David P. Gushee, a professor at Mercer University, listed ten reasons in a Sojourners magazine article why the United States has not legitimized the torture of enemies. Gushee is professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University, founded by Georgia Baptists in the nineteenth century.

His list of reasons:

1) Our Constitution, in the 8th Amendment, bans cruel and unusual punishment.

2) Military traditions banned torture from our very beginning.

3) Our nation began with a founding narrative of having come out of British despotism and not wanting to develop such despotism in our own nation.

4) The U.S. was deeply involved in the development of international law and the Geneva Conventions, as in the United Nations, which meets on our soil. [The Geneva Conventions established standards of humane treatment in times of war, beginning in 1864 and continuing after World War II.]

5) We are a nation that began with “a due regard to the opinions of [hu]mankind.”

6) Checks and balances were built into the Constitution and all structures of government.

7) We began with realism about human nature and its tendencies toward domination, tyranny, and abuse.

8) We have for two centuries enjoyed a free press.

9) We are blessed with longstanding medical traditions in the Judeo-Christian-Hippocratic line.

10) Our nation from its beginning has been shaped by religious traditions.

Gushee believes the United States acted against these traditions after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. His opinions were stated in the April 2014 issue of Sojourners.