"The belief that torture is always wrong is a prejudice inherited from an obsolete philosophy. We need to shed the belief that human rights are violated when a terrorist is tortured. As Rawls and others have shown, basic freedoms must form a coherent whole. Self-evidently, there can be no right to attack basic human rights. Therefore, once the proper legal procedures are in place, torturing terrorists cannot violate their rights. In fact, in a truly liberal society, terrorists have an inalienable right to be tortured.This is what demonstrates the moral superiority of liberal societies over others, past and present. Other societies have degraded terrorists by subjecting them to lawless and unaccountable power. In the new world that is taking shape, terrorists, although they themselves degrade human rights by practising terrorism, will be afforded the full dignity of due legal process, even while being tortured."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Atheists from EnglandPhilosophers from EnglandCultural criticsCritics of religionUniversity of Oxford faculty
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Gray_(philosopher)
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
John Gray (philosopher)
101 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by John Gray (philosopher) →
Related Quotes
"To affirm that humans thrive in many different ways is not to deny that there are universal human values. Nor is it t…"
"I may not be as unambiguously hostile to capitalism as many people are, but what I don't like about it is the commodi…"
"What I liked was Thatcherism's Bolshevik aspect, which was to shake up the whole of Britain quite fundamentally, and …"
"The core of the belief in progress is that human values and goals converge in parallel with our increasing knowledge.…"
"Terror is not now, if it ever was, something that comes to us from outside. It is a part of the society in which we l…"
"If you want to understand the beliefs that are shaping global politics, read the Book of Revelation."
"Blair has been the modern man he claims to be: for him, a sense of subjective certainty is all that is needed for an …"
"Liberals tend to regard being subjects of the Queen as an insult to their dignity. But at least the archaic structure…"
"The result of toppling tyranny in divided countries is usually civil war and ethnic cleansing."
"Ridden with conflicts and lacking the industrial base of communism and nazism, Islamism is nowhere near a danger of t…"