No Virtue Gulags

James Chastek has a really excellent post on defining torture. Some of his comments in the commments thread are well worth reading, too. A sample, from one of the comments:

There can be no “virtue gulags” where we would snatch up vicious men and then use sleep deprivation, beatings, and various physical contortions to brainwash them into goodness or even admit their own folly and error. You can’t build virtue up in this way because you are crushing the very principle within them that will allow them to make a virtuous choice, even if they happen not to be making it now.