--- Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I don't think that is the point. I think that true > moral relativism, which > you don't seem to expouse, argues that its > impossible to get at objective > right and wrong, even after carefully considering > the issues. For example, > all one can say is that, within a given system (be > it personal or > community) X is right, and Y is wrong. You can see > that used to justify > totalitarianism because the idea of human rights is > just part of Western > Culture, and only exists for us. Other people have > different, equally > valid viewpoints. Gautam can correct me, but I > think this is what he > refers to as moral laziness.
That's mostly it, Dan. A large part of what I was saying, though, was that it seems to me that many people (and I'm not referencing David in particular, this is a more general statement) use "It's not all black and white" or "different cultures have different standards" and so on as a _substitute_ for the effort involved in actually making moral judgments. That's what I mean by moral laziness. Instead of the energy and effort involved in moral judgment, these truisms are too often used instead. This isn't an idle debating topic. One of the major arguments of opponents of the Iraq War was nothing more nor less than that Arabs had their own culture, with its own moral standards - so we couldn't make judgments about Saddam's government and didn't have the right to take action against it. It's not all black and white - we're not perfect, Saddam's not perfect, so how do we justify going after him? That's the sort of argument to which I was referring. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online. http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
