A stupid question pondered, unstoned

Michael Kinsley, in Slate, takes the "ticking time bomb" justification of torture more seriously than he should, and goes on a little too long to build up his refutation of an argument that should never see the light of day (but such are our times).

Kinsley rightly lumps in the ticking time bomb terrorist who must be tortured to save hundreds/thousands/millions/all humanity in with other questions that "have been pondered and disputed since the invention of the college dorm, but rarely, until the past couple of weeks, unstoned."

But he does get around to the main point, and makes it well.

Of course a million deaths is hard to shrug off as a price worth paying for the principle that we don't torture people. But college dorm what-ifs like this one share a flaw: They posit certainty (about what you know and what will happen if you do this or that). And uncertainty is not only much more common in real life: It is the generally unspoken assumption behind civil liberties, rules of criminal procedure, and much else that conservatives find sentimental and irritating.

... Sure, if we could know the present and predict the future with certainty, we could torture only people who deserve it. Not just that: We could go door-to-door killing people before they kill others.

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