L'Affaire Volokh: Closing Thoughts

Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber makes a good point:

At least Eugene is being honest here. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suspect that most of the nonsensical defences of torture that we see, invoking ticking bombs and the like, are so many insincere public justifications of an underlying desire to torture the terrorists not to get information, but because they’re terrorists (and if a few innocents get caught up in the system, you can’t make an omelette &c &c).

I try my best not to psychoanalyze those with whom I disagree---I feel obliged to attack their arguments on their merits---except that in some cases, torture-defending prominently among them, there just is no rational merit to the argument. Hence, if such an argument is being advanced by ostensibly rational people (rational in the most stripped-down, minimalist sense, to be sure), it's hard not to conclude that the argument is also being advanced insincerely or with ulterior motive.