Dear Mark Penn: Is torture a question of "civil" rights?

by: Daniel De Groot

Sun Jul 11, 2010 at 15:07

Mark Penn has published a fairly interesting set of polling around the views of Americans on various constitutional questions (Poll slide show here).

In his write up at HuffPo, Penn writes the following bit of alarming interpretation on two questions in the poll:

In another contentious area, respondents rank protecting national security as slightly more important than protecting civil liberties by a margin of 44 to 39. And while 31 percent disagree, 56 percent of Americans can see circumstances in which the police should be allowed to violate civil liberties for national security -- giving support for the so-called ticking time bomb exception when extraordinary means might be sanctioned to secure needed information.

Wait, what? Now, torturing someone is a violation of their civil liberties, but there are a lot of civil liberties violations that are significantly less severe than torture, and this strikes me as (at minimum) an extremely sloppy polling question on which to base an inference like Penn makes.

Daniel De Groot :: Dear Mark Penn: Is torture a question of "civil" rights?

I realize that there is a long history on the subject of what exactly constitutes things like "civil" versus what I see as the more fundamental set of "human" rights (and the use of the term "liberties" instead of "rights" in the polling questions is worth noting too, they're not necessarily identical). However, I can easily draft up a list of civil liberties which many people would support having suspending during emergencies that don't involve egregious personal violence to prisoners. Anything from delaying access to lawyers, not reading Miranda or things like check points and personal searches without probable cause.

Any of these may or may not be argued as valid suspensions of civil liberties when justified against some type of national security or public safety scenario, but I doubt you will find many people who think that no civil rights can ever be suspended under some set of genuine emergency circumstances. If you consider that the US Constitution explicitly spells out when a particularly vital civil right, that of habeas corpus can be suspended, and that there doesn't seem to be any big movement to try and amend Article I, Section 9 it's surprising the question didn't net much higher support.

If that poll had contacted me, and I didn't read between the lines on how that question could be interpreted, I might have answered yes there are circumstances that Police can violate some civil liberties to protect national security. I don't, however, support giving anyone the authority to employ torture.

So what gives? Just a badly written question? Poor analysis by Penn? If the question wasn't meant to be about torture, what was the point? If so, why not ask a more direct question, rather than leaving it to a much broader concept?

Tags: torture, Polling, civil rights, Human Rights, (All Tags)

Print Friendly View

Send As Email

Dear Mark Penn: Is torture a question of "civil" rights? | 1 comments

Based on the article and slideshow, it's hard to know what to make of this. (4.00 / 1)

The slideshow doesn't include the actual phrasing of the questions, which is the first red flag. Only 47% think a person has a "right not to be tortured?" I would like to see detailed cross-tabs on that one.

The second red flag is this is the infamous Mark Penn, touting cherry-picked snippets from his poll, done by his own firm and without much explanation. And he's doing this at the Aspen Festival of Elite Wankers to boot!

Here's the Sourcewatch page on the firm:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind...

PSB's Venezuela poll raised eyebrows for several reasons: the opposition to Hugo Chavez seized upon it as proof that "the results from the vote itself were fraudulent"; the poll results "were sent out by fax and e-mail to media outlets and opposition offices more than four hours before polls closed," in violation of Venezuelan law; "members of Sumate, a Venezuelan group that helped organize the recall initiative, [did] the fieldwork for the poll"; and remarks to media went beyond poll results and analysis to election commentary - Mark Penn told Associated Press that Doug Schoen "believes there were more problems with the voting than with the exit poll."[9]

But much of this poll pretty well confirms that most Americans are not extremists and they actually do value their rights and the Constitution itself. That's hardly surprising, is it? It's easy to focus on the seeming splits on some of these questions, but it's also easy to see that's just about touting the whole "we're too polarized" meme... which leads to the "we need a one-party state" meme.

I really want to see the wording on the claim: Americans put national security ahead of civil rights. On the extending rights question, they seperate terrorists from criminals. Indeed, the wording on that is extremely dubious to say the least. Framed that way, who among us would answer in the affirmative? Using the word "criminal" already plants the assumption of guilt. That's a no-brainer. "Terrorists" obviously makes it even easier. Who would offer that a genuine terrorist should enjoy the same rights as a peaceful civilian? The problem is, the reason we have a system of jurisprudence is to make those distinctions in a factual way. When you assert the presumption of guilt, the rights issue becomes moot.

The last red flag and easily the biggest one is this: In his article--though I don't really see it in the poll itself--he claims people are fine with torture under the Ticking Time Bomb Fantasy. The simple fact he decided to use a well-known canard to justify this is telling in itself. This is pure, unadulterated bullshit. He's clearly making a very dishonest argument.

Thinking on the slideshow itself, it also seems the whole thing is an exercise in propaganda. It starts off all very reasonable, telling us things we already knew. But when it gets to the murkier questions about torture and putting national security ahead of even the most basic rights, there's almost no context or depth in the "factual" claims.

Of course, Penn is only telling this audience what they want to hear. Torture is okay, if only barely. But it's still okay with a plurality of Americans and that's good enough for this crowd. Penn gives a big thumbs up to torture Americans in this "poll."

Lastly, given the sliminess of Penn's career, conflicts of interest and his own RWA political views (including his outright bigotry--Hillary's racist appeal in her campaign was pure Penn), I'm not sure why anyone takes him seriously as some kind of expert on public opinion. We've known for many years now he just makes shit up.

He might as well be talking about how much people really like Scorched Earth Economics.

"The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences..." - Winston Churchill, November 1936

by: Emocrat @ Sun Jul 11, 2010 at 15:15:16 PM CDT