Ron Paul on Dehumanization, Human Nature, and Morality
Thursday, October 22, 2015 at 02:04PM In a recent Liberty Report episode, Ron Paul speaks to the Drone Papers report published by the Intercept. Leaked by a unknown whistleblower, the Drone Papers shed light on the questionable procedures leading up the authorization of a drone strike, as well as the many mistake that have been make throughout the drone war campaign. Dr. Paul delves deeper, examining the moral implications of a drone strike for those responsible for ordering and carrying this from of extrajudicial, remote execution from above, which he believes is immoral and against human nature. The section transcribed below (by the best transcription machine and software I can find: myself) starts at around the 4:45 minute point of the video.
The whistleblowers here are talking about the people that they disagree with – they reveal this: He says they come to the point where the reason they do this, they’re about to do this, is that they have to dehumanize their target. They’re not people anymore. And they had an interesting comment about that, let me just read that, and they’re referring to the people they are sent out to kill, and he said, “They have no rights, they have no dignity, they have no humanity to themselves, they just are selector to analyst” – just a thing. “You eventually get to a point in the target’s life cycle that you are following them, you don’t even refer to them by their actual names. This practice, he said, contributes to the dehumanizing of the people before you’ve even encountered the moral question of: is this a legitimate kill or not?”
They’re void of morally, which I guess they have to do that, or they wouldn’t be able to kill somebody, so they have to go through this process. And I think that this is not something new or different, I think most wars involve this, I mean you just think about what names we’ve called our enemies… what is portrayed in the eyes of many Americans when you say “terrorist, terrorist.” Well I’ve been told that if he’s a terrorist kill him. Well we have no idea if he’s a terrorist. He might be a suspect, but it’s this giant leap… But I think there’s more than just dehumanizing the enemy, I think the process dehumanizes the person. I have this conviction that the individual who does the killing has to be dehumanized as well… I think it’s a natural instinct for people not to walk up to a stranger and say, “Okay, I’m going to kill him.” But they condition people to do this. This is just so bizarre and so contrary to humanity and contrary to what I think should be an exceptional position for America.
And the other thing is they’re not allowed to feel guilt. I mean, you can take pills but the way we treat PTSD is that we don’t say there’s guilt because that means the foreign policy of the United States should be questioned. There can’t be guilt, because we’re exceptional, we know what is right, and I think that adds fuel to the fire.
And I think that has always been a challenge throughout history. I keep wanting to believe, and I believe it is the case that the human race should be able to progress. We have evolved in one sense in the technological way and we have greater abundance because we live betters and we have automobiles and this sort of thing, but we don’t seem to have advanced very much in the cause of treating people, interacting with people. And as a matter of fact the technology has served to just go into the war effort. So often, yes, we have appliances and all these things that make our lives better, but how much of our energy and our money and our wealth goes into killing each other? So that’s such a contradiction. I’m still optimistic enough that the human race can change and make progress because I think it’s a natural instinct. I don’t think war is natural. What is unnatural is the allowance of people to get hold of our governments who hold the propaganda machine that allows people to be dehumanized, and they do it in the name of goodness and exceptionalism. That’s why it’s so disgusting. And then if you say, “Well America is not the exceptional nation, we have our own problems,” then you’re “un-American and unpatriotic and you don’t care about freedom and liberty.” That’s how bizarre it is.
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