THE LEPERS OF OBJECTIVISM

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Barbara,

Thanks for bringing the issue back into perspective. I agree with the distinction you made, at least as concerns me, between the view expressed by most on OL and the one expressed by SOLOP/ARI.

I personally have no problem with the call of American lives being more important (and far more important ) than the lives of civilians of a country that is attacking us. I do have a problem with bombing schools and places of worship to eradicate the ideas preached there. This is a confession of having the soul of a brute and a confession of intellectual impotence. One who preaches this simply does not believe that the ideas he holds in his head can be used to persuade others.

I have repeatedly said that we have a war on two fronts: one military and one intellectual.

I would like to add another essential difference, one you did not mention in your original post, but one that is at the core of the reason for so many tangents and heated exchanges. A monstrous situation like terrorism brings a person face-to-face with something usually hidden inside his own soul. When innocent people are killed in public places, everyone around initially has a feeling of wanting to lash out - both at the atrocity and at the insecurity this makes him feel for himself and his loved ones. How this wanting to lash out is handled results in two basic attitudes that I have seen so far:

1. A dire need to gain control - as a primary - and stomp out any possibility of a future threat. This need is so important and overpowering that it wipes out all other considerations and brings pleasure (or bland indifference at best) at the thought of wreaking the same fate on other people - justly, unjustly, armed, unarmed, military, civilian, they are all the same.

2. An overwhelming desire to find those responsible, remove them from any power they have and bring them to justice. The emotional response to this is usually determined, grim and unpleasant, but the person feels and that what needs to be done is absolutely necessary.

Most everybody fluctuates at one time or another between these two poles, but I see leaders and outspoken people definitely settle on one side or the other. Most people do not get an opportunity to see this side of themselves very often. Seeing it naked to thier awareness causes some very intense moments.

When this happens, philosophy is very important because, as you say, everything makes you dizzy. This is powerful spiritual commotion. More than ever, this is a moment reason needs to reign.

I find the first mentality abhorrent and I have stated my reasons over many long posts, so I will not harp on them. However, I would like to mention a discussion I once had that I used to find perplexing.

On another forum a while back, there was a poster who wrote an article attempting to extol the virtue of reason in a famous battle against savages by settlers. The author was a member of the USA armed forces. While most everybody agreed with him on the virtue of reason in winning a battle against overwhelming odds, many were turned off by his gloating celebration of the slaughter. I ended up engaging him. We started disagreeing on the issue that rational men feel, in some part of their soul, a type of sadness when human life is lost. He started badgering me because he said he only felt joy, so in my view he was a bad person. I asked if the joy was for the actual slaughter or for the competence in winning the battle, relief at eliminating a threat, etc. He was adamant. It was for the slaughter of human life deemed unworthy to live.

As he was a member of the military, I was enormously conflicted inside. How could I harshly criticize a person who probably put himself in harm's way to protect me? So out of respect for this, I backed down. Since then this person has nurtured a strong contempt and hatred for me that gratuitously pops out once in a while. I read it when it happens, but I ignore it.

I have thought over this issue a great deal these last few days because I see it came up again in a veiled form, but one that was observable in several people all at once. I was able to resolve my perplexity looking and thinking hard. Nowadays, I know I would judge the person I engaged as a moral leper and, if engaged online, I would condemn his attitude very harshly. I don't like people who gloat about death.

If we are to use philosophy as a tool for living, either we work to bring our basic fears, hatreds and insecurities up to the level of reason and let reason reign in calming them down while we rationally deal with dangerous issues, or we lower our use of reason to the level of our basic fears, hatreds and insecurities and let reason serve these emotions by imposing rationally guided force and manipulation on any and all who are in our paths. I have found that among the fearful and spiteful and insecure, there are some pretty nasty human beings.

I believe this choice, where and how to let force be ruled by emotion or reason, to be a fundamental issue I now use in judging a person. Nobody admits to being ruled by emotions, but people are not stupid either. Often they can see clearly when a bad intention is being covered by "rational" words. Personally, I am getting tired of seeing the word "justice" twisted all out of shape to hide hatred, sadism, insecurity and fear.

btw - I have not seen this on OL like I have seen it at SOLOP/ARI, which is one other reason I agree with your distinction. This may not be fundamental to the discussion as started, but it is fundamental to my own evaluation of a person.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Michael,

What branch of service did that member of the US armed forces occupy? Did he actually engage in combat and joyously kill people? Were you able to verify to any extent that he wasn't a phony, a liar, a wannabe? Many young soldiers start out with but don't keep such an attitude. The most dangerous soldiers in the world are 8-12 year old males. They'll kill anything and anybody in any imaginable circumstance. This was demonstrated in Africa a while back.

I met two soldiers who actually enjoyed killing people. One was young and stupid about it, but they were combatants. The other was an officer with a reputation as a killer who didn't take prisoners. After three trials--one hung jury, one conviction thrown out on a technicality, one conviction upheld--he was convicted years later of murdering his Cambodian wife in North Carolina. The prosecution was of the opinion he wanted to marry his cousin and run for the presidency of the Czech Republic. He is no longer incarcerated. I presume he is now in the Czech Republic. He probably did kill his wife. Out of 36 different jurors only one stood up for him. I know he was quite capable.

--Brant

edit: I thought I hadn't posted the above, but somehow I did anyway, but it reads okay so I'm leaving it up.

--BG

Edited October 4, 2006 by Brant Gaede

[Barbara Branden]

Thank you, Victor. I, too, agree with Brant and think that what he said is very important.

I wish I could recall the author of a statement that is very relevant to this whole discussion. Perhaps someone here will know who said it. The idea was that the more and more sophisticated weapons of war become, the more emotionally removed, even indifferent, people may become to the reality of destroying human lives. If we go to battle with spears and knives, if we must confront an enemy directly, if we must face him and look into his eyes, we may recognize that this is a a being not unlike us who will never breathe the sweetness of the air again, never embrace a loved wife, never look on the faces of his chidren. We may very well kill him without compunction because he threatens us and those we love; we may conclude that the capital punishment we inflict on him is warranted, but we cannot avoid knowing what we're doing, knowing that it is a human life we are taking -- and we will wish never to go to war without powerful reasons. But if we are thousands of feet in the air in a bomber, so that we never have to see the devastation our bombs cause, never have to see the face of an enemy or the faces of the children our bombs destroy, we can kill and kill and kill still again without allowing the enormity of taking a life to be real to us. We can be like the armchair generals who glibly and cheerfully recommend killing millions of innocent people in the service of their own terrors and blindness. It is said that when Robert Oppenheimer watched the first test of the atomic bomb, he thought, in horror, of the words of the Bible: "I am become Death, destroyer of worlds." If we value our humanity and our sanity, let us never become Death.

Barbara

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant - If you are interested in the article and discussion, it is here. I do not know the guy's position in the armed forces. He said it somewhere.

I skimmed over all that again and I am not too proud of how I backed down by praising the article he wrote. I allowed people to think wrong things about my position and I only mentioned the respect for the armed forces thing at the end, but I remember back then wishing he were another poster so I could draw him out properly. I should have come down hard on him for phrases like "celebrating rational killing" and talking about context for "glorified killing" and so forth. I even tried to convince myself that he had a healthy soul talking like that, since he kept asking about it. The fact is that his article was merely OK in general terms, but not a healthy one at all psychologically. I found it to be a good demonstration of the power of reason. but a horrible thing for human beings to have to do. I also did not like my use of vulgarity because it was not warranted, but there it is.

At least, after all the present Objectivist discussion at different places about bombing unarmed civilians in Iran, I have resolved all doubts in my mind. Those who rejoice and find glory in mass killing are sick in the head and heart, whether soldier or not. I would argue much differently these days than I did back then, although my emphasis on reason as I presented it would still remain.

Barbara - That is a very good point about being more distant from the killing leads to dehumanization of the reality of it. I have an extension of that kind of thinking dealing with overuse of the remote control. When people don't like one kind of reality, they just change the channel. Except reality doesn't work like that. Neither do bombs. And neither do terrorists, for that matter.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Barbara,

Soldiers kill, generally, so they won't be killed--or their buddies won't be killed. Hand to hand combat is unbelievably ferocious; everybody is trying to live--living means killing. I knew someone, slightly, in my high school, who graduated a year or two after I did. The same month I came back from Vietnam he was a Marine Corps machine gunner in the Mekong Delta--also where I had been--and threw himself on a grenade to save his friends. His death, his name was Jedh Barker, earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor. It is only after the battle, when you move among the dead and find in the enemy's possession, family photographs and other such memorabilia, that his common humanity is revealed and achieves human meaning in one's mind.

Bomber pilots in WWII were concerned with the survival of themselves and their crews and doing their jobs so they wouldn't be sent back to try again over the same targets. 200,000 airmen on all sides died in WWII, mostly Germans, English and Americans--I have no idea about Russians--and it is beyond all understanding that their consciousnesses could be be so expansive in such circumstances to morally and objectively consider the damage to human lives they were doing. They were fighting and trying to win a war and survive. The bomber crews of WWII were incredibly brave men.

If I had been old enough for WWII, I would have chosen to be a 20 or 40mm gunner on a battleship fighting off Kamikaze attacks. Me versus them. One on one. Live or die. Why? No American battleships after Pearl Harbor were sunk. A pretty comfortable birth. In a bomber I might have just been blown out of the sky or in a submarine silently died. I joined the army in 1964 to avoid the draft. I was going to be trained as a photographer at Ft. Dix, NJ. I volunteered for Special Forces in Basic Training. At the time it seemed that that that was the way to actually fight communists. I was a natural soldier that way and still am. Somehow it is in my DNA. (Ironically, my brother, a Marine, went to the photography school I didn't go to and didn't go to Vietnam. He is an accomplished photographer with several very good books of such to his credit.) This is why, among other reasons, I have no tolerance for what can be called "war ignorance." I will call it out every time I see it and can. Whatever the bomber pilots feel or don't feel is irrelevant as long as they keep on coming and do the job they were sent out to do. They know that and American bomber pilots keep on coming even unto death itself. And they know that their targets aren't churches or schools. That was true in the "Christmas bombing" of North Vietnam in December 1972. Technology has made (American and Israeli) bombing much more selective and continues to so so.

It is those who aren't fighting for their lives and their friends' lives but who decide how American armed forces are to be deployed and used who are or might be above the fray, not bomber pilots, but they have to be or all battles will either not be fought or lost. Those who do the actual fighting have to trust in them. When I left Vietnam in 1967 it was with great relief for I no longer trusted them. In six months I was proved right when President Johnson, not withstanding American and South Vietnamese victory in the Tet offensive, caved in and effectively surrendered. Now I don't trust the Bush Administration. He isn't going to give in, not him; he's just going to leave office.

--Brant

edit: I would NOT have chosen to be a gunner on a battleship in WWII. In reality I would have been an officer in some combat capacity, but I am not a big adrenaline junkie. The military life described above is years of mind-numbing boredom followed by hours and a few days of adrenaline-pumping terror. There are those who get off on that rush. In Vietnam I was a good, not particularly heroic soldier, though I was decorated for bravery. I knew when to keep my head down and used a lot of common sense to avoid being killed or wounded. If you are wounded you are a liability. If you are dead you are not an asset and possibly a liability. There is nothing romantic about war. But young men can get romantic notions about it until they get into it. By examining certain publicly available records, I figured out that statistically I had about a 10% chance of being killed in the year I was overseas in my particular SF A-Team. Since we generally didn't have to deal with indirect fire weapons the chances of being wounded were about the same. I was not wounded. I was lucky to get out alive. I was on one operation where the six SF suffered two dead, one wounded. (So much for statistics.) The NCO next to me got a bullet between the eyes. The SP 4 radio man in an assault boat (I was in an airboat) got three machinegun rounds across his chest. I had to escort the bodies to Saigon. I saw their bodies laid out on tables in the morgue, which was not especially busy that day as most of the long row of slabs were empty. At that time only about 10,000 Americans had been killed in Vietnam. I think most of the 40,000 combat deaths (plus a total of about 10,000 non-combat deaths) to come went through that morgue, were processed home after being laid out on those slabs. It was the coldest room I have ever been in and I'm not talking about the ambient temperature--I was wiping off the sweat--but the fact that dead men are soon cold dead men. I knew then, absolutely, what was going to happen, that tens of thousands more American soldiers were going to die in that war and go through that room or similar rooms. In 1966 I didn't know it was going to be for naught. I did a year and a half later when I was home in college.

--BG

Edited October 4, 2006 by Brant Gaede

[Dennis Hardin]

Michael,

You say:

According to your reasoning, the Jews in Germany, then later Poland and other places, because of their passivity, were morally responsible for Nazism, thus they were the ones morally responsible for the extermination camps.

As I understand the history of Nazi Germany, Hitler preached his Nazi doctrine of “Aryan” Master Race superiority throughout his gradual rise to power. It seems likely that a program of persecution of Jews and other “inferior,” non-Germanic races was easily predictable. There was widespread support for Hitler’s nationalist rhetoric among the German population who were suffering severe economic hardship and still reeling from the humiliation of the Versailles treaty And there were the additional cultural factors of mysticism-nihilism and the worship of emotion in a rabidly anti-reason climate. As soon as Hitler achieved power, of course, the concentration camps became a key element of his police state.

If there were Jews who saw this coming and did nothing to stop it, they might bear some minimal responsibility for the holocaust. There were many Jews (e.g., Ludwig von Mises) who either got out or did what little they could to prevent Hitler from succeeding. No doubt the storm troopers would have murdered anyone who spoke out loudly enough for the “Aryans” to overhear. So the ultimate moral responsibility must obviously be attributed to the vast numbers of Germans who actively supported Hitler--not the Jews. If ever there was a nation who truly deserved a full scale carpet bombing campaign, it was Nazi Germany.

Your words:

You said Johnson smeared Goldwater. He didn't do that all by himself. The public went with him.

This sounds like an endorsement of Johnson’s TV commercial with the little girl and the mushroom cloud in the background. Are you suggesting that what Lyndon Johnson did was okay—simply because he succeeded in scaring people? Sometimes I really don’t understand you at all.

Barbara,

Great job of summarizing the essence of the two positions. My one disagreement would be with respect to the legitimacy of targeting the ideology of Islamism—that segment of the Muslim religion described by Daniel Pipes as follows:

Though neutral on Islam, I take a strong stand on Islamism, which I see as very different. Islam is the religion of the Qur'an and the Sunna; Islamism is the political path of Hasan al-Banna, Abu'l-A`la al-Mawdudi, and Ayatollah Khomeini. The former is (in the Muslim view) eternal or (in the non-Muslim view) fourteen centuries old; the latter is a twentieth-century phenomenon. The one is a faith, the other an ideology. Whereas the closest parallels to Islam are Judaism and Christianity, those closest to Islamism are other radical utopian "isms," namely fascism and Marxism-Leninism.

Islamism is a global affliction whose victims count peoples of all religions. Non-Muslims are losing their lives to it in such countries as Nigeria, Sudan, Egypt, and the Philippines. Muslims are the main casualties in Algeria, Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan. Islamism is perhaps the most vibrant and coherent ideological movement in the world today; it threatens us all. Moderate Muslims and non-Muslims must cooperate to battle this scourge.

In the aftermath of World War II, we compelled Hirohito to renounce his personal divinity and to dismantle the shrines of State Shinto which many Japanese saw as the divine source of their quest for empire. We are all aware of the price we exacted in human lives to achieve that end.

As much as I would prefer to avoid it, I agree with ARI that a significant human toll may be required to convince today’s religious militants to abandon their goal of global domination. I am inclined to think that lesser measures may be utterly unconvincing. Amahdinijad—like all those who support him throughout the Muslim world--is unlikely to share our concerns about the human faces incinerated by the bombs he is preparing to send our way.

Dennis

[Brant Gaede]

Dennis,

When you fight ideas with bombs they become powerful. If they are right ideas they become even more powerful. The only way to succeed with this is the general if not complete destruction of human consciousness. But then you are rejecting Rand's central thesis: the impotence of evil. You can bomb instruments of evil out of existence and sometimes that is precisely what needs to be done. But evil itself is only as powerful as good makes it. The terrorists who flew those planes into the WTC came out of a culture that couldn't even land those planes or take them off. They attended US flight schools which, in effect, taught them to fly well enough to do their dirty deeds.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dennis,

Quick note:

This sounds like an endorsement of Johnson’s TV commercial with the little girl and the mushroom cloud in the background. Are you suggesting that what Lyndon Johnson did was okay—simply because he succeeded in scaring people? Sometimes I really don’t understand you at all.

Of course I am not saying that. But do you think that if Al Gore had done a commercial like that with Bush, or vice-versa, the public would have been scared? Or if Goldwater had done one like that of Johnson? I don't think so. It takes more than just a word or image to cause major PR damage.

My point is that the public gets real antsy about those who preach about nukes. It is horrible public relations and the public is not forgiving. It doesn't take much, either. Irrespective of merit, ARI is making that same mistake. It is insisting on preaching the glories of nukes. The results are pretty easy to predict.

ARI people are not stupid and they know this, too. Speculating about why they choose PR suicide could be an interesting exercise.

Also, in your scenario of carpet bombing of Nazi Germany, if that included (back then) concentration camps, would you hold the Jewish prisoners in them morally responsible for their own deaths because they were passive in Hitler's rise to power?

Michael

[Rich Engle]

Regarding the moral responsibility while under attempted rise-to-power discussion.

Are there the complacent? Always. Mostly, there are the confused, and the scared. Most people are concerned with daily living; survival, taking care of their kids, and such.

Germany was economically depressed, and that was key. Hitler certainly knew enough about advantage that comes from such opportunity. He also did a stirring job of condensing and streamlining various groups of hoodlum, fascist whackos. He found the common rhetoric that worked well for many.

And he found a perfect target-- the Jews. They looked and behaved differently, and they ran successful businesses--mostly honest ones, for sure. When there's a depressed economy, it's not that large a matter to do disinformation about those who are doing better financially than others. And of course, there was his masterstroke of unifying, of statism, of Aryan purity. Of using symbology borrowed from past civilizations. He had a fabulous propaganda/psychops group. It was brilliant, both subversive and overt. It was a powerful, multithreaded coup.

There were people that tried, earlier on, to comment about what they saw. They got jackboots.

The point is, for the most part, it was too late to mount any kind of meaningful resistance. Too many disparate groups, individuals all having come to the same realization. Too few weapons. Too much fear, too much national pride boiled up by Hitler.

How can someone be morally responsible for not "doing anything" about that? They were going up against a professional, here.

[zantonavitch]

This is a monstrously long discussion, and I think there's something seriously wrong with people offering 10 or 20 comments on it, or on any subject, since no potential reader has the time or energy to really follow along. Nevertheless, I've skimmed a lot of this, and I have a few brief points which might be worth considering, even tho' I'm joining in in medias res, and thus can't near address all the various possibly worthwhile points.

First, I think Craig Biddle's August 31st article advocated killing Iran's and Saudi Arabia's horrific leaders and not the general population. This policy certainly seems correct to me since the leaders of these dictatorships are morally black whereas the population is morally grey -- both victims of the dictatorship, and partial creators and sustainers of it.

Second, Biddle advocates killing Islamists and not mere Muslims. This too seems correct for the above reason.

Finally, I think that in the current War on (activist) Islam the West is in a state of war. And I think it's almost inarguable that sometimes in warfare "innocent civilians" have to be targeted and destroyed. Historical examples of this, as others have mentioned, are the dreadful fire-bombings of Dresden and Tokyo in WWII, as well as Sherman's merciless march thru Georgia in the US Civil War. The sooner victory is obtained and the war is stopped, the sooner the killing on all sides is stopped, which is true humanitarianism.

Based on this logic, the first enemy civilians to be properly attacked and terminated in the War on Islam are the religious leaders in the mosques and madrassas since they are, in effect, giving military orders to the general populace. These men of god aren't merely practicing free speech and offering bad ideas which good people need to refute. These imams are advocating that their followers go out and wage jihad and establish sharia, while killing infidel Westerners. This strikes me as fighting a war and, as such, I think these evil holy rollers and activist Muslim enemies need to be eliminated from earthly existence.

No one hates or opposes the ARIans more than I do, and I certainly don't accept their general advocacy of mindless genocide, but with all due respect, I think many of the comments in this hideously-long and unreadable thread are somewhat off the mark. They don't seem to attack what Craig Biddle actually wrote.

Edited October 4, 2006 by Andre Zantonavitch

[Roger Bissell]

I agree with Andre.

More importantly, I'm willing to devote the next 20 posts to supporting my position. :-)

REB

[Rich Engle]

A matter of interpretation, perhaps? Huh? He said:

'All Iranian mosques and madrassahs, and the residences of all Iranian...imams [and] clerics. Hit these targets when they are most likely to be occupied (e.g., mosques during the day and residences at night).'"

I mean, is he not saying do strikes when the churches and residences are full? Does this not mean peak occupation time for civilians? You know, there are these folks that are just civilian churchgoers and such. And women and children and elderly in the residences (albeit in this case including residences of a number of scumbags). We expect civilian casualties in war. But to try and optimize them? What the fuck?

Maybe after that, go after any of their relatives? Hitler had relatives here in the U.S. that had that to deal with. Where does it end?

Edited October 4, 2006 by Rich Engle

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Andre,

If your interpretation of Biddle were correct, and I do not think it is, I fully agree with you that we identify the Islamist world-domination bad guys and take them out - including military leaders disguised as clergy (or clergy who have assumed the function of military leaders). We also do not let them develop and accumulate highly destructive weapons. (Yes, I think Iran's nuclear program must halt now and if it does not, it must be targeted and destroyed.)

But I have problems with words like "all" and "nukes" and "people as a whole" which are simply not selective. And, as Rich just pointed out, advocating bombing religious places and residences at times when they are likely to be filled with unarmed civilians far exceeds the targets you mentioned. Frankly I think you, as with others who think similarly, have a legitimate position that I agree with, but you are not reading Biddle & Co. correctly. Just because he and ARI seem to get some of it right, this does not exonerate them from responsibility for the genocide they preach. What they are advocating is the same damn thing they want to fight (tribal collectivism at root). I am of the opinion that you do not fight evil by becoming evil yourself. You fight it by correct identification of the problems and decisive action both militarily and intellectually to rid yourself (and the world) of such problems for all time.

For this reason, I found it especially refreshing that you mentioned moral black and moral grays. It is about time someone from the kill-em-all-and-ask-questions-later side mentioned degree when they talk about moral blame. It is good to see reason employed in making proper moral identification and it shows that, despite bombastic rhetoric I have read from you on other forums, there is a fundamental difference between you and the ones you cite.

I get tired of reading about how starving the South to death in the Civil war by burning crops, raping and killing women and children (which conveniently gets left out in the ARI account just like a lot more does) was actually a humanitarian gesture that saved lives. The Nazis did this against the Jews and all it shows is that brutality works wonderfully in weakening and killing folks if you can get away with it. I see no moral superiority at all in this. I contend that morality is out the window when this kind of thing happens and the only standard left is military - essentially the standard of gang warfare. This is inevitable, maybe, because of the nature of force, but it is definitely not moral in the sense the word morality is normally used, even in Objectivism.

On an amusing note, if you found the thread "monstrously long" and "hideously long and unreadable," I find it very strange you contributed to it and made it longer.

(btw - Welcome to OL. It's good to see you here.)

Michael

[Victor Pross]

"I am of the opinion that you do not fight evil by becoming evil yourself."

Yes, that's right. This is so basic and simple a moral maxim and we learned it at our mother’s knee: two wrongs don’t make a right. Kids understand this, so why not "rational adults"? It must be the emotionally driven red splattered words “murder” that blocks their vision. :w00t:

Edited October 4, 2006 by Victor Pross

[Rich Engle]

"I am of the opinion that you do not fight evil by becoming evil yourself."

Yes, that's right. This is so basic and simple a moral maxim and we learned it at our mother’s knee: two wrongs don’t make a right. Kids understand this, so why not "rational adults"? It must be the emotionally driven red splattered words “murder” that blocks their vision. :w00t:

*sigh* One wonders, indeed, Victor. There's always some rationale going on. Some O-izens happen to not simply be atheists, but major hardcore religion haters; across the board religion haters. Maybe that's one reason Biddle had no regrets about blasting innocent people off their prayer mats (I assume he is a concise enough writer that he meant what he wrote, and knew how to write it; I find it very unopen to any other interpretation). He doesn't know precisely who and how many and where of these criminals are to be found in the various places of worship, heck, the U.S. military has enough trouble with that-- terrorism is a nimble beast. Innocents are innocents. I'm trying to figure out how to similar example this thing... Oh, here. Let's say there's a huge atheist and maybe largely Objectivist population somewhere suffering from the exact same problem- criminals using Objectivist schools to conduct business, recruit, foul the philosophy, and do crimes against humanity. Or if that's too wild, use a large colony of Buddhists, being that they're atheists. Do we still want to wait until prime times, so we can get the maximum kill numbers? After all, we have to stop these insane criminals. Just make sure we get 'em all by trying for a full house? There is, in some circles, a fundamental hatred of Islam just like there is of Christianity, and just like there is of "infidels" and atheists. It doesn't matter. Maybe it makes it easier to propose genocidal solutions for complex issues involving a very unconventional enemy.

I suspect that if religious affiliation were taken out of this, the rhetoric would be different- less ability to suggest wide things like what Biddle did.

[Victor Pross]

Rich,

I hear ya. Even though all of history is drenched in blood because of religious passions, I still am able to recognize murder when I hear it being advocated—even as an atheist. When it comes to the Biddles, count me out.

Victor

Edited October 4, 2006 by Victor Pross

[Brant Gaede]

Andre,

The United States is not at war with Iran. If the United States goes to war then what are legitimate military targets will be decided depending on the decided nature and scope of the war. Some clerics may or may not be deemed worthy targets for arrest. The West is at war with Islamists only metaphorically. You don't cause casualties out of a metaphorical war.

BTW, "the first enemy civilians" to be targeted to be "terminated"? How long is your list?

--Brant

Edited October 4, 2006 by Brant Gaede

[Dennis Hardin]

Michael,

…in your scenario of carpet bombing of Nazi Germany, if that included (back then) concentration camps, would you hold the Jewish prisoners in them morally responsible for their own deaths because they were passive in Hitler's rise to power?

I would have opposed the bombing of concentration camps, for the same reason that many Jewish groups did when this was proposed during the war. Bombing the camps would likely kill Jews imprisoned at the camps with little hope of actually stopping the extermination of other Jews.

Yes, as I said, the Jews who did nothing are at least minimally responsible for their fate.

If the Green party began to talk about the need to stop blond, blue-eyed atheists from contaminating the gene pool, and I did nothing about it, and it eventually led to my own incarceration and death, then yes, I would say I was partially to blame for doing nothing to stop it. I have a moral obligation to fight for my own life and happiness, and if I don’t, then to that extent I am blameworthy. But there are degrees of evil, and obviously the individuals pushing the extermination program are incomparably more evil. (Nothing personal against the Greens.)

Brant,

I am not an expert on history by any means, but World War II suggests that overpowering military power can definitely take the wind out of the Zeitgeist. If nothing else, bombs and technology can convince savages to crawl back in their holes and stay there until they get so bored that they decide to test us again. And, then, hopefully, the Great Satan will give them same lesson in unabashed capitalist greed they got the last time.

Dennis

[L W HALL]

I mean, is he not saying do strikes when the churches and residences are full? Does this not mean peak occupation time for civilians? You know, there are these folks that are just civilian churchgoers and such. And women and children and elderly in the residences (albeit in this case including residences of a number of scumbags). We expect civilian casualties in war. But to try and optimize them? What the fuck?

Of course that's what he is saying Rich; when I made mention of this on SOLO those who aplogized for him made the Islamist/Muslim argument, but if anybody happened to read the exchange you would notice there was no reply when I asked how he planned on separating the two out. The reason I believe there was no answer is because he really makes no well thought out differentiation between them as evidenced by the very quote you provided.

Like many on here and other places I make no claim to military genius, but I find it hard to believe that it takes great intelligence to understand that the random killing of innocents makes for less than good strategy.

L W

Edited October 5, 2006 by L W HALL

[Victor Pross]

I wanted to share a letter written to me that addresses an argument that Michael has put forth here at OL. It is a rather interesting perspective and I did want to toss it into the pot on this thread for consideration. The argument might be considered the flip side of Michael’s position.

Victor,

As for MSK on war. I see some glaring problems.

Consider these two statements:

"I admit that when there is an armed

Attack from a nation, a certain amount of tribal thinking is forced upon

us by circumstances. This is due to the fact that nations exist."

"I as a member of our tribe" becomes more important

than "I as an individual."

This so-called "tribal" thinking, in the context of the 9-11 Islamofascist

terrorist attacks, is - for most people - a tacit recognition of the

allegiance they have with the rest of modern civilization.

Michael talks about A.R.I.'s gross-over simplification. Oh, please.

Consider WW2. If you found out the reasons behind Chamberlain's policy of

appeasement (in a conversation I had with WW2 War Vet, Richard Fields,

Richard explained that Chamberlain was extremely worried about the

magnitude of the loss of life on both sides if Britain declared war on

Germany) you'd realize that the decisions made by Winston Churchill were

based on pain-staking deliberations. Churchill was denounced as a

war-monger for standing against the Nazi threat.

Michael implies that proportionality is somehow morally superior to a

lack of proportionality. Why? By what standard of justice do we make such

a moral claim? This is treating expansionist (who initiate force)

theocratic States - like Iran - on moral par with semi-free Western

States.

My God, you only have to look at the endless war Israel is in to

see that proportionality will not work for them. The more they show

restraint the more their enemy (and our enemy) will be emboldened and

conclude that Israel is weak. This is the concept of honor and shame in

Middle Eastern society. Read up on it. I also smell the stench of

altruism - because we're treating them equally. Proportionality, in the

sense employed by MSK, would lead to longer wars (This is what we have

now)- which means - endangering more innocent lives in the future. If we

don't change our approach soon we'll be done for.

Note: This letter was granted permission by the writer for posting here at OL. :turned:

***

Edited October 5, 2006 by Victor Pross

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Victor,

Well, it is true that if you do not use proportionality at all in moral/military judgment, you do resolve the problem with a Final Solution. Kill everybody you don't like.

It works.

(Except for Nazi Germany. But it worked for a while there.)

Michael

[Victor Pross]

Michael,

For the record, I do find the arguments that you have advanced on this issue much more level-headed and persuasive. I suppose that anything short of “Killing them all” would be an act of altruism. For me, it is the engagement of altruism—the flipside: let’s not slit our throats—let’s slit all of theirs!” This is being proposed by people who are not military strategists, but who do smell the stink of blood-lust and hatred. That is what I see.

I am—and always will be—against the specific targeting of unarmed citizens, women and children and educational establishments. Or do I have this wrong? If that is what is being proposed at the end of the day, count me out

Victor

Edited October 5, 2006 by Victor Pross

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Victor,

The person who wrote this letter has no understanding of what altruism is.

Altruism is a philosophy that claims that another's interests are more important than your own - always.

The anal-retentive type Objectivist tries to interpret this to mean that other human beings are or no value whatsoever if you want something. They try to justify their meanness of spirit - basically trampling over others at whim - by distorting the meaning of the concept and tieing it to NIOF, which they twist all out of shape by some amazing hair-splitting.

They make the logical fallacy of reducing a lesser value (other human beings) to a zero or even negative value when they protest against altruism. This allows them to contemplate mass slaughter while smiling.

Reality check. Saying that you are against altruism is not a moral carte blanche to kill people when you feel like it. This distorted preaching of anti-altruism is a classic case of someone not using the philosophy to live, but instead trying to obliterate all values in reality to conform to the rules in his head, even to the point of preaching mass extermination of human beings.

As to your uneasiness with the ARI position, reread some of the quotes from the ARI literature. They are absolutely clear about targeting women, children, educational institutions and places of worship (at times when they are most occupied). The escape clause is that they always claim that, morally, the deaths (the killing that we are supposed to do) is the fault of those killed or that of their leaders. This "blame the victim for his own death" approach works for an armed enemy. It is evil when apply it to women and children (housewife-type women, not armed women soldiers).

Also, there is that boneheaded thing about waging war against the entire Palestinian people, not just the nation. Do you know what waging a war against a people means? The Nazis sure did with the Jews. And yes, it means women and children, too.

Michael

[Rich Engle]

I love O-speak. It's great, if and when you can get past the knee-jerks.

Altruism. Collectivism. Evasion. All the rest... So attractive, and convenient to make it fit one's needs.

Michael nailed it, I'll take it in a bit more.

I am convinced that everyone always acts in what they believe to be their own self interest, all the time. It is the core of human behavior. That doesn't mean it's good for us, or right, but we really do that; it is the nature of survival.

Some Objectivists attack people who do things like charity, social projects. They accuse them of this altruism thing. But, don't these people (and I am one of them, I do charity projects from time to time) do what they do because it makes them happy? The usual response from nasty O'ers is "mistaken thinking."

Do the math. They are acting in their own self-interest, and I don't think you hurt others if you are doing work where you are, say, just trying to get a blanket to a kid in Ethiopia. Yet, one is criticized for that.

I'm not talking about professional do-gooders, corrupt do-gooders. That is a different matter. If I keep my home fires alive, and I have the means and bandwidth, and it makes me happy, I might want to make MYSELF happy by giving to others.

Giving to others is not a bad thing. Some people enjoy it, and in a way that is win-win.

Knee-jerk is that it's always bad. That's where you see the kind of stuff, by extension, for instance, that happened with the death of Nathan Hawking. Those kinds of nasty comments showed, to me, exactly how nasty and psychologically challenged some people can be; they found themselves knotted up in their own principles, so much so that they couldn't do something as simple as mourn the death of someone that was out there, on top of living, on top of taking care of themselves and their dearest ones, trying to encourage discussion at a higher level. What we do here is a gift, one that we give to ourselves.

I applaud MSK's article about tolerance. He said it all there. All of it.

Edited October 5, 2006 by Rich Engle

[kiaer.ts]

Rich,

You said: "I am convinced that everyone always acts in what they believe to be their own self interest, all the time."

How would you characterize this? One night while waiting for the subway around midnight, I sat listening to a guitarist playing songs for tips. I didn't make any requests, but he played "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," "Stairway to Heaven," and "Wish You Were Here." (It was a long wait.) Although I did have smaller change, I tossed a $50 in his guitar case, and boarded the train. He waived at me through the window. I did not expect to see him again, could have tipped him less, or not at all. How would this fit in with your analysis?

Ted

Edited October 6, 2006 by Ted Keer