On Sun, 27 Jan 2002, Gautam Mukunda wrote: > > Me: > First - you're confusing legality and morality. The rebellion was a "just > war" because of the ends for which it was fought.
And because we won and proved that those ends could be met (in part) with a new and untried system of government. I'm pointing out that morals, especially in war, are highly conditional and dependent upon the course of events. I'm also pointing out the truism that "the victor gets to write the history books" -- and the historians get to use history to justify the moral theories. Suppose for a moment that we had lost the war, remained part of the British empire, and later peacefully achieved an independence that resembles Australia's, say. We would very likely look back and think, "Well, our ends were good, and we now know the value of democratic-republican government, but attempting an actual rebellion was shown to be a gross overreaction to circumstances; more of a landholders' grab for power than a true citizen's revolt, and ultimately unjustified." Me: But that's nothing more than a convenient generalization on your part. History does in fact show that the Founding Fathers were in the right to do what they did. Morality is not nearly as conditional as you think it is. It's _convenient_ for you to say that, but I actually think it's rather morally lazy. It lets you avoid making moral judgments because everyone has sinned. Everyone has, but not everyone has sinned equally, and people with power and responsibility must make those judgments. If you believe that democracy and freedom are good things, then you can't just dismiss that that is what they were fighting for. It wasn't a landholders grab for power - a historical reading of the War of the Revolution that held it that way would be _wrong_, whatever the historians of the time chose to believe. Whether it was legal or > not is largely irrelevant in considering its moral position. Second - read > the Declaration of Independence. One of the chief complaints of the authors > was the use of mercenaries in this conflict, which they thought profoundly > immoral. You might look at the speeches of a fair number of British > Parliamentarians, too, for example (including Edmund Burke, I believe), as > they harshly criticized the King for using mercenaries to fight the > rebellion, something that was considered highly dubious by most European > powers. Dubious because immoral or dubious because unwise, perhaps because the king was as much German as British (IIRC), and because British parlimentarians didn't like the part-German king using German (or Prussion, or Hessian, or whatever) troops? I'll be surprised to learn that the British government thought the colonies were doing the right thing at the time. Me: Well, it depends on what you mean by the British Government. Large parts of the British government _did_ think that the colonies were justified in what they were doing, so be surprised. Edmund Burke, for example. So did a large number of other significant figures in British politics. Even more strikingly, the Duke of Wellington in 1814 refused to command British troops in America against the United States because he thought that the United States was right and deserved its independence. The use of mercenaries was, in fact, considered immoral by everyone. But so what the British government thought about it was irrelevant. Who cares? The colonies _were_ doing the right thing. The British government wasn't. Again, you can't just escape moral judgments. In this situation the Founding Fathers were (on the whole) acting morally and the British government (on the whole) was not. Your counterfactual doesn't change that fact, whatever the retrospective judgments of historians would have been. Let me ask another question - why are you so resistant to the idea that they were doing the right thing, and should be judged (and praised) as people who chose to do the right thing? History is not lacking in examples of people who, having the opportunity to stand up for the right, failed to do so. Why then do you think it is necessary or useful to argue that people who - at extraordinary risk to themselves - did do so were actually acting in a morally neutral fashion? What does that achieve? > More broadly, I don't understand why you feel (in the case of the > handling of the prisoners in Guantanamo) that the requirements of morality > exceed those of the law, while in this situation the law and morality are > apparently synonymous to you. Pick one. Marvin: In short, the Western stance towards the Middle East is largely grounded in stupidity, hypocrisy, and good intentions gone awry. Arguing about who deserves blame for what in the middle of a multifaceted clusterf*ck like this gets really silly, really fast, and only servers the narrowest of viewpoints, it seems to me. Marvin Long Austin, Texas Me: Again, that really strikes me as a rationalization. By saying that you excuse yourself from making moral judgments. Some of the people involved are more to blame than others, and justice requires that those who are to blame are not rewarded for their actions. If you want to argue that we should not support Israel (I don't know if you do - that's a hypothetical) do so. If you don't, then do so. But claiming that blame is irrelevant to the situation is exactly equivalent to claiming that justice has nothing to do with how the situation must be resolved. It removes the moral burden of making judgments from your shoulders - but does not remove it from those people whose choices in this situation actually matter. Then, once they've made their decisions, you get to criticize them for "stupidity, hypocrisy, and good intentions gone awry." But whatever we do, someone will be helped and someone will be hurt. I think it is morally incumbent upon us to look at the history of the region and help those who deserve to be helped - not just pretend that there are no moral differences between the two sides or argue that because no one involves meets some imaginary level of moral perfection none of them deserve assistance. Gautam
