[ShadowMarth]

Wow, hit the character limit... Continued here. Also, I removed Mormon's post. It was just straight flaming. Read and post intelligently or don't post at all, because I'll delete it anyway. Also, Arthur, thanks for taking it seriously. I'm fairly surprised.

Tim
Chris
Clint
Sheffey
Russell (ShadowMarth)
(Notes I made that were not part of the original text)

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"And the whole point of this was to post the reasons for why I think the way I do for you and Chris to read"

This, if I may be so frank, is an outright lie. If your goals were to simply show us what you think without rebuttal in the middle of a sentence, or if you just wanted time to organize your thoughts, this would have been resolved in private messages, emails, IM, or something similar. This, however, is not the case. You wanted to bring this argument that you felt so high and mighty about drug out into the public eye. To make us seem like the right-wing 'bad guys' and that you were some righeous crusader of the light.

And don't even try to say otherwise. It's plain as day at the top of the bloody page. You can't just plug your ears and act like it didn't happen here.


"Ok, so I was flamed by my friends when we were talking and the subject of torture came up. They believe in a little thing called "human rights" and I on the other hand am for torture."

This is an indirect comment. You did not address the friends in question, and, hell, you didn't even acknowledge that they might read this anywhere in the note. This post was to show everyone you know that might end up reading this literary abortion how you're better than the two charlatans that oppressed you earlier. You want others on the internet to come and agree with you, so you could throw it in our faces later.


Lets also look at the term 'flaming,' while we're at it. Flaming is the hostile and insulting interaction between people.(usually on the internet, but that doesn't apply here.) It is a deroggatory term, insinuating that we deliberately crawled up your ass with a blowtorch for suggesting what you did, reguardless of what you said. (which, I remind you, wasn't much, but again, that's another argument for another day. I won't address it here.) When your common internet user sees 'flaming' it often calls to mind simple, narrowminded Trolls haunting message boards or chatrooms. Insinuating that we were 'flaming' you about this is a pretty heavy insult.


"You are no better than those Christian extremists who stand on street corners and hold signs and yell at gays how they are going to go to hell. If you want to be respected and get others to hear what you have to say at least try to understand where they come from with their views."

You say that if you want others to respect your views, that they must first respect theirs. This, Tim, is a double-edged sword, and if you're going to wield it, you have to be careful not to cut yourself. By posting this for all the world to see, and painting the two of us in such a light as you did instead of keeping this a private matter, you have disrespected us. You may not have realized it at the time, but this is the case, and it is one of the more childish things I've seen you pull.


Also, for the record, we didn't bring religion into this, I would respect it if you did the same. That is an entirely separate situation, much like the original root of this. You did remove the original reference, but that doesn't change what you said, and you continue with the theme in later posts anyway. I'd rather not be compared to the ignorant Bible-beaters that you speak of, who simply use Jesus as an excuse to be a bigot.


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Stirring the pot. So is it moral to use torture to save lives when there is an eminent threat to people (and say there is evidence to prove that the threat is actually eminent, not just that interrogators believe the threat is eminent)? Why or why not? Furthermore, is it moral to use torture to save lives only when it's say an eminent threat to a city (large scale), or an individual (small scale)? Why or why not for each case? Finally, is it possible that while torture is immoral, is it actually immoral NOT to torture in one of these eminent situations, and those situations only? Why or why not?


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"You are no better than those Christian extremists who stand on street corners and hold signs and yell at gays how they are going to go to hell."

I would tend to disagree. Those people try and force their beliefs on the public, whereas Chris and Russell are responding to a single incident, and have commented many times on the lack of privacy that they would have preferred.


"I read all your posts and the part in my first note where I said that the terrorists do it so why shouldn't we was just another log I was throwing in the fire."

"I didn't want to argue"

So not only did you just admit that one of your first statements was something you made up to get people heated, but then you got angry when people did get heated.

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It would be easy to respond to you, Clint, with blanket statement copy pasta from above, but I'll go ahead and hit each point.

1) No. We as a people are no better than those threatening us if we allow and propagate the use of torture or other such alleviations of human rights.

2) No. While some human rights may be lessened, or completely done away with in situations of national security, but torture is a non-derogable human right. The act of torture is immoral, regardless of scale.

3) Again, no. Resorting to torturous methods is cruel and unusual, regardless of situation. There are other ways of obtaining the information we would need in all the situations you've described.

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"This is opinion. Try as you might you can't win because this isn't an argument, this is two separate opinions."

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that opinions are infallible, because they're just opinions. Ok, time for me to pull a Tim and compare you to a group of people largely hated by the public...

...Racists! Just because they have an opinion does not make it right. Opinions can be wrong. We don't have to respect their opinion just because its an opinion, just like you're not having your opinion respected.