Mean Torture Acceptance by Religious Affiliation [Pew]
3. LIBERTY/OPPRESSION
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opportunities and thus accept an unequal distribution of rewards as an equitable allocation reflecting Fairness-in-proportion to contribution.
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nonauthoritarians’ strong out-group preference, this makes liberals manifest
heightened concern for the welfare of subordinate, vulnerable groups. Liberals look to government to help protect the weak, and this sometimes extends beyond seeking equality of rights to equality of outcomes (Haidt 2012).
Thus, while Liberty/Oppression is a foundation of both liberal and conservative moralities, liberals and conservatives disagree about the source of oppression and the path to liberty. Conservatives see big government as oppressive when it is intervening domestically through social programs and regulatory policies that infringe on the liberties of individuals within the in-group. At the same time, conservatives see big government as an instrument of liberty when it is intervening abroad through aggressive foreign policy or when its constraint of individual liberties at home protect the interests of the in-group. Government sanctioned torture is, through this inwardly-directed lens, one of the ways that the government keeps us free. Liberals, by contrast, see social and economic inequalities as oppressive and look to government (as liberator) to address domestic problems and inequalities through social programs and regulatory policies.
They are critical of the government’s pursuit of neoliberal economic and aggressive foreign policies that further U.S. interests at the expense of others. Government sanctioned torture is, through this outwardly directed lens, an expression of systemic oppression of the Other.
CARE, LIBERTY AND TORTURE OPINION
The significance of the Care and Liberty foundations in shaping public opinion of torture is evident in the discourses surrounding the issue that lessen concerns about
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harm and tyranny. David Luban (2005), scholar of law and philosophy, argues that torture is normalized and made acceptable through what he calls the “liberal ideology of torture” – the belief that torture can be compatible with liberal democracies when separated from its historical associations with cruelty and tyranny.
The liberal ideology of torture pervades contemporary discourse in various ways, but it is distilled and presented most clearly in the ticking time-bomb scenario. Luban sees the time-bomb scenario as a rhetorical device that makes torture acceptable to liberal democracies by providing a moral justification for torture while it separates torture from its historical associations with cruelty and tyranny, both abhorrent to liberal democracts. The time-bomb scenario’s first rhetorical move is to frame the torture debate in terms of a utilitarian argument, where the wrong of torturing a single suspect is set against the greater evil of many deaths, and it is, therefore, made right by comparison. Having provided grounds for its moral justification, the time-bomb scenario further unlinks torture from its associations with tyranny and cruelty by portraying it as a last resort instead of a systematic, governmental policy. Rather than being used by a tyrannical government against its people as vengeful punishment for past crimes, torture is used by a democratically elected government for its people as a matter of present and future national security (Luban 2005). According to this scenario, even the torturer can be imagined as a conscientious interrogator rather than a tyrant.
As we saw with the meta-analysis in chapter one, the time bomb scenario is ubiquitous in surveys that ask about torture. Nearly all explicitly mention the purpose of torture as gaining information and protecting lives. The few questions (2-5) that don’t
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mention gaining information or saving lives directly still invoke the fight against terrorism as the purpose. The exceptional nature of government use of torture, as portrayed in the time-bomb scenario, is instrumental in garnering acceptance. Legalizing torture is wildly unpopular, and the permissability of torture in contexts outside the war on terror is not raised by any national survey.
According to philosopher Jessica Wolfendale (2009), the association of torture with cruelty is further diminished through the surrounding cultural discourse of “torture lite,” which presumes that certain techniques do not cause excessive pain and suffering and so are not real torture. “Torture lite” is used to differentiate certain interrogation techniques from what would otherwise simply be called “torture,” signified in
contemporary discourse by terms such as enhanced-, harsh-, or coercive interrogation.
Techniques such as sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures, standing for long periods of time, etc., are instances of “torture lite.” These techniques are popularly perceived as
“lite” because they do not leave physical marks on the body and because they are conducted at a distance from the victim through some other medium.
When asked about particular interrogation techniques, the public
overwhelmingly prefers non-abusive, non-torturous methods of interrogation, such as offering detainees positive incentives. However, among the coercive interrogation techniques offered, torture lite techniques such as sleep deprivation, prolonged
standing, cramped confinement, hooding, noise bombing, and humiliation are the most accepted (each receiving majority support on at least one national survey), while techniques entailing direct contact such as electric shocks, waterboarding, punching,
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kicking, and sexual assault are consistently the least accepted. Alternately called “clean techniques,” “stealth torture,” “gray torture,” or “stress and duress,” these are the torture techniques most familiar to the U.S. public and of most interest to opinion pollsters (Rejali 2009, 359). According to Rejali, they are popular among modern democracies in part because they leave no marks on the body and so can more easily evade the international human rights monitoring agencies to which they are subject (2009, 358). The CIA developed these techniques after discovering that the combination of “sensory disorientation” and “self-inflicted pain” was the fastest, most reliable means for “breaking” prisoners; whereas direct, physical pain often provoked heightened resistance, this “no-touch torture” “causes victims to feel responsible for their suffering and thus capitulate more readily to their torturers” (McCoy 2006, 8). Ironically, despite the fact that these methods break their victims faster, their traumatic effects last longer, and they are considered torture by international law – the public views clean techniques as less harmful and less cruel. In that sense, they are not really torture.
Given that the Care/Harm and Liberty/Oppression foundations are significant to both political groups, the liberal ideology of torture likely plays a major role in the high rates of torture acceptance in the decade following 9/11. Conservatives, who tend to prioritize the needs of the group above individual autonomy, are susceptible to an argument for torture that pits the care of the group against the rights of the individual.
Conservatives are more likely to see violence as a necessary force for the social good, both when it comes to military intervention and the use of corporal punishment. The
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casting of torture as an exceptional practice performed by the government sidesteps conservative sensitivity to government tyranny by placing government action in the position of protector of the people against an enemy Other. Liberals, who are more strongly attached to the Care/Harm foundation and tend to prioritize individual liberties above group security, need more convincing to get over their strong aversion to
inflicting harm. Presenting the torture question within the context of the time bomb scenario appeals to the Care foundation by emphasizing the possibility of saving lives. By recasting torture as something less harmful than real torture, torture lite discourse may also be an effective means of garnering support for torture from Lib/Dems.
LAST THREE FOUNDATIONS
According to Haidt, liberal morality is composed of three foundations – Care, Fairness, and Liberty. Liberals are ambivalent about the remaining three foundations.
Conservative morality, by contrast, includes the liberal foundations and three additional foundations: Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, and Sanctity/Degradation.
The paired-down morality of liberals is not peculiar to U.S. culture. It is
ubiquitous among the subset of the global population who herald “from cultures that are Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic” (Haidt 2012, 96, underlines added). Haidt calls this “WEIRD morality,” based on the concept developed by Joe Henrich, Steve Heine, and Ara Norenzayan in their paper “The Wierdest People in the World?” (Haidt 2012, 96). Most of the global population are members of non-WEIRD cultures, and so represent the statistical norm in terms of morality. Compared to the rest of the global population, people from WEIRD cultures are statistical outliers who
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hold a relatively atypical worldview that informs their moral judgments. Haidt (2013, 40) reflects that “[t]here’s something about the process of becoming comparatively well-off and educated that seems to shrink the moral domain down to its bare minimum,” but he doesn’t speculate what that might be.11
Members of WEIRD cultures think analytically, “detaching the focal object from its context, assigning it to a category, and then assuming that what’s true about the category is true about the object.” They conceptualize the self as an autonomous individual that perceives the world in terms of “separate objects rather than
relationships” (Haidt 2012, 97, 96). As a result, WEIRD moral systems are individualistic and rule-based. Their morality focuses on issues of harm and fairness; the main moral goals are to reduce harm, and increase fairness. Liberals (as well as libertarians [Haidt’s term] or laissez faire conservatives [Stenner’s term]) share these characteristics of this WEIRD morality.
Members of non-WEIRD cultures, by contrast, think holistically, “seeing the whole context and the relationship among parts.” They conceptualize the self in terms of roles and relationships, and perceive the world in terms of relationships among parts (Haidt 2012, 97). In consequence, their moral systems are sociocentric, prioritizing the needs of the group above those of the individual (Haidt 2012, 97, 98). Non-WIERD morality focuses on more than just issues of harm and fairness and, as with conservative morality, relies upon the additional foundations of Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity.
11 I would speculate that the diminishment of the moral palate to the non-groupish foundations is related to the encounter with social diversity, both physically through industrialization and urbanization, and intellectually through education. Moral foundations such as Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity, which foster tribalism, may not be as adaptive in a social context that rewards greater interdependence among groups rather than divisive competition between them.
133 4. LOYALTY/BETRAYAL
The Loyalty/Betrayal foundation evolved in response to the “adaptive challenge of forming cohesive coalitions.” It is characterized by emotions of group pride and rage against traitors, originally triggered by indications of someone’s allegiance or disloyalty (Haidt 2012, 140).