Torture

5 Reasons Torture is always Wrong
And why there should be no exceptions.
by David P. Gushee
Click title link to read the whole article.
I am a little lazy this morning and don't have time to fix my tags...

"Now it is time to raise our voice and say an unequivocal no to torture, a practice that has no place in our society and violates our most cherished moral convictions."
David P. Gushee is professor of moral philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee,

I could not agree more with the article above. I am taken-aback by people I know and love stating that someone ought to be tortured since "they would have done it to us!"

But then we have all-American movies to encourage us to be hardened to it, like Quentin Tarantino's Hostel.

"Hostel is about three hedonistic fools who indulge in all manner of unethical pleasures until they find themselves trapped in a game where others fulfill their own appetites for cruelty by torturing human beings and killing them in slow and grisly ways—decapitations, throats slit, heads smashed in, digits being cut off and body parts diced and tossed into a furnace, point-blank shootings, eyes being pulled from sockets, flesh drilled full of holes, a person throwing herself in front of a train, and more. It seems designed to delight people who share the unhealthy appetites of the movie's villains."

"Guess what? Hostel is also the No. 1 film in America, tops at the box office. That means we're bound to see a lot more of this kind of thing over the next few years, in which other movies try to outdo Hostel—and the two Saw movies—with increasingly intense and explicit violence."
Read the rest of the article at http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/reviews/hostel.html

And we are ENTERTAINED BY THIS?
What is wrong with people???

About Tarantino, in case you don't know his style
"Tarantino's story - raised by his mother in Los Angeles and Tennessee, he became obsessed with low-budget potboilers and exploitation films in his teens and worked in a California video store - has become the stuff of legend. A generation of fans can recite the events of Tarantino's life as though they were Davy Crockett yarning about his backwoods encounters with grizzly bears.

What made Tarantino significant as a filmmaker was that he had the audacity to create an unusual new kind of modern movie from the dismembered pieces of old genres. As he did so, he hit filmgoers squarely between the eyes at a moment when they were hungry for something unique - yet oddly familiar."
Read the rest of the article by HENRY CABOT BECK: http://www.nydailynews.com/10-05-2003/entertainment/movies/story/123288p-110734c.html:

The weird thing is, I bet you anything if I met QT, I would like him. I have this feeling he would be harmless fun to hang out with or talk to. My husband even saw "Kill Bill" and "Pulp Fiction" and I understand QT's writing would hold up fine with no violence, but I am sorry-- I am against anything that hardens our sensibilities to any kind of harm. Yes, that would include the military service, but that is another blog, isn't it?