Remember when Ben Shapiro said in an interview that his sisters “can’t watch TV anymore because of all the raunchy broadcasting”? Well, we think Ben’s parents should prohibit Ben from watching TV, because it’s warping his mind (and a mind that was carefully homeschooled for all those years is a terrible thing to waste).
Yes, sadly Harvard Law student Ben turns out be be just another coach potato preoccupying himself with steamy fantasies involving Jack Bauer, as shown in his latest column “Where’s Jack Bauer When You Need Him?.” (The title apparently refers to Ben’s belief that we need Jack Bauer to torture Andrew Sullivan until Sully recants his claim that torture is wrong.)
Anyway, here’s a bit from Ben:
No one doubts that arbitrary torture is wrong. Were we to pull random American citizens from their homes and drag them into a cell for a bit of waterboarding, we would undoubtedly be destroying our own moral fiber and discrediting our history. We would be no better than the Islamists we fight. But there is a fundamental difference between our treatment of non-citizens and our treatment of citizens.
Watch out, Canadians!
This does not mean we should treat all outsiders as terrorists. We should treat outsiders with civility as long as they do not threaten our civilization — this in and of itself distinguishes us from our enemies. If, however, outsiders threaten our civilization, we should do what we deem necessary. If we must sometimes get our hands dirty to protect Western civilization, so be it. Western civilization is not a fragile edifice, infinitely susceptible to fruits of fascism. We will not become Nazis because we torture terrorists. We can safely fight our enemies without destroying that which makes us what we are.
That’s an Interesting belief for a religious man: that Western civilization is so strong that we can torture all the terrorists we want without ever turning into the bad guys. But here are some questions for Ben: Just how many “terrorist associates” can we torture before we become Nazi-esque? How many of those who were in the wrong place at the wrong time when we conducted a roundup can we torture before we lose the moral high ground? And what if we find that torture isn’t effective, but we do it anyway, just because it gives us the illusion of power over our enemies — doesn’t that cause some kind of a cloud over our claims to being civilized? And if, as you say, the one question we must ask ourselves when deciding how to treat our enemies is “Do the benefits of torture in this case outweigh the harms?” then why not use that standard for every case when we are dealing with somebody who might be a danger to our civilization? Why not torture child molesters, war protesters, and litter bugs?
Anyway, I’ll let the rest of you weigh in on this — I want to go get Jack Bauer and have him “persuade” Ben to enlist in the infantry.