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0 of 3 Premium Clicks used this month SUBSCRIBE Print + Online Subscriber Activation | Register x Forgot Password | Need an Account? subscribe | newsletter | deals Classifieds Jobs Autos Real Estate FEATURED » NEWS NOW WE hosts monthly community meal ... Ashland-area resident running for Congress ... Ashland police seek suspect in armed robbery ... WE hosts monthly community meal ... Ashland-area resident running for Congress ... Ashland police seek suspect in armed robbery ... RELOCATIONS Herb Rothschild Jr.: Torture and empathy Comment DailyTidings.com Writer Posted Feb. 27, 2016 at 12:01 AM Posted Feb. 27, 2016 at 12:01 AM » Social News At the last Republican debate in New Hampshire, Ted Cruz was asked whether he’d bring back waterboarding. His answer: Not as a general practice; only if national security called for it. Trump then said he’d bring back much worse, and at a later gathering called Cruz a “pussy.” After the revelation of our use of waterboarding and other techniques the Bush administration refused to call torture, I publicly invited Houston-area Congress members to join me in being waterboarded in front of the Federal Building. I didn’t expect any to come, but still I allowed myself to be waterboarded. It only lasted about 45 seconds before I gave the pre-arranged signal to stop, but that was sufficient. Even knowing I was in control, it was frightening. Widespread revulsion against judicial torture — the infliction of pain to extract legally useful information — arose rather suddenly in European nations and the American colonies in the later 18th century. That revulsion led to its prohibition, along with cruel and unusual punishments, in the U.S. Constitution (1789), France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789), and finally in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). In “Inventing Human Rights” (2007), Lynn Hunt explores the sources of revulsion against torture. It’s partially explained by the European Enlightenment, with its emphasis on the inherent and equal dignity of humans and a rejection of practices that leading intellectuals like Voltaire associated with superstition, such as the torture and burning of heretics. A key event was the publication in 1764 of Cesare Beccaria’s “Essay on Crimes and Punishments,” which rapidly circulated in France and England and became a standard reference for European and North American reformers. He stigmatized torture as barbarous and “the instrument of furious fanaticism,” a fairly apt characterization of much of the Republican base. But Hunt asserts that reason by itself couldn’t create revulsion. Indeed, cruel people often justify their cruelty with reasonable arguments, such as the usefulness of torturing a terrorist to save innocent lives. Never mind that the Feinstein Committee report found no evidence that the use of torture during the Bush years achieved any such result. The more basic point is that what they did was revolting. The capacity for revulsion at treating any human being that way (or, for that matter, any animal) follows from the capacity for empathy which, while consonant with reason, arises from feeling. Hunt gives great weight to the sudden and enormous popularity of novels of sentiment, especially Samuel Richardson’s “Pamela” (1740) and “Clarissa” (1748-49), and Rousseau’s “Julie” (1761). Here is her assessment of their impact: “Needless to say, empathy was not invented in the eighteenth century ... [but] in the eighteenth century readers of novels learned to extend their purview of empathy. ... [T]hey came to see others — people they did not know personally — as like them, as having the same kind of human emotions. Without this learning process, ‘equality’ could have no deep meaning and in particular no political consequence.” [President Obama recently told Marilynne Robinson that “the most important stuff I’ve learned I think I’ve learned from novels. It has to do with empathy.” (New York Review 11-19-2015)] One needn’t have oneself tortured to condemn the practice. One need only develop sufficient imagination to put oneself inside someone else’s skin. Perhaps our best response to Republicans would be to send each of them a library card. Herb Rothschild's column appears in the Tidings every Saturday. DailyTidings.com Writer Posted Feb. 27, 2016 at 12:01 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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