The Great and Powerful Oz has recently ordered the arrest of known Wicked Witch acquaintance Dorothy of Kansas. Munchkin Intelligence, Section 5, indicated that Dorothy has been fraternizing with populist rebels and suspected communist sympathizers Scarecrow, Tin-Man, and Cowardly Lion. The Wizards Spokewoman, Glinda, denies as fallacious the claims that Dorothy discovered something compromising about the identity of the All-Powerful Oz that would undermine his depthless authority.
Generally true, but not always. Young, single, childless bohemian types sometimes do, in fact, choose to live lower rent neighborhoods and disdain those who do not do likewise. Priorities tend to change once one settles down, marries, has kids, and actually wants to own a little property.
Lesson: don't take advice about where to live from those who've less to lose than you.
To be sure, actually enforcing a no-fly zone could require SEAD missions [...]
But this is what I had in mind when I wrote. In practical terms, it generally comes to this (case in point, Iraq for much of the 90's). When we hear of no-fly zones presented in media, it is treated as a low-cost alternative to getting into a fight. Of course it's presented this way cynically. Those hawks who call for no-fly zones cannot be ignorant of the fact that most countries don't like foreigners telling them they cannot use their own airspace.
And, you know, it's funny how the gallery at the Capitol doesn't turn into a shooting gallery as some might predict. Of course, it'd be stupid to open fire with the security guards about and who knows how many armed lawmakers. As a teacher at a public university, I wish my institution did not prohibit carrying, inasmuch as I feel responsible for the well-being of my students.
As for being ass-backward, there is certainly some of that here. But I don't think it because of the quality of the people--who are as good and as bad as anywhere else in the country. What's ass-backward about the place is all the corruption. One almost wonders if this isn't the reason the politicians want to be able to carry.
This is sometimes true, but not always. It happens I care (and many more do who protest the war just this sort of reason). Not only do some care about those who've died in the war, but even those who die as a result of sanctions. But you know what? Sometimes it's healthy to target an argument. The fact is, most people can't be convinced to care about foreigners who speak the same language as those whom their neighbors have been called on to fight. But they might be persuaded to care about their neighbors who're called to fight, and perhaps to die.
True. But this is not surprising really. Hawks (presenting themselves as humanitarians) have been talking about establishing a no-fly zone as a less aggressive alternative to direct war with the Syrian army for more than a year. People talk about a establishing a no-fly zone as though it only involves ordering the Syrian military to cease flying planes and occasionally flying our own jets over the area to make sure they do as we say. In fact, establishing a no-fly zone means beginning with a bombing campaign (SEAD, as you say) to destroy radar and AA and partnered by strikes against air assets (it simply won't do if they can fight back). All the while, anytime the enemy should attempt to engage with ground forces, the use of force will be immediately justified, allowing engagement with those.
Anytime I hear promises of easy, limited engagement, I'm brought back to the promises made in 2003. This war would be short; the Iraqis would all just lay down arms; it would really be a budget war. Since then, we've spent equivalent to nearly a third of our current national debt on that war and (last I checked) 4486 American lives.
The sad thing is that the President has already declared it his right to initiate the war unilaterally and he has plenty of cheerleaders, including in the supposed opposition party, who will support action even without Congressional approval.
What you're referring to is the War Powers Act. This does allow the president the ability to engage in conflict on short notice and without a declaration of war, but the act was designed to check the president's warmaking powers, restricting it to specific conditions. According to the act, the president can only act by statutory authorization or "a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces." Presidents (R and D alike) have tended to focus on the details like the 60 to 90 days they have discretion, while ignoring the conditions under which such discretion is allowed. Unless we are in a national emergency (i.e. a nuking or a Pearl Harbor like event), Presidents act against the letter of the War Powers Act if they exercise such powers.
I point all this out because its so often misrepresented in the media, which rarely questions a President's authority to go to war (again, R or D president).
Of course, if we were talking about a courthouse or other government building it would be a different story.
In some places. In the Commonwealth of Kentucky and at least 10 other states (according to an article in the Lexington Herald-[Mis]Leader) it's legal to pack directly in the state Capitol.
The problem here is that you make it all-or-nothing.
I'm afraid not. It is interesting, however, that you repeat to me a charge that others have leveled against you in other comments. Let's dispense with such charges, you and I, and rather than imputing beliefs to one another, try to come to an understanding--even if we don't agree.
I speak of priorities and a hierarchy of duty. That something is lower on a hierarchy does not make it irrelevant nor does it indicate doing something only when it is convenient (as you've falsely accused me). I will say readily that determining the best way to execute these duties, doing good to as many as possible and harm to none, is difficult and on such prudential judgments men of good sense may differ. But that such duties exist, I must insist.
Perhaps I can explain it in this way: state, country, community, circles of friends, and families are all important. Together, they make up human society. But some are both logically and ontologically prior to others. If we are to have a functioning country, it must be composed of functioning communities. If we are to have functioning communities, they must be composed of all the myriad friendships, partnerships, and other social bonds that make a community run. But if we are to have any of these, we must first have families. Families are prior to all more complex forms of relationships if only for this very simple reason: they are the source of children. But there are more reasons than this families are prior. In a healthy community, families are founded on a voluntary bond of mutual self-sacrifice between two people which thereafter remains stable. This gives a coherence to the broader community that even strong friendships cannot give. Families then produce children and it is within the family environment that we expect the children to be best cared for. This is because the bond and affection between parent and child is a natural one and we consider perverse anyone who lacks it. For this reason, if a child goes hungry on one side of the town we do not punish every person in town--many of whom may not have even known of the child's existence--but only the parent whose primary duty it was to feed the one child. But the broader duty of community means we may all well pay taxes for the upkeep of that child as we find human and decent surrogates to adopt her. As much as we might praise those who would adopt the child and make the sacrifices necessary to do so, however, we would never blame a random family for not doing so if that family already had as many mouths as they could feed. But regardless, without the primary bond of families we can never speak of communities toward which we owe duties and so duties owed to families are prior to those owed to a community.
But as I said to someone else (and the thread is getting long enough that comments are being buried), I think we've lost a sense of context. The discussion is becoming rather abstract. My objection to Benedikt's claim is as follows:
[W]e were speaking of education. There is a very tenuous connection between sending my child to a failing public school and the good it does the whole student body. But, when I have an alternative, the connection between the failing school and the harm it does my child is primary and direct. I owe it to my child to avoid that primary harm--that is simply my duty as a parent--even if means neglecting some tenuous good it might do others. It is not a question of sacrificing those other children--I've done them no harm, much less a primary and direct harm. I've simply refused to sacrifice the good of my own child for the tenuous and even questionable claim that concerned parents sending their children to failing public schools would substantially improve them.
If my ethics still seem foreign to you, I would have you know that they're nothing new or radical. They're actually rather older than the newer ethics of the atomized, rights-bearing individual
If you're sacrificing others to protect your own family, at least have the decency to admit it rather than try to reassure yourself with talk of 'bonds of family.'
If you'd like to have a conversation, I'm certainly willing. If you'd like to correct my thinking, I'll listen. But please can the passive-aggressive insinuation about my character or motives and I will continue to speak with you in a civil fashion as well, and we'll both have an enlightening discussion.
I think we're losing sight of context here, but before I get to how I'd like to point something out. You can find no place here where I assert doing a positive evil for the sake of those to whom you owe positive goods. I do not say anywhere that a man ought to take bread out of the mouths of other starving children to feed his own. That is the implication of what you say about. But I do say that a man ought to have priorities in how he dispenses the good he has. If he has but one meal to give, it ought to go to his starving child before the masses. For such is his duty and if he will not feed his starving child, who will? If he has but three meals, one for his child, one for his wife, and one more, he would be just an ordinary human if he chose to feed himself with the third. If he chose to feed the masses with the third, and go hungry himself, he would be more than an ordinary human. But if he starved his wife and child so that an unsatisfying morsel should be distributed to many, he would be less than human for he would have failed in his primary duties.
But you are quite right, as you say, that loyalties are contested. I'd say they have priorities, but even so executing those priorities as one best can--doing the most positive good without doing harm--is not always clear or easy. As a matter of fact, it is precisely these difficult, prudential decisions that are the basis of Greek tragedy.
But to return to the context: we were speaking of education. There is a very tenuous connection between sending my child to a failing public school and the good it does the whole student body. But, when I have an alternative, the connection between the failing school and the harm it does my child is primary and direct. I owe it to my child to avoid that primary harm--that is simply my duty as a parent--even if means neglecting some tenuous good it might do others. It is not a question of sacrificing those other children--I've done them no harm, much less a primary and direct harm. I've simply refused to sacrifice the good of my own child for the tenuous and even questionable claim that concerned parents sending their children to failing public schools would substantially improve them.
It boils down to "I will be altruistic when it is convenient."
This is neither my statement, nor my intent, but I will grant you the benefit of a doubt that you seem to deny me and assume you attack my premises rather than my person when you say what followed. But whether or not you accept my premises, I think you miss my principle.
I do not say a man ought not to sacrifice, or to give of himself. He certainly should. Let him sacrifice himself for his friends, for his neighbors, for his community, and even for the state. Further, I'll not only accept but even proclaim the claim of duty upon individuals, myself included. But duties have hierarchies. I have a duty to myself, my state, my community, my neighbors, my friends, my kin, my children, and my wife. But these duties have a hierarchy. My life and my well-being is my own to give for any of these. But I cannot give my children for the sake of the state, for they are not mine to give as my own welfare is. I cannot give them for the sake of the community, for they are mine only to sacrifice for, not to be sacrificed. My duty is to give them what I have, not to give them for another.
Any man is only one man, and his resources are limited. If he were otherwise, he could owe and give to all to in equal degree. But as he is not, his duties are hierarchical, proceeding from the most fundamental bonds to the breadth of his fellow man. If he has but one life to give he should give it for his wife before his state. If he has but one meal he should give it to his own child before attempting to feed the masses. Perhaps he'll have two meals and give the second to the masses, preferring that he should go hungry. But it must be this way for without the love and priority of the family there can be no community, no society, and no state. All these larger obligations are founded on the bond of the family, which produced progeny and thus continues society.
If you catch me failing to live up to my principles, preferring my own good to that of either family, my community, or my country, I will accept it when you call me an egoist. But if you catch me giving of myself for the sake of my family when I could prioritize instead the good of strangers, and call me an egoist for this reason, I will say that you speak as a fool. I agree that he is not altruistic who does only what is merely convenient or easy. But he not only fails at altruism, but arguably even at humanity, who sacrifices the good of another (such as his children) for the sake of a more distant duty.
Altruism, patriotism, and love of country are all good things. But goods are not all equal. If you ask me to be altruistic, to sacrifice a portion of my time or money to help improve my community, this is a fair request in keeping with civic duty. But if you ask me to sacrifice the good of my children for sake of civic duty, I will deny the claim outright. The duty I owe to wife and children is a higher duty than those I owe to any community. Altruism directed toward one's community is a great good, but the bonds which establish a family are greater still for without the bonds of family all communities must cease.
Indeed concrete individuals should take priority. I think she's approaching from a kind of categorical imperative. Hence her statement, "Whatever you think your children need—deserve—from their school experience, assume that the parents at the nearby public housing complex want the same. No, don’t just assume it. Do something about it." Or, again, her rather annoying, "ruining-one-of-our-nation's-most-essential-institutions-in-order-to-get-what's-best-for-your-kid bad." In other words, she would prioritize the needs of the "nation" over those of your "spawn" [her word, not mine]. After all, wouldn't it be wrong to put your own children before the common good? Isn't it selfish to secure for your own what humanity is often denied?
This kind of thinking always puts me in mind of a passage from the Brother Karamazov. In the passage a woman declare to Elder Zosima her great love for all of humanity, but her apparent inability to actively love an individual. Zosima replies:
“It's just the same story as a doctor once told me,” observed the elder. “He was a man getting on in years, and undoubtedly clever. He spoke as frankly as you, though in jest, in bitter jest. ‘I love humanity,’ he said, ‘but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. In my dreams,’ he said, ‘I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually have faced crucifixion if it had been suddenly necessary; and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with any one for two days together, as I know by experience. As soon as any one is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he's too long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.’” [...]
"I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labor and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science."
Loving and caring for abstractions like humanity or the nation is comparatively easy. Humanity, nations, or the people are objects which can be loved without fear. They will never leave or reject you. They can be readily idealized, so one never doubts the worthiness of loving them. And since they're abstracts, one needn't have to worry about them remembering those times you didn't particularly feel like caring for them. It's also very rewarding. In some cases, all we need to do is vote the way we think best, and then we can hold our heads up high, even regarding neighbors in scorn who have failed to see our good sense.
Loving and caring for concrete individuals is quite hard. They are sometimes ungrateful--in the case of infants and teenagers, it can seem almost constantly so. They have bodily needs which require unpleasant cleaning. They have wills of their own and cannot be idealized. They can remember your bad days. They can suffer and you may feel responsible, even when you're not. They can break your heart. They die.
This, I think, is at the heart of the preference many have, particularly among the educated and white collar, for giving priority to abstracts. A person such as Benedikt can hold you in contempt, for she prioritizes the higher ideal of the national good, while you privilege your "spawn" by giving them the
[...] it may be justified as a revenge well deserved for the civilians concerned. Hitler did not start the war on his own. He came to power through elections, promising a bigger Germany. Expansion was only possible through war. And so the people who elected him were guilty in said war. [...] Dresden was a war crime, but in this case, the civilians was not innocent.
Passing judgment on a whole people is the way of those whom you abhor. Do not be as they were. Bombs do not distinguish between those who supported Hitler, those who believed falsely about him, those who did not support him, those who hid from him, those who opposed him, and those who suffered under him. The firestorm consumed all of these, even babes in arms.
A citizen reaching the voting age when the war began would have been 14 when Hitler was appointed chancellor. And will you blame him for the Reichstag his parents elected? But even if a person held the franchise at the beginning of 1933, it would have mattered little for our purposes by mid-year. Hitler was appointed Chancellor by the Reichstag, not elected by some democratic referendum as you seem to believe. By May, he had secured emergency powers to begin throwing suspected opposition (especially communists and members of trade unions) in prison without trial or to concentration camps. By March, he was a dictator in all but name. Note that this all happened without intervening elections. With such power, he had himself named Führer by 1934. And will you call Hitler's ascendancy democratic so you can dubiously claim that civilians in Dresden deserved for their homes to be turned into crematorial furnaces?
But even if it were true that Hitler had been the leader of a democracy, as you falsely believe, it is still a terrible thing to blame a whole people for a government's actions. In the simplest meaning of the term, democracies operate on majority, not on consensus. Supporters of the villain need not have been higher than 51%. Who can defend killing the 49% to punish the 51%? When crimes occur in our neighborhoods, our best traditions hold it better that a guilty man walk than an innocent man suffer punishment for those crimes. You propose to burn down the whole neighborhood, young and old, man and woman, perpetrator and victim alike.
You have spoken in ignorance of the political arrangements that led to Hitler's rise. But I do not object chiefly to your ignorance, for that may be cured easily enough. It is this claim, that some entire nation which you define--one might say a "genos"--should suffer for the crimes of some subset of that nation. I would suggest you reexamine this claim in light of your rejection of those who would support plans such as Hitler's.
I agree. Even so, I'm a party member--though I've never voted for the party's presidential nominee--because I think that our problems won't be addressed in a general election before they're addressed in the primaries. Since so few pay attention to the primaries, and so many to the generals, we end up with choices like the 2012 presidential election: one pro-corporate statist hawk who says nice things about peace and the environment against another pro-corporate statist hawk who says nice things about religion and small government. (Of course it must be admitted that the latter was slightly more of a hawk, so I suppose there's some difference there.)
Mind you, we've only the scarcest hope to change things even in the primaries, but one still tries to do what little can be done.
It matters little who started what. Dresden remains an example of moral and practical failure. The moral failure came in the form of the massive civilian casualties knowingly inflicted. (That military men are guilty of atrocities does not mean unarmed non-combatants deserve punishment for those atrocities.)
The practical failure is often ignored, however, and the British should have been well aware of it. The Germans bombed London for months, operating under the belief that attacking the city would break the civilian will to fight. It turned out that attacking civilian populations only increases their will to fight, increases enlistment of willing soldiers beyond anything conscription can do, and makes any suggestion of acquiescence a political impossibility for those attacked. If you defeat an enemy military in the field, civilian support for the war effort will wane. Yet you cannot easily secure a surrender once you've committed atrocities against civilians.
This is directly comparable to the treatment of POWs. Some Germans were told by their fathers who'd fought in WWI to fight bravely even to the death against Russians but surrender to the first Americans you find. They said this because American had a policy of treating POWs humanely in WWI. Thus, American units in the European front could sometimes welcome a reduction in the fighting strength of the Germans due to surrender--an option which is always preferable because those who surrender do not shoot back. Contrast this with Americans after the Bataan Death March or, better still, Soviet defectors early in the war. Many Ukranians welcomed the Nazis, thinking them liberators from the evils of Stalin. They soon learned that the racist bastards could be even worse than Stalin. Consequently, Soviet soldiers fought for the state more fervently and many would refuse to surrender, knowing that death in battle would be preferable to being a Slavic POW in Nazi hands.
Atrocity can seem to give the one who commits it a brief surge of power, partly because of the fear it inflicts. But in the long run, atrocity and the killing of civilians is always counter-productive to a war effort. For more information, see Section V of this monograph.
We make this information available not to help liars beat the system, but to provide truthful people with a means of protecting themselves against the high risk of a false positive outcome.
Translation: please don't arrest us for exercising our First Amendment rights.
Especially after they'd already accused you of a crime, admitted that they had no evidence in hand to support the claim (save the testimony of your personal enemies), and to make things even better there was a SWAT team gearing up just off the edge of your property so they can come shoot you when (not if) evidence is found.
Slashdot Mirror
Oblig: "[...] Ornithologists are actually assholes.
He may have pled guilty, but how can we be sure he wasn't lying?
The Great and Powerful Oz has recently ordered the arrest of known Wicked Witch acquaintance Dorothy of Kansas. Munchkin Intelligence, Section 5, indicated that Dorothy has been fraternizing with populist rebels and suspected communist sympathizers Scarecrow, Tin-Man, and Cowardly Lion. The Wizards Spokewoman, Glinda, denies as fallacious the claims that Dorothy discovered something compromising about the identity of the All-Powerful Oz that would undermine his depthless authority.
Generally true, but not always. Young, single, childless bohemian types sometimes do, in fact, choose to live lower rent neighborhoods and disdain those who do not do likewise. Priorities tend to change once one settles down, marries, has kids, and actually wants to own a little property.
Lesson: don't take advice about where to live from those who've less to lose than you.
But this is what I had in mind when I wrote. In practical terms, it generally comes to this (case in point, Iraq for much of the 90's). When we hear of no-fly zones presented in media, it is treated as a low-cost alternative to getting into a fight. Of course it's presented this way cynically. Those hawks who call for no-fly zones cannot be ignorant of the fact that most countries don't like foreigners telling them they cannot use their own airspace.
And, you know, it's funny how the gallery at the Capitol doesn't turn into a shooting gallery as some might predict. Of course, it'd be stupid to open fire with the security guards about and who knows how many armed lawmakers. As a teacher at a public university, I wish my institution did not prohibit carrying, inasmuch as I feel responsible for the well-being of my students.
As for being ass-backward, there is certainly some of that here. But I don't think it because of the quality of the people--who are as good and as bad as anywhere else in the country. What's ass-backward about the place is all the corruption. One almost wonders if this isn't the reason the politicians want to be able to carry.
This is sometimes true, but not always. It happens I care (and many more do who protest the war just this sort of reason). Not only do some care about those who've died in the war, but even those who die as a result of sanctions. But you know what? Sometimes it's healthy to target an argument. The fact is, most people can't be convinced to care about foreigners who speak the same language as those whom their neighbors have been called on to fight. But they might be persuaded to care about their neighbors who're called to fight, and perhaps to die.
True. But this is not surprising really. Hawks (presenting themselves as humanitarians) have been talking about establishing a no-fly zone as a less aggressive alternative to direct war with the Syrian army for more than a year. People talk about a establishing a no-fly zone as though it only involves ordering the Syrian military to cease flying planes and occasionally flying our own jets over the area to make sure they do as we say. In fact, establishing a no-fly zone means beginning with a bombing campaign (SEAD, as you say) to destroy radar and AA and partnered by strikes against air assets (it simply won't do if they can fight back). All the while, anytime the enemy should attempt to engage with ground forces, the use of force will be immediately justified, allowing engagement with those.
Anytime I hear promises of easy, limited engagement, I'm brought back to the promises made in 2003. This war would be short; the Iraqis would all just lay down arms; it would really be a budget war. Since then, we've spent equivalent to nearly a third of our current national debt on that war and (last I checked) 4486 American lives.
The sad thing is that the President has already declared it his right to initiate the war unilaterally and he has plenty of cheerleaders, including in the supposed opposition party, who will support action even without Congressional approval.
What you're referring to is the War Powers Act. This does allow the president the ability to engage in conflict on short notice and without a declaration of war, but the act was designed to check the president's warmaking powers, restricting it to specific conditions. According to the act, the president can only act by statutory authorization or "a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces." Presidents (R and D alike) have tended to focus on the details like the 60 to 90 days they have discretion, while ignoring the conditions under which such discretion is allowed. Unless we are in a national emergency (i.e. a nuking or a Pearl Harbor like event), Presidents act against the letter of the War Powers Act if they exercise such powers.
I point all this out because its so often misrepresented in the media, which rarely questions a President's authority to go to war (again, R or D president).
In some places. In the Commonwealth of Kentucky and at least 10 other states (according to an article in the Lexington Herald-[Mis]Leader) it's legal to pack directly in the state Capitol.
Breaking Even
I'm afraid not. It is interesting, however, that you repeat to me a charge that others have leveled against you in other comments. Let's dispense with such charges, you and I, and rather than imputing beliefs to one another, try to come to an understanding--even if we don't agree.
I speak of priorities and a hierarchy of duty. That something is lower on a hierarchy does not make it irrelevant nor does it indicate doing something only when it is convenient (as you've falsely accused me). I will say readily that determining the best way to execute these duties, doing good to as many as possible and harm to none, is difficult and on such prudential judgments men of good sense may differ. But that such duties exist, I must insist.
Perhaps I can explain it in this way: state, country, community, circles of friends, and families are all important. Together, they make up human society. But some are both logically and ontologically prior to others. If we are to have a functioning country, it must be composed of functioning communities. If we are to have functioning communities, they must be composed of all the myriad friendships, partnerships, and other social bonds that make a community run. But if we are to have any of these, we must first have families. Families are prior to all more complex forms of relationships if only for this very simple reason: they are the source of children. But there are more reasons than this families are prior. In a healthy community, families are founded on a voluntary bond of mutual self-sacrifice between two people which thereafter remains stable. This gives a coherence to the broader community that even strong friendships cannot give. Families then produce children and it is within the family environment that we expect the children to be best cared for. This is because the bond and affection between parent and child is a natural one and we consider perverse anyone who lacks it. For this reason, if a child goes hungry on one side of the town we do not punish every person in town--many of whom may not have even known of the child's existence--but only the parent whose primary duty it was to feed the one child. But the broader duty of community means we may all well pay taxes for the upkeep of that child as we find human and decent surrogates to adopt her. As much as we might praise those who would adopt the child and make the sacrifices necessary to do so, however, we would never blame a random family for not doing so if that family already had as many mouths as they could feed. But regardless, without the primary bond of families we can never speak of communities toward which we owe duties and so duties owed to families are prior to those owed to a community.
But as I said to someone else (and the thread is getting long enough that comments are being buried), I think we've lost a sense of context. The discussion is becoming rather abstract. My objection to Benedikt's claim is as follows:
If my ethics still seem foreign to you, I would have you know that they're nothing new or radical. They're actually rather older than the newer ethics of the atomized, rights-bearing individual
That's interesting. Thank you.
If you'd like to have a conversation, I'm certainly willing. If you'd like to correct my thinking, I'll listen. But please can the passive-aggressive insinuation about my character or motives and I will continue to speak with you in a civil fashion as well, and we'll both have an enlightening discussion.
I think we're losing sight of context here, but before I get to how I'd like to point something out. You can find no place here where I assert doing a positive evil for the sake of those to whom you owe positive goods. I do not say anywhere that a man ought to take bread out of the mouths of other starving children to feed his own. That is the implication of what you say about. But I do say that a man ought to have priorities in how he dispenses the good he has. If he has but one meal to give, it ought to go to his starving child before the masses. For such is his duty and if he will not feed his starving child, who will? If he has but three meals, one for his child, one for his wife, and one more, he would be just an ordinary human if he chose to feed himself with the third. If he chose to feed the masses with the third, and go hungry himself, he would be more than an ordinary human. But if he starved his wife and child so that an unsatisfying morsel should be distributed to many, he would be less than human for he would have failed in his primary duties.
But you are quite right, as you say, that loyalties are contested. I'd say they have priorities, but even so executing those priorities as one best can--doing the most positive good without doing harm--is not always clear or easy. As a matter of fact, it is precisely these difficult, prudential decisions that are the basis of Greek tragedy.
But to return to the context: we were speaking of education. There is a very tenuous connection between sending my child to a failing public school and the good it does the whole student body. But, when I have an alternative, the connection between the failing school and the harm it does my child is primary and direct. I owe it to my child to avoid that primary harm--that is simply my duty as a parent--even if means neglecting some tenuous good it might do others. It is not a question of sacrificing those other children--I've done them no harm, much less a primary and direct harm. I've simply refused to sacrifice the good of my own child for the tenuous and even questionable claim that concerned parents sending their children to failing public schools would substantially improve them.
This is neither my statement, nor my intent, but I will grant you the benefit of a doubt that you seem to deny me and assume you attack my premises rather than my person when you say what followed. But whether or not you accept my premises, I think you miss my principle.
I do not say a man ought not to sacrifice, or to give of himself. He certainly should. Let him sacrifice himself for his friends, for his neighbors, for his community, and even for the state. Further, I'll not only accept but even proclaim the claim of duty upon individuals, myself included. But duties have hierarchies. I have a duty to myself, my state, my community, my neighbors, my friends, my kin, my children, and my wife. But these duties have a hierarchy. My life and my well-being is my own to give for any of these. But I cannot give my children for the sake of the state, for they are not mine to give as my own welfare is. I cannot give them for the sake of the community, for they are mine only to sacrifice for, not to be sacrificed. My duty is to give them what I have, not to give them for another.
Any man is only one man, and his resources are limited. If he were otherwise, he could owe and give to all to in equal degree. But as he is not, his duties are hierarchical, proceeding from the most fundamental bonds to the breadth of his fellow man. If he has but one life to give he should give it for his wife before his state. If he has but one meal he should give it to his own child before attempting to feed the masses. Perhaps he'll have two meals and give the second to the masses, preferring that he should go hungry. But it must be this way for without the love and priority of the family there can be no community, no society, and no state. All these larger obligations are founded on the bond of the family, which produced progeny and thus continues society.
If you catch me failing to live up to my principles, preferring my own good to that of either family, my community, or my country, I will accept it when you call me an egoist. But if you catch me giving of myself for the sake of my family when I could prioritize instead the good of strangers, and call me an egoist for this reason, I will say that you speak as a fool. I agree that he is not altruistic who does only what is merely convenient or easy. But he not only fails at altruism, but arguably even at humanity, who sacrifices the good of another (such as his children) for the sake of a more distant duty.
Altruism, patriotism, and love of country are all good things. But goods are not all equal. If you ask me to be altruistic, to sacrifice a portion of my time or money to help improve my community, this is a fair request in keeping with civic duty. But if you ask me to sacrifice the good of my children for sake of civic duty, I will deny the claim outright. The duty I owe to wife and children is a higher duty than those I owe to any community. Altruism directed toward one's community is a great good, but the bonds which establish a family are greater still for without the bonds of family all communities must cease.
Indeed concrete individuals should take priority. I think she's approaching from a kind of categorical imperative. Hence her statement, "Whatever you think your children need—deserve—from their school experience, assume that the parents at the nearby public housing complex want the same. No, don’t just assume it. Do something about it." Or, again, her rather annoying, "ruining-one-of-our-nation's-most-essential-institutions-in-order-to-get-what's-best-for-your-kid bad." In other words, she would prioritize the needs of the "nation" over those of your "spawn" [her word, not mine]. After all, wouldn't it be wrong to put your own children before the common good? Isn't it selfish to secure for your own what humanity is often denied?
This kind of thinking always puts me in mind of a passage from the Brother Karamazov. In the passage a woman declare to Elder Zosima her great love for all of humanity, but her apparent inability to actively love an individual. Zosima replies:
Loving and caring for abstractions like humanity or the nation is comparatively easy. Humanity, nations, or the people are objects which can be loved without fear. They will never leave or reject you. They can be readily idealized, so one never doubts the worthiness of loving them. And since they're abstracts, one needn't have to worry about them remembering those times you didn't particularly feel like caring for them. It's also very rewarding. In some cases, all we need to do is vote the way we think best, and then we can hold our heads up high, even regarding neighbors in scorn who have failed to see our good sense.
Loving and caring for concrete individuals is quite hard. They are sometimes ungrateful--in the case of infants and teenagers, it can seem almost constantly so. They have bodily needs which require unpleasant cleaning. They have wills of their own and cannot be idealized. They can remember your bad days. They can suffer and you may feel responsible, even when you're not. They can break your heart. They die.
This, I think, is at the heart of the preference many have, particularly among the educated and white collar, for giving priority to abstracts. A person such as Benedikt can hold you in contempt, for she prioritizes the higher ideal of the national good, while you privilege your "spawn" by giving them the
Passing judgment on a whole people is the way of those whom you abhor. Do not be as they were. Bombs do not distinguish between those who supported Hitler, those who believed falsely about him, those who did not support him, those who hid from him, those who opposed him, and those who suffered under him. The firestorm consumed all of these, even babes in arms.
A citizen reaching the voting age when the war began would have been 14 when Hitler was appointed chancellor. And will you blame him for the Reichstag his parents elected? But even if a person held the franchise at the beginning of 1933, it would have mattered little for our purposes by mid-year. Hitler was appointed Chancellor by the Reichstag, not elected by some democratic referendum as you seem to believe. By May, he had secured emergency powers to begin throwing suspected opposition (especially communists and members of trade unions) in prison without trial or to concentration camps. By March, he was a dictator in all but name. Note that this all happened without intervening elections. With such power, he had himself named Führer by 1934. And will you call Hitler's ascendancy democratic so you can dubiously claim that civilians in Dresden deserved for their homes to be turned into crematorial furnaces?
But even if it were true that Hitler had been the leader of a democracy, as you falsely believe, it is still a terrible thing to blame a whole people for a government's actions. In the simplest meaning of the term, democracies operate on majority, not on consensus. Supporters of the villain need not have been higher than 51%. Who can defend killing the 49% to punish the 51%? When crimes occur in our neighborhoods, our best traditions hold it better that a guilty man walk than an innocent man suffer punishment for those crimes. You propose to burn down the whole neighborhood, young and old, man and woman, perpetrator and victim alike.
You have spoken in ignorance of the political arrangements that led to Hitler's rise. But I do not object chiefly to your ignorance, for that may be cured easily enough. It is this claim, that some entire nation which you define--one might say a "genos"--should suffer for the crimes of some subset of that nation. I would suggest you reexamine this claim in light of your rejection of those who would support plans such as Hitler's.
I agree. Even so, I'm a party member--though I've never voted for the party's presidential nominee--because I think that our problems won't be addressed in a general election before they're addressed in the primaries. Since so few pay attention to the primaries, and so many to the generals, we end up with choices like the 2012 presidential election: one pro-corporate statist hawk who says nice things about peace and the environment against another pro-corporate statist hawk who says nice things about religion and small government. (Of course it must be admitted that the latter was slightly more of a hawk, so I suppose there's some difference there.)
Mind you, we've only the scarcest hope to change things even in the primaries, but one still tries to do what little can be done.
It matters little who started what. Dresden remains an example of moral and practical failure. The moral failure came in the form of the massive civilian casualties knowingly inflicted. (That military men are guilty of atrocities does not mean unarmed non-combatants deserve punishment for those atrocities.)
The practical failure is often ignored, however, and the British should have been well aware of it. The Germans bombed London for months, operating under the belief that attacking the city would break the civilian will to fight. It turned out that attacking civilian populations only increases their will to fight, increases enlistment of willing soldiers beyond anything conscription can do, and makes any suggestion of acquiescence a political impossibility for those attacked. If you defeat an enemy military in the field, civilian support for the war effort will wane. Yet you cannot easily secure a surrender once you've committed atrocities against civilians.
This is directly comparable to the treatment of POWs. Some Germans were told by their fathers who'd fought in WWI to fight bravely even to the death against Russians but surrender to the first Americans you find. They said this because American had a policy of treating POWs humanely in WWI. Thus, American units in the European front could sometimes welcome a reduction in the fighting strength of the Germans due to surrender--an option which is always preferable because those who surrender do not shoot back. Contrast this with Americans after the Bataan Death March or, better still, Soviet defectors early in the war. Many Ukranians welcomed the Nazis, thinking them liberators from the evils of Stalin. They soon learned that the racist bastards could be even worse than Stalin. Consequently, Soviet soldiers fought for the state more fervently and many would refuse to surrender, knowing that death in battle would be preferable to being a Slavic POW in Nazi hands.
Atrocity can seem to give the one who commits it a brief surge of power, partly because of the fear it inflicts. But in the long run, atrocity and the killing of civilians is always counter-productive to a war effort. For more information, see Section V of this monograph.
If prosecutors found they could more easily get convictions through failing people on phrenology tests, then yeah, that could happen.
Translation: please don't arrest us for exercising our First Amendment rights.
It doesn't have to work to be useful. But it's only useful so long as people believe it works.
Especially after they'd already accused you of a crime, admitted that they had no evidence in hand to support the claim (save the testimony of your personal enemies), and to make things even better there was a SWAT team gearing up just off the edge of your property so they can come shoot you when (not if) evidence is found.