[MD] atomic bomb and torture

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

Elizabeth, Platt also...

[Elizabeth wrote]
Sorry I may be pathetically stupid but in the Platt and Arlo discussion
Platt, cant the same argument be made for the middle eastern countries
in that they feel that their civilization is threatened hence they have
a right to defend their culture and ipso facto who is to decide whose
civilization is to take priority  Guess Platt can even incite the
lurkers to find a voice.

[Arlo]
You're exactly right, Elizabeth. This is the idiocy of what I've been calling
all along a "right-wing pissing contest".

You'll remember that Platt had charged that the MOQ gives "society" moral
justification to defend itself from "biological threats". I concurred, but
pointed out that this alone does not represent the depth/complexity of the MOQ
position, namely...

(1) That the threat must be actual.
(2) Killing Person B to prevent Person A from harming you is immoral.
(3) Society has NO moral right to protect itself from an intellectual threat.

In saying so, I was not challenging the morality of warring with Japan during
WWII, but was challenging the concept that the detonation of two atomic bombs
over civilian cities was "moral".

In defense, Platt has offered but one sentence, a contextual sentence about the
morality of the Civil War. "When the United States drafted troops for the Civil
War everyone knew that innocent people would be murdered."

There are several key things here. First, this gets at my caveat #3 above. It
was moral for the an idea (freedom for all people irrespective of race) to
destroy society than for society to destroy the idea. Second, notice two key
word-choices on Pirsig's part, "innocent people" and "murdered". At best, one
could say that for the Civil War, some "immorality" was necessary for the goal
of a greater morality.

Does that mean that during war NOTHING a country does could be "immoral"? If
raping Japanese girls would have sped up the countries surrender, does that
make it "moral"? One has to be able to separate the larger context from the
actions from which is it made, one does not give carte blanche moral
justification to the other. Also, the preceding sentance to the single one
Platt uses reads "A primitive isolated village threatened by brigands has a
moral right and obligation to kill them in self-defense since a village is a
higher form of evolution." Notice the specificity of "kill them", meaning the
"brigands". It does not read, "A primitive isolated village threatened by
brigands has a moral right and obligation to kill all the women and children in
the village where the brigands are from in self-defense since a village is a
higher form of evolution."

Never forget too, that the "murdering" of "innocent people" is aborrent and
always immoral according to the MOQ, where even a criminal's life is valued
once the biological threat posed is contained. I find it disturbing, but par
for the course, that the sanctity of life discussed by Pirsig is ignored in the
crafting of endless state apologies.

But, this is simply the "pissing contest" of moral egotism wrought by the
right-wing politicos both here and there. You begin with predefining "morality"
as "what my country does", and subvert everything to that mindset. Then one can
righteously claim the atomic destructions of two civilian cities (hundreds of
thousands of innocents murdered) was "moral", but call the enemy "immoral" when
he targets a one civilian. Perverse logic, but that too is the "right wing"
way.

Arlo