"The Objectivist Death Cult"

[Michelle]

Michelle,

Don't be too upset with Bob. You should have read his stuff before. He's a lot better than he used to be. (Really...)

Michael

Oh, I'm not really upset. I just don't like it when people speak as if every other country on Earth is populated by automatons. I'm not a nationalist, and I don't think the "savages" of the Middle East hold any less claim to the title of "human being" than Americans do. That being said, I'm not a pacifist, either. If this country wishes to maintain its freedoms, it'll have to do some killing. But let's be as rational as we can about the killing, and let us not delude ourselves into thinking that the enemy is a part of the evil hordes of Mordor. If some women and children have to die in the process, so be it, but don't say that we are not responsible for the deaths we deliver them to, or that it is good and noble to mow down foreigners without regard to what role they are playing. A person does not deserve to die because they live in the wrong country.

[Selene]

Folks:

Hypotheticals are wonderful role playing games.

However, I would suggest that folks take the time and "play" one Avalon Hill board game - Gettysburg, Midway, Jutland or Tactics II which has a nuclear option and you would greatly appreciate Brant's observation about strategic and tactical issues.

However, if you knew with certainty that you had a supped up "Anola Gay" ready to take off on December 12th 1941 would you have advised the President to drop it on Hiroshima?

You would argue that 100's of 1,000's of innocent civilians would die no matter which way an air, naval, land war in Asia would play out.

Therefore, you would be saving millions of lives if you drop it.

Well?

Adam

[tjohnson]

No nuclear weapon has been used since Nagasaki and we better pray one is never used again. I fear it will be the beginning of the end for mankind.

[Brant Gaede]

No nuclear weapon has been used since Nagasaki and we better pray one is never used again. I fear it will be the beginning of the end for mankind.

It's been the beginning of the end for mankind since the beginning.

To have an equivalent disaster like the black plague that hit Europe would require a general nuclear exchange.

If nuclear weapons are used again to bust cities people will disperse from cities to more diffuse environments. Big problem for Israel.

It is possible to regime change in Iran without blowing the place up, but the current U.S. disinterest means that Israel might blow the place up because Israel has many fewer options.

Life goes on. Plan on being a survivor.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

You are mixing up tactical with strategic and essentially don't know what you are talking about.

--Brant

If one side has the killing blow up front, then it should make that blow, first thing. Dead men can't fight. Injured men can.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

You are mixing up tactical with strategic and essentially don't know what you are talking about.

--Brant

If one side has the killing blow up front, then it should make that blow, first thing. Dead men can't fight. Injured men can.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Not too well. Injured combatants damage the combat unit's effectiveness as they are dealt with. Full metal jacket military bullets are designed to go through the target and perhaps hit another target behind the target. They'd do much more damage to the first target if they were lead hollow nose. Dum dum bullets were outlawed I suspect because they were inferior for military use anyway and they weren't needed. Now, the M-16 .223 round is such high velocity it does much more tissue damage than the slower NATO round it replaced in the 1960s. Not many wounded keep fighting after being hit by that even if they aren't killed outright. If all the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers killed in the Vietnam War had been only wounded it is doubtful that they could have continued military operations unless the wounded were simply abandoned. Hell for morale. Most booby traps are meant to wound, not kill. Wounding is more valuable. Killing is gravy. It is obviously true, of course, that a soldier tries to kill the other guy, for wounding with a rifle or grenades and shells and bombardment is an unworkable nuance in most situations. In bayonet drill you scream "Kill, kill, kill!", not "Wound, wound, wound!"

--Brant

been there, done that

Edited June 30, 2009 by Brant Gaede

[BaalChatzaf]

What you are advocating is what the Japanese tried to do with all their might in WWII. It blew up in their faces from day one (Pearl Harbor) when we got terribly and horribly pissed off.

Let me educate you with some historical fact. Yamamoto promised his government a six month free hand after attacking the American Fleet. After that six months were up, if the Japanese had not acheived their strategic aim (which they did not, namely controlling all the British and Dutch holdings in the Pacific) then anything could happen thereafter. Which it did. Japan did not, and could not strike a killing blow. And even if we had lost the three carriers, we would have built twenty more bigger and better, which in fact we did.

The Japanese misunderstood the mentality of Americans. They thought we would fold. We didn't. I am talking about anihilation. If you literally kill your enemy, you don't have to estimate his psychological reactions.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited June 30, 2009 by BaalChatzaf

[Selene]

OK Ba'al:

Give me a concrete example of this almighty weapon and a current or past military situation other than Japan.

And GS the US won the only nuclear war in history.

I would not test a perfect record.

Adam

[Brant Gaede]

What you are advocating is what the Japanese tried to do with all their might in WWII. It blew up in their faces from day one (Pearl Harbor) when we got terribly and horribly pissed off.

Let me educate you with some historical fact. Yamamoto promised his government a six month free hand after attacking the American Fleet. After that six months were up, if the Japanese had not acheived their strategic aim (which they did not, namely controlling all the British and Dutch holdings in the Pacific) then anything could happen thereafter. Which it did. Japan did not, and could not strike a killing blow. And even if we had lost the three carriers, we would have built twenty more bigger and better, which in fact we did.

The Japanese misunderstood the mentality of Americans. They thought we would fold. We didn't. I am talking about anihilation. If you literally kill your enemy, you don't have to estimate his psychological reactions.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Your historical information is superior to your how to fight information. Yamamoto said 6-12 months, I believe, then he said he could promise nothing. He was just making a factual statement to the powers-that-be who were going to attack the U.S. regardless of the feelings of the Imperial Navy. And they were running out of oil, thanks to the U.S. Still, it seems they could have attacked the Dutch East Indies and gotten that oil anyway without also attacking the U.S. Dunno. It is obvious they over-estimated the value of the battleship at the start of WWII. I wonder if they were surprised at how easily they sank the Repulse and Prince of Wales.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

OK Ba'al:

Give me a concrete example of this almighty weapon and a current or past military situation other than Japan.

And GS the US won the only nuclear war in history.

I would not test a perfect record.

It was not a nuclear war:

--they were atomic weapons

--only the U.S. had atomic bombs

--the bombs were only used at the very end

To call it a "nuclear war" or "atomic war" might be correct semantically as those bombs were used, but the terminology too distorts what happened for WWII ignorant minds.

--Brant

[Selene]

Brant:

Another aspect of their military was that it did not have any civilian oversight which can really suck when you are in a campaign within the "big picture" paradigm.

Their "judgment" and planning was exceptionally conservative. The rigidity of their command structure was a cancer within a world war structure.

Additionally, they were suspicious of ingenuity, creativity conceptually.

You are correct about the battleship, but that was global in scope. We had a battleship mentality in the US.

Billy Mitchell, Patton, MacArthur were much more technologically and strategically astute than the Cordell Hull, Marshal Petain types.

Adam

[Brant Gaede]

The Japanese had retired some of their best admirals, I've read, in the 1930s. The navy tended not to press an advantage, consequently. A third strike on Pearl Harbor would have hurt the American ability to wage war more than the first two strikes, which left alone the in place infrastructure--oil storage and submarine facilities. At the Battle of Leyte Gulf they threw in the towel at the critical moment and effectively ruined their brilliant battle plan.

--Brant

[Matus1976]

The assertion that American military personnel are not morally responsible for the people they have killed is absolutely amazing. You know you've destroyed the very concept of reality itself when you can see one man gut or shoot another and then say with a straight face that he was absolutely not morally responsible for the death of the other man. The question isn't "is he morally responsible," which he obviously is, but: "was it justified?" War, by its nature, is reprehensible. There is nothing good or noble about murder. The question is whether the murder is morally justifiable or not.

Talk about stolen concept fallacy. I suspect this particular interpretation is merely a remnant off shoot of the eastern pacifistic buddhist abdication of values and rejection of emotions.

Murdering an *evil* person is GOOD, RIGHT, and NOBLE. If I could have killed Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot, I would relish every moment of it, and would forever cite it as one of my proudest achievements. Your reaction is of the common post modern western variety, who, stumbling upon people fighting, insist that they stop because to you PEACE is the highst virtue, NOT JUSTICE. You don't stop to ask why they are fighting, you don't care that one is trying to kill the other and rape his wife. All you care about is that thier fighting, and they ought not to be. If something is *justified* then it necessarily must be GOOD, RIGHT, and JUST. If you feel disgusting for doing something that is JUSTIFIED, then you harbor contradictory premisses. Either your action was not justified, or what you base positive and negative emotional reactions on is disconnected from justice.

War, by it's nature, is neither worthy of praise nor reprehensible, any more than hitting someone is or doing something productive is praise-worthy or reprehensible without considering it's context and purpose. You could be hitting someone because you are a mugger, or producing bombs that look like childrens toys - these are reprehensible. You could be hitting someone who is tyring to make bombs that look like childrens toys or producing a malaria vaccine, these are praiseworthy. You could be fighting a war in order to plunder resources and enslave a population, or be doing so defending or furthering that which you VALUE. In the latter case the war is praiseworthy, and properly just wars are an extension of defending or furthering values. Wars fought in defense of that which you value or to further that which you value are NEVER reprehensible - unless carried out in a reprehensible manner, like those ARI often advocates.

Killing an evil man, and finding it prideful is as proper an emotion as profound Joy is when achieving something great.

[Matus1976]

You'd think that a principle which allows people to blame the deaths of all innocents on the initiators of force in any conflict would also apply to domestic initiators of force. Shouldn't ARIan spokesmen be advocating the carpet bombing of American neighborhoods which are infested with violent crime? After all, it could be argued that fewer innocent lives would be lost in the long run, and bombing neighborhoods would be much safer for the police since it wouldn't put them in danger, and, of course, it would be the criminals' fault that the police had to blow up innocent people in order to wipe out crime. Shouldn't ARIans be arguing that if one police officer dies in the name of justice, it's one too many, and if citizens aren't rising up against the criminals in their neighborhoods, well, then they've made their choice and they deserve what they get -- they're either with us or against us?

Jonathan,

Of everything I have ever read, this takes first place in showing the absurdity of preaching a philosophy for living on earth by elevating indifference to the death of innocent people to a moral ideal.

That was one great piece of thinking...

Michael

I agree, well said. However, I would like to point out that libertarian's like Romaindo harbor the exact same fallacious convinctions but just in the opposite direction. They would insist Iraq should have battleships steaming up the Hudson in order to act in self defense, or would have sat idly by had the Soviet Union invaded Canada in 1980 instead of Afghanastan "They havent done anything to <i>us</i>" they'd cry. Libertarians like Romaindo do a great job for cases of domestic defense and action, but pull the idealogical blinders out when contemplating foriegn policy and think only the most extreme cases deserve reactions. Similiarly ARI total war advocates like Piekoff and Brook have domestice self defense ideas well worked out, but in foriegn policy think the most extreme actions are justified with the most minuscule triggers.

If I have the right to assist a neighbor who is being attacked, I also have the right to assist a neighboring country that is being attacked. It is completely proper to assist allies in fighting common enemies, and it is in our long term rational self interest to do so (such as supporting Israel). Liberatian absolute non-interventionists would see the world perish in a pit of hellish communism or islamic totalitarianism before lifting a single finger - as long as no boots landed on american soil. If I am not literally attacked by a mugger, why is it just to confiscate some of my money to be used to apprehend him? Because it is in my own long term rational self interest to see that any assault on rights is treated with swift and appropriate justice, because standing idly by actually encourages such behavior, boasting that I am doing nothing about a neighbors murderer because he did nothing to me is as irrationally as boasting about non-interventionism with a murderous tyranny launches a full scale assault against an ally with common interests and values. But some ARIians would nuke everyone in response to a single boot. Jonathans consideration is appropriate and is a justified criticism against both isolationism and unchecked interventionism. The same standards of behavior which govern your pursuit of justice domestically ought to be applied internationally.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Mike,

You might have missed it, but we fully agree on one score:

In fact, I believe Raimondo is the same animal as that which he damns, but on the opposite side of the rivalry.

... I would like to point out that libertarian's like Romaindo harbor the exact same fallacious convinctions but just in the opposite direction.

Michael

[tjohnson]

Killing an evil man, and finding it prideful is as proper an emotion as profound Joy is when achieving something great.

Strawman argument. The argument was about killing innocent people, not evil people.

[Michelle]

The assertion that American military personnel are not morally responsible for the people they have killed is absolutely amazing. You know you've destroyed the very concept of reality itself when you can see one man gut or shoot another and then say with a straight face that he was absolutely not morally responsible for the death of the other man. The question isn't "is he morally responsible," which he obviously is, but: "was it justified?" War, by its nature, is reprehensible. There is nothing good or noble about murder. The question is whether the murder is morally justifiable or not.

Talk about stolen concept fallacy. I suspect this particular interpretation is merely a remnant off shoot of the eastern pacifistic buddhist abdication of values and rejection of emotions.

Murdering an *evil* person is GOOD, RIGHT, and NOBLE. If I could have killed Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot, I would relish every moment of it, and would forever cite it as one of my proudest achievements. Your reaction is of the common post modern western variety, who, stumbling upon people fighting, insist that they stop because to you PEACE is the highst virtue, NOT JUSTICE. You don't stop to ask why they are fighting, you don't care that one is trying to kill the other and rape his wife. All you care about is that thier fighting, and they ought not to be. If something is *justified* then it necessarily must be GOOD, RIGHT, and JUST. If you feel disgusting for doing something that is JUSTIFIED, then you harbor contradictory premisses. Either your action was not justified, or what you base positive and negative emotional reactions on is disconnected from justice.

War, by it's nature, is neither worthy of praise nor reprehensible, any more than hitting someone is or doing something productive is praise-worthy or reprehensible without considering it's context and purpose. You could be hitting someone because you are a mugger, or producing bombs that look like childrens toys - these are reprehensible. You could be hitting someone who is tyring to make bombs that look like childrens toys or producing a malaria vaccine, these are praiseworthy. You could be fighting a war in order to plunder resources and enslave a population, or be doing so defending or furthering that which you VALUE. In the latter case the war is praiseworthy, and properly just wars are an extension of defending or furthering values. Wars fought in defense of that which you value or to further that which you value are NEVER reprehensible - unless carried out in a reprehensible manner, like those ARI often advocates.

Killing an evil man, and finding it prideful is as proper an emotion as profound Joy is when achieving something great.

Uh-huh.

I'm not wasting any energy on this.

Just stay away from me and my own.

[Brant Gaede]

Murdering an *evil* person is GOOD, RIGHT, and NOBLE. If I could have killed Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot, I would relish every moment of it, and would forever cite it as one of my proudest achievements.

........

Killing an evil man, and finding it prideful is as proper an emotion as profound Joy is when achieving something great.

I once knew a man who relished killing. He killed a lot of people, enemy combatants. He came home from war and killed his wife so he could marry someone else.

I could have killed all those people you mentioned. I could kill Fidel Castro (but not his brother). There wouldn't be any "profound joy" in it though. Disgust and relief but not that. I would take some not insignificant amount of pride in it, true, but killing human beings no matter who they are is a grim business and not the business of the Objectivist philosophy which is about the positive, productive, creative and rational side of being a human being.

--Brant

Edited July 1, 2009 by Brant Gaede

[Brant Gaede]

City guy driving in the country gets lost and comes upon a local leaning against a fence post: "Where am I"? "Podunk." "How do I get to Nashville"? "You can't get there from here."

Killing people seeking joy: "How do I get to joy"? "You can't get there from here."

--Brant

[Michelle]

City guy driving in the country gets lost and comes upon a local leaning against a fence post: "Where am I"? "Podunk." "How do I get to Nashville"? "You can't get there from here."

Killing people seeking joy: "How do I get to joy"? "You can't get there from here."

--Brant

No, but I've met more than my share of ghouls who get a really big kick out of it.

[Matus1976]

Killing an evil man, and finding it prideful is as proper an emotion as profound Joy is when achieving something great.

Strawman argument. The argument was about killing innocent people, not evil people.

No, it was about murder, or killing in general, MichelleR stated that it is sometimes justified, but never good or noble, writing:

"There is nothing good or noble about murder. The question is whether the murder is morally justifiable or not"

If something is justified, then it is right, always good, and in some cases noble depending on your definition. Something can not be JUST AND wrong that is a conceptual perversion.

[Matus1976]

Mike,

You might have missed it, but we fully agree on one score:

In fact, I believe Raimondo is the same animal as that which he damns, but on the opposite side of the rivalry.

... I would like to point out that libertarian's like Romaindo harbor the exact same fallacious convinctions but just in the opposite direction.

Michael

I did miss that!

[Mikee]

..but killing human beings no matter who they are is a grim business and not the business of the Objectivist philosophy which is about the positive, productive, creative and rational side of being a human being.

--Brant

What about killing Hitler or Stalin is not "positive, productive, creative and rational"? Some people need killing. We should celebrate their deaths and the people who kill them.

[Matus1976]

Uh-huh.

I'm not wasting any energy on this.

Just stay away from me and my own.

Uh-huh... I'm curious how you can simultaneously consider something JUST... AND *Wrong* But hey, don't let me get in the way of your contradictory premises.

People sometimes seek the truth, but most prefer like-minded views

http://www.physorg.com/news165643839.html

"Perhaps more surprisingly, people who have little confidence in their own beliefs are less likely to expose themselves to contrary views than people who are very confident in their own ideas"

In fact, if you read my posts in this thread, you will find our opinions differ very little, the major difference is that you find something RIGHT and JUST (intentionally killing an evil person) as someone wrong, never good, never noble. I can only suspect this is some remnant pacifistic tendency, since you still advocating defending values rationally, but for some reason don't think it's morally praiseworthy if it results in the justified killing of an evil person.

[Matus1976]

I once knew a man who relished killing. He killed a lot of people, enemy combatants. He came home from war and killed his wife so he could marry someone else.

I'm not sure of the point of such an irrelevant red herring. For one, I would not typically relish killing, any more than I would 'relish' punishing a child for doing something wrong. Maybe those top megamurderers I would relish, with their cumulative death toll of almost 200 million innocents, there could have been no greater tribute to justice, reason, and productivity than killing any one of those scumbags. But second, I'm sure quite alot of people in the military have killed, and don't come home to kill their wives. I suspect in this case the man's values were placed on killing to achieve an end, without consideration about the end in site, whether it was just or not, or HE was in fact an EVIL person, seemingly joining the military for a chance to kill people for just reasons, and losing that opportunity, degraded to killing for any reason. You are implying through this anecdote - and this is seemingly MichelleR's implication - that killing renders a person immoral automatically, regardless of contexts and cause. It's like you are suggesting 'this is the only consequence of a man who enjoys killing'

If there are circumstances when it is just to kill someone, then such an action must be good and right and noble.

I could have killed all those people you mentioned. I could kill Fidel Castro (but not his brother). There wouldn't be any "profound joy" in it though.

I did not mean to imply I would feel profound joy in the action of killing, I said "Killing an evil man, and finding it prideful is as proper an emotion as profound Joy is when achieving something great. " I am equating a proper positive emotional reaction with the achievement or defense of a proper rational value. If I kill an evil man, I will be proud of that action. I would not laugh, dance, sing, or experience a sublime joy. But feeling right or good about doing something JUST, which in this case is killing an evil man, is just as proper as feeling JOY and achieving something great after years of struggle.

Disgust and relief but not that. I would take some not insignificant amount of pride in it, true, but killing human beings no matter who they are is a grim business and not the business of the Objectivist philosophy which is about the positive, productive, creative and rational side of being a human being.

--Brant

Are you trying to imply that I am making the objectivist philosophy negative, counter-productive, and destructive and irrational? What is the point of this statement? This is merely the topic of this thread, it is not an indication that justifying killing is the central focus of Objectivism or that I am trying to make it as such.