In a piece ironically titled “Tortured Reasoning,” Thomas Sowell props up a purely fictional hypothetical and displays his disregard for any moral standards whatsoever when the security of Americans is at stake:
If you knew that there was a hidden nuclear time bomb planted somewhere in New York City — set to go off today — and you had a captured terrorist who knew where and when, would you not do anything whatever to make him tell you where and when? Would you pause to look up the definition of “torture”? Would you even care what the definition of “torture” was, when the alternative was seeing millions of innocent people murdered?
To hell with moral principles! If you were in this tiresomely fantastic scenario, you should do “anything whatever”! Don’t pause to think about the difference between right and wrong. Don’t even care about it. You’ve got to rise above morality and do what’s necessary! This is anything-goes moral relativism, friends. Nothing is off the table when the alternative is seeing millions of innocent people murdered. Sowell has an ethics here–it’s an ethics based on fear, fantasy, deference to military power, and an aversion to rational thought. It’s poison. Don’t take it.
Hat tip: Steven L. Taylor
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