ARE THERE ANY INALIENABLE RIGHTS? The underlying problem here, the reason the slope is slippery, is the utilitarian calculus. The rule here is, as Henley said, “By Any Means Necessary“; in order to protect ourselves we’ll recognize no rights held by the terrorists themselves or, further down the slope, those whose well-being they might care about. On this view, they have thrown away all of their rights; they have alienated themselves from the society from which those rights derive.

But it seems to me that one of the basic components of a liberal society is the willingness to accept danger in order to preserve certain inalienable rights. Even if it would make society safer, liberalism rejects bans on political ideology (radical Islam, say, or Communism during the Cold War). Even if it made society safer, liberalism condemns the Japanese- and Italian-American internments. Safety is pretty clearly not the first principle of liberalism; it can be overridden when fundamental freedoms are at stake. (To quote Tom Allison from Balko’s comments: “If we can justify suspension of a civil liberty in one type of situation, what credibility do we have to argue against suspension of other civil liberties? We often hear strong arguments for suspending the 2nd Amendment, and parts of the 1rst, 5th and other Amendments for reasons of public safety or other compelling reasons.”) We can argue about whence these inalienable rights derive, but it seems to me that if they are not favors bestowed by society then they must be based on truths about the human person. One of those basic truths is human dignity–an inescapable degree of responsibility and worth that we can’t throw away even if we try to. And it’s precisely this dignity that torture assaults; it’s this dignity that torture conditions the torturer to ignore.

I’m not planning to say anything more about this; I’ll print reader mail (I’m sure many people will take issue with lots of stuff here), and if I think of anything else that might be worth saying I’ll say it, but I don’t really expect that there is much more I will be able to figure out any time soon. For now I guess all I can say is that it’s better to die like a man than to live like a utilitarian.