One thing that has struck me about all the gnat straining and camel swallowing of the sundry torture defenders I have encountered is their curious devotion to the inversion of Christian values. Over at What\u2019s Wrong with the World there was a thrilling rhetorical flourish at one point of the discussion, in which I was berated for \u201cpious pose and profane prose<\/a>\u201c. It really was an admirably catchy turn of phrase: sort of like \u201cKeep your rosaries off my ovaries\u201d. Admittedly, both flourishes are in the service of defending grave evil and ridiculing opposition to grave evil, but you have to give them props for sticking in your head\u2013like a Kit Kat jingle.<\/p>\n Anyhow, it reminded me of a little exchange I had recently in my own comboxes. Zippy, remarking on the growing pattern of lies emerging from the \u201cTorture Works\u201d wing of the media, remarked:<\/p>\n The point is that the Rubber Hose Right is, well, a pack of dupes and liars when it comes to discussing the extent to which torture \u201cworks\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n To which I responded (caution, naughty word ahead):<\/p>\n I eagerly look forward to the latest round of fainting spells over your heart-rending \u201clack of charity\u201d toward apologists for torture.<\/p>\n All I can think of is \u201cGentlemen! Fighting in the War Room!\u201d \u2013 President Merkin Muffley, Dr. Strangelove<\/em><\/p>\n The bizarre priorities at work in the, \u2018ow you say, Enhanced Interrogation Enablement Community are grotesque. Write \u201cThose animals tortured that man to death\u201d <\/a>and torture defenders *still* have the gall to lie \u2018Hey! Bush just defined \u2018torture\u2019 differently than you\u201d. You get a tut-tutting scold replying, \u201cA truly Christian person would say, \u201cThose *gentlemen* administered approved enhanced interrogation techniques in a regrettably over-enthusiastic way. President Bush ordered what he felt was alright and you have no right to say he was wrong. I think you are very mean to him!\u201d<\/p>\n If you reply, \u201cDon\u2019t you ever tire of telling God-damned fucking lies that insult everyone\u2019s intelligence including yours?\u201d the torture defender, eyes welling with tears, expresses shock and deeply spiritual dismay at your profanity (even though it\u2019s actually more in the nature of a precise theological formulation combined with a little vulgarity just to blow off frustration). <\/p>\n It\u2019s like so much of torture apologetics consists of a satanic inversion of Chesterton\u2019s maxim: \u201cKeep the conventions. Break the Commandments.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As I contemplate this weird inversion of Christian morality, what also strikes me is the peculiar way in this the Sermon on the Mount gets turned on its head. Jesus\u2019 preaching aims to kill sin at the root\u2013in the heart. He says, for instance:<\/p>\n \u201cYou have heard that it was said to the men of old, \u2018You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.\u2019 22 But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother * shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults * his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, \u2018You fool!\u2019 shall be liable to the hell * of fire.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Likewise, with adultery, he famously remarks that if you so much as look upon a woman lustfully, you have already committed adultery in your heart.<\/p>\n It is, shall we say, a difficult standard to live up to.<\/p>\n But as torture apologetics continues to lay waste to clear Catholic moral thinking among those who have, hitherto, defended human life, it proposes to us (just as abortion apologetics does) an entirely different way of thinking about sin. The goal is to lower the standard so far that *nobody* is guilty of sin. <\/p>\n So, for instance, the abortionist tells us to ignore the question of whether the thing we are killing is a what or a who? We are pressed, not to look at the sin which is in our heart, but at how close you can get to murder without technically doing it. First trimester? Second trimester? What *is* infanticide anyway? The bar is always moved lower.<\/p>\n In exactly the same way, the torture apologist seeks to see how much he can dehumanize his victim without \u201ccrossing the line\u201d of some technical legal boundary. And so you get the spectacle of Christian theologians and philosophers suggesting <\/a>things like \u201cThe fact that [KSM] went through 183 spills means that it wasn\u2019t torture to him<\/strong>\u201d as specimens of \u201cserious and careful\u201d deliberation on the question of torture. <\/p>\n Yet such serious and careful thought does not stop for one moment to realize that you may as well say of a rape victim that \u201cthe fact that she was raped a dozen times in a gang bang means that it wasn\u2019t torture to her<\/strong>\u201c. What never enters the discussion is that, in a torture situation as in a rape, it is the torturer, not the victim, who decides how many time the torture is inflicted.<\/p>\n