Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 16:53:01 +0100 From: Paul Richards <paul@freebsd-services.com> To: David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com>, FreeBSD Chat <chat@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: helping victims of terror Message-ID: <20270000.1001605981@lobster.originative.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <20010927151542.AAA26017@shell.webmaster.com@whenever> References: <20010927151542.AAA26017@shell.webmaster.com@whenever>
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--On Thursday, September 27, 2001 08:15:41 -0700 David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com> wrote: > > > On Wed, 26 Sep 2001 14:16:33 +0100, Paul Richards wrote: > >>> The biggest problem I have with Communism is the desire to destroy all >>> capitalist markets, even when it meant using military force. If >>> Communists had historically been content with maintaining the social >>> order of their countries, it might not have registered as such a threat >>> on the radar of other countries. As it was however, it was such a >>> threat that the U.S. decided to counter with its own agenda. > >> You should differentiate between communism and the USSR. Communism is an >> idealogy and it is not one that demands that military force be used to >> overthrow capitalist markets. > > Any ideology that includes the notion that private property is > inherently coercive can be used to justify the use of force against > those who practice it. Umm, not related to my point below, but where does communism state that private property is "coercive"? >> The idealogies don't always support the actions that some individuals >> perform. > > Often only because of other errors in the ideology. For example, if some > ideology claimed that having blonde hair was a crime comparable to > murder, you can blame that ideology for justifying the killing or > imprisoning of blonde people, even if that ideology also includes > complete pacifism and the notion that only god can punish murders. The If there was an ideology that said having blonde hair was a crime but that violent actions were evil then it is not the fault of the ideology for violence against people with blonde hair since those perpetrating the violence are not believers in the ideology, they're just haters of people with blonde hair who have picked out that one piece of someone elses ideology to justify their actions. That is very relevant to the current situation. > comission of a crime comparable to murder can reasonably justify the use > of retaliatory lethal force, and thus so can the ideology even if it > includes other unreasonable elements. You're now applying your own idealogy to pieces of someone elses, that's not a valid course of debate. Your own ideology says that a crime comparable to murder justifies the use of retaliatory force but you're drawing that opinion from your own idealogy, not the one you're criticising for having an opinion on blondes that you disagree with. Don't assume that some other ideology that equates certain acts to murder will also have the same view that muder justifies retaliatory force. To use our silly model, if being blonde is equivalent to being a murderer it does not follow that being blonde deserves the death penalty. The idealogy can be pacifist and view all such crimes as issues to be dealt with in a peacable manner. Dye blondes to be brunette, council murderers until they reform etc. You may not agree with the beliefs of this "idealogy" but you can't pick the bits you don't like in isolation and then apply your ideaology to come to a conclusion, any ideaology has to be viewed as a whole. When you do that you may find that defining blondes to be murders might not seem as abhorrent as it would if you did it within your idealogy, because the way the ideaology deals with murderers is different to yours. (I didn't pick this silly example, apologies to offended blondes). Paul Richards To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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