Why can’t we have an honest debate about ‘enhanced interrogations’ of confessed Terrorists; without the Lies from the Leftists.
Radical evil sets the threshold of victory so high that we risk contamination by confronting it on its own terms. Terrorists tempt us to torture them, by striking against innocent noncombatants out of the shadows. The present debate over torture is a black cloud as big as a man’s hand announcing a storm to come. How do we arrogate unto ourselves the right to inflict death and extreme pain upon innocents—leave aside not-so-innocent terrorists—without corrupting ourselves? The insidious character of radical evil seeks to contaminate us through our own response. Ordinary evil kills for profit or rapes for pleasure. Radical evil rapes and kills so that terror and horror will blot out the memory of the good and leave behind only the capacity for more evil.
Radical evil seeks to destroy the good out of envy; if we cannot envision the Good, we must stand dumb and uncomprehending before radical evil. And no secular philosophy can explain the Good; no mainstream current of modern philosophy even tries. All the less can secular philosophy explain radical evil. The erosion of the West’s theological understanding of good and evil since the Second World War and the Cold War leaves us vulnerable to radical evil. It is in this context that the present debate over torture should be situated.
Out of the Cave 