President with a televised ceremony presided by the Reverend Moon, it STILL wouldn’t change the contents of the Conventions and declaration of human rights and all international laws defining torture as unconditionally illegal – for the entire rest of the world that signed up to those treaties without “interpreting” them. And since I happen to live in the rest of the world… it wouldn’t change the definition for me.

Unless of course I hypothetically were arrested as an alien terrorist suspect by American officials. In which case I would totally collaborate and humbly bow down to the top democracy in the world. Down on my knees while the broomstick does its precious intelligence-gathering work. You never know what terrible secrets I could be hiding in those dark recesses, but I’m sure they’d find out. I’d gladly sacrifice my ass if it was necessary to save New York.

(Sorry if that was a little too visceral.)

The maintenance of some basic human rights is denied by these two agents. When some Americans get tortured in the future, one would expect the blogger and Rumsfeld to be outraged only because they are “our boys”, and not because the torturers have broken some human rights.

Yeah, I imagine so. I remember very well how those conventions were called on and considered very valid and constitutional when those US soldiers were taken prisoners by Saddam’s army last year in Iraq. That would have been… _after_ the March 2003 memo, isn’t that funny now.

No, pepi, just inconsistent with your views.

rd: ah, it’s all a matter of views, I forgot.

There’s a second factor. The 9/11 attack was not an unprecedented murderous attack on civilians. There were several technically and organizationally unique aspects to 9/11, but the murderousness was normal-range.

The reason that 9/11 is thought to be a world-historical event is that it was an attack on the militarily most powerful nation in the history of the world. It was an attack on someone who was able to retaliate.

At some point the Bosnians, the Salvadorans, the Guatamalans, the Ruandans, the Timorese, and many other have had to learn to forget about murderous episodes which were absolutely much worse, and proportionate to population enormously worse. But these are powerless peoples.

Even the French, the Germans, the Poles, et. al. — larger, more prosperous nations — have had to learn to go on with their lives.

Where does the belief come from that this particular attack is so uniquely horrible that it justifies forgetting about a century or more of attempts to reduce the inhumanity of warfare? As far as I know, it comes from America’s historical impunity. We’ve really been very favored and don’t know how to deal with this.

The secrecy of the adversaries adds to the urgency, but now that we’re focussing on them they have become much less mysterious. (It should be noted, though, that apparently very little effort is apparently being made to trace the international money transfers, usually tracable back to Saudi Arabia, which keep the effort going. There was an article awhile back saying that the Americans working in this area are still mostly concentrating on Cuba.
http://philosophy.thereitis.org/displayarticle248.html ;

Foreign Assets Control<>

Libertrarians who fail to realize this pornographic and entirely withoput redeeming social value, are absolutely worthless for any human purpose and should be mercifully put to sleep. Remember, we’re talking about people who are thrown into a rage by the very idea of the unconstitutional Smithsonian Institute and the unconstitutional National Acadamy of the Arts.

The silence of conservative blogs isn’t evidence that conservatives find the torture memo acceptable. If they supported the memo they’d come out and say so. A more likely explanation is that they’re horrified by the utter depravity of the memo, and don’t want to come out and say that the Attorney General, Secretary of Defense and President appear to be depraved. They’re probably all casting about desperately for some explanation. When they do start to comment on the memo, they’ll probably twist themselves into all sorts of logical contortions to say that the memo didn’t say what it said, that it has been misinterpreted, or that it wasn’t acted upon. Sadly, however, the memo said what it said and apparently was relied upon. Take it from a conservative, that’s tough – what am I supposed to do now? Vote for John Kerry? I hate John Kerry. That voice, that voice, God how I hate that voice!

An answer to the “who is “instapundit,” and why does anyone care what he/she thinks?” question.

Starting around election 2000, I discovered the joys of opinion websites. I couldn’t get enough of them. TheNation.com, NationalReview.com, and and the like all had wonderful arguments about the election and policy and I could not get enough. From there I discovered Spectator.org (right before they totally went down the crapper) and TNR and sites like AndrewSullivan.com (and it was his links to various places that included Instapundit and that got me there the first time).

I visited once in a while but it was no biggie until 9/11. I had to go to work that afternoon and none of the news sites there could handle the load. I was stuck with the net but there wasn’t any news. So I went to instapundit and he updated regularly and linked to people with good insights and when CNN.com and Foxnews.com were down for the forseeable future, Instapundit provided me with something like a link to what was going on when I couldn’t get info anywhere else.

I’ve still got a debt of gratitude towards him for the service he provided on that day.

But, anymore, I just use him as a link page. He gets me to most of the sites I like to read (including this one).

bull: Take it from a conservative, that’s tough – what am I supposed to do now? Vote for John Kerry? I hate John Kerry.

Why not oppose the two-party plurality electoral system? That’s the only thing keeping McCain (or whomever you’d prefer) from running against both Bush and Kerry.

Aside from the obvious barbarism of all this, there is another little problem.

I noticed that “rd” — unlike some other correspndents here (perhaps less trusting in our fearless leaders) — posted his/her real email address. Now, nothing is easier than spoofing someone’s email address. So, it’s not at all impossible that some nut might use rd’s email as a return address in some “ticking bomb” prank. If the prank looks real enough, then rd would probably be visited by some G-men. Then, if rd fits a profile, s/he may be in for some serious unconventional interrogation: hey, they have to do it – it’s the famous “ticking bomb” scenario. Howboutthat?

Like the cat or fool, I am just a lowly and little-respected commenter who may insult the noble with a commoner’s profound understanding of the whimsical and abitrary nature of power, and a commoner’s acceptance rather than the noble’s responsibility. And so:

Were Al Gore President, Eugene Volokh would be much less squeamish.

Prof. Volokh ought to be proud of his squeamishness. After all, it goes by other names: pragmatism is one, decency is another. Pick your synonym.

Now: who on the Right will step up and proclaim their pride in their sadism? And how seriously can they expect to be taken until they do?

Some of you have been asking if there are any “reasonable” libertarian voices on Iraq. Well….check out < a href="http://hnn.us/blogs/4.html">Liberty and Power at the History News Network. We have repeatedly and consistently condemned the abuses of power associated with this war (not to mention the war itself!).

rd-

I can’t help disapproving of your politics, which are vicious and sociopathic. But you smarmy-twit demeanour is really starting to win me over.

Where does the belief come from that this particular attack is so uniquely horrible that it justifies forgetting about a century or more of attempts to reduce the inhumanity of warfare?

And do any of the people who hold it realize that, considering our own past history of diplomatic and financial involvement with really ugly people, legitimizing it makes us one of the fattest targets on earth?

“I can’t help disapproving of your politics, which are vicious and sociopathic. But you smarmy-twit demeanour is really starting to win me over.”

Therein lies the point. There is nothing that I’ve written anywhere in our healthy little exchange today that would lead anyone to conclude any of my thoughts “vicious” or “sociopathic”. Irreverent would be the only charge I couldn’t deny. That’s the deal with these “let’s get whipped into a frenzy arguements”. You’re implications build on themselves into this incoherent circle of accusations and phantom enemies. I pretty much have only been commenting
the nature of the argument itself. We left Volokh behind hours ago. And other than getting you to assume things that I’m far from resembling, I don’t think we accomplished much. I’ll accept the smarmy part. But for the twit snit, I don’t think the forest reveals it’s trees.

rd-
Could you explain your reasoning behind your belief that the administration is trustworthy, brave and wise? Do you believe all administrations have these characteristics?
How do these beliefs fit in with
-the resignation of Tenet
-Richard Clarke saying Bush did a terrible job
-the outing of the CIA spy Valerie Plame
-the Chalabi / WMD fiasco
-the involvement of Halliburton
-the oscillation between unilateralism and the UN/NATO
-and the administration of Iraq including Abu Graib?
Why would Rumsfeld want to classify a document which was straight-forward legal advice?

seb-
I think abb1 is making a point about rights by being ironic.
Could you describe what “classic leftist style” is? I don’t think you meant that “”classic leftist style” means being ironic.

rd: We have been discussing this, probably for years, and certainly since GITMO. And a little paranoia ain’t never hurt nobody. The “torture” here is the time and effort being spent on a media circus with the sole purpose of electing their candidate. I still believe it’s a view thing.

Try again, this time after reading the memo, ie. what you’re supposed to be talking about. Normally you talk about something, you know, after learning what it is. If you don’t read it, no wonder you think it’s all paranoia. Though, if you consider elections “torture”, you may need a lot more background reading than that…

I’ll do my best Crash Davis impersonation. We’ll do them one or two at a time. You can look at like dissecting a conservative frog. Maybe we can set a comment record…

“Do you believe all administrations have these characteristics?”

Yes. You’ve got to believe in something. The system is flawed, that’s what makes it unique. But the participants, for all their quirks are good Americans trying to make the best decisions the can for such a diverse collection of constituents.

Stay tuned.

“Richard Clarke saying Bush did a terrible job”

This is a bit too revealing of you, q. Clarkes views reek of sulking snobbishness. And he’s been proven wrong too much to have credibility.

“-the outing of the CIA spy Valerie Plame”

No clue. Let’s argue this one later.

“-the Chalabi / WMD fiasco”

Fiasco? Chalabi we’ll call “untidy”. Using and being used by such characters serve purposes. Would I rather we lived in a world where these situations didn’t exist? Sure. Will I? Probably not. Lose sleep? Nope.

WMD’s? Stay tuned, impatient young activist type person. They’re there.

Last shot for q

“Why would Rumsfeld want to classify a document which was straight-forward legal advice?”

I have no idea. One delemna is that if we had the money spent on copying documents for everyone that wants one, there would be no hunger anywhere and all health care would be free. Cheap shot, I know.

As much as we want full and open disclosure in our “free” society, many tough, uncomfortable questions have to be asked that require bold, extensive, uncomfortable answers. You’ve seen how people respond with a camera on them. It’s not real and it’s not always honest. And by honest I mean, strong, meaningful answers.

I don’t know the answers to your questions, and have no doubt that mistakes are made and wrong is done. q, the group you associate yourself with, whatever it’s intentions, are also necessary. Will people tend to make more “right” decisions with both of us in the world. I think so. You’ve got to believe in something.

Respond more if you want. I’m sure ol Crooked Timber here as had enough of me. I’ll back off unless you take something completely wrong from what I intended. g’day.

This is par for the course for Volokh. I generally have a lot of respect for him; but aside from gay marriage, he almost invariably finds a convenient reason like this one to avoid blogging about politically infelicitous subjects that everyone else is blogging about. I’d like to think he doesn’t do this consciously. I wonder if he’s mistaking his squeamishness at confronting his own intellectual inconsistency for the squeamishness at confronting the rationalization of brutality. Or is it the same thing? Might be. All the more reason for him to look away, look away.

_“Do you believe all administrations have these characteristics?” Yes. You’ve got to believe in something. The system is flawed, that’s what makes it unique. But the participants, for all their quirks are good Americans trying to make the best decisions the can for such a diverse collection of constituents._

rd-
Even if you believe all the administrations have these characteristics (trustworthy, brave and wise), it seems unlikely they will all score the same. What CRITERIA do you use to rate whether one administration is better than the other?

(btw you have not yet answered the questions about the memo.)

q. “What CRITERIA do you use to rate whether one administration is better than the other?”

By height.

q. “rd-
Have you read the memo?
Isn’t the current administration, White House and Pentagon taking the heat at the moment?
Why did they produce a report of torture if they are not intending torturing people?”

Read?, as in word for word. No. Attention deficit syndrome. I figured out the concept early on. (Probably a compensation from attention deficit syndrom) Yes, they are taking heat. Flip answer – because they know I would be disappointed in them. Real answer, not all Americans agree that we would rather accept large losses of American lives on American soil rather than mistreat one captured terrorist. And you may rightfully dispair about where we draw the line. Great moral debate, quite worthy of this country’s attention at all levels of humanity. So what is torture? Taking a sobriety test? Sleep deprevation? Forced grotesque behavior? Physical harm? Where do you start? About a thorough, no holds barred legal brief covering every option. Does that mean that just because an arguement can be made that through twists and turns of legal precedent nothing is “legally” prohibitive? Of course not. What goes on in between is well worth the debate and could have far ranging impact on the future of our country.

Usually we get some smart, thoughtful commentary and debate on CT. Not this time, sadly. Worked my way through all 80-something comments, and most of it was wasted space.

The sophomore-level tripe from rd was a real time-waster. Thought he might actually provide some insight on the way the right views the torture controversy. Instead, the conversation only ended up in “Nyah Nyah, I know you are but what am I” type school yard crap.

Go play in your sandbox, rd, and quit wasting bandwith with your drivel. Trivializing the state-sanctioned torture of people under our own government’s oversight is not funny, nor is your rendering of the subject.

TWIT.

Hmmm, interesting how people are now required to blog about whatever the current topic is, no matter how comfortable they are about doing so, how firm (or soft) their views, or any of a number of different reasons they might have for not saying something. It is really poor treatment talk about Volokh as if he (tacitly) approves of torture unless at least one person here has proof of it, which no one here has so far presented evidence of. All we have is a lot of arguing over Volokh’s decision not to post about the torture memos; can any one here say that he has not talked with people, or written letters to his representatives, or spoken out on campus, or even decided upon a position on, either for or against, the argument in the memos?

One’s blog entries are NOT communal property, even if IA commenters tended to feel otherwise about the comment threads, because the blogger is expressing him/herself. Whatever he feels about the memos, he doesn’t owe anyone an apology for choosing not to comment on them in his blog.

Hmmm, interesting how people are now required to blog about whatever the current topic is, no matter how comfortable they are about doing so, how firm (or soft) their views, or any of a number of different reasons they might have for not saying something. … Whatever he feels about the memos, he doesn’t owe anyone an apology for choosing not to comment on them in his blog.

I guess we’re at that point in the thread where the content of the original post has been forgotten. A reminder:

At the end of the day, Eugene doesn’t have to write about anything he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t have to take the trouble to publicly explain his decisions, either. But I can’t help feeling disappointed that we’re not going to hear from him … The right blogosphere has been a bit quiet about this issue in general, though again I acknowledge that people are free to choose their own topics, especially when it comes to blogs run as hobbies.

A pleasant afternoon listening to rd talking to himself.

Any very stupid person will find it extremely gratifying to control the agenda of a lot of smart but excessively polite people. The ignorant slut must be absolutely giddy with delight by now.

agm: that’s all very well and of course anyone can write about anything, or not. And anyone has a right to comment on that, too. No one is forcing anybody, right?

You forget thought that this not just someone avoiding the topic altogether. He is not going to go into detailed discussion, but he is nonetheless writing about it. The quote at the top, the whole post, are about torture, and the memos.

And I don’t think it’s that wild to comment on the view that “sometimes people need to do disgusting things to avoid greater harms”, or on a question assuming there is a possible choice between “torture” and “saving lives” – just because the author says he’s really to squeamish to argue about it, doesn’t mean he hasn’t given a couple of clear indicators he’s thinking in terms of “lesser evil” choices, therefore, not really dismissing torture altogether.

It’s not even hypothetical scenarios anymore, since the memos have been published already and they do contain those very assumptions.

Now I couldn’t care less what Volokh writes about or not, I don’t read his website. But it’s interesting his reaction seems so widespread. Indifference, or unwillingness to delve into it. It’s not because the topic is so horrible, it’s because it calls into question everything about political power and decisions and the nature of this democracy we’re supposed to be exporting and the moral authority that’s been invoked to do so. And especially for anyone who supported the entire Bush anti-terrorism policy and the Iraq “strategy”, it requires either too much self-criticism, OR the honesty to acknowledge they’re inded sharing those same “lesser evil” mentality to justify even torture – and that’s what the squeamishness is about.

“Any very stupid person will find it extremely gratifying to control the agenda of a lot of smart but excessively polite people. The ignorant slut must be absolutely giddy with delight by now.”

Dear polite person, I may be an ignorant slut, but I haven’t been real giddy lately.

I accept the validity of the debate as to what extent Americans might accept pursuading violent prisoners to provide potential lifesaving information. Should they be granted the same rights as an American citizen accused of malfeasance, or is the another level reserved for those who would murder innocent women and children. What is acceptable – q.? pepi? I can see why Volokh hasn’t come out of the closet yet. What does John Kerry propose? Is it as simple as the Golden Rule? Can these terrorists be negotiated with? Are we wrong about the threat? Is it uncomfortable that as a nation, we portend to abhor such behavior, yet so many Americans willingly exhibit the same behavior in prisons at home and abroad. Go ahead and elect your candidate, life will go on. But if you’re going to debate this issue, do it honestly. This can’t be just about Volokh or Bush. These issue were prevelant in the previous administration. Remember, this country has hundreds of thousands of twits like me. Give us good choices and you might accomplish something.

Dr. Weevil wrote:

Reading Volokh in context, it appears to me that that is a gross misrepresentation, and that Volokh is apologizing for being too squeamish to write about torture, which is not at all the same thing. It is not that he would like to support torture but is held back by “anti-torture ethical qualms” but that he would like to examine the question thoroughly and dispassionately and is held back by revulsion from the entire subject.

Quite correct which is no doubt why those who wanted to do a “why aren’t conservative bloggers talking about this” theme decided to take his comments out of context in order to get a version that fit more closely with the story they were trying to create.

Great comeback from “Caddyshack”. I couldn’t resist. Sometimes I just crack myself up.