Gautam Mukunda wrote:
Then don't pretend that refusing judgment in this situation is somehow morally better than making judgments.
There are different kinds of judgment. There is judgment that decides guilt or innocence, and there is judgment that says "I'm good and you are bad." The former is discernment and I embrace it; the latter is hypocrisy.
The problem that faces us, as I see it, is how wrongdoers -- which is to say all of us -- can live together. I don't believe that "wiping out all the wrongdoers" is a path to living together; it's mass suicide, motivated by self-righteous score-keeping.
That's true. You can choose the freedom of sitting on your hands until they kill you. You do have that freedom. Of course, since they'll try to kill other people along with you, and those other people are more concerned with protecting freedom than refusing to blame terrorists for acts of terror, you'll probably make out okay.
Do I hear anger? You imagine that I'm advocating sitting on my hands? Far from it. If I recall correctly, I said something about this being a time to defend our borders.
Sure. What I see is the writing of someone who would
rather pontificate on what we have done to deserve
this than acknowledge that we haven't done anything to
deserve this.
Acknowledge? I just don't think it's important to figure out who's to blame. When I suggest that this is a time to defend our borders, I'm calling for disengagement from those who've harmed us, a strong defense. Boundaries.
Instead, our leaders tell us that we must figure out who might be planning to hurt us and destroy them before they have a chance. They tell us lies in order to persuade us to support such action against their choice of enemies.
If we truly face decades of the threat of domestic terrorism -- which I believe we do -- the current strategy seems completely wrong, since it focuses on destroying governments we oppose, rather than stopping terrorists who threaten us.
Nick
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