"guilty" and "innocent" (was Re: debates)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>On Thu, 12 Oct 2000 22:22:06 -0400 Yoshie Furuhashi 
><furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
>
> > We will find out who was responsible and hold them accountable...
>
>What, you have a problem with this?!? Or should the costs be defrayed, "We're
>all responsible for this, and we should all be held accountable." How
>indiscriminary. Welcome to postmodernity, enjoy your stay: do 
>whatever you want
>while you're here. Mr. Sade, you here too? - glad to see it.
>
>The point is to hold people responsible for what they do. Universal guilt is a
>wash for particular acts of barbarism. I say, bring 'em up before a war crimes
>tribunal. And I'm not talking about "terrorists" here.
>
>aspects of anarchism,
>ken

So you want Clinton & the American government to "find out who was 
responsible and hold them accountable"?  Clinton & the American 
government who, for instance, bombed a pharmaceutical factory to hold 
the terrorists accountable?

Rousseau's _Discourse on the Origin of Inequality_ still illuminates 
the nature of justice:

*****   Do you not know that numbers of your fellow-creatures are 
starving, for want of what you have too much of?  You ought to have 
had the express and universal consent of mankind, before 
appropriating more of the common subsistence than you needed for your 
own maintenance.  Destitute of valid reasons to justify and 
sufficient strength to defend himself, able to crush individuals with 
ease, but easily crushed himself by a troop of bandits, one against 
all, and incapable, on account of mutual jealousy, of joining with 
his equals against numerous enemies united by the common hope of 
plunder, the rich man, thus urged by necessity, conceived at length 
the profoundest plan that ever entered the mind of man: this was to 
employ in his favor the forces of those who attacked him, to make 
allies of his adversaries, to inspire them with different maxims, and 
to give them other institutions as favorable to himself as the law of 
nature was unfavorable.

With this view, after having represented to his neighbors the horror 
of a situation which armed every man against the rest, and made their 
possessions as burdensome as their wants, and in which no safety 
could be expected either in riches or in poverty, he readily devised 
plausible arguments to make them close with his design.  "Let us 
join," said he, "to guard the weak from oppression, to restrain the 
ambitious, and secure to every man the possession of what belongs to 
him: let us institute rules of justice and peace, to which all 
without exception may be obliged to conform; rules that may in some 
measure make amends for the caprices of fortune, by subjecting 
equally the powerful and the weak to the observance of reciprocal 
obligations.  Let us, in a word, instead of turning our forces 
against ourselves, collect them in a supreme power which may govern 
us by wise laws, protect and defend all the members of the 
association, repulse their common enemies, and maintain eternal 
harmony among us."

Far fewer words to this purpose would have been enough to impose on 
men so barbarous and easily seduced; especially as they had too many 
disputes among themselves to do without arbitrators, and too much 
ambition and avarice to go long without masters.  All ran headlong to 
their chains, in hopes of securing their liberty; for they had just 
wit enough to perceive the advantages of political institutions, 
without experience enough to enable them to foresee the dangers.  The 
most capable of foreseeing the dangers were the very persons who 
expected to benefit by them; and even the most prudent judged it not 
inexpedient to sacrifice one part of their freedom to ensure the 
rest; as a wounded man has his arm cut off to save the rest of his 
body.

Such was, or may well have been, the origin of society and law, which 
bound new fetters on the poor, and gave new powers to the rich; which 
irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, eternally fixed the law of 
property and inequality, converted clever usurpation into unalterable 
right, and, for the advantage of a few ambitious individuals, 
subjected all mankind to perpetual labor, slavery and wretchedness. 
*****

Yoshie