[lit-ideas] Re: Waterboarding Bodies Mattered
- From: Phil Enns <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:13:57 +0700
I had written:
"I have no problems with Omar being accorded the same treatment within
the U.S. legal system as any other U.S. citizen ..."
to which John McCreery wrote:
"Point of information. Is Omar a U.S. citizen? Am I wrong to believe he is not?"
Thank you for pointing this out. I assume that Omar is not a U.S.
citizen but that 'other' slipped in by mistake. The sentence should
read:
"I have no problems with Omar being accorded the same treatment within
the U.S. legal system as any U.S. citizen ..."
John continues:
"If, however, one's goal is to understand, without necessarily
forgiving or approving, the thinking in question, it may be worth
noting the two models of political morality suggested by George
Lakoff. In one, the nurturant family model typically associated with
those of a liberal or progressive orientation, moral principles, e.g.,
"We do not torture" are held to be universal in application. In the
other, the patriarchal family model typically associated with those of
a conservative or reactionary orientation, the application of moral
principles is confined to within the family, or the nation state
construed as the family writ large."
I don't want to mess up that nice binary opposition, but there are
some of us who argue for a combination of the two. We believe there
are universal norms with universal application but that in the
political realm these cannot be realized in practice except through
the actions of democratic countries that have law-governed
constitutions. For example, we could not have the UDHR without
different democratic countries, each having their own constitution and
citizenry, ratifying it.
Sincerely,
Phil Enns
Yogyakarta, Indonesia
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