Heroes live, cowards die : comments.
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![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: Resetting
"Shot four puppet governors all in a line
Shook all tha world bankers who think they can rhyme
Shot the landlords who knew it was mine
Yes its a war from the depth of time" - RATM
Civilisation is merely the SYSTEMATIC usage of violence in the maintenance of social order. That is why the police exist - to exercise violence against the citizen.
Civilisation IS violence, merely controlled violence. All history is the history of class war. The use of violence by a private citizen, unempowered by the mandate of the state, is not immoral or unacceptable.
- contracyle
Re: Resetting
As to the police: the police exist to keep order, not to practice violence against the citizen. They might have to do that in the course of their job, but that is not their primary motivation or purpose. And as a response to that they do so, and the "all of civilization": "So, because it is, that makes it /right/?"
Sorry, Gareth, but others have said the same thing you have, and it hasn't stood up any better (adding quotes of Rage Against the Machine lyrics doesn't do anything for your argument).
Re: Resetting
Why they did was reference the real world, rather than the world of notional abstract speculation. And that is a critical issue when you want to make assertions about morality. And thus they most certainly DO support my argument, not least becuase they are not my own words.
No, causation of harm to another thinking, feeling being is not inherently immoral. How many people do you think you will find who consider killing Saddam Hussein to be IMMORAL? Very few I'd venture, and probably only those with a dogmatic hostility to violence.
If someone is strangling you, is it IMMORAL to kill them? If you are starving and others are guarding the granary, is it IMMORAL to eat over their dead bodies?
This is fantasy-land I'm afraid. Make a perfect, unconflicted world, and then you can say that violence is immoral. In this real, material world, violence is NOT inherently immoral - it may be a bad idea, it may even be traumatic for everyone involved, but IMMORAL it is not. You say that others are "not so casual" about death but they most certainly are - they were in fact SO casual about it that the majority supported an illegal war that killed a hundred thousand people very recently, didn't they?
You say my arguments have not "stacked up" more than any other arguments, but I say the same.
Re: Resetting
As well, just because it is necessary does not mean it is the best possible solution, or that there are not better solutions. Again, this is mistaking one thing for another: as in the previous post "because it is, does not make it right."
As to your "Well, everybody else..." arguments, I'm sorry but you're basing your arguments on a logical fallacy: the bandwagon. But you should first note I wasn't talking about majorities and minorities of thought when I made my statement about others not viewing the practice casually.
Note that I said "others" not "everyone else" or "the majority" or "most people"...just "others", so when you argue about how many people voted to go to war, or how many people would kill Saddam (and there it is again, "because everyone wants to, it is right?"), you aren't even responding to a claim being made, you're just up finding an excuse to be up bitching on your personal soapbox.
You also contradict yourself by arguing this: if violence is civilization and it is not wrong to utilize violence upon a perceived or possible threat, then what's wrong with the war? How is the war illegal or unjust if violence against Saddam Hussein and his regime was not immoral?