Article I states:

• All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Here is a New York Times account of the historic commission vote:

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0618.html#article

Several of the Declaration’s Articles seem especially salient at the moment:

Article 5.

• No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 18.

• Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19.

• Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20.

• (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
• (2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21.

• (1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
• (2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
• (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

The full text of the document approved on December 10, 1948 can be found here:

http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

http://www.un.org/events/humanrights/2007/udhr.shtml

This is also a good reason to recall the extraordinary life and work of Eleanor Roosevelt, the woman called “First Lady of the World” by Harry Truman.

Here are some links to Elanor Roosevelt sites:

Her home at Val-Kill, a national historic  site:

http://www.nps.gov/elro

Official White House biography–

http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/first_ladies/eleanorroosevelt/

A PBS “American Experience” film on Elanor Roosevelt

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eleanor/

“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery,” Lincoln said in 1865, “I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

I just replace “slavery” with “torture.”

Echoing Lincoln, I confess a strong impulse to see waterboarding tried out personally on a few people arguing for it. For me, the urge to give torture’s advocates a taste of their own medicine is a fleeting, shameful notion. But history says the question of “How far would I go?” has been all too real. And the answer is frightening.

In his landmark book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Daniel Goldhagen argued that the grotesque atrocities of the Holocaust could not have been accomplished without the broad and even enthusiastic support of millions of average citizens who made the deaths of millions of others possible. Goldhagen wrote,

“The German perpetrators of the Holocaust treated Jews in all the brutal and lethal ways that they did because, by and large, they believed that what they were doing was right and necessary.”

“Right and Necessary.” The very argument put forward for torturing terrorist suspects.

So, which of us would stop at the unthinkable if we were told that what we were doing was “right and necessary?” Especially if we are led to believe it works!

It’s tempting to think that we would emerge as the exception to the rule if put to the test at Abu Ghraib prison or the Hotel Rwanda or next door to Anne Frank’s family. I myself would like to think that I could be the good apple in the bad barrel. That I would not “go along to get along.”

Yet the work of such scholars as Philip Zimbardo does not bear out my naïve hope. Zimbardo is the creator of the now-notorious Stanford Prison Experiment in which students rapidly devolved into brutal guards in a mock prison scenario. Placed in a situation of uneven distribution of power, most of those in control impose their will to do harm. In a recent book, The Lucifer Effect, Zimbardo wrote:

“Dehumanization is like a cortical cataract that clouds one’s thinking and fosters the perception that other people are less than human. It makes some people come to see those others as enemies deserving of torment, torture and annihilation.”

Zimbardo’s work offers proof of how few of us can resist and actually rebel. His work is borne out by what we know of My Lai, Abu Ghraib, genocide in Africa, or any of the other all-too-frequent examples of people descending into voluntary barbarism. Vain self-flattery tells us that we would follow the lead of Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Mandela or any of the other models of resistance. Those who did attempt to resist, such as Sophie Scholl—the young German student who tried to stand up to the Nazis –or Hugh Thompson—the helicopter pilot who stood in the way of the killing at My Lai –are the rare exceptions to the rule –fae and far between.
Still, we stand justified in asking our leaders to hold America to a higher standard –to probe the decisions and decision-makers who led us to that darkened cell with its waterboards and bug boxes. But as we examine our leaders, each of us must hold ourselves to account as well. And as we do, recall it was also Lincoln who said,  “I hate slavery because it deprives the republican example of its just influence in the world –enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites –causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity.”
Again, simply substitute “torture” for Lincoln’s “slavery.”
Neither has a place in a civilized America.

A shorter version of this blog ran as a Commentary on Vermont Public Radio on Friday May 1.

http://www.vpr.net/episode/45984/