[MD] Flying Spagetti Monsters

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Arlo previously]
Either you can conceive of an order that you would disobey or you can not.

[Platt]
I would not obey an order to kill myself. How absurd do you want to be with your
"any order" question?

[Arlo]
Would you obey an order to rape?

[Platt]
As for insipid insinuations, you insinuated that I would drop gas pellets on
Jews.

[Arlo]
I insinuated that "blind obedience" to the state is what led to dropping gas
pellets on Jews. There is a time when good men must say "no" to immoral orders.

[Platt]
I hear the same sort of insinuation from radical left-wingers. Putting the two
together isn't difficult.

[Arlo]
Oh, yes, I forgot about them dreaded "radical left-wingers". I better check
under my bed tonight, just in case.

[Arlo previously]
You apparently disagree, believing that our soldier's should be "blindly
obedient". History makes obvious the result of your way of thinking.

[Platt]
I repeat, in battle, yes. Specify the "obvious result" in history.

[Arlo]
The Inquisition. Pol Pot. The genocidal actions against the Indians and the
Jews. Those are the obvious historical examples when men blindly obey social
static structures.

[Platt]
The obvious result I see is that America is still free, and you ought to get
down on your knees every day and thank those soldiers, sailors, airmen and
marines who have protected and preserved your right to speak your mind freely,
among other freedoms you enjoy at the intellectual level.

[Arlo]
You think I don't admire, or are not grateful, to the sacrifices of those who
preserve(d) my freedoms? Oh, I forgot, we are in right-wing radio world, where
the slightest suggestion that there are times when even America can act
immorally is met with such ludicrous nonsense like this. I tell you what
though, amigo, I get down on my knees every day and thank those who would say
"no", that there are times, even if its only in extreme cases, when serving
morality is not simply serving the state.

[Platt]
Abu Graib was a prison, not a battlefield. Can't you tell the difference?

[Arlo]
So, there are conceivable orders you, as a US soldier, would decline if you were
stationed at Abu Graib?

[Arlo previously]
All you'd know is that your were ordered to kill 140,000 innocent people. Sorry,
my moral fiber wouldn't take that. Glad to hear you would so willing press that
button and exterminate 140,000 people just because you had hopes that it MIGHT
end the war.

[Platt]
You're damn straight I would press the button to kill those who, if they had the
button, would kill me.

[Arlo]
You're sure that all of those 140,000 people would kill you? How omniscent of
you.

[Arlo previously]
Or is killing 140,000 people in hopes of ending a war only moral when we doit? I
know your answer, of course, and I could rephrase it already as "it is moral
BECAUSE WE do it".

[Platt]
You repeat what you have said before. You see no moral difference between
America and Imperial Japan. Hard to believe, but there it is for all to see and
shake their heads in wonderment.

[Arlo]
Oh drop the idiotic "no moral difference" crap, Platt. You're not Rush Limbaugh
and this is not the EIB network. No one else buys this insipid accusation.

You claimed the dropping of the bomb was moral because it "saved lives" by
"ending the war". If Japan did this, to achieve this same ends, in order only
to force a ceasefire. No end of America. No end of your freedoms. Just an end
to the war. If they did it just for that reason, would it be moral?

But you answered, and you didn't really have to, since I already made it clear
what your answer would be. Dropping the bombs is only moral if America does it.
Anything America does is moral. We are wholly moral and wonderful. America can
do no wrong. "Masturbatory patriotism", nothing more.

Luckily, there are those of us who see how wonderful America is, but also how
easy it is for any social structure to behave immorally. Rather than wrapping
myself is apologistic rhetoric, I prefer to be critical of the state. When it
does wrong, good men must stand up. 

[Platt]
It was Pirsig who said insulting people was evil. You object to his label?

[Arlo]
I object to those who cry about taking what they so readily dish out.

[Platt]
It is not immoral to fight to protect the American Consititution from those who
would overthrow it.

[Arlo]
50 points for the right-wing distortion supreme! I never said it was "immoral to
fight". Did I? No. But, tell you what, I'll give you 10 bonus points if you
keep repeating this and try to convince everyone its what I said, eh? 

[Platt]
As Goldwater rightly put it, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." 

[Arlo]
So, if we start an ebola outbreak in Iraq "to win the war", you'd find no
objections to this?

[Arlo previously]
Yes, how ironic that the "Marxist" is arguing for disobedience to the state, in
favor of individual morality. And the right-winger is arguing for blindly
killing 140,000 "for the greater good". As for the absolutes, its a dead
argument. The whole "there are no absolutes is an absolute" has already been
discussed. I love paradox.

[Platt]
It is indeed ironic. You wouldn't be arguing for disobedience to the state if
immoral forced redistribution of income was the issue.

[Arlo]
Oh, biggie! 100 points for the use of "immoral forced redistribution of income"
to talk about "taxes" (Lakoff readers, take note). Let's remember how "immoral"
it was the next time we drive on a road, or take a book out of the library, or
call 911, or need EMT services, or use a public clinic, or hike in a public
forest, or fish in any of our lakes or streams. Yes, let's. Taxation is a
privilege I am happy to pay for the wonderful infrastructure we all enjoy.
There are things I'd change, sure (abolishing income tax would be first), but
taxation as "immoral redistribution of wealth". That's just right-wing
nonsense.

[Platt]
And funny in that although you believe that absolutes don't exist you call on
them with regularity, using "all," "any" and "every" in wildly absolute general
statements. Whatever happened to your objection to black and white absolutist
dichotomies and generalizations? Methinks you speak with forked tongue.

[Arlo]
There are times when one is forced to deal with the paradox of language. So
what? We, others, there've been threads on this before. If you wanna start one
up again, be my guest. I'll meet you there.