Article Summary: The Case For Torture By Michael Levin

In the article titled The Case for Torture written by Michael Levin, his introduction mentions how we perceive torture as barbaric and that ‘enlightened’ societies outright reject this idea. Which I agree with, torturing someone is never okay, under any circumstances. Industrialized societies reject this idea because we have civilized to the point of understanding the moral unjust of torture. As he also mentioned, those who do not comply with this moral righteousness faces the United States forcing its beliefs down their throat. His stance, however, disagrees with the idea that torture is wrong. I argue that torture is never a last resort, there are always more humane alternatives. In his example, he mentions a terrorist hiding an atomic bomb on Manhattan Island that is set to go off two hours after they caught the perpetrator. The terrorist states that he would rather die than disclose his information, Levin ask a simple question, what do we do? His response is to terrorize the terrorist, mine is to evacuate the area. If the man is caught two hours before the bombing is to go off and officials are aware of the location, but he’s not talking, why don’t they just evacuate the area. If the man is so deranged that he won’t talk through …show more content…
Actually, torturing terrorist IS unconstitutional, especially if that terrorist is a US citizen. Not probably. They are protected by the 8th amendment, which is no cruel and unusual punishment, and judicial review, which allows due process. He also argues how letting innocent people die because you couldn’t ‘apply the electrodes’ is cowardly and immoral. I could sleep at night knowing that I didn’t torture someone without a guarantee of any new lifesaving information arising. I wouldn’t be able to sleep knowing we had all this other information and the government never acted, that our focus on torturing this person led us to drive millions to their