[MD] atomic bomb and torture

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

Platt,

Forgot to add this in my last post. You seem to agree with Pirsig's assessment
on WWI:

"With Victorian spirits atrophied and their minds hemmed in by social
restraints, all avenues to any quality other than social quality were closed.
And so this social base which had no intellectual meaning and no
biological purpose slowly and helplessly drifted toward its own stupid
self-destruction: toward the SENSELESS MURDER of millions of its own
children on the battlefields of World War I."

"The Victorian social system and the Victorian morality that led into World War
I had portrayed war as an adventurous conflict between noble individuals
engaged in the idealistic service of their country: a kind of extended
knighthood." (sound familiar?)
 
"... the Victorians and their Edwardian successors sent an entire generation of
children into the trenches of World War I on behalf of these ideals. And
murdered them. FOR NOTHING. That war was the natural consequence of Victorian
moral egotism." (the natural consequence or moral egotism... sound familiar?)

You say, "Pirsig's moral rationale for the Civil War applies to the
Revolutionary War, World War II and all the subsequent wars we've engaged in."
Can you explain your rationale further as to why WWI was "immoral" but "every
war we've engaged in since" has been "moral"? What was different about WWI that
has not been a factor at all in "every subsequent war"?

Arlo