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The ACLU Blog of Rights
by
Rich Gardner | 05.21.2008
The ACLU has pulled together a blog that has several good bloggers contributing on civil liberties news and action. The ACLU has pulled together a blog that has several good bloggers contributing on civil liberties news and action. Below is a comment from one of our people on her first impressions of the ACLU blog. Read these blog posts on the ineffectuality of torture. The first one's a bit academic, but the others are good. I was especially impressed with this one, which is a quote inside a blogger's comment's, written by a former Soviet human rights activist: Vladimir Bukovsky, a Soviet human rights expert who spent over a decade in Soviet prison camps had first hand knowledge of [torture]. He wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post: One nasty morning Comrade Stalin discovered that his favorite pipe was missing. Naturally, he called in his henchman, Lavrenti Beria, and instructed him to find the pipe. A few hours later, Stalin found it in his desk and called off the search. "But, Comrade Stalin," stammered Beria, "five suspects have already confessed to stealing it." This joke, whispered among those who trusted each other when I was a kid in Moscow in the 1950s, is perhaps the best contribution I can make to the current argument in Washington about legislation banning torture and inhumane treatment of suspected terrorists captured abroad. . . .I have seen what happens to a society that becomes enamored of such methods in its quest for greater security; it takes more than words and political compromise to beat back the impulse. This is a new debate for Americans, but there is no need for you to reinvent the wheel. Most nations can provide you with volumes on the subject. Indeed, . . . torture is the oldest scourge on our planet (hence there are so many conventions against it). Every Russian czar after Peter the Great solemnly abolished torture upon being enthroned, and every time his successor had to abolish it all over again. These czars were hardly bleeding-heart liberals, but long experience in the use of these "interrogation" practices in Russia had taught them that once condoned, torture will destroy their security apparatus. They understood that "torture is the professional disease of any investigative machinery". So, why would democratically elected leaders of the United States ever want to legalize what a succession of Russian monarchs strove to abolish? Why run the risk of unleashing a fury that even Stalin had problems controlling? Why would anyone try to "improve intelligence-gathering capability" by destroying what was left of it? Frustration? Ineptitude? Ignorance? Or, has their friendship with a certain former KGB lieutenant colonel, V. Putin, rubbed off on the American leaders? I have no answer to these questions, but I do know that if Vice President Cheney is right and that some "cruel, inhumane or degrading" (CID) treatment of captives is a necessary tool for winning the war on terrorism, then the war is lost already. Being a Medieval student, I can tell you a story of the treatment of heretics in England during the 1380s and 90s--and those who know Medieval history will realize that the highly heretical Peasants' Revolt occurred in 1381, right at the beginning of this period. The heretics who annoyed the Church were the followers of John Wyclif; and probably the most left-leaning among them combined Wyclif's academic proto-Calvinist heresies with the congregational Christian communism of 1381 rebel leader John Ball. The churchman who demanded that the heretics stop preaching heresy in Oxford and return to Catholic orthodoxy was William Courtenay, who was created Archbishop of Canterbury in July 1381 at the age of 39, just after the Peasants Revolt was put down. England was suddenly without an Archbishop because a highly unpopular one, Sudbury, had been murdered by some of the rebels, almost certainly against the orders of the rebellion's leaders. John Ball's letters emphasized nonviolence. Ball was captured in Coventry after the Revolt and sentenced to death. He would normally have been tortured to reveal names during his last hours, but William Courtenay, the new Archbishop-elect, insisted on spending those hours with the old defrocked priest to save his soul. He even got a stay of execution for an extra day, and apparently spent the time with John Ball, pleading, sermonizing, persuading and exhorting. The preaching may have been mental "torture" to John Ball, since there's no evidence that Ball, a stubborn heretic for more than 20 years, gave up his Waldensian-type beliefs. Maybe he wished the Archbishop-elect would go away, but we can be confident that his last hours involved no physical abuse. We know that because Courtenay never tortured or executed any heretic! If the papal Inquisition's procedures were followed, the Lollard heretics who were rounded up between 1382 and Courtenay's death in 1396 should have been thrown into dungeons. At least the most outspoken, perhaps all, would be tortured very cruelly and put to death by burning. However, as one of the leaders of political reform in the 1370s, refusing for years to pay taxes to either the Pope or the King, Courtenay helped ban the Inquisition from England. He left Wyclif alone, after removing the controversial old scholar from Oxford to his rectory in Leicestershire. Wyclif died in peace later in the 1380s, while saying mass in his church. He never changed his opinions and continued to write tracts, but no longer taught in Oxford. As for Wyclif's Oxford followers, who were young, vigorous and opinionated, what did the Archbishop do with them? He repeated what he did with John Ball. He sent them to a church jail or confined them in house arrest, then sat down with each one and jawboned until the other person either gave in, or gave up because he was sick of endless preaching. My feeling is that most were impressed by the Archbishop's patient, peaceful treatment. It went even further. Instead of threatening, Courtenay made enticing promises. "Return to the Catholic Church and I can do such-and-such for you. You have so much to offer. You could become an important official." The carrot, not the stick. It worked! He won back the lifetime allegiance of passionate Lollards like one of the translators of the Wyclif Bible from Latin to English, who became a famous orthodox theologian (back in Oxford), and another close associate of Wyclif's who was chosen Bishop of Lincoln later in life! For the few who wouldn't recant he got promises of good behavior and set them free--as long as they stayed away from Oxford. Some of them stayed heretics, while others drifted back into orthodoxy--longing to return to Oxford, and perhaps judging that the Catholic Church wasn't so bad after all. After Courtenay died he was replaced by Archbishop Arundel, who set out on a long campaign of arrest, torture, hanging and burning, for as long as he lived. He was followed by more persecuting prelates who continued the reign of terror. Under papal orders, a persecutor bishop in 1427 dug up Wyclif's bones from their churchyard and had them burnt and the ashes thrown into the River Avon. What did all the pain and blood accomplish? Mostly hatred. It didn't bring an end to Lollardy; all it did was radicalize the heretics! They went underground, where (as always, when you're persecuted) they became increasingly angry and more stubborn, convinced that they were far more moral than the evil, demonic churchmen who made war on them. Sound familiar? Some were anti-Trinitarians by the mid 15th century, some denied the virgin birth, a few denied practically every orthodox dogma. In many regions of England Lollardy faded away, but strong communities hid out in Norwich, Leicester and a couple of other towns, which became hotbeds of heresy--and those locales are exactly where Protestantism began in England, years before Henry VIII's Reformation, and where it remained loyal even through the terrible tortures and burnings of Lollards and Lutherans conducted by Sir Thomas More, under orders from Henry VIII. Interestingly, William Courtenay may have been given his name in honor of St William of Bourges. There were other St Williams, so one can't be sure, but William of Bourges' family, the de Donjeons, were close relatives of the de Courtenays of France and England. What was St William of Bourges noted for? This is from my grad school pre-thesis, a biography of William Courtenay: "Few supernatural legends are attached to [St William's] name, and he seems to have been canonized primarily for his kindness and mercy. In the terrible days of the Albigensian Crusade, he refused to turn heretics over to the secular arm to be burnt, persuading them through reason to return to the fold. Dare we see the example of this patient saint in William Courtenay's own later behavior toward heretics?" That kind of story could be repeated over and over in history. Historians know that torture renders only falsehood, resentment, and revenge. If you want converts to your cause, you need to show mercy, be patient, and offer incentives. But I expect our leaders are too stupid to understand that the carrot attracts, while the stick only alienates. Sandy Fulton ------------- Other Good Links: |
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