you don't allow anyone to even consider whether context needs to be applied

Consider yourself "allowed."

Can you present a context that justifies torture? You've been writing at some length but hve presented nothing but generalities. The subject would suggest a little more seriousness, it seems.

Shutting off someone from dissenting from the common orthodoxy of the day with such zealousness as this column is worthy of conservatives, not liberals

That's a lazy defense of a lazy argument, in my opinion. The sum and substance of your argument is to assert that there's some analogue to the self-defense justification for manslaughter that justifies torture. You haven't described it or explained how it would be excuplatory. You've merely asserted that it's possible.

Glenn responded to your argument, and you replied with further airy assertions. And around and around we go.

I think if you make a coherent argument, you'll get a response in kind. Some people shoot from the hip around here - including myself at times - but generally people come to these comment threads to debate. I think you'd just have to do a lot better job making such a difficult case. It's a very serious subject, and half-assing it simply won't do.

On a different subject: the whole "I thought we were the good guys" bit really smacks of concern trollery, Dave. It doesn't do much to enhance your credibility as a serious interlocutor, frankly.

summa cum fraude

That was made of 100% pure win.

I say we go find Timothy1 and get that screen name beack from him...

Trying to claim some arguments too absolute to even allow debate.

You have gone on and on about this, but I don't see where Glenn said or even intimated such a claim. The subject is a very serious and profound one, with real consequences in people's lives: both the torturer and the tortured, as well as everyone - each of us - who lives in this society where all you need is a "good enough" reason to torture.

Douthat didn't make a good enough case to overturn the prohibition on torture. Neither did you, in Glenn's opinion... nor in mine. No one here has told you to shut up. Your posts haven't been deleted. Likewise, Glenn has not called for the silencing of Ross Douthat. He's merely debated the validity of his argument, using wit, sarcasm and scorn, which are three of his sharpest weapons. It is difficult to imagine anything more in the spirit of free speech than that.

On the merits of your argument, which have been engaged continuously in this forum since you raised them, I'd like to see a response to paulpsd at 11:20 and ondelette at 11:38. I pretty much yield my response to ondelette, who - as he often does - expressed my position better than I could. "The lawyer and the whore" is not a new moral conundrum, and has been engaged by better disputants than you, to be honest. Again, I urge you to try harder.

Other than agreeing with you, Dave - how would you have us react to your argument that would not be "supressing dissent" in your mind?

(you will always be "clownsense" to me)

There's a little mouse in my house. I don't want to kill him, so I bought those little traps with the peanut butter at one end and they tilt shut when he climbs in. But then: what? A friend says leaving him on the cold streets of Boston is tantamount to parachuting someone into Ghana without his wallet.

If he finds another house, and the householder sets one of those metal traps... am I just outsourcing his death by torture?

My friend has a cage. Do I catch the mouse and cage him for the winter?

Believe it or not, these are my moral dilemmas. (I'm a bachelor.)

I always liked how Thay talked about "inviting" the bell to sound. Natural, unforced... like Bashō's haiku about the frog.

Plop!

There are a range of opinions by the regulars here on 9/11. It used to get discussed quite a lot. What Glenn pointed out, when he asked we refrain, is that the debate rapidly becomes fixed and very rancorous between two opposing sides, with nothing further being exchanged in terms of ideas, merely escalating insults.

I think it's fair enough for the host to ask that the comment threads not be hijacked with these kinds of flame wars. There are other places to go to discuss such issues.

He criticized and mocked another writer's crisis of conscience because he believe Bush tortured for the right reasons and Greemwald called this a masquerade of a moral struggle. [...] In other words we aren't allowed to even question or wonder whether someone has a right to torture.

Sorry, but that's utter bullshit. You can't just go from Statement A to Conclusion Z, throw an "in other words" in the middle and call that an argument. How is criticizing and mocking a repression of free speech? It is the essence of free speech.

Take your position to its logical conclusion. If we are not free to criticize positions with which we disagree, how can there ever be a free and open exchange of ideas?

You have not thought things through.

I do not agree with not letting the other side have their say. While calls for literal censorship were not made, mocking any attempt at exploring the other side of an argument is certainly not a good display of an open mind.

Glenn did not "mock any attempt;" he mocked this attempt.

I have asked you time and time again, and I ask you once more: how should we respond to an argument with which we disagree in a way that "let[s] the other side have their say?" How exactly?