> Jordan, don't be scared, no one would trust me with a
> position of power, and my entirely justified view that
> anti-retributivists aren't being honest about their
> beliefs, and in general that very often others can
> know what we really think better than we can ourselves
> (in historical materialist terms this is a basic
> premise of the theory of ideology) does not commit me
> to any sort of paternalism -- something I'd vigorously
> oppose. So if I ended up on the losing side of a vote
> about whether to let the torturers go untouched, I'd
> abide by the results.
=========================
In fact, this has always been a political rather than a moral question for
leaders of popular uprisings. In most cases, they have responded to rather
than manufactured mass demands for retribution against the the old regime -
Stuarts, Bourbons, Romanovs, Chinese landlords, Batistianos, etc. This
widespread popular sentiment that justice be done has also corresponded to
the cold political calculation at the top that the best way to thwart a
counter-revolution is to swiftly deprive it of its symbols and apparatus.
Despite our professed moral reservations about such political behaviour or, in Carrol's case, supposed indifference to it, I think most of us would have responded the same way in these circumstances, reluctantly or otherwise. So I'd be cautious about heaping abuse on Andie for making the point.