[MD] Barbarian attack

[Platt Holden]

SA:

>      Platt I know you want to save intellectual
> values, but if you concentrate on killing you are not
> creating something but a whole lot of destruction and
> a tearing down of intellectual values.

I don't see where the American revolution, the Civil war, World Wars I 
and II, or the Korean war tore down intellectual values. In fact, just 
the opposite. Killing in those cases preserved intellectual values from 
destruction.  

> Isn't the
> whole idea of killing to defend ones' ideals something
> both sides are opinionated upon, thus, a number of
> people on both sides of the fight want to kill because
> they think killing is the only way to solve this mess.

Yes, but there are good ideals and evil ideals. The Communist ideal as 
explicated by Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Min and others was an evil 
ideal that resulted in the slaughter of millions for the greater good 
of the state. The ideals of radical Islam as explicated by Bin Laden 
and others calls for destruction of Western ideals that established the 
enlightened intellectual level whereby not the state but each 
individual's life and liberty were held as sacred. As Pirsig said:

"A culture that supports the dominance of intellectual values over 
social values is absolutely superior to one that does not." (Lila, 24)

This of course is just the opposite of what postmodernism and the  
multiculturists are teaching kids in secondary schools and in college. 
There all cultures are considered moral equals to be respected 
regardless whether they jail and murder political dissidents, kill 
female babies, or stone adulteresses to death. After all, if you 
happened to born into such a culture, you too would approve such acts. 
"Judge not lest ye be judged" is the postmodernist rallying cry, 
oblivious of the fact that the cry itself is a judgment that   
contradicts itself and thus becomes absurdly incoherent.

A question I have for you is do you think the killing done by America 
and its allies in the wars mentioned above was justified?

Platt