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Not only does my post appeal to emotion, it openly appeals to emotion. On the other hand, your post uses the appeal to middle ground fallacy. If your list of priorities starts with anything other than stopping the routine torture of children, then your grand scheme of things is probably evil.

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This is hardly the rational discussion you claimed to be starting.

Any "speaking as a parent" argument is hardly likely to be rational.

Why? What the parent post is saying makes sense to me, personally. Sometimes important and relevant factors in topic discussion are intrinsically emotional. That's not automatically a fallacy.

What if a child torturer is helping you save other lives and end the war sooner thus saving innumerable lives? Do you see how torture is bad but there are other variables?

You sound like those US TV dramas where the main character is a kind cop put before a dilemma to either pouch an ugly terrorist once or twice on the nose or a school bus full of cute little children will be blown up by a bomb.

Yeah, in theory, there are other variables. In practice, the chances are that if you turn a blind eye to the routine torture children you are simply an evil person.

Fighting evil with evil simply makes two monsters instead of one.

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