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America’s Identity Crisis Over Torture

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Liberal democracies like the United States agree that the use of torture is abborhent, distasteful and wrong. Our very identity rests on the understanding that we uphold human rights and do not engage in the cruel savagery of older or other governments. And yet the use of torture in this country, and the ways in which those in power have justified it, goes back as far as our founding. 

In his new book “Civilizing Torture: An American Tradition,” (Belknap Press/2018) University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill history professor Fitzhugh Brundageargues Americans allow or overlook practices otherwise deemed barbaric when our existence or security seems threatened. Host Frank Stasio talks with Brundage about his book and how Americans have justified the use of torture in the name of American institutions and democracy.  

 

Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
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