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The Literary Roots of Human Rights

news.harvard.edu — The aim was determining the truth and the technique was torture. Pain was administered in secret, under strict guidelines, often with a judge and doctor present. Once a suspect confessed, the confession would have to be repeated in court.

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  • tranzport, on 04/24/2008, -1/+8major digg....really really fascinating: "Scholar points to the novel as a key spur to the sympathy that precedes notion of rights"
  • kfed2, on 04/24/2008, -8/+3The belief that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was largely the result of evidence obtained by torturing a person believed to be in the know.
    • masterm1nd, on 04/24/2008, -2/+5You heard it here first from k-fed
      • kfed2, on 04/25/2008, -0/+1You may have heard it first from some guy on digg, but I am not actally the source of this information. Take a look at my links with an open mind if you care to.
        • masterm1nd, on 04/25/2008, -1/+1I did and it didn't support your claim.
          • kfed2, on 04/25/2008, -0/+1it is not my claim - that was my earlier point. It is an established fact.
    • pintomp3, on 04/24/2008, -3/+2actually, a lot of that false intel came from ahmed chalabi and curveball. many intelligence agencies, including the CIA, considered chalabi unreliable. the neocons didn't care, because he was saying what they wanted to hear. they used this bad intel to justify the invasion.
  • kfed2, on 04/24/2008, -5/+3OK, I had to come back with the links because there are too many neocons that will dispute this:
    http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/Iraq_Al_Qaeda_Co ...
    http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/Iraq_Al_Qaeda_Co ...
  • FredFredrickson, on 04/24/2008, -3/+5If I could change your mind about how great torture is merely by torturing you, how could you still believe it might be a useful technique for reliable data extraction?
    • masterm1nd, on 04/24/2008, -2/+3It's not. However, If you have a bomb in a large building in a large city, and you have the guy who armed it in your custody, if all else fails, you can only increase your chances of stopping the bomb (saving many innocent lives) by expanding your interrogation toolbox. Everyone draws their own line on what would be torture. When someone sets a plan in motion to kill thousands of innocents, the give up their own rights. Your rights end where others rights begin. Are you telling me that if a thousand people are going to die, you've tried everything else, you would sit on your hands until the thousand died rather than barely hurt or scare the guy responsible to give you a X% chance of saving the thousand. As you know, rarely if ever does a situation like that happen so rarely if ever would the measures be called for.
      • demiurgency, on 04/24/2008, -1/+3Hmmmm... I think maybe you shouldn't be drawing material for a discussion on human rights and the morality of torture from an episode of 24.
      • masterm1nd, on 04/24/2008, -2/+1Never even seen the show. Ok, I have like twice. But the reality is, this is reality. Just imagine if we could have waterboarded the 911 ***** before hand. No 911, No wars, plural... In that particular case, it would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. I guess to be fair Saddam still would racked up a few hundred thousand more kills then.
      • SpinningHead, on 04/24/2008, -2/+1Yeah, we should probably throw out all our laws and the constitution to make sure we would be safe in any situation....especially those thought up by Hollywood screenwriters. How stupid of the founders to draw up such rules when we were at war.
        • masterm1nd, on 04/25/2008, -0/+1How can you use the hollywood argument after you just buried my 911 example? The fact is, some shady ***** goes down to work around constitution.
      • SkinnyPuppy, on 04/25/2008, -1/+2That is the exact same logic this government uses to take away our rights.
        ...lies and all.
        • masterm1nd, on 04/25/2008, -0/+1My logic doesn't take your rights unless you give them up by planning and executing to kill thousands of innocent people. My gives a chance at saving many...hope... and saves the guy a lesser charge of conspiracy to murder...
    • twomeyw23334, on 04/25/2008, -0/+1If could change your mind merely by blowing you up with a bomb that a captive new about it, how could you still believe it might not be a useful technique for data extraction.

      I think everyone agrees torture, own its on right, is bad, just like locking someone in a cell is bad. The question is if the alternative (to do nothing) is worse.
      "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
  • mooseontheloose, on 04/24/2008, -14/+4Humans rights are gifts from God therefore it probably starts with the Bible
    • CTRaider, on 04/24/2008, -8/+4I guess those people who don't believe in God are the ones digging you down. And you are right.
      BTW folks, the Bible has been around a while and played a major role in the freedoms established for the USA.
      • LongShlong, on 04/24/2008, -4/+5That doesn't justify the existence of the Bible.
    • barius, on 04/24/2008, -2/+4The Spanish Inquisition would like a word with you...
      • LongShlong, on 04/24/2008, -4/+1Or any young boy who has been molested by a figure of the church.
    • demiurgency, on 04/24/2008, -1/+2There's a lot more truth in that statement than most people will give credit for. Exodus was truly revolutionary in defining for a set of ten commandments that all (Jewish) people must live by, whether they be kings or beggars, herdsmen or lawmakers. This is in stark contrast to other ancient cultures, like Egypt, or Assyria, where a king is considered a god.

      Christianity was a revolutionary faith, whereby all men, regardless of their material wealth, were ultimately accountable to God. All men had souls, and in that way at least, they were all equal. It's not coincidence that Christianity arose out of slavery.
  • Nelka, on 04/24/2008, -2/+3Thanks, I found this interesting.
  • LongShlong, on 04/24/2008, -13/+1There are no things as rights... Only privileges.
    • matador3, on 04/24/2008, -2/+4Granted by whom exactly? Put another way, how can a group of people have rights that an individual person does not. Which person in the group is in the position to grant rights to the rest, and why?
      • LongShlong, on 04/24/2008, -6/+3Go to Wikipedia. When you get to there, in the search field for Wikipedia, I want you to type in ‘Japanese Americans 1942′ you’ll find out all about your precious *****’ rights.
  • demiurgency, on 04/24/2008, -1/+6Dugg. Great read about the novel's role in the evolution of human consciousness. I would love to see more people be aware that most of the thoughts we consider unalienable and basic to human nature are anything but, and that the notion of basic human rights is one of humankind's most remarkable achievements.

    Sort of unrelated, but one little detail I love in Battlestar Galactica is the President's and Admiral's shared love of reading novels. I think the writers of that series are aware of how important the novel -- even as trivial as a murder mystery -- is for building empathy toward other human beings and is a quality that we should want in our leaders.
  • WebWizard, on 04/25/2008, -0/+2Very timely. We are, as always, 'at choice'. How will history record our time?
    "But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost is lost forever."
    John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, 1775
  • matador3, on 04/25/2008, -2/+4One of the most eloquent defenses of inalienable individual rights has to be The Law by Frédéric Bastiat. http://www.constitution.org/law/bastiat.htm Check it out, it's a hell of a good read if you've got some spare time. Note to atheists: He refers to God given rights (it was written over 150 years ago) but if you interchange nature with God the logical consistency is not diminished.
  • Nelka, on 04/25/2008, -0/+1CTRaider. I'm not sure he is being dugg down by those who do not believe in God, but because he's making the assumption that there is no morality without the bible. Your statement about the Bible paving the freedoms of the USA is also inaccurate, which is why you are being buried now. I am not attempting to knock religion or the bible. These can be of good use to many people. But it is vacuous to suggest that morality stems from religion and the bible only. Especially when just as many horrors have stemmed from these things.
  • nny777, on 04/25/2008, -0/+1Strange, I was wondering about the beginnings of human rights and civil liberties today. Digg, you read my mind again.
  • itsbasu, on 05/26/2008, -0/+0WOW thats right. Pain was administered in secret.
    http://www.photoconfessions.com
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